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how does humidifier work?
So unlike boiling water where you have to heat the water to make it vaporize, humidifiers work differently. What happens is there is an item inside the humidifier called a wick. The wick is almost like a sponge the just soaks up water. When you turn the humidifier on it sucks in air and blows it through the wick. Small warm particles of water are grabbed by the moving error and are sent through the air.
[ "A humidifier is a device, primarily an electrical appliance that increases humidity (moisture) in a single room or an entire building. In the home, point-of-use humidifiers are commonly used to humidify a single room, while whole-house or furnace humidifiers, which connect to a home's HVAC system, provide humidity to the entire house. Medical ventilators often include humidifiers for increased patient comfort. Large humidifiers are used in commercial, institutional, or industrial contexts, often as part of a larger HVAC system.\n", "Industrial humidifiers are used when a specific humidity level must be maintained to prevent static electricity buildup, preserve material properties, and ensure a comfortable and healthy environment for workers or residents.\n", "One type of evaporative humidifier makes use of just a reservoir and wick. Sometimes called a \"natural humidifier\", these are usually non-commercial devices that can be assembled at little or no cost. One version of a natural humidifier uses a stainless steel bowl, partially filled with water, covered by a towel. A waterproof weight is used to sink the towel in the center of the bowl. There is no need for a fan, because the water spreads through the towel by capillary action and the towel surface area is large enough to provide for rapid evaporation. The stainless steel bowl is much easier to clean than typical humidifier water tanks. This, in combination with daily or every other day replacement of the towel and periodic laundering, can control the problem of mold and bacteria.\n", "An impeller humidifier (cool mist humidifier) uses a rotating disc to fling water at a diffuser, which breaks the water into fine droplets that float into the air. The water supply must be kept scrupulously clean, or there is a risk of spreading bacteria or mold into the air.\n", "Most humidors come with a plastic or metal case with a sponge that works as the humidifier, although most recent versions are of polymer acryl. The latter are filled only with distilled water; the former may use a solution of propylene glycol and distilled water. Humidifiers, and the cigars within them, may become contaminated with bacteria if they are kept too moist. New technologies employing plastic beads or gels which stabilize humidity are becoming widely available.\n", "Surgical humidification is the conditioning of insufflation gas with water vapour (humidity) and heat during surgery. Surgical humidification is used to reduce the risk of tissue drying and evaporative cooling.\n", "Electronic humidifiers are also available, although usually reserved for very large humidors. A sensor measures the outside humidity and then activates a ventilator, which blows air over a humid sponge or water tank into the humidor. Once the preset humidity level has been reached the ventilator stops. This way electronic humidifiers can maintain a much more stable humidity level than passive humidifiers. Also they typically will activate an alarm to notify when the moisture supply needs refilling, to prevent humidity drops. The accuracy of electronic humidifiers depends primarily on the integrated type of sensor; the capacitive type are preferred.\n" ]
Why is it, whenever I look at snow for a lengthy period of time, my vision turns red?
what you're seeing is probably an [adaptation aftereffect] (_URL_0_) to bluish sky light reflected by all the white reflecting surfaces that are covering everything (the snow). over time, the retina (and the brain) acts to normalize stimulus distributions, so that if some stimulus is regularly over-represented it is relatively suppressed, and if some stimulus is regularly under-represented it is relatively enhanced. the distribution of light wavelengths in the white light from a blue sky is strongly tilted towards short wavelengths (which is why the sky looks blue) - if you spend a lot of time looking at this light, your neural mechanisms which process short-wavelength light will decrease their sensitivity, while neural mechanisms processing longer wavelengths will have their sensitivity increased. so, being adapted to white light with a 'cold' [color temperature] (_URL_2_) (i.e. stronger towards short wavelengths), when you get into an environment with a warmer color temperature (like white light from a lamp), you'll get an exaggerated response to the longer wavelengths and a suppressed response to the short wavelengths. since what you normally perceive in response to longer wavelengths are redder colors, this means that everything you see will appear reddened - until you re-adapt to the local color temperature, which happens very quickly. more generally, what you're talking about is a phenomenon called [color constancy] (_URL_1_), where the visual system is constantly trying to 'divide out' the wavelength distribution of the local illuminant. i could give some references if you want to go deeper into that...
[ "Scheerer's phenomenon can be distinguished from visual snow because it appears only when looking into bright light, whereas visual snow is constantly present in all light conditions including the dark.\n", "Although ice by itself is clear, snow usually appears white in color due to diffuse reflection of the whole spectrum of light by the scattering of light by the small crystal facets of the snowflakes of which it is comprised.\n", "Snow is a mixture of air and tiny ice crystals. When white sunlight enters snow, very little of the spectrum is absorbed; almost all of the light is reflected or scattered by the air and water molecules, so the snow appears to be the color of sunlight, white. Sometimes the light bounces around inside the ice crystals before being scattered, making the snow seem to sparkle.\n", "These spots are often followed within a few days or weeks by a much greater leakage of blood, which blurs the vision. In extreme cases, a person may only be able to tell light from dark in that eye. It may take the blood anywhere from a few days to months or even years to clear from the inside of the eye, and in some cases the blood will not clear. These types of large hemorrhages tend to happen more than once, often during sleep.\n", "This type of snow is common during the summer in alpine and coastal polar regions worldwide, such as the Sierra Nevada of California. Here, at altitudes of 10,000 to 12,000 feet (3,000–3,600 m), the temperature is cold throughout the year, and so the snow has lingered from winter storms. Compressing the snow by stepping on it or making snowballs leaves it looking red. Walking on watermelon snow often results in getting bright red soles and pinkish trouser cuffs.\n", "Some neuro-ophthalmologists believe that visual snow is not a medical condition, but a poorly understood symptom. People report seeing \"snow\", much like the visual noise on a TV screen after transmission ends. A 2010 study by Raghaven et al. hypothesizes that what the patients see as \"snow\" is their own intrinsic visual noise.\n", "The orange snow was malodorous, oily to the touch, and reported to contain four times the normal level of iron. Though mostly orange, some of the snow was red or yellow. It affected an area with about 27,000 residents. It was originally speculated that it was caused by industrial pollution, a rocket launch or even a nuclear accident. It was later determined that the snow was non-toxic; however, people in the region were advised not to use the snow or allow animals to feed upon it. Colored snow is uncommon in Russia but not unheard of, as there have been many cases of black, blue, green and red snowfall.\n" ]
How much radiation do I get by opening the microwave door before it has finished?
It's hard to tell- Must likely the Magnetron will cut off quickly as you open the door. But you certainly don't get any radiation of the kind people usually think about when referring to radiation. I.e. there is a huge difference between microwaves and the radiation, such as gamma rays, which is associated with nuclear processes. Microwaves are less energetic than visible light, whereas gamma rays are much more energetic. Thus, microwaves cannot ionize molecules, such as your DNA, and will therefore not cause cancer. The radiation in a Microwave oven is ~~tuned to the rotational frequency of water~~, so all it does is make the water molecules wiggle around, which creates heat. /Zaim Ph.d. student in quantum optics and nanophotonics. Edit: The microwave frequency is not tuned to the rotational resonance of the water molecule as I implied above. If it was, all the radiation would be absorbed on the surface of the food. Instead it is tuned away from the resonance, so that it can penetrate into the middle of the item.
[ "The first is that the device immediately ceases production of the microwave radiation when the door is opened, which checks that the safety interlock systems are functional; and the second is that any leakage when operating is less than 5 mWcm which indicates that the door and casing are not distorted and any seals are intact so that there is no hazard to those in the vicinity of the equipment.\n", "The door of a microwave oven has a screen built into the window. From the perspective of microwaves (with wavelengths of 12 cm) this screen finishes a Faraday cage formed by the oven's metal housing. Visible light, with wavelengths ranging between 400 nm and 700 nm, passes easily through the screen holes.\n", "Safety limits exist for microwave exposure. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration defines energy density limit for exposure periods of 0.1 hours or more to 10 mW/cm; for shorter periods the limit is 1 mW-hr/cm with limited excursions above 10 mW/cm. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standard for microwave oven leakage puts limit to 5 mW/cm at 2 inches from the oven's surface.\n", "A piece of calibrated equipment is required for these tests to detect and measure leakage of the 2.4 GHz microwave radiation, it is usually a hand-held device with a sensing antenna that can be scanned over the areas where the door meets the casing to find any radiation \"hot-spots\" whilst the unit is operating. As Microwave ovens are not normally designed to be operated without a load this will usually take the form of an open container containing a quantity of water which is used to absorb the energy and as it gets warmed gives an indication that a unit not previously examined by a tester is actually producing microwaves. After checking for leakage the door is required to be opened by whatever means is provided and the measurement device is not to record a level above the given limit. In some scenarios a known quantity of water is heated for a known period of time and the temperature rise over the period of operation is used to generate an indication of the effective power output of the magnetron. This can be helpful to determine whether the oven is operating at the expected power levels indicated by labelling.\n", "Direct microwave exposure is not generally possible, as microwaves emitted by the source in a microwave oven are confined in the oven by the material out of which the oven is constructed. Furthermore, ovens are equipped with redundant safety interlocks, which remove power from the magnetron if the door is opened. This safety mechanism is required by United States federal regulations. Tests have shown confinement of the microwaves in commercially available ovens to be so nearly universal as to make routine testing unnecessary. According to the United States Food and Drug Administration's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, a U.S. Federal Standard limits the amount of microwaves that can leak from an oven throughout its lifetime to 5 milliwatts of microwave radiation per square centimeter at approximately (2 in) from the surface of the oven. This is far below the exposure level currently considered to be harmful to human health.\n", "The radiation produced by a microwave oven is non-ionizing. It therefore does not have the cancer risks associated with ionizing radiation such as X-rays and high-energy particles. Long-term rodent studies to assess cancer risk have so far failed to identify any carcinogenicity from microwave radiation even with chronic exposure levels (i.e. large fraction of life span) far larger than humans are likely to encounter from any leaking ovens. However, with the oven door open, the radiation may cause damage by heating. Every microwave oven sold has a protective interlock so that it cannot be run when the door is open or improperly latched.\n", "The cooking chamber is similar to a Faraday cage to prevent the waves from coming out of the oven. Even though there is no continuous metal-to-metal contact around the rim of the door, choke connections on the door edges act like metal-to-metal contact, at the frequency of the microwaves, to prevent leakage. The oven door usually has a window for easy viewing, with a layer of conductive mesh some distance from the outer panel to maintain the shielding. Because the size of the perforations in the mesh is much less than the microwaves' wavelength (12.2 cm for the usual 2.45 GHz), microwave radiation cannot pass through the door, while visible light (with its much shorter wavelength) can.\n" ]
Are Palestinians to a significant extent Arabized Jews?
Apologies, but we have had to remove your submission. We ask that questions in this subreddit be limited to those asking about history, or for historical answers. This is not a judgement of your question, but to receive the answer you are looking for, it would be better suited to /r/AskScience. If you are interested in an historical answer, however, you are welcome to rework your question to fit the theme of this subreddit and resubmit it.
[ "Israeli Arabs constitute roughly 20% of the population in Israel. Many Israeli-Arab groups claim continued institutional and social discrimination against them in Israel. Because they are not Jews and many identify ethnically with Palestinians their identity often clashes with their citizenship in the Jewish state. There are large disparities in general living standard and education between Israeli Arabs and the non-Arab Israeli population; they also have a lower participation rate in the workforce. Discrimination and a lower proportion of females in the workforce are often cited as reasons for this. \n", "BULLET::::- A secular Arab state (as described in the Palestinian National Covenant before the cancellation of the relevant clauses in 1998). Accordingly, only those \"Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians\", which excludes at least 90% of the Jewish population of Israel.\n", "The argument that Arab immigration somehow made up a large part of the Palestinian Arab population is thus statistically untenable. The vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs resident in 1947 were the sons and daughters of Arabs who were living in Palestine before modern Jewish immigration began. There is no reason to believe that they were not the sons and daughters of Arabs who had been in Palestine for many centuries.\n", "A fraction of Palestinians remained within Israel's borders following the 1948 Palestinian exodus and are the largest group of Arabic-speaking and culturally Arab citizens of Israel. The vast majority of the Arab citizens of Israel are Sunni Muslim, while 9% of them are Christian.\n", "BULLET::::- Palestinian Jews are Jewish inhabitants of Palestine throughout certain periods of Middle Eastern history. After the modern State of Israel was born, nearly all native Palestinian Jews became citizens of Israel, and the term \"Palestinian Jews\" largely fell into disuse.\n", "In the book, Manji says that Arabs have made a mistake by denying that Jews have a historical bond with Palestine. Manji writes that the Jews' historical roots stretch back to the land of Israel, and that they have a right to a Jewish state. She further argues that the allegation of apartheid in Israel is deeply misleading, noting that there are in Israel several Arab political parties, that Arab-Muslim legislators have veto powers, and that Arab parties have overturned disqualifications. She also writes that Israel has a free Arab press, that road signs bear Arabic translations, and that Arabs live and study alongside Jews.\n", "In contrast, a 2006 poll commissioned by \"The Center Against Racism,\" showed negative attitudes towards Arabs, based on questions asked to 500 Jewish residents of Israel representing all levels of Jewish society. The poll found that: 63% of Jews believe Arabs are a security threat; 68% of Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab; 34% of Jews believe that Arab culture is inferior to Israeli culture. Additionally, support for segregation between Jewish and Arab citizens was found to be higher among Jews of Middle Eastern origin than those of European origin. A more recent poll by the \"Center Against Racism\" (2008) found a worsening of Jewish citizens' perceptions of their Arab counterparts:\n" ]
If instantaneous communication was possible between a person on Earth and a person accelerating near the speed of light in outer space (supposing this, too, was possible), what would the conversation look like since "time" is going much faster for the Earthbound person than it is for the traveler?
This question is invalid as stated - the moment you "pretend" instantaneous communication is possible, you throw relativity out the window, and thus can;t say anything about how perception of time differs between the two reference frames. You cant have your cake and eat it too - the same theory that tells us how to relate time between the two reference frames tells us FTL communication is impossible.
[ "BULLET::::- Point-to-point teleportation at the speed of light is possible with transfer booths (on Earth) and stepping disks (on the Puppeteer homeworld); on Earth, people's sense of place and global position has been lost due to instantaneous travel; cities and cultures have blended together.\n", "BULLET::::- Limited communication: There is no faster-than-light information transfer – meaning no ansible, subspace radio or hyper-wave. Communication is limited to the speed of travel. Decisions are made on the local level, rather than by a remote authority.\n", "In most \"Star Trek\" series, subspace communications are a means to establish nearly instantaneous contact with people and places that are light years away. The physics of \"Star Trek\" describe infinite speed (expressed as Warp 10) as an impossibility; as such, even subspace communications which putatively travel at speeds over Warp 9.9 may take hours or weeks to reach certain destinations. Since subspace signals do not degrade with the square of the distance as do other methods of communication utilizing conventional bands of the electromagnetic spectrum (i.e. radio waves), signals sent from a great distance can be expected to reach their destination at a predictable time and with little relative degradation (barring any random subspace interference or spatial anomalies).\n", "BULLET::::- In Larry Niven's \"Ringworld\" and in other novels from the Known Space universe, people travel instantaneously from point to point in glass \"displacement\" booths for a marginal fee. Destination is specified by dialling a destination number, much like we would dial a telephone today. Displacement actually occurs at light speed, but because any distance on earth is negligible at that speed, the trip is perceived as instantaneous.\n", "Physical communication is by NAFAL ships, Nearly As Fast As Light. The physics is never explained: the ship vanishes from where it was and reappears somewhere else many years later. The trip takes slightly longer than it would to cross the same distance at the speed of light, but ship-time is just a few hours for those on board. It cannot apparently be used for trips within a solar system. Trips can begin or end close to a planet, but if used without a \"retemporalizer\", there are drastic physical effects at the end of long trips, at least according to the Shing, whose information may be suspect. It is also lethal if the traveler is pregnant.\n", "Manned travel at a speed not close to the speed of light, would require either that we overcome our own mortality with technologies like radical life extension or traveling with a generation ship. If traveling at a speed closer to the speed of light, time dilation would allow intergalactic travel in a timespan of decades of on-ship time.\n", "BULLET::::- Broadband and Interactive - Duplex, interactive communication is possible at a maximum speed of 10Mbit/s. Because the transmission path is on the surface of the body, transmission speed does not deteriorate in congested areas where many people are communicating at the same time.\n" ]
What common historical misconception do you find most irritating?
One of my biggest peeves, which will set me spinning off in a rage even at its mention, is the anti-Stratfordian conspiracy theory. This so-called "theory" is that Shakespeare either didn't exist, or was merely a front for some other "real" author. This load of tripe was conceived in the 19th century by a bunch of classists and intellectual elitists who insisted that works of quality like Shakespeare's couldn't possibly be produced by somebody from the lower classes and of humble background, so therefore they clearly must have been written by a noble or an aristocratic person who was simply too modest to take credit. It demonstrates complete ignorance of how theatres, playwrights, and actors operated in the period, makes up absurd tests of validity that would be failed by 99% of all people ever born, and is rooted firmly in the belief that there was somehow a nationwide conspiracy by all levels of society up to and including the royal court to invent, adore, criticize, eulogize, pay, and grant arms to, a fake author that there is not one ounce of evidence to support.
[ "The history of misinformation, along with that of disinformation and propaganda, is tied up with the history of mass communication itself. Early examples cited in a 2017 article by Robert Darnton are the insults and smears spread among political rivals in Imperial and Renaissance Italy in the form of \"pasquinades,” anonymous and witty verse named for the Pasquino piazza and \"talking statue\" in Rome, and in pre-revolutionary France as \"canards,\" or printed broadsides that sometimes included an engraving to help convince readers to take their wild tales seriously.\n", "BULLET::::- \"The Independent\" - Despite \"tiny traces of real history [remaining]\" and \"the odd good joke\", its critic also criticised \"its wearying dependency on the verb \"swiving\" \" and argued that \"even historical impurists may have hankered for a little more hard fact in among the \"cack\" jokes and the cinematic pranks\"\n", "Years later a false myth grew up the crowds and all the belligerent nations cheered and welcomed the war. That was not true – everywhere there was a deep sense of foreboding. In wartime Britain, And in neutral United States, accurate reports of German atrocities and killing thousands of civilians, rounding up hostages, and destroying historic buildings and libraries caused a change of heart to an antiwar population. For example, suffragists took up the cause of the war, as did intellectuals. Very few expected a short happy war – the slogan \"over by Christmas\" was coined three years after the war began. Historians find that, \"The evidence for mass enthusiasm at the time is surprisingly weak.\"\n", "Fischer identifies several examples of the fallacy, particularly the works of Charles A. Beard. In each case, Fischer shows that historians provided detailed portrayals of historical figures involved in off-record meetings and exhibiting low morals, based on little or no evidence. He notes that the furtive fallacy does not necessarily imply deliberate falsification of history; it can follow from a sincere (but misguided) belief that nothing happens by accident or mistake.\n", "There are some incidents in the 19th century where the causes are less clear. A restricted press and limited means of some groups to gain avenues to express their grievances in a dominated society, means that some disturbances were suppressed literally and disguised in the public record.\n", "English depictions of misers in the 18th century begin as genre paintings. Gainsborough Dupont's poorly dressed character clutches a bag of coin and looks up anxiously in the painting in the Ashmolean Museum. John Cranch (1751-1821) pictures two armed desperadoes breaking in on his. However, it is in the realm of satirical prints that the most inventiveness is found. James Gillray does not neglect the moral dimension either in his \"The miser's feast\" (1786). He is pictured seated at a table eating a meager meal, attended by Death in the guise of an emaciated and naked manservant holding in his right hand a tray with a bone on it and behind him, in his left hand, the dart of death. Famine, a withered hag naked to the waist, is also in attendance wearing a large hat and fashionable skirt. These characters are identified by the verse at the bottom: \"What else can follow but destructive fate,/When Famine holds the cup and Death the plate?\"\n", "BULLET::::- Tales of Wrongovia - Essentially an anachronism quiz, this segment goes back into history, where a historical person is faced with a dilemma. Each dilemma involves showing four different items that would all be useful for the person in question, but in all but two, one of the items wasn't available to them at the time. (In the other two, only one of the four items was available.) It's the job of the viewer to guess which one couldn't (or could) be used. Produced by Michael Sporn.\n" ]
Why do humans react the way they to music/beats? And why don't other mammals react the same way?
Parrots dance! Just type "parrot dancing" in youtube and you will have a treasure trove of delightful dancing birds :) My favorite: _URL_0_
[ "Listening to music and general audio is commonly not a task directed activity. People enjoy music for various poorly understood reasons, which are commonly referred to the emotional effect of music due to creation of expectations and their realization or violation. Animals attend to signs of danger in sounds, which could be either specific or general notions of surprising and unexpected change. Generally, this creates a situation where computer audition can not rely solely on detection of specific features or sound properties and has to come up with general methods of adapting to changing auditory environment and monitoring its structure. This consists of analysis of larger repetition and self-similarity structures in audio to detect innovation, as well as ability to predict local feature dynamics.\n", "A research team led by Aniruddh D. Patel of The Neurosciences Institute concluded that sulphur-crested cockatoos have the ability to perceive the beat in music and are able to rhythmically move to the tempo of the music as it changes. Only vocal learning species such as dolphins and parrots are hypothesized to have the ability to perceive beat. This is because beat perception and movement rely on complex vocal learning which require motor and auditory circuits in the brain. Vocal learning and beat perception do some overlapping in the parts of the brain that account auditory and motor areas. There is no significant evidence for beat perception in nonvocal learning species such as dogs and cats. However, California sea lions, a nonvocal learning animal, have demonstrated the ability to perceive beats in music.\n", "Some types of parrots can know rhythm . Neurologist Oliver Sacks states that chimpanzees and other animals show no similar appreciation of rhythm yet posits that human affinity for rhythm is fundamental, so that a person's sense of rhythm cannot be lost (e.g. by stroke). \"There is not a single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck, or move in synchrony with an auditory beat\" (, cited in , who adds, \"No doubt many pet lovers will dispute this notion, and indeed many animals, from the Lippizaner horses of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna to performing circus animals appear to 'dance' to music. It is not clear whether they are doing so or are responding to subtle visual or tactile cues from the humans around them.\") Human rhythmic arts are possibly to some extent rooted in courtship ritual .\n", "The evolutionary switch to bipedalism may have influenced the origins of music. The background is that noise of locomotion and ventilation may mask critical auditory information. Human locomotion is likely to produce more predictable sounds than those of non-human primates. Predictable locomotion sounds may have improved our capacity of entrainment to external rhythms and to feel the beat in music. A sense of rhythm could aid the brain in distinguishing among sounds arising from discrete sources and also help individuals to synchronize their movements with one another. Synchronization of group movement may improve perception by providing periods of relative silence and by facilitating auditory processing. The adaptive value of such skills to early human ancestors may have been keener detection of prey or stalkers and enhanced communication. Thus, bipedal walking may have influenced the development of entrainment in humans and thereby the evolution of rhythmic abilities. Primitive hominids lived and moved around in small groups. The noise generated by the locomotion of two or more individuals can result in a complicated mix of footsteps, breathing, movements against vegetation, echoes, etc. The ability to perceive differences in pitch, rhythm, and harmonies, i.e. “musicality,” could help the brain to distinguish among sounds arising from discrete sources, and also help the individual to synchronize movements with the group. Endurance and an interest in listening might, for the same reasons, have been associated with survival advantages eventually resulting in adaptive selection for rhythmic and musical abilities and reinforcement of such abilities. Listening to music seems to stimulate release of dopamine. Rhythmic group locomotion combined with attentive listening in nature may have resulted in reinforcement through dopamine release. A primarily survival-based behavior may eventually have attained similarities to dance and music, due to such reinforcement mechanisms . Since music may facilitate social cohesion, improve group effort, reduce conflict, facilitate perceptual and motor skill development, and improve trans-generational communication, music-like behavior may at some stage have become incorporated into human culture.\n", "Music is the only form of communication that saves us from an overwhelming amount of small talk. This is not only a human phenomenon, but happens throughout the animal world. Thomas makes examples of animals from termites and earthworms to gorillas and alligators that perform some sort of rhythmic noise making that can be interpreted as music if we had full range of hearing. From the vast number of animals that participate in music it is clear that the need to make music is a fundamental characteristic of biology. Thomas proposes that the animal world is continuing a musical memory that has been going since the beginning of time.\n", "Apart from loud rhythmic singing-stomping-dancing, Jordania also suggested that soft humming could have played an important role in the early human (hominid) evolution as contact calls. Many social animals produce seemingly haphazard and indistinctive sounds (like chicken cluck) when they are going about their everyday business (foraging, feeding). These sounds have two functions: (1) to let group members know that they are among kin and there is no danger, and (2) in case of the appearance of any signs of danger (suspicious sounds, movements in a forest), the animal that notices danger first, stops moving, stops producing sounds, remains silent and looks in the direction of the danger sign. Other animals quickly follow suit and very soon all the group is silent and is scanning the environment for the possible danger. Charles Darwin was the first to notice this phenomenon on the example of the wild horses and the cattle. Jordania suggested that for humans, as for many social animals, silence can be a sign of danger, and that's why gentle humming and musical sounds relax humans (see the use of gentle music in music therapy, lullabies)\n", "Generally, humans have the ability to hear musical beat and rhythm beginning in infancy. Some people, however, are unable to identify beat and rhythm of music, suffering from what is known as beat deafness. Beat deafness is a newly discovered form of congenital amusia, in which people lack the ability to identify or “hear” the beat in a piece of music. Unlike most hearing impairments in which an individual is unable to hear any sort of sound stimuli, those with beat deafness are generally able to hear normally, but unable to identify beat and rhythm in music. Those with beat deafness are also unable to dance in step to any type of music. Even people who do not dance well can at least coordinate their movements to the song they are listening to, because they can easily keep time to the beat.\n" ]
Can you recommend me a couple of books on the history of the Holy Roman Empire, Reformation and the Thirty years war?
On the Reformation: Diarmaid MacCulloch, 'Reformation: Europe's house divided, 1490-1700', London 2004. EDIT: This is an excellent read, very informative and entertaining On the Thirty years war (and naturally with some information on the HRE): R.G. Asch, 'The thirty years war: The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618-1648', New York 1997. Sadly I don't know any good books which only cover the HRE.
[ "BULLET::::- Philip Schaff. «History of the Christian Church» / Volume VIII / HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 1517 – 1648./ THIRD BOOK. THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND, OR THE CALVINISTIC MOVEMENT. / CHAPTER XV. THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES. / § 122. Against the Worship of Relics. 1543.\n", "\"Book I: The Holy Roman Empire\" begins with the Hohenstaufens, detailing the Emperors Lothair II, Conrad III and his Crusade, Frederick Barbarossa and his conflicts with the Pope, the Peace of Constance, and his Crusade; moving on to the decline of this royal family, the book describes the reign of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor who peacefully acquired Jerusalem during the Sixth Crusade. Moving on to the House of Habsburg, it discusses Rudolf I of Germany who came to power in 1273, beginning that dynasty's power throughout Europe for centuries; Charles IV, Sigismund, and the rise of the Hanseatic League, the Swabian League, and the Hussites. Moving on to Frederick III, Maximilian I and the Diet of Worms, and to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation; the Schmalkaldic War, the Protestant Union, the Thirty Years' War, the Grand Alliance, the Treaty of Ryswick, the Treaty of Passarowitz, and the Treaty of Versailles; a brief treatment of the Seven Years' War is given, the reign of Maria Theresa, and the decline of the Holy Roman Empire: the Treaty of Reichenbach, Leopold II, the Congress of Rastatt, to the abdication of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor.\n", "BULLET::::- \"Aktenstücke uber das Verhalten der römischen Kurie zur Reformation, 1524‑1531,\" in \"Quellen und Forschungen\" (Kön. Press. \"Hist. Inst., Rome\"), vol. iii. p. 1‑20; TM Lindsay, \"History of the Reformation\", vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1906).\n", "BULLET::::- Holborn, Hajo. vol 1: \"A History of Modern Germany: The Reformation\"; vol 2: \"A History of Modern Germany: 1648–1840\"; vol 3: \"A history of modern Germany: 1840–1945\" (1959). a standard scholarly survey.\n", "Paul Tschackert (10 January 1848 – 7 July 1911) was a German Protestant theologian and church historian born in Freystadt, Silesia. He is largely remembered for studies involving the history of the Protestant Reformation.\n", "The first portion of Merle d'Aubigné's \"Histoire de la Reformation\" - \"History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century\" - which was devoted to the earlier period of the movement in Germany, i.e., Martin Luther's time, at once earned a foremost place among modern French ecclesiastical historians, and was translated into most European languages. The second portion, \"The History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin\", dealing with reform in the French reformer's sphere, exhaustively treats the subject with the same scholarship as the earlier work, but the second volume did not meet with the same success. It is part of the subject Merle d'Aubigné was most competent to discuss, and was nearly completed at the time of his death. Such was the scope Merle d'Aubigné's scholarship and his level of dedication, states church historian John Carrick, that Merle d'Aubigné \" visited the major libraries of Central and Western Europe in order to read original documents in Latin, French, German, Dutch, and English.\"\n", "The six volumes cover the history, from 98 to 1590, of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and then of the Roman State Church, and the history of Europe, and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire among other things.\n" ]
Why is 0-14 used for the pH scale? What are the highest and lowest pH substances both in existence and theoretically possible?
The pH scale is related to the molar concentration of hydrogen ions. Normal water has a H+ concentration = 10\^-7, therefor the pH is 7. Technically, pH is the -log10 \[ hydrogen ion activity\]. The scale goes beyond 0 - 14, but only uncommon substances are outside this range. Battery acid is pH = 0, meaning the H+ activity is 100%. Pure liquid lye drain cleaner is pH = 14, so the H+ activity is 10\^-14 (very low), and the OH- activity is very high. Hot saturated solution of sodium hydroxide can reach pH = 16. Very concentrated HCl solutions have pH = -1.1, and some waters from the Richmond Mine in California are reported at pH = -3.6.
[ "The pH scale is logarithmic and approximates the negative of the base 10 logarithm of the molar concentration (measured in units of moles per liter) of hydrogen ions in a solution. More precisely it is the negative of the base 10 logarithm of the activity of the hydrogen ion. At 25 °C, solutions with a pH less than 7 are acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic. The neutral value of the pH depends on the temperature, being lower than 7 if the temperature increases. The pH value can be less than 0 for very strong acids, or greater than 14 for very strong bases.\n", "Usually, pH standard is between 6 and 9 and can vary easily depending on the discharge content. In this case, Peru was the country with the smallest range (6–8) and Argentina and Mexico were the ones with the widest range (5.5–10). No limit was found for Canada Regulation.\n", "pH has no fundamental meaning; its official definition is a practical one. However, in the restricted range of dilute aqueous solutions having amount-of-substance concentrations less than 0.1 mol/L, and being neither strongly alkaline nor strongly acidic (2 pH 12), the definition is such that\n", "The pH scale is traceable to a set of standard solutions whose pH is established by international agreement. Primary pH standard values are determined using a concentration cell with transference, by measuring the potential difference between a hydrogen electrode and a standard electrode such as the silver chloride electrode. The pH of aqueous solutions can be measured with a glass electrode and a pH meter, or a color-changing indicator. Measurements of pH are important in chemistry, agronomy, medicine, water treatment, and many other applications.\n", "At 25 °C an aqueous solution that has a pH of 3.5 has 10 moles H (hydrogen ions) per litre of solution (and also 10 mole/litre OH). A pH of 7, defined as neutral, has 10 moles of hydrogen ions per litre of solution and also 10 moles of OH per litre; since the two concentrations are equal, they are said to neutralise each other. A pH of 9.5 has 10 moles hydrogen ions per litre of solution (and also 10 mole per litre OH). A pH of 3.5 has one million times more hydrogen ions per litre than a solution with pH of 9.5 (9.5–3.5 = 6 or 10) and is more acidic.\n", "It is very difficult to measure pH values of less than two in aqueous solution with a glass electrode, because the Nernst equation breaks down at such low pH values. To determine p\"K\" values of less than about 2 or more than about 11 spectrophotometric\n", "Defined this way, pH is a quantity of dimension 1, that is it has no unit. Values pH(S) for a range of standard solutions S are listed in Definitions of pH scales, standard reference values, measurement of pH, and related terminology. Pure Appl. Chem. (1985), 57, pp 531–542, where further details can be found.\n" ]
This morning as I stirred my coffee it happened to be on a kitchen scale. I noticed that the weight of the spoon registered on the scale, even when I was holding it. Why?
The coffee provides a buoyant force to the spoon, pushing it up, making it lighter in your hand. The counter to this force is added weight on the scale.
[ "From 1743, the Celsius scale is based on 0 °C for the freezing point of water and 100 °C for the boiling point of water at 1 atm pressure. Prior to 1743, the scale was also based on the boiling and melting points of water, but the values were reversed (i.e. the boiling point was at 0 degrees and the melting point was at 100 degrees). The 1743 scale reversal was proposed by Jean-Pierre Christin.\n", "We were about to sit down to tea when Mdlle. Gronin called our attention to the steady light, round, and about the size of a cheese plate, which appeared suddenly on the wall of the little garden directly opposite the door of the hut in which we sat.\n", "The earliest known reference to the Coffee Cabinet was published in \"The Spatula\" in 1903:.“A drink that has become the most popular is “Coffee Cabinet,” consisting of coffee syrup, egg, plain cream, ice cream, and shaved ice, thoroughly shaken. The coarse stream of soda is drawn and the drink is strained. This has often been called a meal in itself.”\n", "In measure 33, Barber has written a scale with the mood of the section in mind. Every time a cluster appears, it occurs on the two or three consecutive black keys on the piano. Barber composed this passage so that the listener can perceive the entire span of the scale in a shorter amount of time without sounding frantic or rushed. This variation has a natural flowing feeling throughout, and for Barber to include the scale in this manner helps to add to that effect.\n", "It can be observed by pouring hot milk into a mug, stirring in chocolate powder, and tapping the bottom of the mug with a spoon while the milk is still in motion. The pitch of the taps will increase progressively with no relation to the speed or force of tapping. Subsequent stirring of the same solution (without adding more chocolate powder) will gradually decrease the pitch again, followed by another increase. This process can be repeated a number of times, until equilibrium has been reached.\n", "The hot chocolate effect, also known as the allassonic effect, is a phenomenon of wave mechanics first documented in 1982 by Frank Crawford, where the pitch heard from tapping a cup of hot liquid rises after the addition of a soluble powder. It was first observed in the making of hot chocolate or instant coffee, but also occurs in other situations such as adding salt to supersaturated hot water or cold beer. Recent research has found many more substances which create the effect, even in initially non-supersaturated liquids.\n", "The clock's mechanism is driven by variations in atmospheric pressure, and by daily temperature variations; of the two, temperature variations are more important. Either causes the air in a one cubic-foot (28 litre) air-tight box to expand or contract, which pushes on a diaphragm. A temperature variation of six degrees Fahrenheit (3.3 K) over the course of each day creates approximately enough pressure to raise a one-pound weight by one inch (equivalent to 0.113 Joules or 31 μWh), which drives the clock mechanism.\n" ]
How do donated organs remain viable without blood flow?
Organs can usually last a few hours at very low temperatures (but not freezing). This is normally sufficient to get from the donor to the recipient. Same goes with the heart muscle during a myocardium infarction. Serious damage to the heart muscle doesn't happen immediately but is progressive the longer the affected area of the heart is without oxygen.
[ "In living donors, the donor remains alive and donates a renewable tissue, cell, or fluid (e.g., blood, skin), or donates an organ or part of an organ in which the remaining organ can regenerate or take on the workload of the rest of the organ (primarily single kidney donation, partial donation of liver, lung lobe, small bowel). Regenerative medicine may one day allow for laboratory-grown organs, using person's own cells via stem cells, or healthy cells extracted from the failing organs.\n", "Organ donation is usually made possible by CPR, even if CPR does not save the patient. If there is a Return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC), all organs can be considered for donation. If the patient does not achieve ROSC, and CPR continues until an operating room is available, the kidneys and liver can still be considered for donation.\n", "Tissue may be recovered from donors who die of either brain or circulatory death. In general, tissues may be recovered from donors up to 24 hours past the cessation of heartbeat. In contrast to organs, most tissues (with the exception of corneas) can be preserved and stored for up to five years, meaning they can be \"banked.\" Also, more than 60 grafts may be obtained from a single tissue donor. Because of these three factors—the ability to recover from a non-heart beating donor, the ability to bank tissue, and the number of grafts available from each donor—tissue transplants are much more common than organ transplants. The American Association of Tissue Banks estimates that more than one million tissue transplants take place in the United States each year.\n", "Donations can also be taken by machines called cell separators, usually in larger blood donation centres located in city centres. These machines use a process called apheresis to collect either blood plasma only, or plasma and platelets, the other blood cells being returned to the patient. Platelets are the tiny fragments of cells in the blood which help it to clot and so stop bleeding, and are used in the treatment of cancer and leukaemia. A constant supply is vital because platelets only last five days once collected. People who give plasma and/or platelets can donate every two weeks, and each donation usually gives two or three adult doses. One adult dose of platelets would otherwise require four whole blood donations.\n", "Many societies have a system for organ donation, in which a living or deceased donor's organ is transplanted into a person with a failing organ. The transplantation of larger solid organs often requires immunosuppression to prevent organ rejection or graft-versus-host disease.\n", "Anatomical donation is still relatively rare, and in attempts to increase these donations, many countries have instituted programs and regulations surrounding the donation of cadavers or body parts. For example, in some states within the United States and for academic-based programs, a person must make the decision to donate their remains themselves prior to death; the decision cannot be made by a power of attorney. If a person decides not to donate their whole body, or they are unable to, there are other forms of donation via which one can contribute their body to science after death, such as organ donation and tissue donation.\n", "Organ donation is possible after CPR, but not usually after a death with a DNR. If CPR does not revive the patient, and continues until an operating room is available, kidneys and liver can be considered for donation. US Guidelines endorse organ donation, \"Patients who do not have ROSC [return of spontaneous circulation] after resuscitation efforts and who would otherwise have termination of efforts may be considered candidates for kidney or liver donation in settings where programs exist.\" European guidelines encourage donation, \"After stopping CPR, the possibility of ongoing support of the circulation and transport to a dedicated centre in perspective of organ donation should be considered.\" CPR revives 64% of patients in hospitals and 43% outside (ROSC), which gives families a chance to say goodbye, and all organs can be considered for donation, \"We recommend that all patients who are resuscitated from cardiac arrest but who subsequently progress to death or brain death be evaluated for organ donation.\"\n" ]
Why are all the planets on the ecliptic plane? Why are there other celestial objects orbiting the sun that are not on the ecliptic plane?
[This is a very frequently asked question](_URL_0_).
[ "Most large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earth's orbit, known as the ecliptic. The planets are very close to the ecliptic, whereas comets and Kuiper belt objects are frequently at significantly greater angles to it. All the planets, and most other objects, orbit the Sun in the same direction that the Sun is rotating (counter-clockwise, as viewed from above Earth's north pole). There are exceptions, such as Halley's Comet.\n", "Ecliptic coordinates are convenient for specifying positions of Solar System objects, as most of the planets' orbits have small inclinations to the ecliptic, and therefore always appear relatively close to it on the sky. Because Earth's orbit, and hence the ecliptic, moves very little, it is a relatively fixed reference with respect to the stars.\n", "The orbits of planets around the Sun do not really follow an identical ellipse each time, but actually trace out a flower-petal shape because the major axis of each planet's elliptical orbit also precesses within its orbital plane, partly in response to perturbations in the form of the changing gravitational forces exerted by other planets. This is called perihelion precession or apsidal precession.\n", "Because Earth's rotational axis is not perpendicular to its orbital plane, Earth's equatorial plane is not coplanar with the ecliptic plane, but is inclined to it by an angle of about 23.4°, which is known as the obliquity of the ecliptic. If the equator is projected outward to the celestial sphere, forming the celestial equator, it crosses the ecliptic at two points known as the equinoxes. The Sun, in its apparent motion along the ecliptic, crosses the celestial equator at these points, one from south to north, the other from north to south. The crossing from south to north is known as the vernal equinox, also known as the \"first point of Aries\" and the \"ascending node of the ecliptic\" on the celestial equator. The crossing from north to south is the autumnal equinox or descending node.\n", "In most cases, the Laplace plane is very close to the equatorial plane of its primary planet (if the satellite is very close to its planet) or to the plane of the primary planet's orbit around the Sun (if the satellite is far away from its planet). This is because the strength of the planet's perturbation on the satellite's orbit is much stronger for orbits close to the planet, but drops below the strength of the Sun's perturbation for orbits farther away. Examples of satellites whose Laplace plane is close to their planet's equatorial plane include the satellites of Mars and the inner satellites of the giant planets. Examples of satellites whose Laplace plane is close to their planet's orbital plane include Earth's Moon and the outer satellites of the giant planets. Some satellites, such as Saturn's Iapetus, are situated in the transitional zone and have Laplace planes that are midway between their planet's equatorial plane and the plane of its solar orbit. \n", "Most of the major bodies of the Solar System orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane. This is likely due to the way in which the Solar System formed from a protoplanetary disk. Probably the closest current representation of the disk is known as the \"invariable plane of the Solar System\". Earth's orbit, and hence, the ecliptic, is inclined a little more than 1° to the invariable plane, Jupiter's orbit is within a little more than ° of it, and the other major planets are all within about 6°. Because of this, most Solar System bodies appear very close to the ecliptic in the sky.\n", "With the exception of Hyperion all the known regular planetary natural satellites in the Solar System are tidally locked to their host planet, so they have zero rotation relative to their host planet, but have the same type of rotation relative to the Sun as their host planet, because they have prograde orbits around their host planet. That is to say, they all have prograde rotation relative to the Sun except those of Uranus.\n" ]
despite intense competition and very small profit margins in the mobile phone market, how do companies like xiaomi manage to provide significantly better hardware specs than relatively larger & older companies like samsung and sony?
A few reasons. Xiaomi's business model is like that of Kuerig, or Xerox, or HP printers. They will practically *give* you the device, because that is not the actual product. What they sell is software, the device is just a means of getting it to you.Printers are cheap, but you have to keep buying toner. Kuerig machine are a marvel of engineering, but the coffee is what keeps you coming back to the trough. They sell through online outlets, instead of brick and mortar stores. Xiaomi is Chinese, they have an enormous indigenous consumer base, favorable tax liabilities to serve that base, and slave labor to produce for it. These reasons are why trade agreements with the Chinese are a joke, and probably immoral, not many other countries can just force people to do shit. All the while dumping incalculable waste, without any first world restrictions. Result: cheap ass phone, with quality components for the consumer.
[ "Several sources, including \"The Economist\", have identified Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft as the four platform cloud companies which will be the key competitors in the post-PC era of mobile computing. Tech companies with a heavy dependency on PC sales such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell have seen decreased profits, while IBM has also struggled due to slowing demand for hardware and consulting services.\n", "While uptake of smartphone technology by the medical field has grown in low- and middle-income countries, it is worth noting that the capabilities of mobile phones in low- and middle-income countries has not reached the sophistication of those in high-income countries. The infrastructure that enables web browsing, GPS navigation, and email through smartphones is not as well developed in much of the low- and middle-income countries. Increased availability and efficiency in both voice and data-transfer systems in addition to rapid deployment of wireless infrastructure will likely accelerate the deployment of mobile-enabled health systems and services throughout the world.\n", "There are three main reasons that mobile CRM is becoming so popular. The first is that the devices consumer use are improving in multiple ways that allow for this advancement. Displays are larger and clearer and access times on networks are improving overall. Secondly, the users are also becoming more sophisticated. The technology to them is nothing new so it is easy to adapt. Lastly, the software being developed for these applications has become worthwhile and useful to end users.\n", "Improved hardware and faster wireless communication (due to standards such as LTE) have bolstered the growth of the smartphone industry. In the third quarter of 2012, one billion smartphones were in use worldwide. Global smartphone sales surpassed the sales figures for feature phones in early 2013.\n", "There has been an industry shift from feature phones (including low-end smartphones), which rely mainly on volume sales, to high-end flagship smartphones which also enjoy higher margins, thus manufacturers find high-end smartphones much more lucrative than feature phones. \n", "The rapid uptake of smart devices in China is of critical importance in that it lays the foundation for the development of the digital consumer market. There were 80 million smartphones in circulation in China in 2010, a figure which skyrocketed to 580 million units in 2013, and is expected to further increase to over 1 billion units by 2016. There are 650 million mobile internet users, 350 million smartphone subscribers and 290 million active WeChat users.\n", "According to research by Logicalis, high-growth markets (including Brazil, Russia, India, UAE, and Malaysia) demonstrate a much higher propensity to use their own device at work. Almost 75% of users in these countries did so, compared to 44% in the more mature developed markets.\n" ]
How did anti-miscegenation laws in the USA deal with mixed-race couples where neither partner was white?
The usual disclaimer is along these lines: These listings just indicate previous articles that may be applicable. This is not to discourage new questions. A search for > jim crow asian (merely as likely terms to have been in an article) includes a reply, [When interracial marriages were illegal in some states in the U.S., what did biracial people do? Could they simply not marry anyone in those states?](_URL_0_). They say they "assume" it was true in other states but provides no data, but they correctly note that Loving v. Virginia's Supreme Court decision says "While Virginia prohibits whites from marrying any nonwhite (subject to the exception for the descendants of Pocahontas), Negroes, Orientals, and any other racial class may intermarry without statutory interference." ([here](_URL_2_), in note 11). I found a few more general posts, but they don't talk about marriage in particular, so I don't know whether they apply to marriage too. [How were non-black minorities treated in the Jim Crow South](_URL_1_). /u/Dubstripsquads's reply says that different categories were variously treated as white or as non-white, depending on location or time. There was also [What was Jim Crow/segregation era America like for non-black minorities?](_URL_5_) It cites and approves of the book [What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America](_URL_4_). [What was the status of Jews and Asians in America during racial segregation?](_URL_3_) is older and doesn't cite sources.
[ "Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws enforced racial segregation through marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage. Certain communities also prohibit having sexual intercourse with a person of another race. These laws have since been changed in all U.S. states - interracial marriage is permitted. The last states to change these laws were South Carolina and Alabama. South Carolina made this change in 1998 and in 2000, Alabama became the last state in the United States to legalize interracial marriage.\n", "In the United States, various state laws prohibited marriages between whites and blacks, and in many states they also prohibited marriages between whites and Native Americans or Asians. In the U.S., such laws were known as anti-miscegenation laws. From 1913 until 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced such laws. Although an \"Anti-Miscegenation Amendment\" to the United States Constitution was proposed in 1871, in 1912–1913, and in 1928, no nationwide law against racially mixed marriages was ever enacted. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in \"Loving v. Virginia\" that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. With this ruling, these laws were no longer in effect in the remaining 16 states that still had them.\n", "In the United States, laws in some but not all of the states prohibited the marriage of whites and blacks, and in many states also the intermarriage of whites with Native Americans or Asians. In the U.S., such laws were known as anti-miscegenation laws. From 1913 until 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced such laws. Although an \"Anti-Miscegenation Amendment\" to the United States Constitution was proposed in 1871, in 1912–1913, and in 1928, no nationwide law against racially mixed marriages was ever enacted. In 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled in \"Loving v. Virginia\" that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. With this ruling, these laws were no longer in effect in the remaining 16 states that still had them.\n", "The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act in South Africa, enacted in 1949, banned intermarriage between different racial groups, including between whites and non-whites. The Immorality Act, enacted in 1950, also made it a criminal offense for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race. Both laws were repealed in 1985.\n", "In many states, anti-miscegenation laws also criminalized cohabitation and sex between whites and non-whites. In addition, the state of Oklahoma in 1908 banned marriage \"between a person of African descent\" and \"any person not of African descent\"; Louisiana in 1920 banned marriage between Native Americans and African Americans (and from 1920–1942, concubinage as well); and Maryland in 1935 banned marriages between blacks and Filipinos. While anti-miscegenation laws are often regarded as a Southern phenomenon, most western and plains states also enacted them.\n", "Anti-miscegenation laws, banning interracial marriage between whites and non-whites, had existed long before the emergence of eugenics. First enacted during the Colonial era when slavery had become essentially a racial caste, such laws were in effect in Virginia and in much of the United States until the 1960s.\n", "The mixing of whites and blacks, resulting in multiracial children, for which the term \"miscegenation\" was coined in 1863, was a taboo, and most whites opposed marriages between whites and blacks. In many states, marriage between whites and non-whites was even prohibited by state law through anti-miscegenation laws. As a result, two kinds of \"mixture talk\" developed:\n" ]
why do vacuum insulated containers insulate cold beverages longer than hot beverages?
They don't. It's a difference in your perception of what constitutes "hot" and "cold", and the way thermal transfer works. Room temperature is ~70F; a hot beverage might be ~170F. A 100F difference. A cold beverage isn't going to be any colder than ~32F, about a 40F difference. So you need to heat your beverage up a lot for you to think of it as truly hot...much more so than making a beverage cold. Then there's heat transfer. Heat transfer happens the fastest when the temperature difference is the greatest. So your "hot" beverage initially loses heat faster than your "cold" beverage gains it. So there are two factors working against the hot beverage. It cools faster due to the greater temperature difference, and you don't think of it as "hot" when it cools down just a bit. If you were to take 2 beverages and cool one 20 degrees below room temperature and heat another 20 degrees above room temperature, you'd find that they both approach room temp at the same rate. EDIT: Note that to do this correctly, I should have represented all temperatures in Kelvin. The conclusions are still correct, but the numbers are not quite right as I wrote it.
[ "A vacuum flask (also known as a Dewar flask, Dewar bottle or thermos) is an insulating storage vessel that greatly lengthens the time over which its contents remain hotter or cooler than the flask's surroundings. Invented by Sir James Dewar in 1892, the vacuum flask consists of two flasks, placed one within the other and joined at the neck. The gap between the two flasks is partially evacuated of air, creating a near-vacuum which significantly reduces heat transfer by conduction or convection.\n", "In laboratories and industry, vacuum flasks are often used to hold liquefied gases (often LN2) for flash freezing, sample preparation and other processes where maintaining an extreme low temperature is desired. Larger vacuum flasks store liquids that become gaseous at well below ambient temperature, such as oxygen and nitrogen; in this case the leakage of heat into the extremely cold interior of the bottle results in a slow boiling-off of the liquid so that a narrow unstoppered opening, or a stoppered opening protected by a pressure relief valve, is necessary to prevent pressure from building up and eventually shattering the flask. The insulation of the vacuum flask results in a very slow \"boil\" and thus the contents remain liquid for long periods without refrigeration equipment.\n", "The vacuum flask consists of two vessels, one placed within the other and joined at the neck. The gap between the two vessels is partially evacuated of air, creating a partial-vacuum which reduces heat conduction or convection. Heat transfer by thermal radiation may be minimized by silvering flask surfaces facing the gap but can become problematic if the flask's contents or surroundings are very hot; hence vacuum flasks usually hold contents below the boiling point of water. Most heat transfer occurs through the neck and opening of the flask, where there is no vacuum. Vacuum flasks are usually made of metal, borosilicate glass, foam or plastic and have their opening stoppered with cork or polyethylene plastic. Vacuum flasks are often used as insulated shipping containers.\n", "Insulated beverage containers, or KOOZIE branded products, are used to insulate a chilled beverage from warming by warm air or sunlight. Using an insulated beverage container, or KOOZIE branded product, can reduce the rate a drink warms in the sun by up to 50%.\n", "Unlike most plastics, it does not produce significant outgassing even at high temperatures, which makes it useful for lightweight heat shields and crucible support. It also performs well in vacuum applications, down to extremely low cryogenic temperatures. However, Vespel tends to absorb a small amount of water, resulting in longer pump time while placed in a vacuum.\n", "Vacuum cooling is a rapid cooling technique for any porous product which has free water and works on the principle of evaporative cooling. Vacuum cooling is generally used for cooling food products having a high water content and large porosities, due to its efficacy in losing water from both within and outside the products. This is the most widely used technique for rapid cooling of food product which has been proven to be one of the most efficient and economical method of cooling and storage of vegetables, fruits, flowers & more. \n", "Vacuum packing reduces atmospheric oxygen, limiting the growth of aerobic bacteria or fungi, and preventing the evaporation of volatile components. It is also commonly used to store dry foods over a long period of time, such as cereals, nuts, cured meats, cheese, smoked fish, coffee, and potato chips (crisps). On a more short term basis, vacuum packing can also be used to store fresh foods, such as vegetables, meats, and liquids, because it inhibits bacterial growth.\n" ]
What caused the guitar, an instrument not found in a typical orchestra, to become the de-facto popular music instrument?
Hi, not discouraging further contributions here, but do check out these earlier answers * /u/hillsonghoods on the hugely entertaining [AskHistorians Podcast 067 - 20th Century Popular Music and the Rise of Guitar Groups](_URL_1_); as well as in [How did the default set of instruments for modern bands come to be 2 guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, and vocals? Why is it so rare to hear instruments other than these in popular music since the 1950s?](_URL_2_) and [When did the modern concept of the 'band' begin? I.e. The four piece guitar, bass, drums, singer set up. Was it popularized by a single group?](_URL_0_) * /u/Kai_Daigoji in [Why is the guitar the standard instrument for modern music?](_URL_3_)
[ "From the late 18th century the guitar achieved considerable general popularity though, as Ruggero Chiesa stated, subsequent scholars have largely ignored its place in classical music. It was the era of guitarist-composers such as Fernando Sor, Ferdinando Carulli, Mauro Giuliani and Matteo Carcassi. In addition several well-known composers not generally linked with the guitar played or wrote for it: Luigi Boccherini and Franz Schubert wrote for it in several pieces, Hector Berlioz was a proficient guitarist who neither played keyboards nor received an academic education in music, the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini played guitar informally and Anton Diabelli produced a quantity of guitar compositions (\"see List of compositions by Anton Diabelli\").\n", "The instrument itself was not popular, and was dropped from the product line in 1965, presumably because it failed to excite the market. It was one of a number of experiments that Zacharias made converting non-standard musical instruments to modern ones. Guitarets that have survived have problems with the reed dampening system, which means that the instrument has come to be played with two hands.\n", "Its decline coincided with the waning of the popularity of the guitar as a salon instrument, increasingly supplanted by the piano which benefitted from ongoing improvements to its keyboard action. The lyre-guitar nevertheless persisted, not so much as a musical instrument, but more commonly as a symbol of classicist ideals appearing in numerous allegorical paintings (e.g. Mähler's portrait of Beethoven), and later on, photographs as a prop for evoking ancient Greek and Roman themes.\n", "The Russian guitar remained the standard for popular musicians until the 1960s, when a strong interest in underground music such as jazz and Western rock groups such as the Beatles and Elvis Presley developed.\n", "With the rise of electronically created music in the 1980s, violins declined in use, as synthesized string sounds played by a keyboardist with a synthesizer took their place. However, while the violin has had very little usage in mainstream rock music, it has some history in progressive rock (e.g., Electric Light Orchestra, King Crimson, Kansas, Gentle Giant). The 1973 album \"\" by Italy's RDM plays violins off against synthesizers at its finale (\"La grande fuga\"). The instrument has a stronger place in modern jazz fusion bands, notably The Corrs. The fiddle is sometimes a part of British folk rock music, as exemplified by the likes of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span.\n", "Like many other instruments used in classical music, the violin descends from remote ancestors that were used for folk music. Following a stage of intensive development in the late Renaissance, largely in Italy, the violin had improved (in volume, tone, and agility), to the point that it not only became a very important instrument in art music, but proved highly appealing to folk musicians as well, ultimately spreading very widely, sometimes displacing earlier bowed instruments. Ethnomusicologists have observed its widespread use in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.\n", "The evolution of the classical guitar and its repertoire spans more than four centuries. It has a history that was shaped by contributions from earlier instruments, such as the lute, the vihuela, and the baroque guitar.\n" ]
Why is it that when I eat from an aluminum container with a steel fork I get a similar taste sensation as when I put a battery on my tongue? Is there a reaction going on?
Potentially yes, assuming you cook with salt. When two dissimilar metals are connected together by an electrolyte, they form a galvanic cell. See: _URL_0_ These were the first types of batteries. It can also lead to corrosion of metals, if they are kept in contact for too long. This is a corrosion mechanism in the molten salt reactor.
[ "Neurotoxic behavior of aluminum is known to occur upon entry into the circulatory system, where it can migrate to the brain and inhibit some of the crucial functions of the blood brain barrier (BBB). A loss of function in the BBB can produce significant damage to the neurons in the CNS, as the barrier protecting the brain from other toxins found in the blood will no longer be capable of such action. Though the metal is known to be neurotoxic, effects are usually restricted to patients incapable of removing excess ions from the blood, such as those experiencing renal failure. Patients experiencing aluminum toxicity can exhibit symptoms such as impaired learning and reduced motor coordination. Additionally, systemic aluminum levels are known to increase with age, and have been shown to correlate with Alzheimer’s Disease, implicating it as a neurotoxic causative compound of the disease. Despite its known toxicity, aluminum is still extensively utilized in the packaging and preparing of food, while other toxic metals such as lead have been almost entirely phased-out of use in these industries.\n", "It is not recommended to fill aluminum bottles with acidic liquids (e.g. orange juice), as this could cause aluminum to leach into the contents of the bottle. Stainless steel bottles do not contain a liner but have been known to transfer a metallic taste and odor to contents. Bottles made with food grade stainless steel (Grade 304, also known as 18/8) do not transfer taste or odor. Depending on the type of source material and manufacturing process behind your stainless steel bottle, trace amounts of minerals can leach into contents.\n", "Use of aluminum in cans began in 1957. Aluminum offers greater malleability, resulting in ease of manufacture; this gave rise to the two-piece can, where all but the top of the can is simply stamped out of a single piece of aluminum, rather than laboriously constructed from two pieces of steel. The inside of the can is lined by spray coating an epoxy lacquer or polymer to protect the aluminum from being corroded by acidic contents such as carbonated beverages and imparting a metallic taste to the beverage. The epoxy may contain bisphenol A. A label is either printed directly on the side of the can or will be glued to the outside of the curved surface, indicating its contents.\n", "Any object containing pointed metal can create an electric arc (sparks) when microwaved. This includes cutlery, crumpled aluminium foil (though some foil used in microwaves is safe, see below), twist-ties containing metal wire, the metal wire carry-handles in paper Chinese take-out food containers, or almost any metal formed into a poorly conductive foil or thin wire, or into a pointed shape. Forks are a good example: the tines of the fork respond to the electric field by producing high concentrations of electric charge at the tips. This has the effect of exceeding the dielectric breakdown of air, about 3 megavolts per meter (3×10 V/m). The air forms a conductive plasma, which is visible as a spark. The plasma and the tines may then form a conductive loop, which may be a more effective antenna, resulting in a longer lived spark. When dielectric breakdown occurs in air, some ozone and nitrogen oxides are formed, both of which are unhealthy in large quantities.\n", "The tastes of copper and zinc were found to be \"bold and assertive, with bitter, metallic tastes\". The silver spoon \"tasted dull\", while the stainless steel had a \"faintly metallic flavour\". Miodownik observed that the guests were not just tasting the spoons, but eating them, as with every lick they consumed \"perhaps a hundred billion atoms\".\n", "Aluminum is the most common metal found in the Earth's crust. It is found in all soils and in all environments, from temperate to tropical. In a soluble state, it is highly toxic to plant life, as it inhibits root growth; however, in neutral and alkaline soils common to the temperate zones, it is insoluble and therefore inert. Soil fertility is directly influenced by how acidic it is, as the more acidic, the higher the level of aluminum toxicity; in areas where the pH drops below 5, aluminum becomes soluble and can enter into plant roots where it accumulates.\n", "Uncoated and un-anodized aluminium can react with acidic foods to change the taste of the food. Sauces containing egg yolks, or vegetables such as asparagus or artichokes may cause oxidation of non-anodized aluminium.\n" ]
why do some antennas such as the kind for tv have such a rail-like design?
The series of parallel elements are called directors, and they, in effect, focus the signal. A simple wire, sticking up, will have a sensitivity pattern which is circular with is centre around the wire, but this isn't much use for receiving faint signals and shutting out interfering signals. The [Yagi-Uda antenna](_URL_0_) uses the row of directors to stretch the sensitivity in the direction of the directors - that is, along the line of the "rail" of the antenna. This allows it to collect faint signals from (nearly) a single direction. The gains can be quite startling, but adding extra elements has increasingly little effect, so you don't often see ridiculously long versions.
[ "Since directional antennas must be pointed at the transmitting antenna, this is a problem when the television stations to be received are located in different directions. In this case two or more directional rooftop antennas each pointed at a different transmitter are often mounted on the same mast and connected to one receiver; for best performance filter or matching circuits are used to keep each antenna from degrading the performance of the others connected to the same transmission line. An alternative is to use a single antenna mounted on a \"rotator\", a remote servo system that rotates the antenna to a new direction when a dial next to the television is turned. \n", "Panel antennas are common at Ultra high frequency (UHF) frequencies, where they are often used for cellular/mobile base stations or wireless networking due to their size and directional properties. At VHF frequencies, such an antenna would be impractically large for most receiving applications unless implemented as no more than a two-bay design. Some full-power radio stations do use multiple panel antenna bays, installed one above the other on the side of a tall antenna tower, to provide a directional transmitter pattern on these frequencies.\n", "In a picture on the right, there are two sector antennas with different mechanical downtilts. Note that a more vertical antenna is less visible than a mechanically tilted one - the use of purely electrical tilt with no mechanical tilt is therefore an attractive choice for aesthetic reasons which are very important for operators seeking acceptance of integrated antennas in visible locations.\n", "Common reference antennas are horns, dipoles, monopoles and biconicals. These types are chosen because they are mechanically simple and quite electrically simple. Mechanical simplicity makes building repeatable antennas easier. Electrical simplicity makes design easier and allows use of design formulae that are known to be accurate.\n", "Soon after television broadcasting switched from analog to digital broadcasting, indoor antenna marketing evolved beyond the traditional \"rabbit ears.\" Flat antennas are lightweight, thin, and usually square-shaped with the claim of having more omnidirectional reception. They connect to televisions only with a coaxial cable; they may also be sold with a signal amplifier requiring a power source. Internally, the thin, flat square is a loop antenna, with its circular metallic wiring embedded into conductive plastic.\n", "directional antennas can have an almost unidirectional radiation pattern so the correct end of the antenna must be pointed at the TV station. As an antenna design provides higher gain (compared to a dipole), the main lobe of the radiation pattern becomes narrower.\n", "Many truckers use two co-phased antennas, mounted on their outside mirrors. Such an array is intended to enhance performance to the front and back, while reducing it to the sides (a desirable pattern for long-haul truckers). To achieve this effect, the antennas must be separated by about eight feet, only practical on large trucks. Two antennas may be installed for symmetrical appearance, with only one connected.\n" ]
Are humans evolving to appear more physically attractive?
I have read that some scientists believe that beauty is an indicator of good health, and thus was probably important to mate selection, and yes, would thus consequently have lead to favoring that genetic trait. However, you asked the question in the present tense, and the current reality is probably reversed. The best looking, healthiest, smartest, most well off individuals in our society are today often single or have just one or two children, because they are too busy living their awesome lives to have more. On the other hand, the bored, poor, poorly educated, and ... less than gifted in the beauty sense ... often have many children. Please don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.
[ "Physical attractiveness can have a significant effect on how people are judged in terms of employment or social opportunities, friendship, sexual behavior, and marriage. In many cases, humans attribute positive characteristics, such as intelligence and honesty, to attractive people without consciously realizing it. Physically attractive individuals are regarded more positively and accurately in first impressions, however the physical attractiveness stereotype will have bias opinions and decisions when comparing people of different attractiveness levels.\n", "Evolutionary theory also suggests that people whose physical features suggest they are healthy are seen as more attractive. The theory suggests that a healthy mate is more likely to possess genetic traits related to health that would be passed on to offspring. People's tendency to consider people with facial symmetry more attractive than those with less symmetrical faces is one example. However, a test was conducted that found that perfectly symmetrical faces were less attractive than normal faces. According to this study, the exact ratio of symmetric to asymmetric facial features depicting the highest attraction is still undetermined.\n", "In many cases, humans subconsciously attribute positive characteristics, such as intelligence and honesty, to physically attractive people. From research done in the United States and United Kingdom, it was found that the association between intelligence and physical attractiveness is stronger among men than among women. Evolutionary psychologists have tried to answer why individuals who are more physically attractive should also, on average, be more intelligent, and have put forward the notion that both general intelligence and physical attractiveness may be indicators of underlying genetic fitness. A person's physical characteristics can signal cues to fertility and health, with statistical modelling studies showing that the facial shape variables that reflect aspects of physiological health, including body fat and blood pressure, also influence observers' perceptions of health. Attending to these factors increases reproductive success, furthering the representation of one's genes in the population.\n", "Generally, physical attractiveness can be viewed from a number of perspectives; with universal perceptions being common to all human cultures, cultural and social aspects, and individual subjective preferences. The perception of attractiveness can have a significant effect on how people are judged in terms of employment or social opportunities, friendship, sexual behavior, and marriage.\n", "This episode studies whether human physical attractiveness is a matter of personal taste, looking at standards of beauty that are shared worldwide: a pretty face suggests fertility, while ugliness suggests poor health. Big eyes, smooth skin and symmetrical features are valued, and can lead to a better job, more money, and better sex.\n", "There are infinite variations in human phenotypes, though society reduces the variability to distinct categories. Physical appearance of humans, in particular those attributes which are regarded as important for physical attractiveness, are believed by anthropologists to significantly affect the development of personality and social relations. Humans are acutely sensitive to their physical appearance. Some differences in human appearance are genetic, others are the result of age, lifestyle or disease, and many are the result of personal adornment.\n", "In short, the more physically attractive an individual is, the more likely they are to experience decreased levels of sociometric popularity but increased levels of perceived popularity for engaging in relationally aggressive activities.\n" ]
how come when i put the tip of an aux cable against my skin when its already plugged into another device, how come it appears to make a signal?
Going to take a rough while I am on the Thunder dome at work You body will act like it is connected to the cable and because you body creates thousands of millions of small electromagnetic pulses throughout your nerves and what not, this then creates the "noise" signal Like I said rough guess while I am pooping at work.
[ "The device consists of a molded plastic housing that attaches to the end of an electrical conduit that carries the underground cables up the utility pole to the crossarm. Multiple bushing insulators project from the plastic body, each ending at an electrical terminal. Each overhead wire is connected to a bushing terminal from which the current passes through a rod down the center of the bushing to the interior of the housing, where it is connected to a wire from the conduit. Thus the device allows the overhead conductors to pass into the conduit while serving as a seal to keep out water. The purpose of the bushings, which have corrugations moulded into their surfaces, is to provide enough creepage distance along their surface to prevent leakage current from the high voltage terminal from flowing to the grounded metal conduit.\n", "Other uses for these contacts have been found. One is to interrupt a signal path to enable other circuitry to be inserted. This is done by using one NC contact of a stereo jack to connect the tip and ring together when no plug is inserted. The tip is then made the output, and the ring the input (or vice versa), thus forming a patch point.\n", "When viewing the device from above (the end without the exhaust tip), the pins are arranged in a group of three and a group of two, starting with the centre pin in the group of three and going in a clockwise direction, the pins are \"cathode, heater, grid, anode, heater\".\n", "The connector has 12 pins for electrical connections (both power and data), 2 double-sided \"hooks\" on the plug and matching holes in the phones connector for keeping the plug safely in place. One hook contains a small polarity key to prevent the connector being inserted upside down. The dimension of the connector on the phone is approximately . To help users identify the type of cable and see how to correctly insert the plug, a small symbol is placed on the side intended to be towards the front of the phone. Powerplugs display a small lightning bolt, headsets and hands-free-plugs show an old-fashioned headset, data-cables present a computer screen and music accessories reveal a note-sign.\n", "Twist-on wire connectors are available in a variety of sizes and shapes. While their exterior covering is typically made from insulating plastic, their means of connection is a tapered coiled metal insert, which threads onto the wires and holds them securely. When such a connector is twisted onto the stripped and twisted-together ends of wires, the wires are drawn into the connector's metal insert and squeezed together inside it. Electrical continuity is maintained by both the direct twisted wire-to-wire contact and by contact with the metal insert. \n", "Since the wire guiding nozzle can be moved freely throughout the room, it is possible for the nozzle to terminate the wire at the contact points if equipped with an additional swivel device. As in the case of the conventional linear winding technology, a contact pin or a hook contact can be terminated for the electrical connection and for interconnecting the single poles in a star connection or delta connection.\n", "Phone connectors with three conductors are also commonly used as unbalanced audio \"patch points\" (or \"insert points\", or simply \"inserts\"), with the output on many mixers found on the tip (left channel) and the input on the ring (right channel). This is often expressed as \"tip send, ring return\". Other mixers have unbalanced insert points with \"ring send, tip return\". One advantage of this system is that the switch contact within the panel socket, originally designed for other purposes, can be used to close the circuit when the patch point is not in use. An advantage of the \"tip send\" patch point is that if it is used as an output only, a 2-conductor mono phone plug correctly grounds the input. In the same fashion, use of a \"tip return\" insert style allows a mono phone plug to bring an unbalanced signal directly into the circuit, though in this case the output must be robust enough to withstand being grounded. Combining \"send\" and \"return\" functions via single  in TRS connectors in this way is seen in very many professional and semi-professional audio mixing desks, because it halves the space needed for insert jack fields which would otherwise need two jacks, one for \"send\" and one for \"return\". The tradeoff is that unbalanced signals are more prone to buzz, hum and outside interference.\n" ]
how do you have money to spend when "all your money is in stocks"?
"Heavily Invested" and "All In" are not the same thing. If Bill Gates invests 90% of his money in stocks he is still wealthier than you and I by a large margin. Plus, stocks are pretty liquid assets. Its not hard to sell off some shares if you need some cash.
[ "When money or goods that have been kept are brought back into the economy, for example when people invest or spend money rather than save it. Or it can also be defined as the activity of investing money or selling gold, silver, etc. after a period during which investors have saved them.\n", "Money also functions as a unit of account, providing a common measure of the value of goods and services being exchanged. Knowing the value or price of a good, in terms of money, enables both the supplier and the purchaser of the good to make decisions about how much of the good to supply and how much of the good to purchase.\n", "An investor who has some money has two options: to spend it right now or to save it. But the financial compensation for saving it (and not spending it) is that the money value will accrue through the compound interest that he or she will receive from a borrower (the bank account in which he has the money deposited).\n", "Asked whether he invests in stocks, he replied, \"Not as much these days. I used to have a lot in equities—about 75%—but over the past three years, I've had about 95% in cash and 5% in equities. You're not getting much from savings these days but earning 0% is better than losing 50%. ... I don't believe in picking individual stocks or assets. ... Never invest your money as though you are gambling at the casino. Buying and selling individual stocks is a waste of time.\"\n", "An investor who has some money has two options: to spend it right now or to invest it. The financial compensation for saving it (and not spending it) is that the money value will accrue through the interests that he will receive from a borrower (the bank account on which he has the money deposited).\n", "An investor views his money as a \"capital asset\". As such, he expects his money to produce more money. Taking into account risk and how much interest is available on investments in other assets, an investor arrives at a personal rate of return he expects from his money. This is the cap rate he expects. If an apartment building is offered to him for $100,000, and he expects to make at least 8 percent on his real estate investments, then he would multiply the $100,000 investment by 8% and determine that if the apartments will generate $8000, or more, a year, after operating expenses, then the apartment building is a viable investment to pursue.\n", "Using margin of safety, one should buy a stock when it is worth more than its price in the market. This is the central thesis of value investing philosophy which espouses preservation of capital as its first rule of investing. Benjamin Graham suggested to look at unpopular or neglected companies with low P/E and P/B ratios. One should also analyze financial statements and footnotes to understand whether companies have hidden assets (e.g., investments in other companies) that are potentially unnoticed by the market.\n" ]
Were Normans Vikings?
Most people living in Normandy were not descended from Vikings. Following Rollo's appointment as Duke there was no mass-migration of Scandinavians. It was primarily the elite that were descendants of the original Viking invaders, and they very often intermarried with French nobility to form alliances and entrench their power. Arguably however, these elite retained some aspects of Scandinavian culture, and their ventures abroad can be seen in the wider context of later Viking activity. Sarah Davis-Secord (*Sicily and the Medieval Mediterranean*) refers to a "lure of profit and adventure" which drove the Normans to Sicily for instance. Like the Vikings, they were prominent as seafarers and mercenaries. Graham Loud in *The Age of Robert Guiscard* argues that the Normans were present in Italy as mercenaries before the events described in either the Salerno or Gargano traditional accounts of the Norman arrival. From minor military positions in the armies of Salerno, the Normans rose to power, possibly with the help of Papal intervention, and established the Kingdom of Sicily. This mirrors contemporary Scandinavian activities - The Byzantine Varangian Guard for example established for themselves a strong position within Byzantine society. Harald Hardrada served with them before becoming King of Norway. This "lure" could even be applied to Norman ventures in the British Isles, the most obvious example being the adventures of Richard de Clare (Strongbow) in Ireland. So it could be said that Norman warriors and elites continued some parts of Viking culture.
[ "The Normans were descended from Vikings who had settled in Normandy, and although they had adopted the French language, their heritage and self-image were essentially Viking. In this manner, the Vikings ultimately (if indirectly) finally conquered and kept England after all. \n", "The Normans (Norman: \"Normaunds\"; ) were an ethnic group that arose in Normandy, a northern region of France, from contact between indigenous Franks, Gallo-Romans, and Norse Viking settlers. The settlements followed a series of raids on the French coast from Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, and they gained political legitimacy when the Viking leader Rollo agreed to swear fealty to King Charles III of West Francia. The distinct cultural and ethnic identity of the Normans emerged initially in the first half of the 10th century, and it continued to evolve over the succeeding centuries.\n", "Normans (\"Nortmanni\" in Latin) was originally the name given by the Northern French inhabitants to Norwegian and Danish Vikings that plundered the French coastal regions and to those who finally settled in the Northwestern part of Neustria around 911 AD. Their descendants, that completely mixed up with the local population, were called Norman as well and the part of France, where they lived, Normandie. It could be said that some of their ancestors were the first Europeans to discover North America in 1000 AD (see Leif Ericson).\n", "The Normans, or Norsemen, raided the shores of England and France, from their homes in Scandinavia. The most prominent of these Norsemen was Hrólf, the Viking. whose name was Latinized to \"Rollo\" ... Tancredus was with Hrólf and his followers, when they seized in northern France, the area that would become \"Normandie\". Their possession of these lands were formalized, by the 'Treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte', between Charles III of France and Rollo, in the year 911.\n", "The Normans have Norse mythology in their Viking heritage, however, they were known to readily assimilate into other cultures. After a generation or two, the Normans were generally indistinguishable from their French neighbours.\n", "Whereas the term \"Normans\" in English usually refers to the Scandinavian-descended ruling dynasty of Normandy in France from the tenth century onwards, and their scions elsewhere in Western Europe, in the context of the Rus', 'Normanism' refers to the idea that the Rus' had their origins in Scandinavia (i.e. among 'Northmen'). However, the term is used to cover a diverse range of opinions, not all of which are held by all Normanists. (Some, indeed, may mostly exist as accusations about the views of Normanists by polemical anti-Normanists.) As outlined by Leo Klejn, these are, in decreasing order of plausibility:\n", "Vikings were of three types of Scandinavians: Swedes, whose expeditions were mainly eastwards to places such as Russia; Norwegians (Norse), who concentrated on the western seaboard of what is now Scotland, on Ireland, on the Irish Sea coasts including the Dublin area, on the Isle of Man, and on what is now Cumbria; and thirdly, Danes, who were more interested in eastern England and the north-east (including the Northumbrian kingdom), and what is now Yorkshire. The activities of the Vikings included a mix of trading, raiding, settlement and conquest.\n" ]
how do they restore old videos to 60 fps?
I would say that either they had an original of the record in 60 FPS, which was not uploaded back then or recreated the "missing" frames by "averaging" of the frames before/after of some sort.
[ "Originally BD-ROMs stored video up to 1920×1080 pixel resolution at up to 60 (59.94) fields per second. Currently with UHD BD-ROM videos can be stored at a maximum of 3840×2160 pixel resolution at up to 60 (59.94) frames per second, progressively scanned. While most current Blu-ray players and recorders can read and write 1920×1080 video at the full 59.94p and 50p progressive format, new players for the UHD specifications will be able to read at 3840×2160 video at either 59.94p and 50p formats.\n", "To remaster a movie digitally for DVD and Blu-ray, digital restoration operators must scan in the film frame by frame at a resolution of at least 2,048 pixels across (referred to as 2K resolution). Some films are scanned at 4K, 6K, or even 8K resolution to future proof for higher resolution delivery formats. Scanning a film at 4K—a resolution of 4096 × 3092 for a full frame of film—generates at least 12 terabytes of data before any editing is done.\n", "SVCD has two thirds the resolution of DVD, and over 2.7 times the resolution of VCD. One CD-R disc can hold up to 60 minutes of standard quality SVCD-format video. While no specific limit on SVCD video length is mandated by the specification, one must lower the video bit rate, and therefore quality, to accommodate very long videos. It is usually difficult to fit much more than 100 minutes of video onto one SVCD without incurring significant quality loss, and many hardware players are unable to play video with an instantaneous bit rate lower than 300 to 600 kilobits per second.\n", "The progressive output of a DVD player can be considered the baseline for EDTV. Movies shot at 24 frames-per-second (fps) are often encoded onto a DVD at 24 fps progressive, and most DVD players do the 2:2 or 3:2 pulldown conversion internally, before feeding the output to (usually) an interlaced display, or here, a progressive 576p or 480p.\n", "Blu-ray disc editions were released to celebrate the film's 25th, 30th, and 35th anniversaries in 2009, 2014, and 2019 respectively, featuring a remastered 4K resolution video quality, deleted scenes, alternate takes, fan interviews and commentaries by crewmembers including Aykroyd, Ramis, Reitman, and Medjuck. The 35th-anniversary version came in a limited edition steel book cover and contained unseen footage including the deleted \"Fort Detmerring\" scene. A remaster of Bernstein's score was also released in June 2019, on CD, digital, and vinyl formats. It includes four unreleased tracks and commentary by Bernstein's son Peter.\n", "Another caveat to be aware of is that the output of Slow-Motion recording is not saved as being the original duration but is instead \"stretched\": for example, a one-second recording at 120 fps will be saved as being 4 seconds at 30 fps. While this is easily corrected for the video track without the need for reencoding, one consequence is that audio is not recorded.\n", "Damaged spots on a LaserDisc can be played through or skipped over, while a DVD will often become unplayable past the damage. Some newer DVD players feature a repair+skip algorithm, which alleviates this problem by continuing to play the disc, filling in unreadable areas of the picture with blank space or a frozen frame of the last readable image and sound. The success of this feature depends upon the amount of damage. LaserDisc players, when working in full analog, recover from such errors faster than DVD players. Direct comparison here is almost impossible due to the sheer size differences between the two media. A scratch on a DVD will probably cause more problems than a scratch on a LaserDisc, but a fingerprint taking up 1% of the area of a DVD would almost certainly cause fewer problems than a similar mark covering 1% of the surface of a LaserDisc.\n" ]
How far can electricity travel through our electrical grid?
For long distance transport, power is converted to a very high voltage and transported in high-diameter cables, usually Al for cost. A very naive calculation (300kV_RMS and 750mm^2 cross-section aluminum wire @ room temperature) assuming all the power of the Hoover dam is used (that's 2080MW) says that the maximum absolute length of wire so that all the power is used for ohmic heating is about 7200 km. So 3600 km because you need a return path, and then a bit shorter than that if you want some power left to do something useful. In actuality though I think the power grid is so complex (many transformers and tie-ins to other power stations) that if only one power plant was working, the power would dissipate in the spiderweb of connections, plus the computerized control and feedback systems that ajust load for certain grid sections would immediately fail.
[ "As originally built, the line was 153.4 miles long, crossing the Continental Divide at Hagerman Pass (at altitude 12,055 feet), Fremont Pass (at altitude 11,346 feet) and Argentine Pass (at altitude 13,532 feet). For many years, this was the highest electric power transmission line in the world. The three-phase line operated at 90 kV and was supported 1400 steel towers 44 feet high on an average spacing of 730 feet.\n", "BULLET::::- June 3 – The first long distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.\n", "Power is supplied to the SWER line by an isolating transformer of up to 300 kVA. This transformer isolates the grid from ground or earth, and changes the grid voltage (typically 22 or 33 kV line-to-line) to the SWER voltage (typically 12.7 or 19.1 kV line-to-earth).\n", "The first electric power transmission line in North America terminated at Chapman Square. It went online at 10:00 pm on June 3, 1889, operating at 4,000 volts of direct current, with the lines between the electric generating station at Willamette Falls in Oregon City, Oregon, and downtown Portland stretching about 13 miles. A bronze tablet in the park commemorates this achievement.\n", "It will transmit electrical power from renewable sources from areas of the world that are best able to produce it to consumers in other parts of the world. The idea is dependent on development of an ultra-high voltage grid operating at more than 1,000 kilovolts AC and 800 kilovolts DC over thousands of kilometers. It envisions interconnecting grids across regions, nations, and even continents with a capacity of over 10 gigawatts.\n", "Power is transmitted at 24 kV, which is then distributed at 11 kV and consumed at 115/200 volts or 115/230 volts (residential), 230/400 volts (commercial), or 11,000–24,900 volts for industry at a frequency of 50 hertz.\n", "The first 57 miles of power line were energized in December 1938 to provide electric service to 114 meters. The average member had a monthly electric bill of $3.00 and used approximately 30 kWh (kilowatt hours).\n" ]
if air is a better insulator than water, why do clouds trap heat?
Heat is transferred in three ways 1. Radiation - This is IR and other energy which is emitted from something warm 2. Conduction - This is energy transferred between two objects that are physically touching 3. Convection - This is the movement of energy through currents like hot air rising and cold air sinking or running a fan to even out the temperature When you talk about air being a better insulator than water you're talking about conduction of heat. Water is significantly denser so particles bump into each other and pass energy around much quicker than in air. We generally design insulation to have little air pockets so there isn't enough air to have significant heat transfer from convection. Clouds trap heat by blocking radiation transfer. The warm Earth emits IR which on a clear day will continue out into space, but on an overcast day will bounce off the clouds and come back to Earth or be absorbed and warm the cloud. Since there is no mass to conduct heat to in space, the only way for the Earth to get rid of energy is to radiate it out into space so blocking that path results in the Earth staying warm.
[ "A vapor barrier on the warm side of the envelope must be combined with a venting path on the cold side of the insulation. This is because no vapor barrier is perfect, and because water may get into the structure, typically from rain. In general, the better the vapor barrier and the drier the conditions, the less venting is required.\n", "Bulk insulators block conductive heat transfer and convective flow either into or out of a building. The denser a material is, the better it will conduct heat. Because air has such low density, air is a very poor conductor and therefore makes a good insulator. Insulation to resist conductive heat transfer uses air spaces between fibers, inside foam or plastic bubbles and in building cavities like the attic. This is beneficial in an actively cooled or heated building, but can be a liability in a passively cooled building; adequate provisions for cooling by ventilation or radiation are needed.\n", "Warm air has a lower density than cool air, so warm air rises within cooler air, similar to hot air balloons. Clouds form as relatively warmer air carrying moisture rises within cooler air. As the moist air rises, it cools, causing some of the water vapor in the rising packet of air to condense. When the moisture condenses, it releases energy known as latent heat of condensation which allows the rising packet of air to cool less than its surrounding air, continuing the cloud's ascension. If enough instability is present in the atmosphere, this process will continue long enough for cumulonimbus clouds to form, which support lightning and thunder. Generally, thunderstorms require three conditions to form: moisture, an unstable airmass, and a lifting force (heat).\n", "Warm air has a lower density than cool air, so warm air rises within cooler air, similar to hot air balloons. Clouds form as relatively warmer air carrying moisture rises within cooler air. As the moist air rises, it cools, causing some of the water vapor in the rising packet of air to condense. When the moisture condenses, it releases energy known as the latent heat of vaporisation, which allows the rising packet of air to cool less than its surrounding air, continuing the cloud's ascension. If enough instability is present in the atmosphere, this process will continue long enough for cumulonimbus clouds to form, which support lightning and thunder. Generally, thunderstorms require three conditions to form: moisture, an unstable air mass, and a lifting force (heat).\n", "Warm air has a lower density than cool air, so warm air rises within cooler air, similar to hot air balloons. Clouds form as relatively warmer air carrying moisture rises within cooler air. As the moist air rises, it cools causing some of the water vapor in the rising packet of air to condense. When the moisture condenses, it releases energy known as latent heat of vaporization which allows the rising packet of air to cool less than its surrounding air, continuing the cloud's ascension. If enough instability is present in the atmosphere, this process will continue long enough for cumulonimbus clouds to form, which support lightning and thunder. Generally, thunderstorms require three conditions to form: moisture, an unstable airmass, and a lifting force (heat).\n", "The primary role of such insulation is to make the thermal conductivity of the insulation that of trapped, stagnant air. However this cannot be realized fully because the glass wool or foam needed to prevent convection increases the heat conduction compared to that of still air. \n", "Clouds greatly affect the transfer of radiation in the atmosphere. In the thermal spectral domain, water is a strong absorber (and thus emitter, according to Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation); hence clouds exchange thermal radiation between their bases and the underlying planetary surface (land or ocean) by absorbing and re-emitting this infrared radiation at the prevailing temperature – the lower the cloud base, the warmer the cloud particles and the higher the rate of emission. For a synthetic discussion of the impact of clouds (and in particular the role of cloud bases) on climate systems, see the IPCC Third Assessment Report, in particular chapter 7.2.\n" ]
how can malt-o-meal blatantly rip off every brand-name cereal while apple and samsung have been in legal issues since the beginning of time?
You can't copyright a recipe for food and usually can't patent a food product. The specific form in which a recipe is presented can be copyrighted (the words and formatting), but as long as someone changes up the words they can use the same ingredients, measurements, and steps. Similarly, you can protect branding and food packaging, but not a food product. If someone figures out how to make a Twinkie and sells it with different packaging and branding, they're allowed to. Malt-O-Meal can get away with it because their packaging and branding is different. For example, they don't use Lucky the Leprechaun with their Marshmallow Mateys cereal (similar to Lucky Charms); they use a kangaroo instead. Also, I don't even think the recipe is exactly the same because their cereals definitely taste a little different. Th Edit: You can patent some food products, but they have to be non-obvious and novel. Most food products are obvious variations on old recipes (like with cereal). Examples of food products that have been patented include egg yolk substitutes and sealed crustless sandwiches. Edit 2: You can all go make your own sealed crustless sandwiches. Turns out the product was patented by Smuckers in 1999, but the patent was reexamined and rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2003. Smuckers' application to patent the process for making the sandwiches was also rejected. Edit 3: The process for making "marbits" (the marshmallows in Lucky Charms) is patented: _URL_0_. I don't know what process Malt-O-Meal uses, but as long as it's different they should be fine. The main point that you can't patent a recipe is still true for cereals in general.
[ "Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co., 305 U.S. 111 (1938), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the Kellogg Company was not violating any trademark or unfair competition laws when it manufactured its own Shredded Wheat breakfast cereal, which had originally been invented by the National Biscuit Company (later called Nabisco). Kellogg's version of the product was of an essentially identical shape, and was also marketed as \"Shredded Wheat\"; but Nabisco's patents had expired, and its trademark application for the term \"Shredded Wheat\" had been turned down as a descriptive, non-trademarkable term.\n", "The cereal was a joint product from Post Cereals and Kraft Foods, which allowed both companies to share the rights, distribution and profits after 1997. The cereal was very successful when it came to sales, and parental approval as a suitable breakfast food. In 2007, both companies ceased co-branding, which made the cereal impossible to produce. Kraft foods owned the copyrights to the name Oreo, yet Post owned the copyrights to the cereal recipe itself. Neither company wished to relinquish either rights; therefore forcing the cereal to become discontinued worldwide.\n", "On November 22, 1977, Jenner went to San Francisco to refute charges filed by San Francisco district attorney Joseph Freitas that General Mills—the maker of Wheaties—had engaged in deceptive advertising in its campaign that featured Jenner. Jenner liked Wheaties and ate the breakfast cereal two or three times a week, which supported the advertising campaign's claims. Two days later, Freitas withdrew the suit, saying that it was \"a case of overzealousness\" on the part of his staff.\n", "In late August 2012, a three-judge panel in Seoul Central District Court delivered a split decision, ruling that Apple had infringed upon two Samsung technology patents, while Samsung violated one of Apple's patents. The court awarded small damages to both companies and ordered a temporary sales halt of the infringing products in South Korea; however, none of the banned products were the latest models of either Samsung or Apple.\n", "The Kellogg Company started manufacturing shredded wheat cereal in 1912 after Perky's patents expired; after the Shredded Wheat Company objected, Kellogg stopped manufacturing their version in 1919. The nature of the settlement is not clear. In 1927, the Kellogg Company resumed manufacturing shredded wheat, prompting a lawsuit from the Shredded Wheat Company; the lawsuit was settled. In 1930, the Shredded Wheat Company was acquired by the National Biscuit Company (later Nabisco), which again sued Kellogg, both in Canada and in the United States, for unfair competition.\n", "The cereal has been subsequently manufactured by numerous other suppliers under a generic brand, often in supermarkets' \"own brand\" range. In the United Kingdom, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Waitrose have all produced their own versions of the cereal.\n", "The first advertising copy for the new product described the cereal as \"The Food That is all Food\", the advertising images showed rosy-cheeked children, and it was sold in a box decorated with images of muscular men wrestling with chains. Perhaps because it was not initially targeted at a well-defined market, it did not sell well.\n" ]
[Physics] Considering that the photons would never be absorbed by the 100% reflective mirror, what would happen inside? It's in the realm of a thought experiment since you'll never be able to measure the result.
I think that he is asking about the inside of a perfectly reflective box. Yes it would bounce around forever, here's why: The photon is an electromagnetic wave in a vaccum, and is classically defined as a pair of coupled wave equations: _URL_0_. Imagine a mirror in 1-D propagation. A perfect mirror, (100% reflection) can be mathematically modelled as a specific boundary condition at the physical boundary, (lets say, X = 0 and X = L), which governs the energy transfer and reflection from the surface. In this case, (1D), the wave equation is v^2 f_XX(x, t) = f_TT(x,t). With an initial condition of f(x,0) = initial_trapped_wave(x) and f_t(x,0)=0, (some initial waveform, and no first order temporal derivative). The boundary condition is such that there is no restoring force acting on the wave front at the boundaries, so something like f_tt(0,t)=0, f_tt(L,t)=0. Then, without loss of generality, expand this to 3-D and limit wave propagation to some box in R^3. It will just keep reflecting.
[ "Mirror matter could have been diluted to unobservably low densities during the inflation epoch. Sheldon Glashow has shown that if at some high energy scale particles exist which interact strongly with both ordinary and mirror particles, radiative corrections will lead to a mixing between photons and mirror photons. This mixing has the effect of giving mirror electric charges a very small ordinary electric charge. Another effect of photon–mirror photon mixing is that it induces oscillations between positronium and mirror positronium. Positronium could then turn into mirror positronium and then decay into mirror photons.\n", "If a single photon is emitted into the entry port of the apparatus at the lower-left corner, it immediately encounters a beam-splitter. Because of the equal probabilities for transmission or reflection the photon will either continue straight ahead, be reflected by the mirror at the lower-right corner, and be detected by the detector at the top of the apparatus, or it will be reflected by the beam-splitter, strike the mirror in the upper-left corner, and emerge into the detector at the right edge of the apparatus. Observing that photons show up in equal numbers at the two detectors, experimenters generally say that each photon has behaved as a particle from the time of its emission to the time of its detection, has traveled by either one path or the other, and further affirm that its wave nature has not been exhibited.\n", "Einstein proposed as part of his theory of special relativity that light reflected from a mirror moving close to the speed of light will have higher peak power than the incident light because of temporal compression. Using a dense relativistic electron mirror created from a high-intensity laser pulse and nanometre-scale foil, the frequency of the laser pulse was shown to shift coherently from infrared to the ultraviolet. The results elucidate the reflection process of laser-generated electron mirrors and suggest future research in relativistic mirrors.\n", "When it reaches the second half-silvered mirror, if the photon in the experiment is behaving like a particle (in other words, if it is not in a superposition), then it has a fifty-fifty chance it will pass through or be reflected and be detected by one or the other detector. \"But that's only possible if the bomb is live.\" If the bomb \"observed\" the photon, it detonated and destroyed the photon on the lower path, therefore only the photon that takes the upper path will be detected, either at Detector C or Detector D.\n", "The proposed experimental setup is basically a variation of the Michelson interferometer but for a single photon. Additionally, one of the mirrors has to be very tiny and fixed on an isolated micromechanical-oscillator. This allows it to move when the photon is reflected on it, so that it may become superposed with the photon. The purpose is to vary the size of the mirror to investigate the effect of the mass on the time it takes for the quantum system to collapse.\n", "Now, the same photon is moving through two different parts of the device. The photon that passed through the mirror is now on the \"lower path\". It may or may not encounter a bomb, which is designed to explode if it encounters a single photon. The photon that was reflected off the mirror is now on the \"upper path\". Both photons next encounter a normal mirror. The \"lower-path\" photon is reflected ninety-degrees upward (if it did not detect a bomb). The \"upper-path\" photon is reflected back ninety degrees so that it is returned to its original trajectory.\n", "Alternatively, it is also possible to use an oscillating reflecting surface to cause destructive interference with reflected light along a single optical path. This principle is the basis for a Michelson interferometer.\n" ]
What is the effect of strength training on lifespan?
I think you need to be more specific. Anything that uses your muscles will build strength. Push-ups, pull-ups, and standing squats, all use your own body weight to strengthen muscles. If you use these exercises as aerobic activity you will get cardio health benefits. If you are talking about anaerobic weight lifting to add muscle, I don't know of any specific health benefits from doing this alone.
[ "Traditionally, strength training (the performance of exercises with resistance or added weight) was not deemed appropriate for endurance athletes due to potential interference in the adaptive response to the endurance elements of an athlete's training plan. There were also misconceptions regarding the addition of excess body mass through muscle hypertrophy (growth) associated with strength training, which could negatively effect endurance performance by increasing the amount of work required to be completed by the athlete. However, more recent and comprehensive research has proved that short-term (8 weeks) strength training in addition to endurance training is beneficial for endurance performance, particularly long-distance running.\n", "Strength training is typically associated with the production of lactate, which is a limiting factor of exercise performance. Regular endurance exercise leads to adaptations in skeletal muscle which can prevent lactate levels from rising during strength training. This is mediated via activation of PGC-1alpha which alter the LDH (lactate dehydrogenase) isoenzyme complex composition and decreases the activity of the lactate generating enzyme LDHA, while increasing the activity of the lactate metabolizing enzyme LDHB.\n", "Evidence has shown that increases in strength occur well before muscle hypertrophy, and decreases in strength due to detraining or ceasing to repeat the exercise over an extended period of time precede muscle atrophy. To be specific, strength training enhances motor neuron excitability and induces synaptogenesis, both of which would help in enhancing communication between the nervous system and the muscles themselves. However, neuromuscular efficacy is not altered within a two-week time period following cessation of the muscle usage; instead, it is merely the neuron's ability to excite the muscle that declines in correlation with the muscle's decrease in strength. This confirms that muscle strength is first influenced by the inner neural circuitry, rather than by external physiological changes in the muscle size.\n", "Older adults are prone to loss of muscle strength. With more strength older adults have better health, better quality of life, better physical function and fewer falls. In cases in which an older person begins strength training, their doctor or health care provider may neglect to emphasize a strength training program which results in muscle gains. Under-dosed strength training programs should be avoided in favor of a program which matches the abilities and goals of the person exercising.\n", "The mechanisms implied for the muscle memory suggest that it mainly related to strength training, and a 2016 study conducted at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, failed to find a memory effect of endurance training. \n", "Any athlete who has trained for a sport has probably experienced plateaus, and this has given rise to various strategies to continue improving. Voluntary skeletal muscle is in balance between the amount of muscle synthesized or renewed each day and the amount that is degraded. Muscle fibers respond to repetition and load, and increased training causes the quantity of exercised muscle fiber to increase exponentially (simply meaning that the greatest gains are seen during the first weeks of training). Successful training produces hypertrophy of muscle fibers as an adaptation to the training regimen. In order to make further gains, greater workout intensity is required with heavier loads and more repetitions, although improvement in skill can contribute to gains in ability.\n", "Part of the process of strength training is increasing the nerve's ability to generate sustained, high frequency signals which allow a muscle to contract with its greatest force. It is this neural training that causes several weeks worth of rapid gains in strength, which level off once the nerve is generating maximum contractions and the muscle reaches its physiological limit. Past this point, training effects increase muscular strength through myofibrilar or sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and metabolic fatigue becomes the factor limiting contractile force.\n" ]
how are hand sanitizer companies able to claim their product is better or more effective than their competitors when they all kill 99.9% of all germs?
No government oversight or enforcement of false product claims. Assume all copy on products is a lie.
[ "The main difference between a sanitizer and a disinfectant is that at a specific use dilution, the disinfectant must have a higher kill capability for pathogenic bacteria than that of a sanitizer. If these micro-organisms are not destroyed, the bottled water being produced may be contaminated. \n", "On April 30, 2015, the FDA announced that they were requesting more scientific data based on the safety of hand sanitizer. Emerging science also suggests that for at least some health care antiseptic active ingredients, systemic exposure (full body exposure as shown by detection of antiseptic ingredients in the blood or urine) is higher than previously thought, and existing data raise potential concerns about the effects of repeated daily human exposure to some antiseptic active ingredients. This would include hand antiseptic products containing alcohol and triclosan.\n", "If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol (check the product label to be sure). Hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol is effective in killing Cronobacter germs. But use soap and water as soon as possible afterward because hand sanitizer does not kill all types of germs and may not work as well if hands are visibly greasy or dirty.\n", "Hand sanitizers containing a minimum of 60 to 95% alcohol are efficient germ killers. Alcohol rub sanitizers kill bacteria, multi-drug resistant bacteria (MRSA and VRE), tuberculosis, and some viruses (including HIV, herpes, RSV, rhinovirus, vaccinia, influenza, and hepatitis) and fungi. Alcohol rub sanitizers containing 70% alcohol kill 99.97% (3.5 log reduction, similar to 35 decibel reduction) of the bacteria on hands 30 seconds after application and 99.99% to 99.999% (4 to 5 log reduction) of the bacteria on hands 1 minute after application.\n", "Sanitizers are substances that simultaneously clean and disinfect. Disinfectants kill more germs than sanitizers. Disinfectants are frequently used in hospitals, dental surgeries, kitchens, and bathrooms to kill infectious organisms.\n", "Hand sanitizers are most effective against bacteria and less effective against some viruses. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are almost entirely ineffective against norovirus or Norwalk type viruses, the most common cause of contagious gastroenteritis.\n", "Compared to competitors who provided 5% profit margin, Ghari detergent provided a profit margin of 6-7% to its dealers. This enabled Ghari to have a stronger dealer base to push sales while keeping its prices low.\n" ]
how do martial artists break huge stacks of bricks without their hand passing through every brick?
Dominos. The force is transfered from the top brick down by the breaking bricks themselves.
[ "Aspiring boxers undergo years of apprenticeship, toughening their fists against stone and other hard surfaces, until they are able to break coconuts and rocks with their bare hands. Any part of the body may be targeted, except the groin, but the prime targets are the head and chest. Techniques incorporate punches, kicks, elbows, knees and grabs. Boxers wear no form of protection and fight bare-fisted. Matches may be one-on-one, one against a group, or group against group. Victory can be attained by knockout, ringout or submission.\n", "Punching may be done to create a decorative pattern, or to make a hole, for example, in preparation for making a hammer head, a smith would punch a hole in a heavy bar or rod for the hammer handle. Punching is not limited to depressions and holes. It also includes cutting, slitting and drifting; these are done with a chisel.\n", "BULLET::::- Brick by Brick: The players must transfer their bricks one at a time from one pile to the next, while walking across a plank. Players are disqualified if they drop a brick, break one, or fall off the plank. Whoever has transferred the most bricks at the end of three and a half hours wins.\n", "Punching may be done to create a decorative pattern, or to make a hole. For example, in preparation for making a hammerhead, a smith would punch a hole in a heavy bar or rod for the hammer handle. Punching is not limited to depressions and holes. It also includes cutting, slitting, and drifting—all done with a chisel.\n", "The human hand is made up of many small bones which may be damaged by heavy impact. If a hard part of the opponent's body or other hard object is inadvertently struck, the metacarpals may splay on impact and break. Boxers tape their hands so as to hold the metacarpals together and keep them from splaying. One can toughen one's bones by striking objects to induce osteoclasts (cells which remove bone) and osteoblasts (which form bone) to remodel the bone over the struck area increasing the density of bone at the striking surface. For more information on bone remodeling, see Wolff's law.\n", "The word \"tinju\" means fist-fighting and usually refers to western boxing. In Flores a form of boxing exists which involves four people. As two boxers fight, each is steered by a partner holding their waistband from behind. Attacks may be delivered with the open hand, closed fist, backhand, elbow, or a combination of these. Only the hands, arms and shoulders may be used. Kicks and throws are not permitted. The history of tinju is unknown but it is most common in Bajawa and most likely originated there. In earlier times, each boxer would hold a smooth round stone in one hand and wrap the hand in cloth. Matches are full-contact and victory is determined on points.\n", "A boxer normally hits the speed bag from the front with his or her fists, but it is also possible to use fists and elbows to hit the bag from all around it, including the front, back and sides. In this method the user may perform many diverse punching combinations that create improvised rhythmic accents.\n" ]
Why do you feel a jerk when a car comes to a complete stop?
[Jerk](_URL_0_) is actually a technical term, and part of the answer. I'm sure you're familiar with that feeling of being pushed forward when you're just braking. That's a result of inertia but it feels as if there was some force pushing you forward a bit, and we can even think of it that way. The same happens to the car, but the car has suspension on each tire. The front suspension springs contract a bit as a result. While you're braking, there's this fictitious force pushing the front suspension down but the springs are also pushing up, and they stay contracted at some length where these two forces balance exactly. The actual force of friction doing the braking remains pretty much constant all the way, which means that the fictitious force pushing down the suspension also remains constant and the amount of contraction in springs also remains constant. Then you come to a complete stop and suddenly the force of friction is gone, and with it the fictitious force pushing down on the front suspension. The springs however are still contracted but now there is no force keeping them that way, so they must extend to their natural length. This makes the chassis of the car bounce back a bit. Same as with normal braking it felt like there was some force pushing you forward, with the chassis bouncing back, you again feel as if something's pushing you forward although there actually is no such force, it's just the inertia. If you slowly release the brakes just as the car is coming to a halt, then the force of friction gradually goes down which means that the springs gradually extend and there is no bounce (or at least not as big) when you finally stop. Jerk is to acceleration what acceleration is to speed, it's the rate of change of acceleration. With slowly releasing the brakes, the jerk right at the end is small. With constant braking that results in the springs and chassis bouncing, you have a very high jerk right at the end when acceleration goes from some value to zero in an instant.
[ "Since forces, changing at a suitable rate in time (that is, \"suitable\" jerk) are the cause of vibrations, and vibrations significantly impair the quality of transportation, there is good reason to simply \"minimize\" jerk in transportation vehicles.\n", "BULLET::::- High-powered sports cars offer the feeling of being pressed into the cushioning, but this is the force of the acceleration. Jerk occurs only in the very first moments, when the torque of the engine starts at zero and grows with the rotational speed, causing a remarkable of the acceleration. A slight whiplash effect is noticeable in the neck, mostly masked by the jerk of gear switching.\n", "Sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) is the unintended, unexpected, uncontrolled acceleration of a vehicle, often accompanied by an apparent loss of braking effectiveness. Such problems may be caused by driver error (e.g., pedal misapplication), mechanical or electrical problems, or some combination of these factors.\n", "BULLET::::- Slow response – sideways acceleration does not start immediately when the steering is turned and may not stop immediately when it is returned to center. This is partly caused by body roll. Other causes include tires with high slip angle, and yaw and roll angular inertia. Roll angular inertia aggravates body roll by delaying it. Soft tires aggravate yaw angular inertia by waiting for the car to reach their slip angle before turning the car.\n", "\"Sudden acceleration incidents\" (SAI) are defined for the purpose of this report as unintended, unexpected, high-power accelerations from a stationary position or a very low initial speed accompanied by an apparent loss of braking effectiveness. In a typical scenario, the incident begins at the moment of shifting to \"Drive\" or \"Reverse\" from \"Park\".\n", "Driveline shunt occurs when a vehicle gives an abrupt jolt while coming on or off overrun or freewheel. It is caused when the gearbox or other transmission linkages do not immediately relay changes in engine output to changes in wheel speed. There is a very brief delay before the backlash is taken up in a sudden, abrupt manner.\n", "The effect of the system on normal driving has been described as \"dreaded\", \"awful\" and \"annoying\". In 1994 Popular Science noted that \"if something like an oncoming truck makes you change your mind, the car's response is doggedly slow.\"\n" ]
what are magnet links?
They tell your PC to open up an application, then send that application some data. Other uses include: Starting a skype call to a number, Opening up mumble and connecting it to a server, opening up steam to download a game, and more. They are very useful, and need more use!
[ "Although magnet links can be used in a number of contexts, they are particularly useful in peer-to-peer file sharing networks because they allow resources to be referred to without the need for a continuously available host, and can be generated by anyone who already has the file, without the need for a central authority to issue them. This makes them popular for use as \"guaranteed\" search terms within the file sharing community where anyone can distribute a magnet link to ensure that the resource retrieved by that link is the one intended, regardless of how it is retrieved.\n", "Correlated magnetics is an enabling technology that can produce very strong yet safe industrial magnets. For the small size applications, correlated magnets can be used in positioning devices, consumer electronics, magnetic couplings, and vehicle attachment. Potential applications include attach and release work-holding mechanisms, magnetic separators, fluid seals and valves, motor and motion control, factory automation, prosthetics, security devices, and power generation. Correlated magnets is a relatively new technology in history. More applications and research opportunities will be explored.\n", "Bonded Nd-magnets are prepared by melt spinning a thin ribbon of the NdFeB alloy. The ribbon contains randomly oriented NdFeB nano-scale grains. This ribbon is then pulverized into particles, mixed with a polymer, and either compression- or injection-molded into bonded magnets. Bonded magnets offer less flux intensity than sintered magnets, but can be net-shape formed into intricately shaped parts, as is typical with Halbach arrays or arcs, trapezoids and other shapes and assemblies (e.g. Pot Magnets, Separator Grids, etc.). There are approximately 5,500 tons of Neo bonded magnets produced each year. In addition, it is possible to hot-press the melt spun nanocrystalline particles into fully dense isotropic magnets, and then upset-forge or back-extrude these into high-energy anisotropic magnets.\n", "A magneto is one of the electromechanical devices invented for the purpose of ignition with gasoline internal combustion engines. A magneto at its most basic is a simple magnet that moves next to a wire, or sometimes a wire moves next to a magnet. As they move in relation to each other, the changes in direction of magnetic force induce an electric current in the wire. Usually the wire (called a primary wire) is very long, and looped around an iron magnetic core that more or less channels the magnetic field through the loop of wire. As the current flows, the wire loops develop their own magnetic field, which takes a certain amount of energy to form. The magnetic field is a type of potential energy. There is usually some sort of device that opens and closes the circuit called a contact breaker, points or an ignitor. As the points or ignitor open, the current ceases flowing, and the magnetic field collapses. The energy stored in the magnetic field is released in the form of increased electric voltage in the wire. This voltage jumps across the gap of either the ignitor or a spark plug located in the combustion chamber and ignites the air–fuel mixture to do work.\n", "MAGNET provides awareness to the field as well as to strategic planners by aggregating data from existing sources internal and external to the Coast Guard or the Department of Homeland Security. MAGNET correlates data and provides the medium to display information such as ship registry, current ship position, crew background, passenger lists, port history, cargo, known criminal vessels, and suspect lists. MAGNET processes personally identifiable information (PII).\n", "The science of correlated magnetics was created in 2008 by Larry W. Fullerton in his laboratory at Cedar Ridge in North Alabama. Correlated Magnetics Research (CMR) was formed to pursue research and development of the Coded Magnets technology and to license the technology to business entities across industry. More than 65 patents have been filed for the technology in the U.S. and around the world. CMR uses the term \"polymagnets\" for this technology. The coding theory used to design radio frequency signals in communication and radar is applied to form the magnetic regions of correlated magnets. The discovery was announced during a press conference in October, 2009, in Huntsville, Alabama. The world first's 3D magnetizing printer is developed by CMR, which is called MagPrinter. This printer consists of a magnetizing coil in a cabinet with a motion-control system. A polymagnet can be easily made from reprogramming a conventional magnetic material in a few minutes.\n", "Magnet.me has been referred to by one source as the “LinkedIn for students”. The difference between the two is that Magnet.me only focuses on the graduate recruitment market and is a student-to-employer network, whilst Linkedin is a peer-to-peer network.\n" ]
Can any bacteria survive the boiling point of water?
Yes, see [wikipedia](_URL_1_) for a list of examples, such as [this one](_URL_0_) which can survive and reproduce above boiling temperature.
[ "However, the observations proved that it is actually possible for life to exist at high temperatures and that some bacteria even prefer temperatures higher than the boiling point of water. Dozens of such bacteria are known.\n", "BULLET::::1. Boiling: Bringing water to its boiling point (about 100 °C or 212 F at sea level), is the oldest and most effective way since it eliminates most microbes causing intestine related diseases, but it cannot remove chemical toxins or impurities. For human health, complete sterilization of water is not required, since the heat resistant microbes are not intestine affecting. The traditional advice of boiling water for ten minutes is mainly for additional safety, since microbes start getting eliminated at temperatures greater than . Though the boiling point decreases with increasing altitude, it is not enough to affect the disinfecting process. In areas where the water is \"hard\" (that is, containing significant dissolved calcium salts), boiling decomposes the bicarbonate ions, resulting in partial precipitation as calcium carbonate. This is the \"fur\" that builds up on kettle elements, etc., in hard water areas. With the exception of calcium, boiling does not remove solutes of higher boiling point than water and in fact increases their concentration (due to some water being lost as vapour). Boiling does not leave a residual disinfectant in the water. Therefore, water that is boiled and then stored for any length of time may acquire new pathogens.\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", "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", "The elimination of micro-organisms by boiling follows first-order kinetics—at high temperatures, it is achieved in less time and at lower temperatures, in more time. The heat sensitivity of micro-organisms varies, at , Giardia species (causes Giardiasis) can take ten minutes for complete inactivation, most intestine affecting microbes and \"E. coli\" (gastroenteritis) take less than a minute; at boiling point, \"Vibrio cholerae\" (cholera) takes ten seconds and hepatitis A virus (causes the symptom of jaundice), one minute. Boiling does not ensure the elimination of all micro-organisms; the bacterial spores Clostridium can survive at but are not water-borne or intestine affecting. Thus for human health, complete sterilization of water is not required.\n", "Although the vegetative form of the bacteria is destroyed by boiling, the spore itself is not killed by the temperatures reached with normal sea-level-pressure boiling, leaving it free to grow and again produce the toxin when conditions are right.\n", "Other research is being done on the effects of protein, pH, temperature, sodium chloride (NaCl), and sucrose on \"P. multocida\" development and survival in water. The research seems to show the bacteria survive better in 18 °C water compared to 2 °C water. The addition of 0.5% NaCl also aided bacterial survival, while the sucrose and pH levels had minor effects, as well. Research has also been done on the response of \"P. multocida\" to the host environment. These tests use DNA microarrays and proteomics techniques. \"P. multocida\"-directed mutants have been tested for their ability to produce disease. Findings seem to indicate the bacteria occupy host niches that force them to change their gene expression for energy metabolism, uptake of iron, amino acids, and other nutrients. \"In vitro\" experiments show the responses of the bacteria to low iron and different iron sources, such as transferrin and hemoglobin. \"P. multocida\" genes that are upregulated in times of infection are usually involved in nutrient uptake and metabolism. This shows true virulence genes may only be expressed during the early stages of infection.\n" ]
Why were Roman replicas of the bronze Greek statues made of marble?
They often did, but marble is cheaper than bronze, so *most* replicas were marble. The Roman use of Greek statues was very often a change in context from public to private--many of the most famous statues were originally set up in either official or religious spaces, while the Romans would often place these in private contexts. So a wealthy Roman would have a copy of a famous temple statue commissioned for his garden--or, increasingly likely, would simply buy a premade statue. Marble is a much cheaper material than bronze, so these would generally be marble. Another factor deals with material survival. Almost every classical bronze statue you see was recovered from a shipwreck, because bronze statues could be melted down and recast, either into other works of art (Bernini's altar in St. Peter's is a rather famous example of this) or, more commonly, cannons. Therefore, almost all of the classical bronze that survives is that which was taken out of circulation, so to speak.
[ "Many of the Greek statues well known from Roman marble copies were originally temple cult images, which in some cases, such as the Apollo Barberini, can be credibly identified. A very few actual originals survive, for example, the bronze Piraeus Athena ( high, including a helmet). The image stood on a base, from the 5th century often carved with reliefs.\n", "The marble has been used in Rome since the Augustan age, when large-scale quarrying began at Docimium, and columns of it were used in the House of Augustus, as well as in the Temple of Mars Ultor, which also had pavonazzo floor tiles in the cella. Pavonazzetto statues of kneeling Phrygian barbarians existed in the Basilica Aemilia and Horti Sallustiani. Giant statue groups carved from Docimaean marble were discovered at Tiberius's Villa in Sperlonga. Pavonazzetto was not widely or extensively used before the Roman period; there is no evidence of it in circulation before the last two decades B.C.\n", "Bronze statues were regarded as the highest form of sculpture in Ancient Greek art, though survivals are few, as bronze was a valuable material in short supply in the Late Antique and medieval periods. Many of the most famous Greek bronze sculptures are known through Roman copies in marble, which were more likely to survive.\n", "Surviving ancient Greek sculptures were mostly made of two types of material. Stone, especially marble or other high-quality limestones was used most frequently and carved by hand with metal tools. Stone sculptures could be free-standing fully carved in the round (statues), or only partially carved reliefs still attached to a background plaque, for example in architectural friezes or grave stelai.\n", "Ancient Greek monumental sculpture was composed almost entirely of marble or bronze; with cast bronze becoming the favoured medium for major works by the early 5th century. Both marble and bronze are fortunately easy to form and very durable. Chryselephantine sculptures, used for temple cult images and luxury works, used gold, most often in leaf form and ivory for all or parts (faces and hands) of the figure, and probably gems and other materials, but were much less common, and only fragments have survived.\n", "Ancient Greek sculpture was composed almost entirely of marble or bronze; with cast bronze becoming the favoured medium for major works by the early 5th century. Both marble and bronze are easy to form and very durable. Chryselephantine sculptures, used for temple cult images and luxury works, used gold, most often in leaf form and ivory for all or parts (faces and hands) of the figure, and probably gems and other materials, but were much less common, and only fragments have survived. By the early 19th century, the systematic excavation of ancient Greek sites had brought forth a plethora of sculptures with traces of notably multicolored surfaces. It was not until published findings by German archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann in the late 20th century, that the painting of ancient Greek sculptures became an established fact.\n", "The white marble favored by Classical sculptors is easily broken, and many antique statues have been damaged since their creation by accidents, iconoclasm, or vandalism. During the 19th century, it was common practice for museums to exhibit such marble sculptures in a \"restored\" state, with damaged parts repaired or reconstructed to make the statue look as much as possible as it did when it was first created. The noses of antique statues are especially likely to be damaged or missing, so many Greek or Roman statues acquired new noses during this era. Modern exhibition practice may differ from museum to museum. The minimalist approach prescribes removing such 19th-century additions in the interest of authenticity, as has been done in Copenhagen.\n" ]
does fractional reserve banking cause all money to be created in the form of debt?
Fractional Reserve banking is not started from scratch in any of the economies. They simply plug it in to the system. So there is some extent of money already present in the system for the Fractional reserve banking to work. > where is the money used to pay interest over and above the principal coming from? The system will collapse if everyone will pay off debt. There will be no money left. That is why central banks will print crazy amount of money to keep the cash flow going.
[ "Fractional reserve banking has resulted in a transfer of wealth from the holders of currency to investors. Under fractional reserve banking the money supply is allowed to be increased whenever new interest-bearing loans are issued and is often constrained by a reserve ratio, which mandates that banks hold a portion of the wealth they lend out at interest in the form of real reserves. Many nations are in the process of eliminating reserve ratios.\n", "The theory holds that, in a system of fractional-reserve banking, where banks ordinarily keep only a fraction of their deposits in reserves, an initial bank loan creates more money than is initially lent out.\n", "The process of fractional-reserve banking expands the money supply of the economy but also increases the risk that a bank cannot meet its depositor withdrawals. Modern central banking allows banks to practice fractional-reserve banking with inter-bank business transactions with a reduced risk of bankruptcy.\n", "There are two suggested mechanisms for how money creation occurs in a fractional-reserve banking system: either reserves are first injected by the central bank, and then lent on by the commercial banks, or loans are first extended by commercial banks, and then backed by reserves borrowed from the central bank. The \"reserves first\" model is that taught in mainstream economics textbooks, while the \"loans first\" model is advanced by endogenous money theorists.\n", "Fractional-reserve banking allows banks to create credit in the form of bank deposits, which represent immediate liquidity to depositors. The banks also provide longer-term loans to borrowers, and act as financial intermediaries for those funds. Less liquid forms of deposit (such as time deposits) or riskier classes of financial assets (such as equities or long-term bonds) may lock up a depositor's wealth for a period of time, making it unavailable for use on demand. This \"borrowing short, lending long,\" or maturity transformation function of fractional-reserve banking is a role that many economists consider to be an important function of the commercial banking system.\n", "However, some critics of fractional reserve banking argue that the practice inherently artificially lowers real interest rates and leads to business cycles propagated by excessive capital investment and subsequent contraction. A small number of critics, such as Michael Rowbotham, equate the practice to counterfeiting, because banks are granted the legal right to issue new loans while charging interest on the money thus created. Rowbotham argues that this concentrates wealth in the banking sector with various pernicious effects.\n", "Today, monetary reformers point out that fractional reserve banking leads to unpayable debt, growing inequality, inevitable bankruptcies, and an imperative for perpetual and unsustainable economic growth.\n" ]
why does fast air feel cold, if temperature is a measure of kinetic energy, even when i'm not sweaty?
Because the air temperature is lower than you body temperature when it blows past your skin it's still taking heat away from the body. Causing the air to feel cool.
[ "At high speeds through the air, the object's kinetic energy is converted to heat through compression and friction. At lower speed, the object will lose heat to the air through which it is passing, if the air is cooler. The combined temperature effect of heat from the air and from passage through it is called the stagnation temperature; the actual temperature is called the recovery temperature. These viscous dissipative effects to neighboring sub-layers make the boundary layer slow down via a non-isentropic process. Heat then conducts into the surface material from the higher temperature air. The result is an increase in the temperature of the material and a loss of energy from the flow. The forced convection ensures that other material replenishes the gases that have cooled to continue the process.\n", "Air movement can have a significant influence on human thermal comfort. Wind chill in cold conditions is considered detrimental, but air movement in neutral to warm environments is considered beneficial. This is because normally under conditions with air temperatures above about 74°F, the body needs to lose heat in order to maintain a constant internal temperature. \n", "As the air surrounding one's body is warmed by body heat, it will rise and be replaced with other air. If air is moved away from one's body with a natural breeze or a fan, sweat will evaporate faster, making perspiration more effective at cooling the body. The more unevaporated perspiration, the greater the discomfort.\n", "At higher temperatures, air is less dense and planes must fly faster to generate the same amount of lift. High heat may reduce the amount of cargo a plane can carry, increase the length of runway a plane needs to take off,\n", "Heat transfer by convection is driven by the movement of fluids over the surface of the body. This convective fluid can be either a liquid or a gas. For heat transfer from the outer surface of the body, the convection mechanism is dependent on the surface area of the body, the velocity of the air, and the temperature gradient between the surface of the skin and the ambient air. The normal temperature of the body is approximately 37 °C. Heat transfer occurs more readily when the temperature of the surroundings is significantly less than the normal body temperature. This concept explains why a person feels cold when not enough covering is worn when exposed to a cold environment. Clothing can be considered an insulator which provides thermal resistance to heat flow over the covered portion of the body. This thermal resistance causes the temperature on the surface of the clothing to be less than the temperature on the surface of the skin. This smaller temperature gradient between the surface temperature and the ambient temperature will cause a lower rate of heat transfer than if the skin were not covered.\n", "Thermals are caused by local differences in temperature, pressure, or impurity concentration in the vertical. Temperature differences can cause air currents because warmer air is less dense than cooler air, causing the warmer air to appear \"lighter.\" Thus, if the warm air is under the cool air, air currents will form as they exchange places. Air currents are caused because of the uneven heating of Earth's surface.\n", "Temperature must also be accounted for because the air pump will heat the air passing through it making the air down stream of it less dense and more viscous. This difference must be corrected for. Temperature is measured at the test piece plenum and at the metering element plenum. Correction factors are then applied during flow calculations. Some flow bench designs place the air pump after the metering element so that heating by the air pump is not as large a concern.\n" ]
What causes light to slow when it travels through a medium?
Dielectric materials are full of electric charges (positive nuclei and negative electrons). The charges aren't free to move around, but they do get tugged around a bit by electric fields: the electrons and nuclei are pulled in opposite directions in an electric field, and so a tiny electric dipole is formed. This is called polarization. When light---consisting of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, but the electric part is more important here---hits a polarizable material, it creates tiny oscillating electric dipoles. Oscillating electric dipoles produce light of their own at the same frequency. However, the produced light is not exactly in phase with the incoming light. The remarkable thing---and it is quite remarkable that it works out this way---is that the combination of the incoming and all of the produced light is exactly the same as a single light wave with a slower velocity (and potentially a different direction, in the case of refraction). This is not an obvious fact and requires some study of Maxwell's equations to fully appreciate. There is a common mis-explanation that the slowing is due to some sort of time delay between absorption and re-emission of photons. It's not *entirely* wrong but it does over-simply. The slowing of light is due to the collective effects of many atoms in the material, and there's no true absorption happening. Plus, you can get rather bizarre effects in special materials, including *speeding up* of light (in a peculiar way that doesn't violate special relativity---only the peaks of the wave move faster than c, not any energy or information). These things are harder to see within the absorption-emission picture but are quite compatible with the collective-dipole-wiggles picture.
[ "When light propagates through a material, it travels slower than the vacuum speed, . This is a change in the phase velocity of the light and is manifested in physical effects such as refraction. This reduction in speed is quantified by the ratio between and the phase velocity. This ratio is called the refractive index of the material. Slow light is a dramatic reduction in the group velocity of light, not the phase velocity. Slow light effects are not due to abnormally large refractive indices, as which will be explained below.\n", "When light propagates in a medium, its speed is reduced, in the rest frame of the medium, to , where is the index of refraction of the medium . The speed of light in a medium uniformly moving with speed in the positive -direction as measured in the lab frame is given directly by the velocity addition formulas. For the forward direction (standard configuration, drop index on ) one gets,\n", "Slow light is the propagation of an optical pulse or other modulation of an optical carrier at a very low group velocity. Slow light occurs when a propagating pulse is substantially slowed down by the interaction with the medium in which the propagation takes place.\n", "Interest in the field of ‘slow’ and ‘stopped’ light arises from the prospect of obtaining much better control over light signals, with extremely nonlinear effects in interactions between light and matter, and optical quantum memories facilitating new architectures to process quantum information. With conventional dielectric materials, having a positive refractive index, it is impossible to ‘stop’ travelling light signals completely, not least because of the presence of structural disorder. This was an important observation, which Hess made from his extensive studies of slow light in semiconductor quantum dots and the dynamics of their spontaneous emission close to the stopped-light point in photonic crystals. Hess showed theoretically that a way to overcome this fundamental limitation of conventional media was to use nanoplasmonic waveguide structures.\n", "According to the theories prevailing at the time, light traveling through a moving medium would be dragged along by the medium, so the measured speed of the light would be a simple sum of its speed \"through\" the medium plus the speed \"of\" the medium.\n", "In a medium, light usually does not propagate at a speed equal to \"c\"; further, different types of light wave will travel at different speeds. The speed at which the individual crests and troughs of a plane wave (a wave filling the whole space, with only one frequency) propagate is called the phase velocity \"v\". An actual physical signal with a finite extent (a pulse of light) travels at a different speed. The largest part of the pulse travels at the group velocity \"v\", and its earliest part travels at the front velocity \"v\".\n", "Light that travels through transparent matter does so at a lower speed than \"c\", the speed of light in a vacuum. For example, photons engage in so many collisions on the way from the core of the sun that radiant energy can take about a million years to reach the surface; however, once in open space, a photon takes only 8.3 minutes to reach Earth. The factor by which the speed is decreased is called the refractive index of the material. In a classical wave picture, the slowing can be explained by the light inducing electric polarization in the matter, the polarized matter radiating new light, and that new light interfering with the original light wave to form a delayed wave. In a particle picture, the slowing can instead be described as a blending of the photon with quantum excitations of the matter to produce quasi-particles known as polariton (other quasi-particles are phonons and excitons); this polariton has a nonzero effective mass, which means that it cannot travel at \"c\". Light of different frequencies may travel through matter at different speeds; this is called dispersion (not to be confused with scattering). In some cases, it can result in extremely slow speeds of light in matter. The effects of photon interactions with other quasi-particles may be observed directly in Raman scattering and Brillouin scattering.\n" ]
why the martingale betting strategy doesn't work.
It does and it doesnt, in THEORY it does, as you explained, eventually your numbers come up and you will always be up your initial stake. you reset and start again. The problem comes in that casinos predict people doing this, they have max bets, so say if the max bet is £40 (for ease), you start with £10, you lose, up it to £20, bet the £20 you lose and go to £40 and lose, then you are actually down £70 and you cant go up any further. So in theory it works, but in practice it doesnt. I hope this helps.
[ "Originally, \"martingale\" referred to a class of betting strategies that was popular in 18th-century France. The simplest of these strategies was designed for a game in which the gambler wins their stake if a coin comes up heads and loses it if the coin comes up tails. The strategy had the gambler double their bet after every loss so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake. As the gambler's wealth and available time jointly approach infinity, their probability of eventually flipping heads approaches 1, which makes the martingale betting strategy seem like a sure thing. However, the exponential growth of the bets eventually bankrupts its users due to finite bankrolls. Stopped Brownian motion, which is a martingale process, can be used to model the trajectory of such games.\n", "The martingale strategy fails even with unbounded stopping time, as long as there is a limit on earnings or on the bets (which is also true in practice). It is only with unbounded wealth, bets \"and\" time that it could be argued that the martingale becomes a winning strategy.\n", "A martingale is any of a class of betting strategies that originated from and were popular in 18th century France. The simplest of these strategies was designed for a game in which the gambler wins the stake if a coin comes up heads and loses it if the coin comes up tails. The strategy had the gambler double the bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake. The martingale strategy has been applied to roulette as well, as the probability of hitting either red or black is close to 50%.\n", "The strategy can pay dividends when gamblers successfully reduce the potential winners of an event to a select few from the field or when information about runners not expected to perform well does not reach the market (so as to affect the odds), making it profitable to back the rest of the field.\n", "Although the Kelly strategy's promise of doing better than any other strategy in the long run seems compelling, some economists have argued strenuously against it, mainly because an individual's specific investing constraints may override the desire for optimal growth rate. The conventional alternative is expected utility theory which says bets should be sized to maximize the expected utility of the outcome (to an individual with logarithmic utility, the Kelly bet maximizes expected utility, so there is no conflict; moreover, Kelly's original paper clearly states the need for a utility function in the case of gambling games which are played finitely many times). Even Kelly supporters usually argue for fractional Kelly (betting a fixed fraction of the amount recommended by Kelly) for a variety of practical reasons, such as wishing to reduce volatility, or protecting against non-deterministic errors in their advantage (edge) calculations.\n", "This is also known as the reverse martingale. In a classic martingale betting style, gamblers increase bets after each loss in hopes that an eventual win will recover all previous losses. The anti-martingale approach instead increases bets after wins, while reducing them after a loss. The perception is that the gambler will benefit from a winning streak or a \"hot hand\", while reducing losses while \"cold\" or otherwise having a losing streak. As the single bets are independent from each other (and from the gambler's expectations), the concept of winning \"streaks\" is merely an example of gambler's fallacy, and the anti-martingale strategy fails to make any money. If on the other hand, real-life stock returns are serially correlated (for instance due to economic cycles and delayed reaction to news of larger market participants), \"streaks\" of wins or losses do happen more often and are longer than those under a purely random process, the anti-martingale strategy could theoretically apply and can be used in trading systems (as trend-following or \"doubling up\"). (But see also dollar cost averaging.)\n", "Betting exchanges compete with the traditional bookmaker. They are generally able to offer punters better odds because of their much lower overheads but also give opportunities for arbitrage, the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets. However, traditionally, arbitrage has always been possible by backing all outcomes with bookmakers (dutching), as opposed to laying an outcome on an exchange. Exchanges, however, allow bookmakers to see the state of the market and set their odds accordingly.\n" ]
carbs, protein, fats - in which order are these used by the body and why?
Glucose is our staple energy source. If the body needs energy, glucose is broken down producing ATP and releasing CO2 and H20. If the body does not need energy, the glucose is built in to chains for easy storage in liver. These chain molecules are called glycogen. They are easily accessed and broken down to glucose whenever blood sugar levels decrease to provide the body with energy, During starvation, when there is no energy provided by food, the body has to break down it's 3 main energy stores - liver glycogen, body fat and muscle. Your body begins by breaking down the liver glycogen. Next is body fat and and if desperate - muscles. In terms of weight and total calorific content this comes to, for an exemplar 70kg male; about 0.2kg liver glycogen = ~800kcal, about 15kg triacylglycarides (TAGs = major component of body fat)= ~135,000kcal and 6kg muscle = ~24,000kcal. As you can see, body fat is the major energy store of the body. Fat cells exist partly to be used as an energy store. However, the body will break down glycogen first always as its simpler and more direct. Breaking down body fat (TAGs) for use as energy requires two more complex processes; 1) beta-oxidation of fatty acids to the natural precursor for a specific stage in the same natural metabolic pathway as glucose, and 2) gluconeogenesis, producing glucose from glycerol ( a non-carb source!). Muscles are the last to be broken down, for obvious reasons - we need them. Muscle breakdown doesn't only affect things like leg and arm muscles, but also things like cardiac and diaphragm muscle, so it is really a last attempt for the body to survive by breaking these down. This would probably be around a couple weeks in to starvation and death would soon follow.
[ "Molecules of carbohydrates and fats consist of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Carbohydrates range from simple monosaccharides (glucose, fructose and galactose) to complex polysaccharides (starch). Fats are triglycerides, made of assorted fatty acid monomers bound to a glycerol backbone. Some fatty acids, but not all, are essential in the diet: they cannot be synthesized in the body. Protein molecules contain nitrogen atoms in addition to carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The fundamental components of protein are nitrogen-containing amino acids, some of which are essential in the sense that humans cannot make them internally. Some of the amino acids are convertible (with the expenditure of energy) to glucose and can be used for energy production, just as ordinary glucose, in a process known as gluconeogenesis. By breaking down existing protein, the carbon skeleton of the various amino acids can be metabolized to intermediates in cellular respiration; the remaining ammonia is discarded primarily as urea in urine.\n", "Molecules of carbohydrates and fats consist of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Carbohydrates range from simple monosaccharides (glucose, fructose, galactose) to complex polysaccharides (starch). Fats are triglycerides, made of assorted fatty acid monomers bound to a glycerol backbone. Some fatty acids, but not all, are essential in the diet: they cannot be synthesized in the body. Protein molecules contain nitrogen atoms in addition to carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The fundamental components of protein are nitrogen-containing amino acids, some of which are essential in the sense that humans cannot make them internally. Some of the amino acids are convertible (with the expenditure of energy) to glucose and can be used for energy production just as ordinary glucose. By breaking down existing protein, some glucose can be produced internally; the remaining amino acids are discarded, primarily as urea in urine. This occurs naturally when atrophy takes place, or during periods of starvation.\n", "Molecules of carbohydrates and fats consist of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Carbohydrates range from simple monosaccharides (glucose, fructose, galactose) to complex polysaccharides (starch). Fats are triglycerides, made of assorted fatty acid monomers bound to glycerol backbone. Some fatty acids, but not all, are essential in the diet: they cannot be synthesized in the body. Protein molecules contain nitrogen atoms in addition to carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The fundamental components of protein are nitrogen-containing amino acids. Essential amino acids cannot be made by the animal. Some of the amino acids are convertible (with the expenditure of energy) to glucose and can be used for energy production just as ordinary glucose. By breaking down existing protein, some glucose can be produced internally; the remaining amino acids are discarded, primarily as urea in urine. This occurs normally only during prolonged starvation.\n", "Proteins are essential nutrients for the human body. They are one of the building blocks of body tissue and can also serve as a fuel source. As a fuel, proteins provide as much energy density as carbohydrates: 4 kcal (17 kJ) per gram; in contrast, lipids provide 9 kcal (37 kJ) per gram. The most important aspect and defining characteristic of protein from a nutritional standpoint is its amino acid composition.\n", "A complete protein or whole protein is a food source of protein that contains an adequate proportion of each of the nine essential amino acids necessary in the human diet. Examples of single-source complete proteins are red meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, yogurt, soybeans and quinoa. The concept does not include whether or not the food source is high in total protein, or any other information about that food's nutritious value.\n", "Proteins are composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in a variety of ways to form a large combination of amino acids. Unlike fat the body has no storage deposits of protein. All of it is contained in the body as important parts of tissues, blood hormones, and enzymes. The structural components of the body that contain these amino acids are continually undergoing a process of breakdown and replacement. The respiratory quotient for protein metabolism can be demonstrated by the chemical equation for oxidation of albumin:\n", "Proteins are the basis of many animal body structures (e.g. muscles, skin, and hair). They also form the enzymes which control chemical reactions throughout the body. Each molecule is composed of amino acids which are characterized by the inclusion of nitrogen and sometimes sulfur. The body requires amino acids to produce new proteins (protein retention) and to replace damaged proteins (maintenance). As there is no protein or amino acid storage provision, amino acids must be present in the diet. Excess amino acids are discarded, typically in the urine. For all animals, some amino acids are \"essential\" (an animal cannot produce them internally) and some are \"non-essential\" (the animal can produce them from other nitrogen-containing compounds). A diet that contains adequate amounts of amino acids (especially those that are essential) is particularly important in some situations: during early development and maturation, pregnancy, lactation, or injury (a burn, for instance). \n" ]
Was the failure of communism due to inherit flaws in the ideology or because the countries that adopted it were poorer and fewer than their capitalist counterparts?
You seem to have a bunch of different questions here. For the questions in the last paragraph you might consider /r/HistoryWhatIf .
[ "While having been a relatively unknown system due to the failure of authoritarianism within the First World during the Cold War, with the transition of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia to capitalist economic models, authoritarian capitalism has recently rose into prominence. While it was initially thought that changing to a capitalist model would lead to the formation of a liberal democracy within authoritarian countries, the continued persistence of an authoritarian capitalist models has led to this view decreasing in popularity. Furthermore, some have argued that by utilising capitalist economic models authoritarian governments have improved the stability of their regimes through improving the quality of life of their citizenship. Highlighting this appeal, Robert Kagan stated: \"There's no question that China is an attractive model for autocrats who would like to be able to pursue economic growth without losing control of the levers of power\".\n", "During the adoption of varying forms of market economy, there was a general decline in living standards for many former Communist countries. Political reforms were varied, but in only four countries were Communist parties able to retain a monopoly on power, namely China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (North Korea went through a constitutional change in 2009 that made it nominally no longer Communist, but still \"de facto\" organised on Stalinist lines). Many communist and socialist organisations in the West turned their guiding principles over to social democracy and democratic socialism. Communist parties in Italy and San Marino suffered and the reformation of the Italian political class took place in the early 1990s. In South America, the Pink tide began with Venezuela in 1999 and swept through the early 2000s. The European political landscape changed drastically, with several former Eastern Bloc countries joining NATO and the European Union, resulting in stronger economic and social integration with Western Europe and the United States.\n", "By the beginning of the 21st century, capitalism had become the pervasive economic system worldwide. The collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991 significantly reduced the influence of Socialism as an alternative economic system. Socialist movements continue to be influential in some parts of the world, most notably Latin-American Bolivarianism, with some having ties to more traditional anti-capitalist movements, such as Bolivarian Venezuela's ties to communist Cuba.\n", "Gotfred Appel's big ideological theory was published in extensive series of articles in \"Communist Briefing\" during 1966 and 1967. His \"leech state theory\" theorized that the rich countries make so much money by exploiting 3rd world countries that even their \"poorest\" citizens are so rich they are effectively \"bribed\" into being part of the Capitalist bourgeoisie and unlikely to participate in any Communist revolution until this source of wealth dries out due to liberation of the 3rd world. Accordingly, western communists who really want a communist ideal state must first help liberate the 3rd world countries from western exploitation. This theory will be the basis of all future activities in both the party and the gang. The theory is later published as a book. During the fall of 1967, Jens Holger Jensen made the acquaintance of Gottfred Appel during a small one-man KAK-demonstration and almost immediately began helping out and soon joined KAK.\n", "Communism was strengthened as a force in Western democracies when the global economy crashed in 1929 in what became known as the Great Depression. Many people saw this as the first stage of the end of the capitalist system and were attracted to Communism as a solution to the economic crisis, especially as the Soviet Union's economic development in the 1930s was strong, unaffected by the capitalist world's crisis.\n", "Socialist and Communist parties around the world saw drops in membership after the Berlin Wall fell and the public felt that free market ideology had won. Libertarian, neoliberal, nationalist and Islamist parties on the other hand benefited from the fall of the Soviet Union. As capitalism had \"won\", as people saw it, socialism and communism in general declined in popularity. Social-Democratic Scandinavian countries privatized many of their commons in the 1990s and a political debate on modern institutions re-opened. Scandinavian nations are now more seen as social democrat (see Nordic model).\n", "All the countries concerned have abandoned the traditional tools of communist economic control and moved more or less successfully toward free market systems. Although some (including Charles Paul Lewis) stress the beneficial effect of multinational investment, the reforms also had important negative consequences that are still unfolding.\n" ]
why did people in places like africa develop darker skin when black absorbs the most light compared to lighter colors?
Dark skin is caused by melanin. When the sun hits your skin it gets absorbed by melanin and not by your skin cells. This is a good thing because if your skin cells absorb the sun it can cause damage that can possibly lead to skin cancer.
[ "Historically, the cause of skin lightening goes back to colonialism, where individuals with lighter skin received greater privilege than those of darker tones. This built a racial hierarchy and color ranking within colonized African nations, leaving psychological effects on many of the darker skinned individuals.\n", "Natural skin color can darken as a result of tanning due to exposure to sunlight. The leading theory is that skin color adapts to intense sunlight irradiation to provide partial protection against the ultraviolet fraction that produces damage and thus mutations in the DNA of the skin cells. There is a correlation between the geographic distribution of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and the distribution of indigenous skin pigmentation around the world. Darker-skinned populations are found in the regions with the most ultraviolet, closer to the equator, while lighter skinned populations live closer to the poles, with less UVR, though immigration has changed these patterns.\n", "The genetic mutations leading to light skin, though partially different among East Asians and Western Europeans, suggest the two groups experienced a similar selective pressure after settlement in northern latitudes.\n", "Dark-skinned populations inhabiting Africa, Australia, Melanesia, Papua New Guinea and South Asia all live in some of the areas with the highest UV radiation in the world, and have evolved very dark skin pigmentations as protection from the harmful sun rays. Evolution has restricted humans with darker skin in tropical latitudes, especially in non-forested regions, where ultraviolet radiation from the sun is usually the most intense. Different dark-skinned populations are not necessarily closely related genetically. Before the modern mass migration, it has been argued that the majority of dark pigmented people lived within 20° of the equator.\n", "Light skinned is frequently marketed via billboards and posters that feature light skinned models, playing on the public perception that looking multiracial or having lighter skin makes one more attractive. Some Ghanaians also believe that if a lighter-skinned person is in a position of power, that they bleached to get into that position and is bleaching to maintain it. Historians such as Jemima Pierre theorize that the desire for lighter colored skin stem from apartheid and the British colonization of West Africa. White skin asserted class privilege and distinct racial privilege, prompting many Ghanaians to bleach their skin to achieve a similar color. Over time this also became a major determinant of beauty, especially among Ghanaian women, and by the 1980s skin bleaching had spread throughout all socioeconomic classes of women. Despite being a common practice among Ghanaians, lower-class people are often openly ridiculed for skin bleaching. Blacks who bleach their skin (regardless of socioeconomic status) are often ridiculed for aspiring and ultimately failing to become white.\n", "Convergent evolution in humans includes blue eye colour and light skin colour. When humans migrated out of Africa, they moved to more northern latitudes with less intense sunlight. It was beneficial to them to reduce their skin pigmentation. It appears certain that there was some lightening of skin colour \"before\" European and East Asian lineages diverged, as there are some skin-lightening genetic differences that are common to both groups. However, after the lineages diverged and became genetically isolated, the skin of both groups lightened more, and that additional lightening was due to \"different\" genetic changes.\n", "Nevertheless, some social groups favor specific skin coloring. The preferred skin tone varies by culture and has varied over time. A number of indigenous African groups, such as the Maasai, associated pale skin with being cursed or caused by evil spirits associated with witchcraft. They would abandon their children born with conditions such as albinism and showed a sexual preference for darker skin.\n" ]
in electromagnetic waves, how are photons produced, how does the electric force and magnetic force interact and what factors effect the energy of a photon/wave?
A photon is a little packet of energy in the form of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. They fly around at the speed of light. When certain photons hit our eyes, they tell our brain that we're seeing something. The energy of a photon depends on its frequency (or its wavelength). The lowest energy photons are radio waves, then microwaves, then infrared, then red light, then blue light, then ultraviolet, then x-ray, and finally gamma rays. Out of all of those, we con only see the small amount of light between infrared and ultraviolet.
[ "Classical waves transfer energy without transporting matter through the medium (material). For example, waves in a pond do not carry the water molecules from place to place; rather the wave's energy travels through the water, leaving the water molecules in place. Additionally, charged particles, such as electrons and protons create electromagnetic fields when they move, and these fields transport the type of energy known as electromagnetic radiation, or light. A changing magnetic field will induce a changing electric field and vice versa—the two are linked. These changing fields form electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic waves differ from mechanical waves in that they do not require a medium to propagate. This means that electromagnetic waves can travel not only through air and solid materials, but also through the vacuum of space.\n", "An electric charge has an electric field, and if the charge is moving it also generates a magnetic field. The combination of the electric and magnetic field is called the electromagnetic field, and its interaction with charges is the source of the electromagnetic force, which is one of the four fundamental forces in physics. The study of photon-mediated interactions among charged particles is called quantum electrodynamics.\n", "Electromagnetic waves are a result of Maxwell's equations which, in part, state that changing electric fields produce magnetic fields and vice versa. Due to this dependence, the fields form an electromagnetic wave, also called electromagnetic radiation (EMR). The electric and magnetic fields are transverse to each other, and transverse to the direction of propagation of the electromagnetic wave.\n", "Once this electromagnetic field has been produced from a given charge distribution, other charged or magnetised objects in this field may experience a force. If these other charges and currents are comparable in size to the sources producing the above electromagnetic field, then a new net electromagnetic field will be produced. Thus, the electromagnetic field may be viewed as a dynamic entity that causes other charges and currents to move, and which is also affected by them. These interactions are described by Maxwell's equations and the Lorentz force law. This discussion ignores the radiation reaction force.\n", "The wave propagates in the direction of the magnetic field, although waves exist at oblique incidence and smoothly change into the magnetosonic wave when the propagation is perpendicular to the magnetic field.\n", "The force acts on the charged particles themselves, hence charge has a tendency to spread itself as evenly as possible over a conducting surface. The magnitude of the electromagnetic force, whether attractive or repulsive, is given by Coulomb's law, which relates the force to the product of the charges and has an inverse-square relation to the distance between them. The electromagnetic force is very strong, second only in strength to the strong interaction, but unlike that force it operates over all distances. In comparison with the much weaker gravitational force, the electromagnetic force pushing two electrons apart is 10 times that of the gravitational attraction pulling them together.\n", "As an electromagnetic wave travels through space, energy is transferred from the source to other objects (receivers). The rate of this energy transfer depends on the strength of the EM field components. Simply put, the rate of energy transfer per unit area (power density) is the product of the electric field strength (E) times the magnetic field strength (H).\n" ]
How expensive were candles in the 18th century? Could only the rich afford to light their homes after dark? Was it a major expense to host a party at night considering candles were made of beeswax or the wax extracted from sperm whales?
You are forgetting about [tallow](_URL_0_) candles, which have also been around for a long time. They are made from rendered animal fat. Candles would not have been very expensive, though the very poor would not have been able to afford them.
[ "By the late 19th century, Price's Candles, based in London, was the largest candle manufacturer in the world. Founded by William Wilson in 1830, the company pioneered the implementation of the technique of steam distillation, and was thus able to manufacture candles from a wide range of raw materials, including skin fat, bone fat, fish oil and industrial greases.\n", "By the late 19th century, Price's Candles, based in London was the largest candle manufacturer in the world. The company traced its origins back to 1829, when William Wilson invested in of coconut plantation in Sri Lanka. His aim was to make candles from coconut oil. Later he tried palm oil from palm trees. An accidental discovery swept all his ambitions aside when his son George Wilson, a talented chemist, distilled the first petroleum oil in 1854. George also pioneered the implementation of the technique of steam distillation, and was thus able to manufacture candles from a wide range of raw materials, including skin fat, bone fat, fish oil and industrial greases.\n", "During the Middle Ages, tallow candles were most commonly used. By the 13th century, candle making had become a guild craft in England and France. The candle makers (chandlers) went from house to house making candles from the kitchen fats saved for that purpose, or made and sold their own candles from small candle shops. Beeswax, compared to animal-based tallow, burned cleanly, without smoky flame. Beeswax candles were expensive, and relatively few people could afford to burn them in their homes in medieval Europe. However, they were widely used for church ceremonies.\n", "Candles were commonplace throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. Candle makers (known as chandlers) made candles from fats saved from the kitchen or sold their own candles from within their shops. The trade of the chandler is also recorded by the more picturesque name of \"smeremongere\", since they oversaw the manufacture of sauces, vinegar, soap and cheese. The popularity of candles is shown by their use in Candlemas and in Saint Lucy festivities.\n", "In parts of Europe, the Middle-East and Africa, where lamp oil made from olives was readily available, candle making remained unknown until the early middle-ages. Candles were primarily made from tallow and beeswax in ancient times, but have been made from spermaceti, purified animal fats (stearin) and paraffin wax in recent centuries.\n", "By the early 18th century, the custom had become common in towns of the upper Rhineland, but it had not yet spread to rural areas. Wax candles, expensive items at the time, are found in attestations from the late 18th century.\n", "Despite advances in candle making, the candle industry declined rapidly upon the introduction of superior methods of lighting, including kerosene and lamps and the 1879 invention of the incandescent light bulb. From this point on, candles came to be marketed as more of a decorative item.\n" ]
Why are some of the heavier elements more common than the lighter ones in the universe?
Different elements, different methods of formation. Some of the heavier atoms [like iron] are made in every star, but a few of the lighter ones are only formed in cosmic ray collisions [ lithium, beryllium, and boron ]. If you are interested in this, track down this book: ["The Magic Furnace" by Marcus Chown](_URL_0_) It explains where all the various atoms came from, and how we figured it out. It is very clearly written. I got mine used through Amazon for just a couple of quid.
[ "The presence of heavier elements hails from stellar nucleosynthesis, the theory that the majority of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in the Universe (\"metals\", hereafter) are formed in the cores of stars as they evolve. Over time, stellar winds and supernovae deposit the metals into the surrounding environment, enriching the interstellar medium and providing recycling materials for the birth of new stars. It follows that older generations of stars, which formed in the metal-poor early Universe, generally have lower metallicities than those of younger generations, which formed in a more metal-rich Universe.\n", "The main exception to this is the kinetic isotope effect: due to their larger masses, heavier isotopes tend to react somewhat more slowly than lighter isotopes of the same element. This is most pronounced by far for protium (), deuterium (), and tritium (), because deuterium has twice the mass of protium and tritium has three times the mass of protium. These mass differences also affect the behavior of their respective chemical bonds, by changing the center of gravity (reduced mass) of the atomic systems. However, for heavier elements the relative mass difference between isotopes is much less, so that the mass-difference effects on chemistry are usually negligible. (Heavy elements also have relatively more neutrons than lighter elements, so the ratio of the nuclear mass to the collective electronic mass is slightly greater.)\n", "For elements lighter than iron on the periodic table, nuclear fusion releases energy. For iron, and for all of the heavier elements, nuclear fusion consumes energy. Chemical elements up to the iron peak are produced in ordinary stellar nucleosynthesis, with the alpha elements being particular abundant. Some heavier elements are produced by less efficient processes such as the r-process and s-process. Elements with atomic numbers close to iron are produced in large quantities in supernova due to explosive oxygen and silicon fusion, followed by radioactive decay of nuclei such as Nickel-56. On average, heavier elements are less abundant in the universe, but some of those near iron are comparatively more abundant than would be expected from this trend.\n", "Besides mass, the elements heavier than helium can play a significant role in the evolution of stars. Astronomers label all elements heavier than helium \"metals\", and call the chemical concentration of these elements in a star, its metallicity. A star's metallicity can influence the time the star takes to burn its fuel, and controls the formation of its magnetic fields, which affects the strength of its stellar wind. Older, population II stars have substantially less metallicity than the younger, population I stars due to the composition of the molecular clouds from which they formed. Over time, such clouds become increasingly enriched in heavier elements as older stars die and shed portions of their atmospheres.\n", "Heavy metals up to the vicinity of iron (in the periodic table) are largely made via stellar nucleosynthesis. In this process, lighter elements from hydrogen to silicon undergo successive fusion reactions inside stars, releasing light and heat and forming heavier elements with higher atomic numbers.\n", "In general, elements up to iron are made in large stars in the process of becoming supernovae. Iron-56 is particularly common, since it is the most stable element that can easily be made from alpha particles (being a product of decay of radioactive nickel-56, ultimately made from 14 helium nuclei). Elements heavier than iron are made in energy-absorbing processes in large stars, and their abundance in the universe (and on Earth) generally decreases with increasing atomic number.\n", "Physical and chemical characterisations of heavy metals need to be treated with caution, as the metals involved are not always consistently defined. As well as being relatively dense, heavy metals tend to be less reactive than lighter metals and have much less soluble sulfides and hydroxides. While it is relatively easy to distinguish a heavy metal such as tungsten from a lighter metal such as sodium, a few heavy metals, such as zinc, mercury, and lead, have some of the characteristics of lighter metals, and, lighter metals such as beryllium, scandium, and titanium, have some of the characteristics of heavier metals.\n" ]
Are there any families from the Roman Republic period that survived into Late Antiquity?
There are plenty of claims, but there is no way for modern historians to confirm any of them. The Anicii only appear in 298, when Anicius Faustus became the consul and I don't think there's any indication that they publicised their Republican heritage - the late antique Anicii originally came from North Africa, whereas the Republican Anicii came from central Italy. Of course, the imperial Anicii could still be descended from the earlier family, but we cannot evaluate this hypothesis with the available evidence. The Anicii's claim to antiquity may have come from their marriage into the Acilii Glabriones, who did have what appears to be a long and distinguished ancestry. But even then this is only based on the fact that a certain Anicius Acilius Glabrio Faustus (consul in 438) was the son of Acilius Glabrio Sibidius, which has been interpreted by Alan Cameron as evidence that Sibidius had married a female member of the Anicii and added 'Anicius' to his son's name to 'advertise their union'. The Acilii Glabriones claimed descent from Manius Acilius Glabrio, the consul in 191 BC, and their claim was seemingly well-known, as the third-century historian Herodian discussed another member of the family, Marcus Acilius Glabrio (consul of 186) > This Glabrionus was the most nobly born of all the Roman aristocrats, for he traced his ancestry to Aeneas, son of Venus and Anchises, and he had served two terms as consul. Cameron however points out the obvious problem, since we know of no-one from this family between yet another Marcus Acilius Glabrio (consul of 256) and Sibidius in the late fourth/early fifth century (though there is an unknown Acilius Glabrio from an inscription in the early fourth century). For a family to pass their name through their male line for five centuries is extraordinarily unlikely (see for instance the often-noted longevity of the House of Capet in France - which is only frequently pointed out because it was so exceptional), so it would be safe to presume that descent from a female line and/or forged ancestries were involved somewhere along the way. There were of course many other claims. Lucius Aradius Valerius Proculus Populonius, prefect of Rome in 337/8, was for example praised by a friend to be descended from the Poplicolae family active during the Republic, whilst the fourth-century inscription of Creperius Amantius and Caeionia Marina declared their descent from Munatius Plancus Paulinus, consul in 13 AD. The Decii and Corvinii, both families active at the same time as the Anicii, similarly had their Republican ancestry praised by Cassiodorus and Ennodius, two authors writing in Ostrogothic Italy in the sixth century (interestingly, the Anicii were not praised in relation to their Republican ancestors here). Personally, the most fascinating theory is the idea that Emperor Anastasius (491-518) was a descendant of Pompey the Great, as the Republican general was mentioned a few times in panegyrics dedicated to the emperor and the name 'Pompeius' is attested within the emperor's extended family - which is an indication that the family held the name to be somewhat important to pass on through the generations. Understandably, despite all these claims, we have to be cautious, since we are reading what these families and their allies want us to read, not factual reports of their descent. The Romans loved everything from the past and evidently fictional ancestries were omnipresent. St Jerome for instance celebrated his patron Paula's descent from Agamemnon from the Trojan War, whilst Ruus Volusianus was allegedly descended from the Volusus featured in the *Aeneid*. Most famously, Constantine the Great (306-337) manufactured an entirely fictitious familial connection with the relatively recent emperor Claudius Gothicus (268-270). There is no reason for us to think that other Roman aristocrats were not capable of writing similar fabrications. Many people no doubt believed that they had many illustrious ancestors, and in reality they probably did, as they no doubt were all descended in some way from Roman families dating back to the Republic, but we have to be very cautious about their claims that they were descended from specific individuals, since the evidence available is not enough for us to test any of them.
[ "After the fall of the Roman Empire, these families survived during the middle ages (c700-1200AD) perhaps under Papal rule in Rome. It is possible that branches of this family lived in Byzantine territories.\n", "From these middle age families, originated the more modern families of the Roman nobility (1200-1600) (3, p. 131). From Rome, a branch of the Caridi family moved to the city of Messina, Sicily during the reign of King Martino, c1392 (4). An Antonio Cariddi was gentiluomo maggiore (major gentleman) in the court of the Queen Marianna, c1390 (4).\n", "The gens Roscia, probably the same as Ruscia, was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are mentioned as early as the fifth century BC, but after this time they vanish into obscurity until the final century of the Republic. A number of Roscii rose to prominence in imperial times, with some attaining the consulship from the first to the third centuries.\n", "The family was one of the most distinguished of the republic. At least fifteen members became consuls, some re-elected many times, between 350 BC and 111 BC. Their family tomb, dated to the 3rd century BC and rediscovered in 1780, contained one of the earliest collections of Latin inscriptions, the elogia Scipionum (\"inscriptions of the Scipiones\"), an important historical source for the Roman Republic.\n", "The gens Lartia, also spelled Larcia, or rarely Largia, was a patrician family at ancient Rome, whose members earned great distinction at the beginning of the Republic. Spurius Lartius was one of the two companions of Horatius, who defended the Pons Sublicius against Lars Porsena in 508 BC. A few years later, Titus Lartius became the first Roman dictator. However, the gens all but vanishes from history after this period. A family of the same name existed in the late Republic and under the early Empire, but their relationship to the earlier Lartii is unknown.\n", "The gens Maecilia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Although of great antiquity, only two members of this gens are mentioned in republican times, both tribunes of the plebs in the first century of the Republic. The Maecilii appear again, somewhat sporadically, in imperial times, even obtaining the consulship during the early fourth century. One of the last emperors of the Western Empire was Marcus Maecilius Avitus.\n", "The gens Insteia was a minor family at Rome. None of its members held any of the curule magistracies under the Republic, but several served as military commanders under Rome's leading generals during the first century BC and in Imperial times, and by the second century the family was important enough to obtain the consulship.\n" ]
it’s so important that we keep our hands washed, but our housecats literally touch their waste and don’t wash their paws. why is this ok?
Until the 20th Century it was not common for people to wash their hands so often. But we have decided that we really don't like getting sick as much as older generations, or as cats do.
[ "Hand hygiene is defined as hand washing or washing hands and nails with soap and water or using a water less hand sanitizer. Hand hygiene is central to preventing spread of infectious diseases in home and everyday life settings.\n", "For hand care they are designed to protect against the harm from detergents and other irritants. To help prevent the spread of pathogens, health care providers are required to wash their hands frequently. Frequent hand washing can result in chronic damage termed irritant contact dermatitis which includes dryness, irritation, itching, and more seriously, cracking and bleeding. Irritant contact dermatitis is very common among nurses, ranging from 25% to 55%, with as many as 85% relating a history of having skin problems. The World Health Organization has considered the use of barrier creams and has found their efficacy to be \"equivocal\" and too expensive to be considered in health-care settings where resources are limited.\n", "The CDC recommends, \"To prevent infections in general, persons should stay home if they are ill, wash their hands often with soap and water, avoid close contact (such as touching and shaking hands) with those who are ill, and clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces.\"\n", "Handwashing helps to prevent the spread of foodborne illnesses to children. Pathogenic microorganisms can be transmitted from other children and their diapers, and from uncooked meat, seafood, eggs, dogs, cats, turtles, snakes, birds, lizards, and soil.\n", "2. To promote hand-washing. Many diseases and illnesses can be prevented by washing hands with soap and water, especially when handling food. Similarly, they wish to promote menstrual hygiene management, a topic that is highly taboo in certain cultures.\n", "The purpose of hand-washing in the health-care setting is to remove pathogenic microorganisms (\"germs\") and avoid transmitting them. The \"New England Journal of Medicine\" reports that a lack of hand-washing remains at unacceptable levels in most medical environments, with large numbers of doctors and nurses routinely forgetting to wash their hands before touching patients, thus transmitting microorganisms. One study showed that proper hand-washing and other simple procedures can decrease the rate of catheter-related bloodstream infections by 66 percent.\n", "Compulsive washing is usually found in individuals that have a fear of contamination. People that have compulsive hand washing behaviors wash their hands repeatedly throughout the day. These hand washings can be ritualized and follow a pattern. People that have problems with compulsive hand washing tend to have problems with chapped or red hands due to the excessive amount of washing done each day.\n" ]
why do some people get off on being angry all of the time? what does it do for them?
Sometimes it is a defense mechanism. I've seen angry people use a general anger-filled disposition to hide insecurities and in doing so they become highly irrational.
[ "Anger causes a reduction in cognitive ability and the accurate processing of external stimuli. Dangers seem smaller, actions seem less risky, ventures seem more likely to succeed, and unfortunate events seem less likely. Angry people are more likely to make risky decisions, and make less realistic risk assessments. In one study, test subjects primed to feel angry felt less likely to suffer heart disease, and more likely to receive a pay raise, compared to fearful people. This tendency can manifest in retrospective thinking as well: in a 2005 study, angry subjects said they thought the risks of terrorism in the year following 9/11 in retrospect were low, compared to what the fearful and neutral subjects thought.\n", "A person who is angry tends to place more blame on another person for their misery. This can create a feedback, as this extra blame can make the angry person angrier still, so they in turn place yet more blame on the other person.\n", "An angry person tends to anticipate other events that might cause them anger. They will tend to rate anger-causing events (e.g. being sold a faulty car) as more likely than sad events (e.g. a good friend moving away).\n", "Research on emotion has shown that anger is often caused by interruptions of plans and expectations, especially through the violation of social norms. This sense of anger can be magnified when the individual does not understand why they are unable to meet their goal or task at hand or why there was a violation of social norms. Psychologists have argued that this is particularly relevant to computer rage, as computer users interact with computers in a similar manner that they interact with other people (for more information, see The Media Equation). Thus, when computers fail to function in the face of incoming deadlines or an important task to accomplish, users can feel betrayed by the computer in the same way they can feel betrayed by other people. Specifically, when users fail to understand why their computer will not work properly, often in the times they need it to the most, it can invoke a sense of hostility as it is interpreted as a breach of social norms or a personal attack. Consistent with this finding, perceived betrayal by the computer can also elicit other negative emotions. One survey of US adults reported that 10% of users who experience computer issues experienced feeling helplessness, and 4% reported feeling victimized. In the same survey, 7% adults ages 18–34 reported that they had cried over their computer problems within the previous six months.\n", "People feel angry when they sense that they or someone they care about has been offended, when they are certain about the nature and cause of the angering event, when they are convinced someone else is responsible, and when they feel they can still influence the situation or cope with it. For instance, if a person's car is damaged, they will feel angry if someone else did it (e.g. another driver rear-ended it), but will feel sadness instead if it was caused by situational forces (e.g. a hailstorm) or guilt and shame if they were personally responsible (e.g. he crashed into a wall out of momentary carelessness). Psychotherapist Michael C. Graham defines anger in terms of our expectations and assumptions about the world. Graham states anger almost always results when we are caught up \"... expecting the world to be different than it is\".\n", "People feel angry when they sense that they or someone they care about has been offended, when they are certain about the nature and cause of the angering event, when they are certain someone else is responsible, and when they feel they can still influence the situation or cope with it.\n", "29. Let us examine as to why a person sometimes gets annoyed when he hears an insult, and other times he endures it without getting agitated. What is the reason for this contrast? And is there one reason or are there several? There are several reasons, although they are all born from a main one. Sometimes it happens that after praying or completing a benevolent exercise, the person finds himself in a kind spiritual disposition and therefore, is amenable to his brother and doesn't get annoyed over his words. It also happens that a person is partial to another, and as a consequence, endures without any annoyance, everything that the individual inflicts upon him. It also happens that a person may despise the individual who wants to insult him, and therefore ignores him.\n" ]
Is there a point as the temperature drops that it stops feeling colder? in other words, once a certain temperature is reached does it all just feel the same after that?
You don't feel temperature directly, you feel the rate at which heat leaves your body. So it really depends on the material's heat conductivity and how it's arranged as a heat sink. Generally, the rate of heat transfer is inversely proportional to temperature, all else equal, and since you can't reach absolute zero, there is no maximum rate of heat transfer. Thus, there is no limit to how cold things 'feel' in this sense, but you'd probably damage your nerves and skin before you got anywhere near that cold, so this isn't really a meaningful statement. At some point you'll just destroy your sense of touch, and it will feel very painful and quickly cause numbness, not a sense of coldness.
[ "After a certain period, an equilibrium is reached: the drop has cooled to a point where the rate of heat carried away in evaporation is equal to the heat gain through convection. At this point, the following balance of energy per interface area is true:\n", "Because of this effect, the lowering of temperature in moist, cold ground does not happen at a uniform rate. The loss of heat through conduction is reduced when water freezes, and latent heat is released. This heat of fusion is continually released until all the subsurface water has frozen, at which point temperatures can continue to fall.\n", "Changes to the normal human body temperature may result in discomfort. The most common such change is a fever, a temporary elevation of the body's thermoregulatory set-point, typically by about 1–2 °C (1.8–3.6 °F). Hyperthermia is an acute condition caused by the body absorbing more heat than it can dissipate, whereas hypothermia is a condition in which the body's core temperature drops below that required for normal metabolism, and which is caused by the body's inability to replenish the heat that is being lost to the environment.\n", "Clearly, the temperature gradient may change substantially in time, as a result of diurnal or seasonal heating and cooling for instance. This most likely happens during an inversion. For instance, during the day the temperature at ground level may be cold while it's warmer up in the atmosphere. As the day shifts over to night the temperature might drop rapidly while at other places on the land stay warmer or cooler at the same elevation. This happens on the West Coast of the United States sometimes due to geography.\n", "In meteorology, an inversion, also known as a temperature inversion, is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude. It almost always refers to an inversion of the thermal lapse rate. Normally, air temperature decreases with an increase in altitude. During an inversion, warmer air is held above cooler air; the normal temperature profile with altitude is inverted. \n", "Clearly this doesn't happen. It turns out that, as the drop starts cooling, it's now colder than the air, so convective heat transfer begins to occur from the air to the drop. Also, understand that the evaporation rate depends on the \"difference of concentration of water vapor\" between the drop-stream interface and the distant stream (i.e. the \"original\" stream, unaffected by the drop) and on a \"convective mass transfer coefficient,\" which is a function of the components of the mixture (i.e. water and air).\n", "From this equation, we note that if we keep enthalpy constant and increase volume, temperature must change depending on the sign of formula_9. Therefore, our inversion temperature is given where the sign flips at zero, or\n" ]
what happens to all the bleach and washing liquids and chemicals we use. is any of it filtered out or degrades once it goes down the drain or are we simply polluting the seas?
Most of the harmful stuff is removed at a [wastewater treatment](_URL_0_) plant. Things like bleach and soap are fairly reactive, so they get filtered out pretty easily. Some other things (like motor oil or plastics) are more resilient, so they survive through treatment, though. Don't pour motor oil down the drain. Edit: Cunningham's Law strikes again.
[ "A 1-in-5 dilution of household bleach with water (1 part bleach to 4 parts water) is effective against many bacteria and some viruses, and is often the disinfectant of choice in cleaning surfaces in hospitals (primarily in the United States). Even \"scientific-grade\", commercially produced disinfection solutions such as Virocidin-X usually have sodium hypochlorite as their sole active ingredient, though they also contain surfactants (to prevent beading) and fragrances (to conceal the bleach smell).\n", "Liquid bleaches for domestic use fall in 3 categories: for pool-treatment (10% hypochlorite solutions, without surfactants and detergents) for laundry and general purpose cleaning, at 3–5% active chlorine (which are usually recommended to be diluted substantially before use), and in pre-mixed specialty formulations targeted at particular cleaning, bleaching or disinfecting applications. Commercial chlorine bleaches range from under 10% active chlorine to over 40%. \n", "Solutions of ammonia (5–10% by weight) are used as household cleaners, particularly for glass. These solutions are irritating to the eyes and mucous membranes (respiratory and digestive tracts), and to a lesser extent the skin. Caution should be used that the chemical is never mixed into any liquid containing bleach, as a toxic gas may result. Mixing with chlorine-containing products or strong oxidants, such as household bleach, can lead to hazardous compounds such as chloramines.\n", "The benefits of chlorine bleach include its inexpensive and fast acting nature. However it is harmful to mucous membranes and skin upon contact, has a strong odour; is not effective against \"Giardia lamblia\" and \"Cryptosporidium\"; and combination with other cleaning products such as ammonia and vinegar can generate noxious gases like chlorine. The best practice is not to add anything to household bleach except water. As with most disinfectants, the area requiring disinfection should be cleaned before the application of the chlorine bleach, as the presence of organic materials may inactivate chlorine bleach.\n", "For liquids and small quantities, a 1–10% solution of bleach can be used to disinfect biomedical waste. Solutions of sodium hydroxide and other chemical disinfectants may also be used, depending on the waste's characteristics. Other treatment methods include heat, alkaline digesters and the use of microwaves.\n", "Chlorine bleach tablets give a more stable platform for disinfecting the water than liquid bleach (sodium hypochlorite) as the liquid version tends to degrade with age and give unregulated results unless assays are carried outnot practical on the spot. Still, despite chlorine-based halazone tablets falling from favor for portable water purification, chlorine-based bleach may nonetheless safely be used for short-term emergency water disinfection. Two drops of unscented 5% bleach can be added per liter or quart of clear water, then allowed to stand covered for 30 to 60 minutes. After this treatment, the water may be left open to reduce the chlorine smell and taste. Guidelines are available online for effective emergency use of bleach to render unsafe water potable.\n", "Chlorinated plastic can release harmful chemicals into the surrounding soil, which can then seep into groundwater or other surrounding water sources and also the ecosystem of the world. This can cause serious harm to the species that drink the water.\n" ]
Were "perfume cones" a thing in ancient Egypt?
Yes, its pretty well accepted that the yellow and white cones seen in Egyptian art from the New Kingdom are cones of fat that were meant to perfume the person as they melted. However, they were only worn in scenes where people were meant to be enjoying themselves, like a feast or festival. They were also worn by both men and women in art. Of course, the frequency with which they would have been worn in real life and whether artistic depictions are completely accurate is up for debate, but the basic concept of perfumed cones is sound, as strange as it may seem to us.
[ "Traces of onions recovered from Bronze Age settlements in China suggest that onions were used as far back as 5000 BCE, not only for their flavour, but the bulb's durability in storage and transport. Ancient Egyptians revered the onion bulb, viewing its spherical shape and concentric rings as symbols of eternal life. Onions were used in Egyptian burials, as evidenced by onion traces found in the eye sockets of Ramesses IV.\n", "\"The fact that perfumes are absorbed and retained by oils and fats was known in Egypt at an early date, and later to the Greeks and Romans; it was the basis of perfume-making in the ancient world, and it is still the principle of one of the modern methods employed when dealing with certain delicate flower-perfumes. Balanos oil, which is obtained from the seeds of \"Balanitesa egyptiaca\", a tree that at one time grew plentifully in Egypt and is still abundant in the Sudan (where it is called \"heglig\"), is a bland odourless oil that does not readily become rancid and is hence very suitable for making perfumes. If balanos oil be warmed with myrrh, the volatile oil of the myrrh is absorbed by the fixed (non-volatile) balanos oil, which in consequence becomes perfumed, and when the extraction is finished, the perfumed balanos oil can be separated from the exhausted and useless residue by pressing.\" \n", "The Egyptians were famous for producing perfumes throughout the ancient world. They were formulated from plants and flowers before they could be added to other oils. It was later refined and developed by al-Shaykh al-Raisa renowned physician who made a distinctive type of aromatic product. He was referred to as Abi Ali al Sina. He was among the first people to come with the technique of distillation of roses and other plant fragrances. Liquid perfumes used to be a mixture of oil and crushed herbs until his discovery where he first experimented with roses.\n", "Combustible bouquets were used by the ancient Egyptians, who employed incense in both pragmatic and mystical capacities. Incense was burnt to counteract or obscure malodorous products of human habitation, but was widely perceived to also deter malevolent demons and appease the gods with its pleasant aroma. Resin balls were found in many prehistoric Egyptian tombs in El Mahasna, giving evidence for the prominence of incense and related compounds in Egyptian antiquity. One of the oldest extant incense burners originates from the 5th dynasty. The Temple of Deir-el-Bahari in Egypt contains a series of carvings that depict an expedition for incense.\n", "Funerary cones were small cones made from clay that were used in Ancient Egypt, almost exclusively in the Theban necropolis. The items were placed over the entrance of the chapel of a tomb. Early examples have been found from the Eleventh Dynasty. However, they are generally undecorated. During the New Kingdom, the cones were smaller in size and inscribed in hieroglyphs with the title and name of the tomb owner, often with a short prayer. The exact purpose of the cones is unknown, but hypotheses exist that they variously served as passports, architectural features, and symbolic offerings, among others.\n", "The ancient Egyptian garden would have looked different from a modern garden. It would have seemed more like a collection of herbs or a patch of wild flowers, lacking the specially bred flowers of today. Flowers like the iris, chrysanthemum, lily and delphinium (blue), were certainly known to the ancients but do not feature much in garden scenes. Formal bosquets seem to have been composed of mandrake, poppy, cornflower and or lotus and papyrus.\n", "Such rods were also used for walking sticks, splints, for stirring boiling liquids, and for corporal punishment. Some of the mythology may have transferred to the related galbanum which was referred to as the sacred “mother resin.” Galbanum was highly treasured as a sacred substance by the ancient Egyptians. The “green” incense of Egyptian antiquity is believed to have been galbanum. Galbanum resin has a very intense green scent accompanied by a turpentine odor. The initial notes are a very bitter, acrid, and peculiar scent followed by a complex green, spicy, woody, balsamlike fragrance. When diluted the scent of galbanum has variously been described as reminiscent of pine (due to the pinene and limonene content), evergreen, green bamboo, parsley, green apples, musk, or simply intense green. The oil has a pine like topnote which is less pronounced in the odor of the resinoid. The latter, in turn, has a more woody balsamic, conifer resinous character. Galbanum is frequently adulterated with pine oil.\n" ]
I've heard that the Y chromosome is shrinking. Is it true, and what does it mean for future generations?
talk presented by hhmi: [youtube video](_URL_0_)
[ "By one estimate, the human Y chromosome has lost 1,393 of its 1,438 original genes over the course of its existence, and linear extrapolation of this 1,393-gene loss over 300 million years gives a rate of genetic loss of 4.6 genes per million years. Continued loss of genes at the rate of 4.6 genes per million years would result in a Y chromosome with no functional genes – that is the Y chromosome would lose complete function – within the next 10 million years, or half that time with the current age estimate of 160 million years. Comparative genomic analysis reveals that many mammalian species are experiencing a similar loss of function in their heterozygous sex chromosome. Degeneration may simply be the fate of all non-recombining sex chromosomes, due to three common evolutionary forces: high mutation rate, inefficient selection, and genetic drift.\n", "As it has been already mentioned, the Y chromosome is unable to recombine during meiosis like the other human chromosomes; however, in 2003, researchers from MIT discovered a process which may slow down the process of degradation.\n", "However, comparisons of the human and chimpanzee Y chromosomes (first published in 2005) show that the human Y chromosome has not lost any genes since the divergence of humans and chimpanzees between 6–7 million years ago, and a scientific report in 2012 stated that only one gene had been lost since humans diverged from the rhesus macaque 25 million years ago. These facts provide direct evidence that the linear extrapolation model is flawed and suggest that the current human Y chromosome is either no longer shrinking or is shrinking at a much slower rate than the 4.6 genes per million years estimated by the linear extrapolation model.\n", "Sex chromosomes contribute to the majority of chromosome loss events with increasing age. In females, the X chromosome can account for up to 72% of the observed micronuclei of which 37% appear to be lacking a functional kinetochore assembly possibly due to X chromosome inactivation. Multiple studies have shown that the frequencies of autosome-positive micronuclei in both genders and of sex chromosome-positive MN in men were similar and remained unchanged in older groups while the frequency of X-positive MN in women was higher than the average frequency of autosome-positive MN and continued to increase until the oldest age.\n", "Other changes in the number or structure of chromosome 15 can cause mental retardation, delayed growth and development, hypotonia, and characteristic facial features. These changes include an extra copy of part of chromosome 15 in each cell (partial trisomy 15) or a missing segment of the chromosome in each cell (partial monosomy 15). In some cases, several of the chromosome's DNA building blocks (nucleotides) are deleted or duplicated.\n", "The human Y chromosome is particularly exposed to high mutation rates due to the environment in which it is housed. The Y chromosome is passed exclusively through sperm, which undergo multiple cell divisions during gametogenesis. Each cellular division provides further opportunity to accumulate base pair mutations. Additionally, sperm are stored in the highly oxidative environment of the testis, which encourages further mutation. These two conditions combined put the Y chromosome at a greater risk of mutation than the rest of the genome. The increased mutation risk for the Y chromosome is reported by Graves as a factor 4.8. However, her original reference obtains this number for the relative mutation rates in male and female germ lines for the lineage leading to humans.\n", "Methods of estimating the age of the Y-MRCA for a population of human males whose Y-chromosomes have been sequenced are based on applying the theories of molecular evolution to the Y chromosome. Unlike the autosomes, the human Y-chromosome does not recombine often with the X chromosome during meiosis, but is usually transferred intact from father to son; however, it can recombine with the X chromosome in the pseudoautosomal regions at the ends of the Y chromosome. Mutations occur periodically within the Y chromosome, and these mutations are passed on to males in subsequent generations.\n" ]
How do we know this? - origins of elements from the periodic table. /physics/
The Big Bang created everything. As it cooled down atoms formed. Most were hydrogen. Some helium and lithium fused as well. Everything else is understanding supernovae and how stars die.. Most of those percentages are calculated guesses, not exact values though. Different types of supernovae have different end results. For example type 1a supernovae is a white dwarf siphoning energy from a companion star until it explodes, releasing all of the elements it created throughout its lifetime. Know that all smaller stars fuse only up to carbon, oxygen and maybe a bit higher. Larger stars only fuse up to iron, maybe a bit higher. This is because anything beyond iron actually requires rnergy to fuse instead of making it. So all elements beyond iron were created in massive star supernovae or stars colliding.
[ "There is currently no consensus on the placement of elements beyond atomic number 120 in the periodic table. The table below shows one possibility for the appearance of the eighth period, with placement of elements primarily based on their predicted chemistry.\n", "The standard presentation of the chemical elements is in the periodic table, which orders elements by atomic number. The periodic table is arranged in groups, or columns, and periods, or rows. The periodic table is useful in identifying periodic trends.\n", "BULLET::::- In chemistry, Group 11 of the Periodic Table of the Elements (IUPAC numbering) consists of the three coinage metals copper, silver, and gold known from antiquity, and roentgenium, a recently synthesized superheavy element.\n", "Throughout the history of chemistry, several chemical elements have been discovered. In the nineteenth century, Dmitri Mendeleev formulated the periodic table, a table of elements which describes their structure. Because elements have been discovered at various times and places, from antiquity through the present day, their names have derived from several languages and cultures. \n", "His book, \"Die modernen Theorien der Chemie\", which he began writing in Breslau in 1862 and which was published two years later, contained an early version of the periodic table containing 28 elements, classified elements into six families by their valence—for the first time, elements had been grouped according to their valence. Works on organizing the elements by atomic weight, until then had been stymied by the widespread use of equivalent weights for the elements, rather than atomic weights.\n", "An extended periodic table theorizes about chemical elements beyond those currently known in the periodic table and proven up through oganesson, which completes the seventh period (row) in the periodic table at atomic number (\"Z\") 118.\n", "When the first periodic table of the elements was published by Dmitri Mendeleev in the early 1870s, it showed a \" — \" in place after uranium similar to several other places for then-undiscovered elements. Other subsequent tables of known elements, including a 1913 publication of the known radioactive isotopes by Kasimir Fajans, also show an empty place after uranium, element 92.\n" ]
what is laveyan satanism
Anton LaVey basically made up a faith based on his Ideals. Taking the satan figure as a symbol of defiance from western religions. Lavey did not believe in the existence of any god or gods, as such to him humans are animals that got smart, and should act in that way. However he put into place 2 separate codes of conduct. rules for acting. As well as ritual magics. so it's a bit of a mess before he set up to split his own church into regional competing sub churches. There is a shit ton on this area
[ "LaVeyan Satanism is a religion founded in 1966 by the American occultist and author Anton Szandor LaVey. Scholars of religion have classified it as a new religious movement and a form of Western esotericism. It is one of several different movements that describe themselves as forms of Satanism.\n", "The Satanist is a black magic/horror novel by Dennis Wheatley. Published in 1960, it is characterized by an anti-communist spy theme. The novel was one of the popular novels of the 1960s popularizing the tabloid notion of a black mass.\n", "LaVeyan Satanists embrace the original etymological meaning of the word \"Satan\" (Hebrew: שָּׂטָן \"satan\", meaning \"adversary\"). According to Peter H. Gilmore, \"The Church of Satan has chosen Satan as its primary symbol because in Hebrew it means adversary, opposer, one to accuse or question. We see ourselves as being these Satans; the adversaries, opposers and accusers of all spiritual belief systems that would try to hamper enjoyment of our life as a human being.\"\n", "LaVeyan Satanism is atheistic, rejecting belief in God and all other deities, including, to the surprise of many, Satan. \"Satanism begins with atheism,\" said Church of Satan High Priest Peter H. Gilmore in an interview. \"We begin with the universe and say, 'It’s indifferent. There’s no God, there’s no Devil. No one cares!'\" The function of God is performed and satisfied by the satanist him/herself. The needs of worship, ritual, and religious/spiritual focus are directed inwards towards the satanist, as opposed to outwards, towards a deity. It rejects concepts such as prayer, the afterlife, and divine forces.\n", "LaVeyan Satanism – which is also sometimes termed \"Modern Satanism\" and \"Rational Satanism\" – is classified by scholars of religious studies as a new religious movement. When used, \"Rational Satanism\" is often employed to distinguish the approach of the LaVeyan Satanists from the \"Esoteric Satanism\" embraced by groups like the Temple of Set. A number of religious studies scholars have also described it as a form of \"self-religion\" or \"self-spirituality\", with religious studies scholar Amina Olander Lap arguing that it should be seen as being both part of the \"prosperity wing\" of the self-spirituality New Age movement and a form of the Human Potential Movement. Conversely, the scholar of Satanism Jesper Aa. Petersen preferred to treat modern Satanism as a \"cousin\" of the New Age and Human Potential movements.\n", "A notable group that outwardly considers themselves to be traditional Satanists is the Order of Nine Angles. This group became controversial and was mentioned in the press and in books, because they promoted human sacrifice. The O9A believes that Satan is one of two 'acausal' eternal beings, the other one being Baphomet, and that Satan is male and Baphomet is female.\n", "LaVeyan Satanism has been characterised as belonging to the political right rather than to the political left. The historian of Satanism Ruben van Luijk characterised it as a form of \"anarchism of the Right\". LaVey was anti-egalitarian and elitist, believing in the fundamental inequality of different human beings. His philosophy was Social Darwinist in basis, having been influenced by the writings of Herbert Spencer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ayn Rand. LaVey stated that his Satanism was \"just Ayn Rand's philosophy with ceremony and ritual added\". Characterising LaVey as a Nietzschean, the religious studies scholar Asbjørn Dyrendal nevertheless thought that LaVey's \"personal synthesis seems decidedly his own creation, even though the different ingredients going into it are at times very visible.\" Social Darwinism is particularly noticeable in \"The Book of Satan\", where LaVey uses portions of Redbeard's \"Might Is Right\", though it also appears throughout in references to man's inherent strength and instinct for self-preservation.\n" ]
does software updates always increases its filesize?
No, sometimes a file is overwritten. So as long as the original file isn't saved as a backup, there's a chance that a 60gb game with a 12gb update will likely stay 60gb. If a more efficient code is produced, you can get lower file sizes. Sometimes programs launch with really clunky code that works and is launched to meet a deadline while future versions have better streamlined code. However it's far far more likely for a product to have an increased filesize simply because you're adding to the program rather than removing. The most common thing you'll see where a software update reduces filesize is if you install a game with HD textures, but don't have a very good video card, then go into your settings and tell it to use regular textures instead of HD textures. You'll get 2 or 3gb update and you'll go from 50gb down to 32gb.
[ "A file's modification time describes when the content of the file most recently changed. Because most file systems do not compare data written to a file with what is already there, if a program overwrites part of a file with the same data as previously existed in that location, the modification time will be updated even though the contents did not technically change.\n", "BULLET::::- Update: The update process replaces an earlier version of all or part of a software system with a newer release. It commonly consists of deactivation followed by installation. On some systems, such as on Linux when using the system's package manager, the old version of a software application is typically also uninstalled as an automatic part of the process. (This is because Linux package managers do not typically support installing multiple versions of a software application at the same time, unless the software package has been specifically designed to work around this limitation.)\n", "Traditionally, the service provided each patch in its own proprietary archive file. Occasionally, Microsoft released service packs which bundled all updates released over the course of years for a certain product. Starting with Windows 10, however, all patches are delivered in cumulative packages. On 15 August 2016, Microsoft announced that effective October 2016, all future patches to Windows 7 and 8.1 would become cumulative as with Windows 10. The ability to download and install individual updates would be removed as existing updates are transitioned to this model. This has resulted in increasing download sizes of each monthly update. An analysis done by Computerworld determined that the download size for Windows 7 x64 has increased from 119.4MB in October 2016 to 203MB in October 2017. Initially, Microsoft was very vague about specific changes within each cumulative update package. However, since early 2016, Microsoft has begun releasing more detailed information on the specific changes.\n", "In Ubuntu, the Software Updater can update the operating system to new versions which are released every six months for standard releases or every two years for Long Term Support releases. This functionality is included by default in the desktop version but needs to be added to the server version.\n", "In Mac OS 9 and earlier versions of Mac OS X, Software Update was a standalone tool. The program was part of the CoreServices in OS X. It could automatically inform users of new updates (with new features and bug and security fixes) to the operating system, applications, device drivers, and firmware. All updates required the user to enter their administrative password and some required a system restart. It could be set to check for updates daily, weekly, monthly, or not at all; in addition, it could download and store the associated .pkg file (the same type used by Installer) to be installed at a later date, and it maintained a history of installed updates. Starting with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, updates that required a reboot logged out the user prior to installation and automatically restarted the computer when complete. In earlier versions of OS X, the updates were installed, but critical files were not replaced until the next system startup.\n", "At the same time, multitenancy increases the risks and impacts inherent in applying a new release version. As there is a single software instance serving multiple tenants, an update on this instance may cause downtime for all tenants even if the update is requested and useful for only one tenant. Also, some bugs and issues resulted from applying the new release could manifest in other tenants' personalized view of the application. Because of possible downtime, the moment of applying the release may be restricted depending on time usage schedule of more than one tenant.\n", "Software update systems allow for updates to be managed by users and software developers. In the 2017 Petya cyberpandemic, the financial software \"MeDoc\"'s update system is said to have been compromised to spread malware via its updates. On the Tor Blog cybersecurity expert Mike Perry states that deterministic, distributed builds are likely the only way to defend against malware that attacks the software development and build processes to infect millions of machines in a single, officially signed, instantaneous update. Update managers also allow for security updates to be applied quickly and widely. Update managers of Linux such as Synaptic allow users to update all software installed on their machine. Applications like Synaptic use cryptographic checksums to verify source/local files before they are applied to ensure fidelity against malware.\n" ]
how is it possible that 50 cent who made $100 million from the sale of vitamin water, is bankrupt?
Saw a comment before that said some woman is trying to sue him for $5 million for who knows fucking what. They said its his business side and not his personal side. So he is still super rich, at least from what I know so far
[ "In May 2007, Vitamin Water was sold to The Coca-Cola Company for $4.1 billion. As part of his endorsement deal, Wright was given 0.5% of the company, and thus netted approximately $20 million from the deal.\n", "In 2010, Null reported that he and six other consumers had been hospitalized for vitamin D poisoning after ingesting a nutritional supplement manufactured by his own contractor. In a lawsuit against the company, he alleged that the supplement erroneously contained more than 1,000 times the dose of vitamin D reported on the label. Null received numerous telephone calls from customers while himself in severe pain.\n", "In 1988, Trump set up the Donald J. Trump Foundation to give away royalties from the book's sales, in Trump's words, promising four or five million dollars \"to the homeless, to Vietnam veterans, for AIDS, multiple sclerosis.\" According to a \"Washington Post\" investigation those donations largely did not happen: the paper said \"he gave less to those causes than he did to his older daughter's ballet school.\" \"The Washington Post\" asked Trump's campaign if Trump had donated the $55,000 Trump earned in the first six months of 2016 to charity, as he promised in the 1980s, and it did not respond.\n", "In 2010, Null and six other consumers were hospitalized for vitamin D poisoning caused by ingesting his own nutritional supplements. Null sued a contractor involved in producing the product, alleging that each contained more than 1,000 times the dose of vitamin D reported on the label.\n", "In December 2008 a 68-year-old friend, who invested her life savings with Madoff, telephoned Dell'Orefice to inform her that she too had been bankrupted by the scheme. Dell'Orefice said, \"For the second time in my life, I've lost all of my life savings.\"\n", "Barney is also revealed to have had a gambling problem, enabled by his mother, who is a bookmaker. However, he assures the group that it is not a problem because he is so good at it. He revealed in \"Atlantic City\" that he lost his entire life savings playing a Chinese game. He has also apparently lost every one of his many bets on the Super Bowl. He will go to any lengths to win a bet, even if it takes one year for just $10.\n", "Donald D. Lapre (May 19, 1964 – October 2, 2011) was an American multi-level marketing and infomercial salesman. His work involved product packages such as \"The Greatest Vitamin in the World\" and \"Making Money Secrets\".\n" ]
How was lumber in the middle ages measured and cut?
Indeed, medievals liked their timber as square and smooth as we do. I love [this manuscript illustration](_URL_12_), which comes from the [Bedford Hours](_URL_8_), a prayer book from ~1423 CE. It is supposed to depict the building of Noah's Ark, but it looks suspiciously like a timber-framed house. The artist clearly saw house construction and fudged it to be the Ark. And for our purposes, the tools of house builders and shipwrights are the same: the Bedford Hours shows tools which we would recognize today: saws and adzes for cutting and rough straightening timber. You can see someone at the bottom drilling a hole, and someone drilling a peg-hole in the assembled timber-frame. Scattered on the ground are hammers, wood mallets, chisels, adzes and another type of saw: the frame or bow saw. We see these tools again in another picture of a carpenter [here](_URL_11_). But this time he has badly injured himself while truing timber with an adze. This image is part of a set of painting by Antonio Vivarini from 1450; they illustrate the miraculous works of [Saint Peter the Martyr](_URL_3_). The description from the Metropolitan Museum in New York: > This painting belongs to a series of eight scenes that would have been arranged around an image or statue of Saint Peter Martyr (1205–1252). Here the saint ministers to a youth who had kicked his mother and cut off his leg in remorse. A genial storyteller, Antonio sets the scene in a carpenter’s shop. The clever Vivarini has given us a picture of the medieval carpenter's shop: the frame/bow saw again, a long plane, the adze, and various timbers leaning against the workshop walls. Returning to the first picture of the bedford hours: in the bottom left corner is a carpenter working a large plane - the long soled planes are meant to flatten long lengths of wood. The wood he is working on is so large that it rests on the ground, and it's wedged in logs for stability so the planing is straight and true. Now, look at [this guy](_URL_0_) working in the house itself. Hanging from his belt is a black object - an object which looks suspiciously like a windable chalk line reel for setting long, straight lines, something we still use today (if we can't afford a laser). Or it may very well be a windable cloth measuring tape. You'll note that all the images are Christian motifs. Another one which provides us with lots of building techniques is the constructtion of the Tower of Babel. [Thisone](_URL_6_) shows us a 12th century depiction of levels, plumb bobs, and squares. Now, if the carpenter wanted a polished surface he had other tools for the job. Below is a copy of a [post I did some time ago](_URL_2_): ---------------------- This is one of those weird bits of history that I have researched, going back to when my teenage interest in medieval history dovetailed with a passion for woodworking (see what I did there?). Anyway, I recollect references to 3 types of 'sanding' of wood before the modern era: a sharkskin called dog shark or dog fish, certain silica-heavy rushes (stiff marsh grass) and leather or cloth impregnated with ground stone, perhaps carried with an oil. As I said my 'research' was in libraries over 20 years ago and I remember finding it in a book about medieval building. I remember this because I was seriously stoked at digging something out of the stacks. Sure enough, tonight google found it for me in a reference to a reference. In this medieval terms reference book there is a word 'hundysfishskyn' in [Middle English Dictionary from University of Michigan](_URL_4_), and that points to the book I actually remember looking at: [Building in England down to 1540: a documentary history by Louis Francis Salzman](_URL_1_). Hundysfishskyn is houndfish or dogfish. Unfortunately Google doesn't seem have this book scanned in and available to look through. [But I found another web reference to the text](_URL_9_), take it for whatever it's worth to you: & gt;L.F. Salzman in Building in England down to 1540: A Documentary History (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952) mentions "sanding" using rottenstone, scouring rush (aka equisetum, horsetail fern, shave grass, etc.), or dog-fish skin. On the latter, Salzman notes receipts for "hundysfishskyn for the carpenters" (Westminster, 1355) and "j pelle piscis canini pro operibus stall" (Windsor, 1351). As it turns out [Equisetum is known for scouring](_URL_5_). So that's a 14th century reference. But wait, there's more! In the same obscure web site above, there is a reference to the book [On Divers Arts: The Foremost Medieval Treatise on Painting, Glassmaking, and Metalwork by a certain Theophilus of the 11th century](_URL_10_). This book is partially searchable and seems to turn up the reference to the same rush called shave grass for sanding wood; alas, Google does not preview anything but a snippet. Incidentally, smooth polishing of fine wooden stringed instruments is still done the same today as it was in the baroque period: with rosen powder after shellac coats. The above would all be final finishing. After hand planing surface imperfections can be removed with a [cabinet scraper](_URL_7_). If you've used a scraper before, you'll know the burr on the edge will give you a surface finer than sanding as it cuts the grain, not grind it down. Sanding 'fuzzes' the raw grain and so it's preferred for finishing coats that have stiffened the grain enough for the sandpaper to 'cut'. Scrapers are very old technology: basically a thin piece of steel with some flex. Some handplanes in museums carry confused labeling and are actually devices for holding the cabinet scraper: using a cabinet scraper for extended periods will burn your fingers. I have seen examples of cabinet scrapers dating back to the baroque period. -------------------------
[ "Lumber's \"nominal\" dimensions are larger than the actual standard dimensions of finished lumber. Historically, the nominal dimensions were the size of the green (not dried), rough (unfinished) boards that eventually became smaller finished lumber through drying and planing (to smooth the wood). Today, the standards specify the final finished dimensions and the mill cuts the logs to whatever size it needs to achieve those final dimensions. Typically, that rough cut is smaller than the nominal dimensions because modern technology makes it possible to use the logs more efficiently. For example, a \"2×4\" board historically started out as a green, rough board actually . After drying and planing, it would be smaller by a nonstandard amount. Today, a \"2×4\" board starts out as something smaller than 2 inches by 4 inches and not specified by standards, and after drying and planing is reliably .\n", "Timber was cut into logs at the pulpwood mill, and then stockpiled on the premises before being sent along the river to paper mills. Operating with a 35-bhp motor at a 45-degree angle, the double-trussed stacker replaced what had been a labor-intensive method of handling the timber product. It moved the cut logs into large piles on land, from which they could then be placed in the water for their journey to the paper mill.\n", "A measure of 100 varas by 100 varas (Spanish) is almost 7000 square meters, and is known traditionally throughout Latin America as a \"manzana\" (\"i.e.\", a \"city block\"). As well, lumber is still measured in Costa Rica using a system based on 4 vara, or 11 feet, for both round and square wood. With square wood, using inches, the width is multiplied by the depth to get a measurement which they call \"pulgadas\", or inches. The lumber is charged 'per inch', which is a measurement 11/12 of a board foot.\n", "In rough sawn lumber it immediately clarifies that the lumber is not yet milled, avoiding confusion with milled dimension lumber which is measured as actual thickness after machining. Examples – 3/4\", 19mm, or 1x.\n", "Also in North America, hardwood lumber is commonly sold in a \"quarter\" system, when referring to thickness; 4/4 (four quarter) refers to a board, 8/4 (eight quarter) is a board, etc. This \"quarter\" system is rarely used for softwood lumber; although softwood decking is sometimes sold as 5/4, even though it is actually one-inch thick (from milling 1/8th inch off each side in a motorized planing step of production).\n", "Wood splitting (\"riving\", cleaving) is an ancient technique used in carpentry to make lumber for making wooden objects, some basket weaving, and to make firewood. Unlike wood sawing, the wood is split along the grain using tools such as a hammer and wedges, splitting maul, cleaving axe, side knife, or froe.\n", "The types of rip-cuts influence the quality of the lumber. Plain-sawn is the most common type of cut where a log is repeatedly run through a saw and much of the lumber has wood grain nearly parallel to the width of the boards. Quarter sawn and rift-sawn wood is more time consuming and wasteful to produce but is higher quality. \n" ]
how did "a/an" evolve from "one"?
It happened the other way around. Beyond that... let's talk about a few things about how the English Language developed. (This being ELI5, I'm oversimplifying a little bit because the *full* version is more complicated and, not being a specialist in the history of English, I don't even understand all of the details myself. But this covers the case you care about.) Languages develop according to rules that apply in a mostly regular manner. One of the rules in the development of Old English to Middle English is that short vowels become long in one-syllable words. ("Long" here is literal; it means that it's pronounced for a longer period of time than if it were short. The modern English "long" and "short" vowels are totally different sounds that last the same amount of time, but they come from the literally long and short vowels of Middle English.) Another is that under certain circumstances the n sound disappears before consonants. Another is that, before n (and this happens before it goes away), long a becomes long o. The Old English word for "one" is "an." In a lot of situations where it was just being used as an indefinite article, people seem to have treated it like part of the next word, which means it wasn't a one-syllable word and the a didn't become long. Since it wasn't long, it didn't turn into an o, but the n still disappeared before most consonants. By habit, that got generalized to dropping it before all consonants, giving us the pattern we're used to. But when you emphasized the fact that you really mean the numeral, that you're using it to talk about the fact that there is specifically one of whatever, it got seen as a standalone word. There's no consonant after it now, so the n never goes away, but it's also a one-syllable word, so the a becomes long (you even see it written that way in late Old English texts), then becomes an o, giving Middle English one (in Middle English a silent e was sometimes used to show that the preceding vowel was long; many silent e's in Modern English weren't silent yet in Middle English, though). The fact that it's pronounced like "won" instead of like "own" is a little bit of a surprise, though. Scots, by the way, derives from dialects of Middle English that hadn't undergone the change of certain long a's to long o's. That's why in Scots they say "ane" instead, which is also a clue that would help us know that the Old English word had an a rather than an o. (In fact we don't even need the hint, since Old English is a written language and we've got plenty of stuff in it to check, but that kind of thing helps affirm the validity of the methods by which we figure this kind of thing out for non-written ancestor languages.) There's another word you didn't expect to be related, by the way - the Old English word "anlic", a compound of that same "an" and "lic," which is related to our word "like" but develops into the -ly suffix we use for adverbs, means something is somehow one-ish, which is to say that there's just one of it. In modern English, that becomes "only". (I assume the lengthening of the a, and hence it turning into a long o, is influenced by what was going on with "one" back when it was still obviously "one" with a suffix.)
[ "A new \"ā\" was formed following the shift from \"ā\" to \"ō\" when intervocalic was lost in \"-aja-\" sequences. It was a rare phoneme, and occurred only in a handful of words, the most notable being the verbs of the third weak class. The agent noun suffix *\"-ārijaz\" (Modern English \"-er\") was likely borrowed from Latin around or shortly after this time.\n", "The English indefinite article \"an\" is derived from the same root as \"one\". The \"-n\" came to be dropped before consonants, giving rise to the shortened form \"a\". The existence of both forms has led to many cases of juncture loss, for example transforming the original \"a napron\" into the modern \"an apron\".\n", "When first asked to distinguish between \"all\", \"some\", and \"one\" Genie would interpret \"some\" to mean \"all\", but by 1975 she reversed this and began mistaking \"some\" for \"one\", which Curtiss interpreted as a sign of progress. This contrasted with her distinction between \"more\" and \"less\", which she had demonstrated by at least August 1973, and her understanding of the qualifiers \"one\" and \"all\" in everyday conversations. When learning relative terms such as \"large\" and \"small\" or \"narrow\" and \"wide\" she simultaneously learned both words in the pair, whereas most people acquire either the marked or the negative form first, and never mistakenly used one term in a pair to mean the other. Although she had difficulty with different pairs of relative and relational terms on tests, she showed significantly greater comprehension outside of test settings.\n", "A (named , plural \"As\", \"A's\", \"a\"s, \"a's\" or \"aes\") is the first letter and the first vowel of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type.\n", "Cuneiform \"a\" is the most common of the 4-vowels in the Akkadian language, \"a\", \"e\", \"i\", and \"u\". All vowels can be interchangeable, depending on the scribe, though spellings of Akkadian words in dictionaries, will be formalized, and typically: unstressed, a 'long-vowel', or thirdly, a 'combined' vowel (often spelled with two signs (same vowel, ending the first sign, and starting the next sign), thus combined into the single vowel, \"â\", \"ê\", \"î\", or \"û\".). Cuneiform \"a\" is the most common of the four vowels, as can be shown by usage in the \"Epic of Gilgamesh\", the usage numbers being (ú (u, no. 2) is more common than u, (no. 1), which has additional usages, numeral \"10\", and \"and\", \"but\", etc.): a-(1369), e-(327), i-(698), ú-(493). (For u, only: u-(166)); The usage for a, includes the usage for Akkadian \"a-na\", (\"ana\"), the preposition, \"for\", \"to\", etc., about 250 usages (therefore usage: 1369-250).\n", "The fact that English has words like \"before\" and \"after\" that are (currently or archaically) polysemous between 'front/earlier' or 'back/later' may seem to refute the claims regarding Aymara uniqueness. However, those words relate events to other events and are part of the moving-events metaphor. In fact, when \"before\" means \"in front of ego, it can mean only \"future\". For instance, \"our future is laid out before us while \"our past is behind us\". Parallel Aymara examples describe future days as \"qhipa uru\", literally 'back days', and they are sometimes accompanied by gestures to behind the speaker. The same applies to Quechua-speakers, whose expression \"qhipa p'unchaw\" corresponds directly to Aymara \"qhipa uru\". Possibly, the metaphor is from the fact that the past is visible (in front of one's eyes), but the future is not.\n", "The Old Latin diphthong \"ei\" evolves in stages: \"ei\" \"ẹ̄\" \"ī\". The intermediate sound \"ẹ̄\" was simply written \"e\" but must have been distinct from the normal long vowel \"ē\" because \"ẹ̄\" subsequently merged with \"ī\" while \"ē\" did not. It is generally thought that \"ẹ̄\" was a higher sound than \"e\" (e.g. perhaps vs. during the time when both sounds existed). Even after the original vowel had merged with \"ī\", the old spelling \"ei\" continued to be used for a while, with the result that \"ei\" came to stand for \"ī\" and began to be used in the spelling of original occurrences of \"ī\" that did not evolve from \"ei\" (e.g. in the genitive singular \"-ī\", which is always spelled \"-i\" in the oldest inscriptions but later on can be spelled either \"-i\" or \"-ei\").\n" ]
finding and moving specific genes between organisms
Biology PhD student here. In the interest in ELI5ness and not writing a wall of text no one wants to read, I'll write an overview and let you ask if you want to me elaborate more on how any particular part actually works. **Finding the gene:** You sequence the genome of the organism (or part of it), at which point you can use known DNA sequence patterns to predict where the beginning and end of each gene is. As for identifying which gene does what so you know which gene you are interested in, there are loads of ways and a lot of research is basically just this process - I can elaborate on this if you want. **Moving the gene:** There is a technology called the [polymerase chain reaction](_URL_0_) (PCR) that can replicate a single specific gene in a whole mess of DNA a trillion times, so that the entire sample is effectively just that one gene. So you either extract the DNA from the organism with the gene or, more commonly, extract its RNA (essentially its "genes in use") and use an enzyme to turn it into DNA, then use PCR on the sample to copy your gene of interest a trillion times. Now you have obtained your gene. The next step is to put your gene in a plasmid vector, which is a little circle of DNA that has been specially designed for this purpose (plasmids occur naturally in bacteria, but we have extensively modified them to serve our purposes). You use enzymes called restriction enzymes that cut DNA at specific sequences to cut open the vector and cut off the ends of your gene (in the PCR reaction, you can add restriction enzyme snip sites to the gene copies you make). A useful property of restriction enzymes is that the cuts they make stick back together, so if you cut the vector and cut the ends off your gene in the same test tube and then add an enzyme to heal the cuts, at a certain rate your gene will end up stuck in the vector, since its cuts matched those in the vector. Now you have your gene in a vector. We call this process "cloning" a gene, confusing all non-scientists who think of cloning as making identical animals. Now you want to put the gene into a different organism. If all you want is for the gene to be working inside the new cells, and you don't care about actually editing their genome, you can just put the vector with your gene inside them and you're done. If you want to integrate the gene into the genome of another organism, it's more complicated. A disclaimer here is that I've never personally done this, so I am less familiar with it than the earlier techniques. But basically if this is your end goal, you design your vector to have long stretches of DNA on either side of where you put the gene in that match long stretches of DNA in the genome of the organism you are putting the gene in. If you do this, once you put the vector inside the new cells, at a low rate their genome will "recombine" with the matching parts of the vector, exchanging their DNA for the vector DNA and moving your gene into them. This recombination is a natural process that occurs with long stretches of matching DNA in all living things. A final note: you may notice that all the "putting the gene in the organism" stuff I described only really works for single cells. If you want to put the gene in the genome of a multicellular organism, you do what I described to a fertilized egg or very early embryo that will grow into the organism. If you want to modify lots of cells in a fully-grown multicellular organism, you usually use a virus. You put the vector inside the virus, and when the virus infects the organism's cells, it delivers the vector. This is pretty hard and most researchers just stick to single cells when moving genes around. ***** Oh look, it turned out to be a wall of text anyways! In any case, if there is anything you are confused about or any part of the process you want explained in more detail, please ask! I'd be happy to elaborate. This stuff is super important and forms the basis of a lot of modern biological research.
[ "After the formation of the regionally specified anterior-posterior axis, genes must be turned \"on\" to form unique structures in specific regions. This is orchestrated via the homeobox (Hox) transcription factor signaling pathway. First identified in Drosophila by Edward Lewis who won a Nobel Prize for the discovery. \n", "How did evolutionary non-related genes come in close proximity in the first place? Either there is a force that brings functionally related genes near to each other, or the genes came near by change. Singer et al. proposed that genes came in close proximity by random recombination of genome segments. When functionally related genes came in close proximity to each other, this proximity was conserved. They determined all possible recombination sites between genes of human and mouse. After that, they compared the clustering of the mouse and human genome and looked if recombination had occurred at the potentially recombination sites. It turned out that recombination between genes of the same cluster was very rare. So, as soon as a functional cluster is formed recombination is suppressed by the cell. On sex chromosomes, the amount of clusters is very low in both human and mouse. The authors reasoned this was due to the low rate of chromosomal rearrangements of sex chromosomes.\n", "It is possible that genes came in close proximity by change. Other models have been proposed but none of them can explain all observed phenomena. It’s clear that as soon as clusters are formed they are conserved by natural selection. However, a precise model of how genes came in close proximity is still lacking. \n", "In some organisms, especially vertebrates, the various Hox genes are situated very close to one another on the chromosome in groups or clusters. The order of the genes on the chromosome is the same as the expression of the genes in the developing embryo, with the first gene being expressed in the anterior end of the developing organism. The reason for this colinearity is not yet completely understood, but could be related to the activation of Hox genes in a temporal sequence by gradual unpacking of chromatin along a gene cluster. The diagram above shows the relationship between the genes and protein expression in flies.\n", "The recent discovery of extensive horizontal gene transfer among organisms provides a significant complication to molecular systematics, indicating that different genes within the same organism can have different phylogenies.\n", "In its earliest days, \"gene finding\" was based on painstaking experimentation on living cells and organisms. Statistical analysis of the rates of homologous recombination of several different genes could determine their order on a certain chromosome, and information from many such experiments could be combined to create a genetic map specifying the rough location of known genes relative to each other. Today, with comprehensive genome sequence and powerful computational resources at the disposal of the research community, gene finding has been redefined as a largely computational problem.\n", "In prokaryotes, clusters of genes that are physically close together in the genome often conserve together through evolution, and tend to encode proteins that interact or are part of the same operon. Thus, \"chromosomal proximity\" also called the gene neighbour method can be used to predict functional similarity between proteins, at least in prokaryotes. Chromosomal proximity has also been seen to apply for some pathways in selected eukaryotic genomes, including \"Homo sapiens\", and with further development gene neighbor methods may be valuable for studying protein interactions in eukaryotes.\n" ]
Who were the first Jamestown colonists? How were they selected?
While I can't speak to the specific members of the crew that first founded Jamestown, the initial motivations of colonists in the first half of the 17th century were as follows: a) For the rich: A quick profit - either from gold or timber or soap manufacturing or exporting pitch, additionally many were hopeful of the western passage to China that never materialised. b) For the poor the motivations are harder to discern considering the lack of the records that they were able to leave, but most were persuaded by the hellacious and over-blown propaganda at the time that portrayed Virginia as a paradise (one slogan ran "In Virginia land free and labour scarce, in England land scarce and labour plenty"); and considering the state of England's poor at the time it was not suprising that many would leave (although of course they were more or less deceived and the initial colonists died in huge numbers). I think the specific motivations and lives of the specific Jamestown colonists could be hard to discern. ~~~~ Source: Mainly Brogan's 'The Penguin History of the USA'
[ "A project of the proprietary Virginia Company of London, Jamestown had been established by an initial group of settlers on 14 May 1607. This colony proved as troubled as earlier English settlements. Two return trips with supplies by Christopher Newport arrived in 1608, while another large relief fleet was dispatched in 1609, carrying hundreds of new settlers and supplies across the Atlantic. Heading the Third Supply fleet was the new flagship of the Virginia Company, the \"Sea Venture\", carrying Rolfe and his wife, Sarah Hacker.\n", "The English settlement at Jamestown had been established on May 24, 1607, with the arrival of three ships commanded by Captain Christopher Newport. The initial small group of 104 men and boys chose the location because it was favorable for defensive purposes, but it offered poor hunting prospects and a shortage of drinking water. Although they did some farming, few of the original settlers were accustomed to manual labor or familiar with farming. Hunting on the island was poor, and they quickly exhausted the supply of small game. The colonists were largely dependent upon trade with the Native Americans and periodic supply ships from England for their food.\n", "Colonists of the first successful English settlement, based at Jamestown, had a complicated relationship with Virginia Indians. In the winter of 1607, Opechancanough, chief of the Pamunkey tribe, captured Captain John Smith. Smith was brought to the paramount chief, Chief Powhatan. This first meeting between Powhatan and Smith resulted in an alliance between the two people. Powhatan sent Smith back to Jamestown in the spring of 1608 and started sending gifts of food to the colonists. If not for Powhatan's donations, the settlers would not have survived through the first winters. As the settlement expanded, competition for land and other resources, and conflict between the settlers and Virginia tribes, increased.\n", "Only two weeks after his arrival at the Jamestown Settlement, Spelman went with Captain John Smith on an expedition up the James River to the Indian town called Powhatan. (located in the East End portion of the modern-day city of Richmond, Virginia.) With Jamestown already nearly out of food provisions Smith knew that Jamestown would be unable to support the arrival of several hundred new colonists through the coming winter, and he traded young Henry Spelman's bonded servitude in exchange for the village, which was ruled by \"weroance\" Parahunt, son of Wahunsunacock (also known as Chief Powhatan.) The agreement was also for the boy to apprentice the native Powhatan language, and thus become an interpreter and serve as a messenger between the two cultures. Young Henry Spelman was not the first boy to be traded to the Powhatans; Thomas Savage had previously been given to Powhatan by Captain Christopher Newport in 1608, and Spelman named in his writings of \"Dutchman Samuel\" (actually \"Samuel Collier\" who was John Smith's page) as another European child that lived with the Natives.\n", "Initially, the colonists were governed by a president and seven-member council selected by the King. Leadership problems quickly erupted. Jamestown's first two leaders coped with varying degrees of success with sickness, assaults by Native Americans, poor food and water supplies, and class strife. Many colonists were ill-prepared to carve out a new settlement on a frontier. When Captain John Smith became Virginia's third president, he proved the strong leader that the colony needed. Industry flourished and relations with Chief Powhatan's people improved.\n", "Members of an English voyage of exploration landed in the area in 1603, four years before the founding of the Jamestown Colony. Captain John Smith visited the region in 1608. The \"Accawmacke\" nation at the time numbered around 2000, and were governed by Debedeavon, a paramount chief called by the English the \"Laughing King\". He became a staunch ally of the English newcomers, granting them several large areas for their own use.\n", "Early in Jamestown's history, Smith and the Virginia Company began recruiting workers from the Polish and Baltic region to come to their new colony. The first of these foreign workers came with the second group of settlers who arrived in the colony in 1608; two of these Polish workers would later save Smith's life in an attack by Native Americans as noted in Smith's writings. Contemporary historical accounts refer to this first group of foreign craftsmen as Poles and Dutchmen.\n" ]
Does dust/particles on the glass affect space telescopes significantly and how is this problem addressed?
In general, no, dust on the mirror doesn't really affect the image produced by a telescope. Most telescopes are focused at infinity, so a speck of dust sitting on the mirror won't actually be in the image plane. All it does is *very* slightly dim the entire image, since the tiny portion of the mirror covered by dust is no longer reflective, and thus can't add to the overall brightness of the image. The only time it really matters (and thus the only time you should consider cleaning your main mirror) is if your mirror gets *really* dusty. In that case the image is significantly dimmed, and all the dust can start producing scattering, which adds an overall hazy quality to the image as photons are now steered from their nice focused path in random directions. In general, this takes about a decade for most ground-based research telescopes to get to this level of dust, and mirrors are usually then sent off for cleaning; in space, where the environment is much cleaner, you'll likely never see this level of dust. Fun fact: Almost fifty years ago, the security guard at McDonald Observatory had a bit of a psychotic break one evening, and shot the telescope's main mirror several times with his gun, point blank. As a very thick piece of glass, the mirror did not shatter, but did end up with a few bullet holes. Just like dust, this really didn't end of affecting the telescope's image much at all, so they just blacked out the edges of the holes (to prevent scattering from the ragged edges of the glass around the holes), and went straight on using it as a research-grade telescope. [The bullet holes are still there to this day](_URL_0_).
[ "There is a further problem of glass defects, striae or small air bubbles trapped within the glass. In addition, glass is opaque to certain wavelengths, and even visible light is dimmed by reflection and absorption when it crosses the air-glass interfaces and passes through the glass itself. Most of these problems are avoided or diminished in reflecting telescopes, which can be made in far larger apertures and which have all but replaced refractors for astronomical research.\n", "When attempting to study space, cosmic dust would tend to hinder the scientists attempting to observe the celestial bodies in space. However, cosmic dust went from a hindrance, to a new and important aspect of scientific study. The Herschel Space Observatory used far reaching infrared equipment which revealed light being emitted from cosmic dust and gasses. This infrared technology allowed the Herschel Space Observatory and scientist to see more objects in space that emit heat at lower temperatures, which in turn allows more celestial bodies to be seen when they would not have been without the advanced infrared technologies.\n", "The effect of the mirror flaw on scientific observations depended on the particular observation—the core of the aberrated PSF was sharp enough to permit high-resolution observations of bright objects, and spectroscopy of point sources was only affected through a sensitivity loss. However, the loss of light to the large, out-of-focus halo severely reduced the usefulness of the telescope for faint objects or high-contrast imaging. This meant that nearly all of the cosmological programs were essentially impossible, since they required observation of exceptionally faint objects. NASA and the telescope became the butt of many jokes, and the project was popularly regarded as a white elephant. For instance, in the 1991 comedy \"\", Hubble was pictured with \"Lusitania\", the \"Hindenburg\", and the Edsel. Nonetheless, during the first three years of the Hubble mission, before the optical corrections, the telescope still carried out a large number of productive observations of less demanding targets. The error was well characterized and stable, enabling astronomers to partially compensate for the defective mirror by using sophisticated image processing techniques such as deconvolution.\n", "The absence of air makes outer space an ideal location for astronomy at all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is evidenced by the spectacular pictures sent back by the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing light from more than 13 billion years ago—almost to the time of the Big Bang—to be observed. However, not every location in space is ideal for a telescope. The interplanetary zodiacal dust emits a diffuse near-infrared radiation that can mask the emission of faint sources such as extrasolar planets. Moving an infrared telescope out past the dust increases its effectiveness. Likewise, a site like the Daedalus crater on the far side of the Moon could shield a radio telescope from the radio frequency interference that hampers Earth-based observations.\n", "Solar cells, integrated circuits, and sensors can be damaged by radiation. Geomagnetic storms occasionally damage electronic components on spacecraft. Miniaturization and digitization of electronics and logic circuits have made satellites more vulnerable to radiation, as the total electric charge in these circuits is now small enough so as to be comparable with the charge of incoming ions. Electronics on satellites must be hardened against radiation to operate reliably. The Hubble Space Telescope, among other satellites, often has its sensors turned off when passing through regions of intense radiation. A satellite shielded by 3 mm of aluminium in an elliptic orbit () passing the radiation belts will receive about 2,500 rem (25 Sv) per year (for comparison, a full-body dose of 5 Sv is deadly). Almost all radiation will be received while passing the inner belt.\n", "The first answer to this problem was speckle imaging, which allowed bright objects with simple morphology to be observed with diffraction-limited angular resolution. Later came NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, working outside the atmosphere and thus not having any seeing problems and allowing observations of faint targets for the first time (although with poorer resolution than speckle observations of bright sources from ground-based telescopes because of Hubble's smaller telescope diameter). The highest resolution visible and infrared images currently come from imaging optical interferometers such as the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer or Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope, but those can only be used on very bright stars.\n", "Additionally, the dust responsible for the atmospheric pollution may be detected by infrared radiation if it exists in sufficient quantity, similar to the detection of debris discs around main sequence stars. Data from the Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that 1-3% of white dwarfs possess detectable circumstellar dust.\n" ]
I've asked all over Reddit for help identifying this unknown object. Recently, someone said it was part of a WWII Cryptography Radio. Someone else commented that since it may have historical significance, I should ask for help here.
My father is a radio enthusiast who served as a 1st class radio operator during military service in 60ties' Czechoslovakia. Nowadays he likes to repair 20ties-40ties radios as a hobby. He says that he's never seen anything like this in a radio and that he is sure that those objects were NOT a part of a radio. Since there is a robust VOICE/TONE switch, his guess is a siren/megaphone combo.
[ "In July 1945, Captain Benjamin M. Bradin entered the \"Führerbunker\" and discovered an original carbon copy of the Göring Telegram marked with an 'F' in a group of Hitler's papers that in later years were given to Robert W. Rieke, a professor of history at the Citadel.\n", "During the Second World War, a captured German spy (Marius Goring) is executed at the Tower of London, without revealing the whereabouts of Professor Hansen, a refugee Swedish scientist in Britain. He is believed to be unwittingly passing information on the atomic bomb to Germany through the neutral Irish Free State. British intelligence attempts to locate him and break this link.\n", "Among the significant artifacts are Hitler's SA (Sturmabteilung) shirt; his first sketch for the Nazi flag; his reading glasses; Patton's battle helmet; Montgomery's beret; and copies of \"Mein Kampf\" that belonged to Hitler, President Roosevelt, and General Patton. There are also six different Enigma code machines, including the ten-rotor T-52, of which only five are extant; an American Sherman tank from the North African Campaign; a German Goliath tank used at Normandy; and one of the very few surviving landing craft (LCVP) from the Pacific in near-original condition.\n", "The , a Type IXB, was captured in 1941 by the Royal Navy, and its Enigma machine and documents were removed. was also captured by the British in October 1942; three sailors boarded her as she was sinking, and desperately threw all the code books out of the submarine so as to salvage them. Two of them, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and Lieutenant Francis Anthony Blair Fasson, continued to throw code books out of the ship as it went under water, and went down with it. Further code books were captured by raids on weather ships. was boarded by crew from the Canadian ship on 6 March 1944, and codes were taken from her, but by this time in the war, most of the information was known. The , a Type IXC, was captured by the United States Navy in June 1944. It is now a museum ship in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry.\n", "BULLET::::- 1941 – World War II: The German submarine \"U-110\" is captured by the Royal Navy. On board is the latest Enigma machine which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages.\n", "The bomb was again searched for in 2001 and not found. A new group in 2004 headed by Derek Duke claimed to have found an underwater object which it thinks is the bomb, but the US Army Corp of Engineers discounted the claim, saying the radioactive traces detected by the group were \"naturally occurring\".\n", "Kaczynski left false clues in every bomb, which he made hard to find to make them believable. The first clue was a metal plate stamped with the initials FC hidden somewhere (usually in the pipe end cap) in every bomb. Another clue included a note left in a bomb that did not detonate; it read \"Wu—It works! I told you it would—RV\". Another clue was the Eugene O'Neill $1 stamps used to send his boxes. He sent one bomb embedded in a copy of Sloan Wilson's novel \"Ice Brothers.\" The FBI theorized that Kaczynski had a theme of nature, trees and wood in his crimes. He often included bits of tree branch and bark in his bombs, and targets selected included Percy \"Wood\" and Professor Leroy \"Wood\". Crime writer Robert Graysmith noted that his \"obsession with wood\" was \"a large factor.\"\n" ]
why do web pages viewed on mobile devices keep changing layout as they load, and then change again just as you try to tap a link after it seems like they were finished loading?
Main reason is asymetric loading of elements and bad programming. In detail: The main goal of a mobile page is to load as fast as possible. There are certain methods to achieve this. The two most important (for your question) are: 1) Load visible stuff first: The first things that will be loaded are things you see when you open the web page. Everything "below the fold" (below the point where you need to scroll to see it) will be loaded at a later point. 2) Load bigger elements later: Bigger elements, such as images, will be loaded last. So your initial page is loaded fast, and the rest comes at a later point. Now to your problem with the layout changes: Poor programming causes this. Normally you would place blank placeholders for big elements like images. For example: If you, as a programmer, know, that there is an image that is 500x500 pixel, you will reserve this 500x500 spot with a blank white space. So when the image loads (after the initial loading of the page) you can fill this blank space with the image, without destroying the layout. OR you could use two different image qualities. Like one really low quality (and low filesize) one that loads when you open the page (in case the image is in your "initial load view") and when this initial load is over, you use your "normal" bigger size image to replace the old one. Really sorry, for a non native speaker its kinda hard to explain this :( I hope you get my point.
[ "In many applications (e.g., web browsers), holding down the control key while rolling the scroll wheel causes the text size to increase or decrease, or an image in an image-editing or map-viewing program to zoom in or out, if such a feature is available.\n", "Also, because the layout information may be stored externally to the HTML, it may be quite easy to add new content in a tableless design, whether modifying an existing page or adding a new page. By contrast, without such a design, the layout for each page may require a more time-consuming manual changing of each instance or use of global find-and-replace utilities. However site owners often want particular pages to be different from others on the site either for a short period or long term. This will often necessitate a separate style sheet to be developed for that page. The page (or template) content usually can remain unaltered however, which is not the case in a tables-based design.\n", "Standard Adaptive layout (screen-dependent multi-page) can also use viewport responsive scaling of the page in conjunction (as in responsive web design), but new responsive web design strategies and technology have all but made the need for separate multi-screen pages obsolete except where the site wishes to target users of non-smart internet-capable mobile devices and obsolete smartphones which do not respond to new responsive design scripts. As previously stated, things like Django's \"views\" concept and some aspects of AJAX blur the lines, as they serve different versions of pages, for many reasons, but some can be for fluidity on different devices, however, pages are generated dynamically, not statically (though one could argue that the \"views\" are static templates to be filled with content. In the end, it is all up to the developer how he or she feels is the most appropriate way to target the devices their content will be viewed on in the most fluid, clean and integrated way. There is certainly more than one way to skin the cat of dynamic web development.\n", "Because marquee text moves, links within it are more difficult to click than those in static text, depending on the speed and length of the scrolling. Users only get one chance every time it scrolls past. Also, scrolling text too fast can make it unreadable to some people, particularly those with visual impairments. This can easily frustrate users. To combat this, most client-side scripting allows marquees to be programmed to stop when the mouse is over them.\n", "If a page's layout information is stored externally, a user can decide to disable the layout information entirely, leaving the site's bare content still in a readable form. Site authors may also offer multiple style sheets, which can be used to completely change the appearance of the site without altering any of its content.\n", "In the early days of the Web, each individual web page was delivered to the client as a static document, but the sequence of pages could still provide an interactive experience, as user input was returned through web form elements embedded in the page markup. However, \"every\" significant change to the web page required a round trip back to the server to refresh the entire page.\n", "As of 23 March 2015, separate mobile and text only versions have been removed, and replaced with a \"responsive web design\", allowing the presentation of content to adjust automatically for a wide variety of screen sizes, from desktop computer to smartphones and tablet devices.\n" ]
Why do amputees feel a part of the body even though it is physically not present?
It's called 'phantom limb syndrom' and is thought to be related to the the somatosensory system (the neuronal system that senses pain, amongst other things). It's currently thought that this system does not readjust appropriately when a limb is amputated. This results in the continued sensation of movement and pain in the neurones which would originally have connected to the missing limb. Another speculation is that the somatosensory system does readjust, but inappropriately, and so sensation is still felt in the missing limb when other parts of the body are stimulated (eg face > look up Ramachandran's experiment). A definitive cause is yet to be confirmed, but the above are current speculations! :) (BSc hons neuroscience)
[ "A large proportion of amputees (50–80%) experience the phenomenon of phantom limbs; they feel body parts that are no longer there. These limbs can itch, ache, burn, feel tense, dry or wet, locked in or trapped or they can feel as if they are moving. Some scientists believe it has to do with a kind of neural map that the brain has of the body, which sends information to the rest of the brain about limbs regardless of their existence. Phantom sensations and phantom pain may also occur after the removal of body parts other than the limbs, e.g. after amputation of the breast, extraction of a tooth (phantom tooth pain) or removal of an eye (phantom eye syndrome).\n", "Several scientists and scientific groups have expressed the belief that amphibians can feel pain, however, this remains somewhat controversial due to differences in brain structure and the nervous system compared with other vertebrates.\n", "A similar phenomenon is unexplained sensation in a body part unrelated to the amputated limb. It has been hypothesized that the portion of the brain responsible for processing stimulation from amputated limbs, being deprived of input, expands into the surrounding brain, (\"Phantoms in the Brain\": V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee) such that an individual who has had an arm amputated will experience unexplained pressure or movement on his face or head.\n", "People who have a limb amputated may still have a confused sense of that limb's existence on their body, known as phantom limb syndrome. Phantom sensations can occur as passive proprioceptive sensations of the limb's presence, or more active sensations such as perceived movement, pressure, pain, itching, or temperature. There are a variety of theories concerning the etiology of phantom limb sensations and experience. One is the concept of \"proprioceptive memory\", which argues that the brain retains a memory of specific limb positions and that after amputation there is a conflict between the visual system, which actually sees that the limb is missing, and the memory system which remembers the limb as a functioning part of the body. Phantom sensations and phantom pain may also occur after the removal of body parts other than the limbs, such as after amputation of the breast, extraction of a tooth (phantom tooth pain), or removal of an eye (phantom eye syndrome).\n", "In the phenomenon of phantom limb sensation, a person continues to feel pain or sensation within a part of their body that has been amputated. This is strangely common, occurring in 60–80% of amputees. An explanation for this is based on the concept of neuroplasticity, as the cortical maps of the removed limbs are believed to have become engaged with the area around them in the postcentral gyrus. This results in activity within the surrounding area of the cortex being misinterpreted by the area of the cortex formerly responsible for the amputated limb.\n", "When an arm or leg is amputated, patients often continue to feel vividly the presence of the missing limb as a \"phantom limb\" (an average of 80%). Building on earlier work by Ronald Melzack (McGill University) and Timothy Pons (NIMH), Ramachandran theorized that there was a link between the phenomenon of phantom limbs and neural plasticity in the adult human brain. To test this theory, Ramachandran recruited amputees, so that he could learn more about if phantom limbs could \"feel\" a stimulus to other parts of the body.\n", "People with amputations have reported phantom limbs. This serves as evidence that the brain is hard-wired to perceive body image, making it notable that sensory input and proprioceptive feedback are not essential in its formation. Losing an anatomical part through amputation sets a person up for complex perceptual, emotional, and psychological responses. Such responses include phantom limb pain, which is the painful feeling some amputees incur after amputation in the area lost. Phantom limb pain permits a natural acceptance and use of prosthetic limbs.\n" ]
The charger for my electric toothbrush has no metal parts that touch the toothbrush. How does it recharge?
Through [magnetic induction](_URL_0_). It's the same mechanism for [transformers](_URL_2_), the electrical circuits of which are not physically connected either. See [this diagram of a simple transformer](_URL_1_). Basically, the electricity from the outlet is used to generate a magnetic field, which generates a current inside your toothbrush.
[ "Modern electric toothbrushes run on low voltage, 12v or less. A few units use a step-down transformer to power the brush, but most use a battery, usually but not always rechargeable and non-replaceable, fitted inside the handle, which is hermetically sealed to prevent water damage. While early NiCd battery toothbrushes used metal tabs to connect with the charging base, some toothbrushes use inductive charging.\n", "Electric toothbrushes are toothbrushes with moving or vibrating bristle heads. The two main types of electric toothbrushes are the sonic type which has a vibrating head, and the oscillating-rotating type in which the bristle head makes constant clockwise and anti-clockwise movements.\n", "An electric toothbrush is a toothbrush that makes rapid automatic bristle motions, either back-and-forth oscillation or rotation-oscillation (where the brush head alternates clockwise and counterclockwise rotation), in order to clean teeth. Motions at sonic speeds or below are made by a motor. In the case of ultrasonic toothbrushes, ultrasonic motions are produced by a piezoelectric crystal. A modern electric toothbrush is usually powered by a rechargeable battery charged through inductive charging when the brush sits in the charging base between uses.\n", "The different brush types make contact with the commutator in different ways. Because copper brushes have the same hardness as the commutator segments, the rotor cannot be spun backwards against the ends of copper brushes without the copper digging into the segments and causing severe damage. Consequently, strip/laminate copper brushes only make tangential contact with the commutator, while copper mesh and wire brushes use an inclined contact angle touching their edge across the segments of a commutator that can spin in only one direction.\n", "The brush head vibrates at hundreds of times per second, with the latest models at 31,000 strokes per minute or 62,000 movements per minute (517 Hz). Rather than connecting to its charger with conductors, it uses inductive charging—the charger includes the primary winding of the voltage-reducing transformer and the fat handle of the brush includes the secondary winding. The replaceable head is also driven magnetically.\n", "The wire brush is primarily an abrasive implement, used for cleaning rust and removing paint. It is also used to clean surfaces and to create a better conductive area for attaching electrical connections, such as those between car battery posts and their connectors, should they accumulate a build-up of grime and dirt. When cleaning stainless steel, it is advisable to use a stainless steel bristle wire brush, as a plain carbon steel brush can contaminate the stainless steel and cause rust spots to appear. Brass bristle brushes are used on softer surfaces or when it is necessary to clean a harder surface without marring it. Brass bristle brushes are also used in potentially flammable environments where non-sparking tools are required. Wire brushes are also used to clean the teeth of large animals, such as crocodiles and pigs. They are also used widely in surface engineering to clean the castings to paint the castings.\n", "Using electric tooth brushes is less complex in regards to brushing technique, making it a viable option for children, and adults with limited dexterity. The bristle head should be guided from tooth to tooth slowly, following the contour of the gums and crowns of the tooth. The motion of the toothbrush head removes the need to manually oscillate the brush or make circles.\n" ]
Do you get your memories back after electroconvulsive therapy?
With our current methods of ECT, memory loss is quite common. There are a lot of complex idiosyncrasies and variables that play into the pattern and permanence of memory loss (i.e., age, bilateral vs. unilateral ECT, number of ECT treatments, psychiatric diagnosis, length of the seizures, interval between ECT treatments, etc). However, in general this is the pattern that is most common in the research, and this is also what I see clinically: * Patients typically have slight retrograde amnesia (i.e., loss of memories for things that happened BEFORE they started ECT treatment) and it's usually most significant for things in the days (maybe a week or two) leading up to the first treatment. * There is near complete amnesia (and this would technically be anterograde) for the events on the day of an ECT treatment, as well as fairly significant anterograde amnesia for several days (maybe a week or two) following ECT. * After the treatment ends, their memory functions return to normal (i.e., they are able to encode, consolidate, and retrieve new information just as they could before). HOWEVER, the time for which they were amnestic (i.e., The days before the treatment, the day of the treatment, and several days after the treatment) are completely forgotten, and will never come back to memory. * It's important to understand that the memory system requires that you encode and consolidate information into memories in order for you to remember it (i.e., take information from your surroundings into your brain, and turn it into a long-term memory). ECT appears to disrupt that process. Therefore, if information is not encoded or consolidated into a memory, there is no information there to retrieve. Does that make sense? Hope that helps, let me know if you have other questions.
[ "Therapists who subscribe to recovered memory theory point to a wide variety of common problems, ranging from eating disorders to sleeplessness, as evidence of repressed memories of sexual abuse. Psychotherapists tried to reveal “repressed memories” in mental therapy patients through “hypnosis, guided imagery, dream interpretation and narco-analysis”. The reasoning was that if abuse couldn’t be remembered, then it needed to be recovered by the therapist. The legal phenomena developed in the 1980s, with civil suits alleging child sexual abuse on the basis of “memories” recovered during psychotherapy. The term “repressed memory therapy” gained momentum and with it social stigma surrounded those accused of abuse. The “therapy” led to other psychological disorders in persons whose memories were recovered.\n", "Therapy-induced memory recovery has made frequent appearances in legal cases, particularly those regarding sexual abuse. Therapists can often aid in creating a false memory in a victim's mind, intentionally or unintentionally. They will associate a patient's behavior with the fact that they have been a victim of sexual abuse, thus helping the memory occur. They use memory enhancement techniques such as hypnosis dream analysis to extract memories of sexual abuse from victims. According to the FMSF (False Memory Syndrome Foundation), these memories are false and are produced in the very act of searching for and employing them in a life narrative. In \"Ramona v. Isabella\", two therapists wrongly prompted a recall that their patient, Holly Ramona, had been sexually abused by her father. It was suggested that the therapist, Isabella, had implanted the memory in Ramona after use of the hypnotic drug sodium amytal. After a nearly unanimous decision, Isabella had been declared negligent towards Holly Ramona. This 1994 legal issue played a massive role in shedding light on the possibility of false memories' occurrences.\n", "The founders of the FMS Foundation had been concerned that alleged recovered memories were being reported after the use of controversial therapy techniques that including hypnosis, relaxation exercises, guided imagery, drug-mediated interviews, body memories, literal dream interpretation and journaling. It is the position of the FMSF that there is no scientific evidence that the use of consciousness-altering techniques such as these can reveal or accurately elaborate factual information about previously forgotten past experiences, including sexual abuse.\n", "It has been suggested that inducing selective amnesia for particular events or stimuli in patients may be an effective tool in psychotherapy. Alexander (1953) found that administering electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to patients suffering from a traumatic life event induces selective amnesia for the traumatic event without effecting the patient’s surrounding memories. This finding, as well as other similar findings, has been used to form a hypothesis concerning the mechanisms underlying ECT. This hypothesis states that the most decisive effect of ECT is the arousal of the active defensive operations in the brain. They further hypothesize that the arousal of these operations makes ECT an effective treatment for depression and other psychotic disorders in which the brain’s defensive operations are ineffective. This hypothesis would also explain why ECT is an ineffective treatment for disorders in which the defensive operations are overactive such as anxiety disorders. Thus, selective amnesia, if utilized under the correct circumstances, may be useful in a therapeutic setting.\n", "A 2010 article in \"Ynet\" quoted Dr. Alex Aviv, Chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Law of Hypnosis to the Israeli Ministry of Health as saying (in reference to Scientology) \"they restore early memories, usually of traumas, when in some cases this is a false memory. When a patient 'remembers' a false event like that via a hypnotic process - the event can become real for him\".\n", "This state of trance is widely used as a means to recall suppressed or repressed memories. During the sessions of hypnosis, a great deal of spontaneous recovery can occur because the conscious thoughts are slowed down to allow much higher retrieval. Some memories can seem foreign to the patient because they have never been recalled before; this is usual proof that the therapy is working.\n", "A 2015 article in the peer-reviewed APA journal \"Psychology of Consciousness\" suggested that primal therapy, as well as some other therapies, may have produced false memories, specifically those within the period of infantile amnesia in early infancy, and in memories for birth.\n" ]
How did the early advocates for LGBTQ rights in the US begin pushing their case? What were the methods of the earliest advocacy groups?
Great question! Before I get into it, I want to provide a little context. I've talked quite a bit on here about different understandings of 'homosexuality' throughout history. How sexuality was understood and conceptualized has changed dramatically over the course of history, although not in a linear or teleological fashion. When we use words like 'gay' or even 'homosexual' we situate our discussion in a particular time and place. The 'modern' homosexual-gay-lgbt-queer movement has its origins in late 19th and early 20th century Europe, where Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Karl Maria Kertbeny, Magnus Hirschfeld, and others began to create a framework, and some of the corresponding vocabulary, for understanding 'new' ways of framing gender and sexual identity. In the US, we often use the end of the Second World War as a kind of point of demarkation between earlier notions of sex, gender, and sexuality and the more current frameworks. For that reason, I'm going to confine my answer to that period. Although there was a vibrant (and remarkably open) homosexual culture in the US from the late 19th century to the 1930's, there are so many substantial and important differences that it would be both challenging and potentially problematic to compare movements. The main organizations of the post-WWII pre-Stonewall era were the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. Mattachine was more male-centered, although there were some mixed chapters. DoB was entirely lesbian. Both organizations were formed in the 1950's, at a time of reactionary social-sexual attitudes. Whereas there had been a certain kind of openness allowed by the different social-sexual frameworks of the pre-WWII period, gay life in the 50's and 60's existed almost entirely in the closet. Although both these organizations were created to advocate for gay and lesbian people, maintaining the privacy and anonymity of their members was an extremely high priority. The Mattachine Society was named after a medieval French fraternal organization known for their masks; the name was chosen to indicate the need for homosexuals to be 'masked' from society. The name 'Daughters of Bilitis' was chosen because it was deliberately vague. Members were allowed to use just their first name - or a fake name- at meetings, and their publication *The Ladder* frequently mentioned that the identities of it's members would be protected (although this did not prevent the organization from being infiltrated by informants who provided the names of members to the FBI and CIA.) Because of the strongly homophobic social attitudes of the 1950's and 60's, organizations like DoB and the Mattachine Society had a limited influence. They did make an effort to inform and educate the public about gay and lesbian people, but the extremely high social risks associated with homosexuality made any kind of substantial political organizing a challenge. Bars provided their own kind of organized community, particularly for working class lesbians, gay hustlers, 'drag queens' and other gender and sexuality outlaws. The informal (and usually underground) networks created in bars were often far more influential and important that organized groups like Mattachine and DoB (which were small, operated primarily in cities and by mail, and largely made up of the upper middle classes.) After the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, there was a new kind of openness in regards to sexuality. People began to come out in large numbers, and new organizations were formed to lend a voice to this new generation. There was a flurry of activity in the couple of years after Stonewall, and this saw the creation of two organizations - the Gay Liberation Front and it's offshoot the Gay Activists Alliance. Both organizations came to be mostly dominated by white, middle class, cisgender gay men, despite the large number of trans* or gender-nonconforming people of color involved in the Stonewall riots. Despite some exciting action at the beginning organizations fizzled out within a few years, and failed to create a cohesive movement. That's not to say that there wasn't a lot going on in the 1970's. Gay men created impressive social-sexual networks in the 'gay ghettos' found in most urban centers. Lesbians became involved in lesbian feminism and lesbian separatist communities. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign - two of the most prominent national LGBT groups today - were both formed in the 1970's as well. Although they both played important roles in regards to lobbying and political fundraising, it would taking time before political and social attitudes towards gays and lesbians shifted enough for those organizations to gain real political traction. The 1980's brought the kind of change that allowed political organizations to enter the mainstream. AIDS brought homosexuality into the mainstream consciousness in a way that nothing else had done before. Groups like ACT UP, Queer Nation, and the Lesbian Avengers were formed to draw political attention to AIDS and Queer issues, and brought a huge amount of visibility to LGBTQ people. By the 1990's gay and AIDS organizations really started to have political and institutional power. As gay became increasingly accepted by the mainstream, these organizations were able to broaden their fundraising base and expand their organizational goals. In earlier generations gay, lesbian, and trans* advocacy groups were small, kept afloat by volunteers and in some instances a handful of wealthy members. When it comes down to it, organizations in the formal sense, played a pretty minimal role in modern LGBTQ movements. Informal community networks - although harder to trace - were hugely important in creating the movement. That was a lot of information! I hope that at least kinda-sorta answered your question. And now for a brief list of sources: *Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers* - Lillian Faderman, *Transgender History* - Susan Stryker, *Gay New York* - George Chauncey.
[ "The first LGBT rights organizations began to emerge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early LGBT rights organizations were primarily research-oriented psychiatric organizations that took a sympathetic, rather than corrective approach to homosexuality. such as the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee, WhK), which was founded in 1897 by Magnus Hirschfeld, an outspoken advocate for LGBT and women's rights in Germany.\n", "In 1950, gay activist Harry Hay and several other men founded the Mattachine Society, the first enduring LGBT rights organization in the United States. The Mattachine Society was involved in two landmark gay rights cases in the 1950s. In the spring of 1952, William Dale Jennings, one of the cofounders of the Mattachine Society, was arrested in Los Angeles for allegedly soliciting a police officer in a bathroom in Westlake Park, now known as MacArthur Park. His trial drew national attention to the Mattachine Society, and membership increased dramatically after Jennings contested the charges, resulting in a hung jury. In 1958 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of ONE, Inc., a spinoff of the Mattachine Society, which had published \"ONE: The Homosexual Magazine\" beginning in 1953. After a campaign of harassment from the U.S. Post Office Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Postmaster of Los Angeles declared the October, 1954 issue obscene and therefore unmailable under the Comstock laws.\n", "The gay liberation movement spread to countries throughout the world and heavily influenced many of the modern gay rights organizations. Out of this vein, a number of modern-day advocacy organizations were established with differing approaches: the Human Rights Campaign, formed in 1980, follows a more middle class-oriented and reformist tradition, while other organizations such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), formed in 1973, tries to be grassroots-oriented and support local and state groups to create change from the ground up.\n", "While the earliest advocacy for LGBT rights initially came from or was adopted by members of the left-wing milieu of Canadian politics, LGBT-affirmative religious organizations such as the Metropolitan Community Church played an early role in the advocacy for civil rights. MCC pastor Brent Hawkes, rector of the MCC of Toronto, became one of the earliest openly gay advocates for LGBT civil rights in the country, and performed the first same-sex marriage ceremony in the country, eventually participating in the successful legal struggle to have it recognized by Ontario.\n", "Early LGBT organizations in the United States were, like earlier German organizations, primarily centered around the rights of gay men. The Society for Human Rights was founded in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois by Henry Gerber, who was inspired by Hirschfeld's work in Germany and produced the first gay-rights-oriented publication in the US, \"Friendship and Freedom\". The first national gay rights organization, the Mattachine Society, was formed in 1951, was created by Harry Hay.\n", "The Daughters of Bilitis , also called the DOB or the Daughters, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. The organization, formed in San Francisco in 1955, was conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were subject to raids and police harassment. As the DOB gained members, their focus shifted to providing support to women who were afraid to come out. The DOB educated them about their rights, and about gay history. The historian Lillian Faderman declared, \"Its very establishment in the midst of witch-hunts and police harassment was an act of courage, since members always had to fear that they were under attack, not because of what they did, but merely because of who they were.\" The Daughters of Bilitis endured for 14 years, becoming an educational resource for lesbians, gay men, researchers and mental health professionals.\n", "The modern LGBT civil rights movement began on Saturday, June 28, 1969 with the Stonewall Riots, when police raided a New York gay bar called the Stonewall Inn and the patrons fought back. Lesbian Martha Shelley was in Greenwich Village the night of the Stonewall Riot; she proposed a protest march and as a result the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis sponsored a demonstration. Later that year, on November 2, 1969, Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes proposed the first gay pride parade to be held in New York City by way of a resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) meeting in Philadelphia.\n" ]
how did the original mathematicians prove their formulas and theories, and to who?
To their own community of academics. But how far back are we talking? Ancient greece? Renaissance? Isaac Newton era?
[ "The formula was discovered independently by Leonhard Euler and Colin Maclaurin around 1735. Euler needed it to compute slowly converging infinite series while Maclaurin used it to calculate integrals. It was later generalized to Darboux's formula.\n", "Mathematical analysis formally developed in the 17th century during the Scientific Revolution, but many of its ideas can be traced back to earlier mathematicians. Early results in analysis were implicitly present in the early days of ancient Greek mathematics. For instance, an infinite geometric sum is implicit in Zeno's paradox of the dichotomy. Later, Greek mathematicians such as Eudoxus and Archimedes made more explicit, but informal, use of the concepts of limits and convergence when they used the method of exhaustion to compute the area and volume of regions and solids. The explicit use of infinitesimals appears in Archimedes' \"The Method of Mechanical Theorems\", a work rediscovered in the 20th century. In Asia, the Chinese mathematician Liu Hui used the method of exhaustion in the 3rd century AD to find the area of a circle. Zu Chongzhi established a method that would later be called Cavalieri's principle to find the volume of a sphere in the 5th century. The Indian mathematician Bhāskara II gave examples of the derivative and used what is now known as Rolle's theorem in the 12th century.\n", "Bhaskara I had not indicated any method by which he arrived at his formula. Historians have speculated on various possibilities. No definitive answers have as yet been obtained. Beyond its historical importance of being a prime example of the mathematical achievements of ancient Indian astronomers, the formula is of significance from a modern perspective also. Mathematicians have attempted to derive the rule using modern concepts and tools. Around half a dozen methods have been suggested, each based on a separate set of premises. Most of these derivations use only elementary concepts.\n", "In 370 BC, Plato's Parmenides may have contained an early example of an implicit inductive proof. The earliest implicit traces of mathematical induction may be found in Euclid's proof that the number of primes is infinite and in Bhaskara's \"cyclic method\". An opposite iterated technique, counting \"down\" rather than up, is found in the Sorites paradox, where it was argued that if 1,000,000 grains of sand formed a heap, and removing one grain from a heap left it a heap, then a single grain of sand (or even no grains) forms a heap.\n", "Mathematicians have always practised experimental mathematics. Existing records of early mathematics, such as Babylonian mathematics, typically consist of lists of numerical examples illustrating algebraic identities. However, modern mathematics, beginning in the 17th century, developed a tradition of publishing results in a final, formal and abstract presentation. The numerical examples that may have led a mathematician to originally formulate a general theorem were not published, and were generally forgotten.\n", "Methods to calculate the sum of the first positive integers, the sum of the squares and of the cubes of the first positive integers were known, but there were no real 'formulas', only descriptions given entirely in words. Among the great mathematicians of antiquity to consider this problem were Pythagoras (c. 572–497 BCE, Greece), Archimedes (287–212 BCE, Italy), Aryabhata (b. 476, India), Abu Bakr al-Karaji (d. 1019, Persia) and Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (965–1039, Iraq).\n", "The Greek mathematician Menaechmus solved problems and proved theorems by using a method that had a strong resemblance to the use of coordinates and it has sometimes been maintained that he had introduced analytic geometry.\n" ]
How are we self aware? What does our self awareness come from?
This is an awesome question, and one that straddles the line between science and philosophy. The real answer is "we don't know" and there are fascinating arguments for multiple viewpoints (including arguments that run the spectrum from pure spirituality all the way to quantum physics.) I'd recommend [this Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) as a starting point. Give yourself an hour or so to it through, follow a few inline links, external links and *see also*s, and prepare to spelunk the rabbit hole.
[ "Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness. Self-awareness is how an individual consciously knows and understands their own character, feelings, motives, and desires. There are two broad categories of self-awareness: internal self-awareness and external self-awareness.\n", "Self-awareness is seen, by some, to be a sign of highly developed, abstract thinking. Self-awareness, though not well-defined scientifically, is believed to be the precursor to more advanced processes like meta-cognitive reasoning (thinking about thinking) that are typical of humans. Research in this field has suggested that cetaceans, among others, possess self-awareness.\n", "Self-awareness is seen, by some, to be a sign of highly developed, abstract thinking. Self-awareness, though not well-defined scientifically, is believed to be the precursor to more advanced processes like meta-cognitive reasoning (thinking about thinking) that are typical of humans. Research in this field has suggested that cetaceans, among others, possess self-awareness.\n", "Self-knowledge is linked to the cognitive self in that its motives guide our search to gain greater clarity and assurance that our own self-concept is an accurate representation of our \"true self\"; for this reason the cognitive self is also referred to as the \"known self\". The cognitive self is made up of everything we know (or \"think we know\" about ourselves). This implies physiological properties such as hair color, race, and height etc.; and psychological properties like beliefs, values, and dislikes to name but a few.\n", "\"Self-awareness\" refers to an individual's ability to become aware of their own subconscious thinking. Absence of self-awareness is frequently seen in eating disorder patients, causing them to react to situations, feelings and other stimuli emotionally rather than rationally.\n", "Aside from being aware of our physical selves, awareness requires an awareness of our mind. He suggests that we notice and acknowledge our thoughts but not allow them to influence us in any way. We should recognize our feelings, thoughts and ideas, but never judge them because they are us.\n", "Self-knowledge is a component of the self or, more accurately, the self-concept. It is the knowledge of oneself and one's properties and the \"desire\" to seek such knowledge that guide the development of the self-concept. Self-knowledge informs us of our mental representations of ourselves, which contain attributes that we uniquely pair with ourselves, and theories on whether these attributes are stable or dynamic.\n" ]
why guitar hero / rockband died.
IMO it's because there isn't much room to expand on the core gameplay. Sure you can add more songs, but are you willing to spend another $50+ dollars on basically the same game? Not to mention that the equipment (guitar, drumset, etc.) can also rack up the price (some may say unnecessarily). Once everybody played Guitar Hero/Rockband, it lost the sense of novelty that first came with such gameplay.
[ "\"Guitar Hero II\" is the centerpiece of an episode of \"South Park\" titled \"Guitar Queer-O\", in which Stan and Kyle overindulge in \"Guitar Hero II\" and become treated as though they were real-life rock stars. The episode was first broadcast on November 7, 2007, ten days after the American release of \"Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock\". \"Metalocalypse\" (created by Titmouse Studio, who also provided cutscene animations within the \"Guitar Hero\" game) has made reference to \"Guitar Hero\"; in one example, the episode \"Dethkids,\" a sick child composes a song for Dethklok rhythm guitarist Toki Wartooth using a \"Guitar Hero\" controller. Ellen DeGeneres has played \"Guitar Hero\" several times in 2008 during the monologue of her syndicated talk show. In the January 25, 2008, episode she is seen playing along to \"Barracuda\", which segues to Heart performing the song for the audience. During the season 7 finale of \"American Idol\", finalists David Cook and David Archuleta appeared in separate commercials for the games, where they each parodied Tom Cruise dancing to \"Old Time Rock and Roll\" in the movie \"Risky Business\". This parody has been used by director Brett Ratner to create advertisements for \"Guitar Hero World Tour\", featuring celebrities such as Kobe Bryant, Tony Hawk, Alex Rodriguez, Michael Phelps, Corbin Bleu, Heidi Klum, and Marisa Miller.\n", "At this point, the band started writing original songs, including \"Grave Robbers\" (later renamed \"Raise The Dead\"), \"Overkill\", and \"Unleash the Beast (Within)\". More songs followed, including \"Death Rider\" (1981) and \"Rotten To The Core\" (1982). In 1983 Rich left and Bobby Gustafson remained as the sole guitarist. The band became a staple at New York and New Jersey clubs, such as L'Amours, and Verni gave Ellsworth the nickname \"Blitz\" due to his over-the-top lifestyle. Verni has been the sole songwriter for the music of Overkill since \"Horrorscope\".\n", "\"Guitar Hero: Metallica\" received positive reviews, with critics stating it to be a strong tribute to the band and Neversoft's best work on the \"Guitar Hero\" series to date. The difficulty throughout the game was praised, found to be more enjoyable to players of all skill levels than the more-difficult \"\". Reviewers noted the lack of additional downloadable content, save for the pre-existing \"Death Magnetic\" songs, the cartoonish storyline for the Career mode, and the overall value of the game as some of the negatives to the experience.\n", "Grunge guitarists \"flatly rejected\" the virtuoso \"shredding\" guitar solos that had become the centerpiece of heavy metal songs, instead opting for melodic, blues-inspired solos – focusing \"on the song, not the guitar solo\". Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains stated that solos should be to serve the song, rather than to show off a guitarist's technical skill. In place of the strutting guitar heroes of metal, grunge had \"guitar anti-heroes\" like Cobain, who showed little interest in mastering the instrument.\n", "The \"Guitar Hero\" video game series included several of Metallica's songs. \"One\" was used in \"Guitar Hero III\". The album \"Death Magnetic\" was later released as purchasable, downloadable content for the game. \"Trapped Under Ice\" was featured in the sequel, \"Guitar Hero World Tour\". In 2009, Metallica collaborated with the game's developers to make \"\", which included a number of Metallica's songs. Harmonix' video game series \"Rock Band\" included \"Enter Sandman\" and \"Battery\"; \"Ride the Lightning\", \"Blackened\", and \"...And Justice for All\" were released as downloadable tracks. In 2013, due to expiring content licenses, \"Ride the Lightning\", \"Blackened\", and \"...And Justice for All\" are no longer available for download.\n", "The \"Guitar Hero\" series has made a significant cultural impact, becoming a \"cultural phenomenon\". The series has helped to rekindle music education in children, influenced changes in both the video game and music industry, has found use in health and treatment of recovering patients, and has become part of the popular culture vernacular. Several journalists, including 1UP.com, \"Wired\", G4TV, the \"San Jose Mercury News\", \"Inc.\", \"The Guardian\", and \"Advertising Age\", considered \"Guitar Hero\" to be one of the most influential products of the first decade of the 21st century, attributing it as the spark leading to the growth of the rhythm game market, for boosting music sales for both new and old artists, for introducing more social gaming concepts to the video game market, and, in conjunction with the Wii, for improving interactivity with gaming consoles.\n", "\"Guitar Hero: Metallica\" features 49 songs based on master recordings, 28 by Metallica, and the other 21 songs by bands that are \"their personal favorites and influences from over the years\", including those that appeared on their \"Garage Inc.\" album. All of the Metallica songs in the game are from original masters, though locating some masters proved troublesome. Though Metallica were prepared to re-record songs as Aerosmith had done for \"\", they were able to find the masters for their debut album \"Kill 'Em All\" in the basement of their former manager Johny Zazula. While other downloadable content from \"Guitar Hero III\" or \"Guitar Hero World Tour\" is not usable in \"Guitar Hero: Metallica\", the game will detect and incorporate the songs from the \"Death Magnetic\" downloadable content into the game's setlist (however, the song \"All Nightmare Long\" is available in the game as part of its main setlist). The PlayStation 2 and Wii versions of the game do not support downloadable content, but include \"Broken, Beat & Scarred\", \"Cyanide\" and \"My Apocalypse\" from \"Death Magnetic\" in addition to the game's existing tracks. The 1998 medley of covers of the band Mercyful Fate's songs \"Mercyful Fate\" is the longest track included in the game, running at around 11 minutes.\n" ]
Were the Romans cynical about their downfall (or perceived downfall) as (some) tend to be today in America? Was there any "sky is falling" moments or movements?
Augustine's *City of God* was written as a response to the seemingly imminent collapse of the Roman Empire. The sack of Rome in 410 was traumatic to an extent that I think it is difficult for us to comprehend. Today we tend to shy away from pronouncement's like this one from 1905 that said "the Roman Empire was the civilized world; the safety of Rome was the safety of all civilization. Outside was the wild chaos of barbarism. Rome kept it back from end to end of Europe and across a thousand miles of western Asia" but that is absolutely how the Romans viewed it. St. Jerome, on hearing of the fall of Rome, said "The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken." It was apocalyptic in the most literal sense. But it is still difficult to actually name the fall of Rome because none of the players involved were aiming for that. Alaric, who sacked Rome in 410, was a Roman military officer who was seeking recognition and reward. Odoacer, who is generally credited with the death blow, invaded because the Roman government would not grant him *foederati* status. However, everyone picking away at it and reaching for their share of the pie had the effect of destroying it.
[ "The popular view is that the fall of the Western Roman Empire caused a \"dark age\" in western Europe in which \"knowledge and civility\", the \"arts of elegance,\" and \"many of the useful arts\" were neglected or lost. Conversely, however, the lot of the farmers who made up 80 percent or more of the total population, may have improved in the aftermath of the Roman Empire. The fall of Rome saw the \"shrinking of tax burdens, weakening of the aristocracy, and consequently greater freedom for peasants.\" The countryside of the Roman Empire was dotted with \"villas\" or estates, characterized by Pliny the Elder as \"the ruin of Italy.\" The estates were owned by wealthy aristocrats and worked in part by slaves. More than 1,500 villas are known to have existed in England alone. With the fall of Rome, the villas were abandoned or transformed into utilitarian rather than elite uses. \"In western Europe, then, we seem to see the effect of a release from the pressure of the Roman imperial market, army and taxation, and a return to farming based more on local needs.\"\n", "The belief has been traced back to Edward Gibbon's work, \"The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire\", published between 1776 and 1788, where Gibbon argues that Rome collapsed due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens, who became lazy, spoiled and inclined to hire foreign mercenaries to handle the defence of state. He believed that that reason must triumph over superstition to save Europe's superpowers from a similar fate to the Roman Empire.\n", "After some 1200 years of independence and nearly 700 years as a great power, the rule of Rome in the West ended. Various reasons for Rome's fall have been proposed ever since, including loss of Republicanism, moral decay, military tyranny, class war, slavery, economic stagnation, environmental change, disease, the decline of the Roman race, as well as the inevitable ebb and flow that all civilizations experience. At the time many pagans argued that Christianity and the decline of traditional Roman religion were responsible; some rationalist thinkers of the modern era attribute the fall to a change from a martial to a more pacifist religion that lessened the number of available soldiers; while Christians such as Augustine of Hippo argued that the sinful nature of Roman society itself was to blame.\n", "Bryan Ward-Perkins's \"The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization\" (2005) takes a traditional view tempered by modern discoveries, arguing that the empire's demise was caused by a vicious circle of political instability, foreign invasion, and reduced tax revenue. Essentially, invasions caused long-term damage to the provincial tax base, which lessened the Empire's medium- to long-term ability to pay and equip the legions, with predictable results. Likewise, constant invasions encouraged provincial rebellion as self-help, further depleting Imperial resources. Contrary to the trend among some historians of the \"there was no fall\" school, who view the fall of Rome as not necessarily a \"bad thing\" for the people involved, Ward-Perkins argues that in many parts of the former Empire the archaeological record indicates that the collapse was truly a disaster.\n", "Cullen Murphy in his book, \"Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America\", Tells of American Expansionists and their desire to bring America, primarily American culture, to the rest of the world, starting with Europe.\n", "BULLET::::- Peter Heather argues in his book \"The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians\" that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but because centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis by making them a much more sophisticated and dangerous adversary. The fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of the Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to the Han and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate and others.\n", "In 1995, an established journal of classical scholarship, \"Classics Ireland\", published punk musician's Iggy Pop's reflections on the applicability of \"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire\" to the modern world in a short article, \"Caesar Lives\", (vol. 2, 1995) in which he notedAmerica is Rome. Of course, why shouldn't it be? We are all Roman children, for better or worse ... I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins – military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial – are all there to be scrutinised in their infancy. I have gained perspective.\n" ]
Was classical music by German composers less popular after World War II?
Not talking about symphony, because the real drama is at the opera, c'mon! The Metropolitan opera had been performing German-language opera since the 1880s. During 1914-17 the Met did German opera as usual, but when the US entered WWI in late 1917 they did cancel all German operas. [Check out the 1917-18 season.](_URL_2_) [German was reintroduced pretty quickly though.](_URL_1_) However during WWII [Wagner was performed without interruption, along with other German pieces,](_URL_0_) as well Italian operas. Some of this was due to censorship being seen as unpatriotic, but I mean, some of it's also just practical: you ban all German AND Italian operas for the season, what do you have left? You're probably going to be doing *Carmen* until you want to barf roses. *Madame Butterfly* did disappear during the war though, presumably due to subject matter and not language. So, WWII opera didn't fight a war against Axis music per se, the real story is with the singers. During WWII the Met essentially could not hire any top global talent, as at that time the top singers of Italian opera were from Italy and were unable to leave Italy (the Fascists banned opera singers travelling without permission in 1939). Tito Schipa, famously, cancelled his contract with the Met in 1941 to return home to Italy for the war because he was a very loyal Fascist. Top Wagnerian talent was from Germany, so obviously also no dice there. So, the real change at the Met during WWII is they started hiring a lot more American singers instead of Europeans, which was taken to be very patriotic and much lauded at the time. As opera houses closed through-out a war-ravaged Europe, America was also framing itself as this last bastion of opera, and therefore the highest ideals of Western arts and culture. Which is also why the 1942-43 season was saved from getting canceled! Unsold tickets were also given to off-duty servicemen, which of course is mega patriotic. (This is also why Met dropped their dress code during the war, for the servicemen, and it has never returned!) So yeah, by being the only ones doing opera AND doing it with American singers, they kinda got to trumpet the Met as this All-American institution during WWII, despite opera being an art form dominated by 2 Axis cultures. Sadly, ethnically German and Italian opera singers living and working in the US at that time also faced discrimination and pressure from the government, and later on after the war they still faced discrimination. Most notably Kirsten Flagstad when she returned to the Met in 1951, after leaving America for her home Norway in 1941, which was occupied by Germany at the time. She was seen as disloyal and her return was protested. But, other than challenging the ethnic makeup of who gets to be a Heldentenor and a Wagnerian soprano, WWII didn't have much lasting impact on German opera in the US! This is from *Grand Opera, the Story of the Met* by Afron and Afron, which came out late last year.
[ "Composers writing after World War II had to find a way of coming to terms with the destruction caused by the Third Reich. The modernism of Schoenberg and Berg proved attractive to young composers, since their works had been banned by the Nazis and were free of any taint of the former regime. Bernd Alois Zimmermann looked to the example of Berg's \"Wozzeck\" for his only opera \"Die Soldaten\" (1965), and Aribert Reimann continued the tradition of expressionism with his Shakespearean \"Lear\" (1978). Perhaps the most versatile and internationally famous post-war German opera composer is Hans Werner Henze, who has produced a series of works which mix Bergian influences with those of Italian composers such as Verdi. Examples of his operas are \"Boulevard Solitude\", \"The Bassarids\" (to a libretto by W. H. Auden) and \"Das verratene Meer\". Karlheinz Stockhausen set off in an even more avant-garde direction with his enormous operatic cycle based on the seven days of the week, \"Licht\" (1977–2003). Giselher Klebe created an extensive body of work in the based on literary works. Other leading composers still producing operas today include Wolfgang Rihm and Olga Neuwirth.\n", "German Classical is one of the most performed in the world; German composers include some of the most accomplished and popular in history, among them Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann and Richard Wagner. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (also recognized as Austrian) was among the composers who created the field of German opera. One of the most famous film score composers is Hans Zimmer.\n", "Therefore, the best that can be understood about German Music during the war is the official Nazi government policy, the level of enforcement, and some notion of the diversity of other music listened to, but as the losers in the war German Music and Nazi songs from World War II has not been assigned the high heroic status of American and British popular music. As the music itself goes, however, it is considered by many as being above the level of the latter, which is also true of Fascist Italian music of the time.\n", "German classical music includes works by some of the world's most well-known composers. Dieterich Buxtehude composed oratorios for organ, which influenced the later work of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel; these men were influential composers of the Baroque period. During his tenure as violinist and teacher at the Salzburg cathedral, Augsburg-born composer Leopold Mozart mentored one of the most noted musicians of all time: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Ludwig van Beethoven was a crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras. Carl Maria von Weber and Felix Mendelssohn were important in the early Romantic period. Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms composed in the Romantic idiom. Richard Wagner was known for his operas. Richard Strauss was a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hans Zimmer are important composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries.\n", "Germans have played a leading role in the development of classical music. Many of the best classical musicians such as Bach, Händel, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, or Schoenberg (a lineage labeled the \"German Stem\" by Igor Stravinsky) were German. At the beginning of the 15th century, German classical music was revolutionized by Oswald von Wolkenstein, who travelled across Europe learning about classical traditions, spending time in countries like France and Italy. He brought back some techniques and styles to his homeland, and within a hundred years, Germany had begun producing composers renowned across the continent. Among the first of these composers was the organist Conrad Paumann. The largest summer festival for classical music in Germany is the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival.\n", "In the field of music, Germany claims some of the most renowned classical composers of the world, including Bach and Beethoven, who marked the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music. Also, Germans developed many Lutheran chorales and hymns.\n", "In West Germany in the second half of the 20th century, German and Austrian music was largely dominated by the avant-garde. In the 60s and 70s, the Darmstadt New Music Summer School was a major center of European modernism; German composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hans Werner Henze and non-German ones such as Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio all studied there. In contrast, composers in East Germany were advised to avoid the avant-garde and to compose music in keeping with the tenets of Socialist Realism. Music written in this style was supposed to advance party politics as well as be more accessible to all. Hanns Eisler and Ernst Hermann Meyer were among the most famous of the first generation of GDR composers.\n" ]
how did calling shotgun for a vehicle's front passenger seat begin? where did it come from?
The term calling "Shotgun" came from when stage coaches would transport money from bank to bank like in the old west movies. The person in the passenger seat would be holding a shotgun for defense against robbers.
[ "The expression \"riding shotgun\" is derived from \"shotgun messenger\", a colloquial term for \"express messenger\", when stagecoach travel was popular during the American Wild West and the Colonial period in Australia. The person rode alongside the driver. The first known use of the phrase \"riding shotgun\" was in the 1905 novel \"The Sunset Trail\" by Alfred Henry Lewis. \n", "It is because of this gun and its usage that the term \"Riding shotgun\" came to be. Typically, a cut-down shotgun would be carried by the messenger sitting next to the stagecoach driver, ready to use the gun to ward off bandits. Today, in American and Canadian English, the term \"Riding shotgun\" refers to the person sitting in the front passenger seat of an automobile.\n", "Like \"gunslinger\", the actual term \"riding shotgun\" first appeared in fiction about the Old West, dating back as far as the 1905 book \"The Sunset Trail\", by Alfred Henry Lewis. See also \"calling shotgun\" which dates from use in autos to about 1954, at a time it was being used in the popular TV series \"Gunsmoke\".\n", "Since the 1960s, the term has evolved, describing cars combining elements of both station wagon and coupé body styles, both with or without reference to the historical usage for shooting parties. During the 1960s and early 1970s, several high end European manufacturers produced two-door shooting brake versions of their sports cars.\n", "Riding shotgun was used to describe the guard who rode alongside a stagecoach driver, ready to use his shotgun to ward off bandits or hostile Native Americans. In modern use, it refers to the practice of sitting alongside the driver in a moving vehicle. The phrase has been used to mean giving actual or figurative support or aid to someone in a situation. The coining of this phrase dates to 1905 at latest.\n", "The term \"shotgun house,\" is often said to come from the saying that one could fire a shotgun through the front door and the pellets would fly cleanly through the house and out the back door. However, the name's origin may actually reflect an African architectural heritage, perhaps being a corruption of a term such as \"to-gun\", which means \"place of assembly\" in the Southern Dohomey Fon area.\n", "\"Kübelwagen\" is a contraction of \"Kübelsitzwagen\", meaning 'bucket-seat car' because all German light military vehicles that had no doors were fitted with bucket seats to prevent passengers from falling out. This body style had first been developed by in 1923. The first Porsche Type 62 test vehicles had no doors and were therefore fitted with bucket seats as \"Kübelsitzwagen\", that was later shortened to \"Kübelwagen\". Mercedes, Opel and Tatra also built \"Kübelsitzwagen\".\n" ]
how can my computer distinguish between my wifi and my neighbors wifi if they are both running on 2.4 ghz?
It isn't just your router! every Wifi device is listening and broadcasting to everything! It is really chaotic at the signal level. There are several tricks wifi routers use to get around this 1 collision avoidance - the devices actively try to avoid disturbing each other, and N routers (and high end N NICS) actively try to find better paths 2 Channel switching - this is normally manual, but the further your channel is from your neighbors, the better. once you are 5 stations away, you are totally clear of their frequency. Because ther are only 11 channels, you can only have 3 routers be completely clear of each other. 3 Frequency switching - N devices are dual band and can connect at 2.4 or 5ghz. In an automated setup (normally requering matching branded hardware) they may have routines for jumping up to 5ghz automagicaly when things get to crowded. 5ghz has other advantages as well, there is a lot more space because of the higher frequency, so more devices can be there. Plus, fewer devices are already there! most wifi devices and machines like microwaves cloud up the 2.4 band, but don't block the 5. So if you can, set everything to be 5. 4 tagging data (SSID and IP info) and simply sifting through it all- most of what is broadcast isn't going to be a problem for a modern router to simply hear and discard. EVERY wifi device is doing this. It isn't just your and your neighbor's router, all of the PCs are sharing the frequency space too. So a modern router is actually designed to listen to several devices every moment, a good N router can do over 20 (roughly 3-5 per antenna.) However, to give you high speed bandwidth (streaming) it has to focus at least one antenna for that computer, the antenna rapidly and simutainusly litsens and broadcasts. If you have a 4 antenna router, and 2 people watching HDmovies and one gaming, your router will have a harder time dealing with anamolous data and frequency disturbances, it also wont be able to cater to new people, this is when you see your bars suddenly drop and come back (assuming no software problems.) The router has to drop you to check signal quality, or maybe a computer tried to register into the network, during which it had to drop the quality of your frequency for a few seconds to handshake that (it probably also took your friend longer to login to the router, simply because it is not able to pay as much attention to general broadcast while prioritizing registered user data.) But if an N router has a mostly free antenna, it can use that to do a lot of it's work automagicaly. The simplist way to avoid those problems is to set a max number of wifi users that can login at any given time, and maybe even bandwidth quotas (cap the bandwidth on your mom's internet box.) But at the very least, don't have more than 1.5 people per antenna (on an N router) if gaming, or 4 per if general office use. If there are lots of devices (routers and pcs) near you, then you may want to use your router as if you have 1 less antenna, this will guarantee quality. For lower end/base routers you should do this anyway, because, even if they are N routers, they generally have at least one antenna that is not worth it (fixed/omni direction with poor or no signal shaping routines/abilities) but normally 2 or more are just crap. More expensive routers use smarter software, faster processors and more advanced antennas so they can rapidly handle all the traffic and collisions while still offering you a quality connection. More expensive NICS do similarly, and can even start having advanced antennas like mechanics and high end beam shaping. In all cases for N, they also figure out what works, and hold to a routine till it doesn't. So, keeping your router and computer in the same place is a good thing. They basically figure out that if they operate together in a certain way, a lot of the noise is gone/managable, and make a list of the best patterns between them. When you move any devices in your home (computer and ones that simply disrupt the frequency) they have to readjust. That said, I think modern routers have that adjustment period below 15minutes for most situations. Again, high quality hardware improves their smarts and capabilities in this. It is a required capability of N routers, and N NICS are designed to provide important signaling information to assist. High end NICS have active shaping capabilities as well. Oh, ths is also a high power process (processor and signalling,) so moving your labtop around while on wifi will increase battery usage.
[ "One of the most common ways of creating a home network is by using wireless radio signal technology; the 802.11 network as certified by the IEEE. Most wireless-capable residential devices operate at a frequency of 2.4 GHz under 802.11b and 802.11g or 5 GHz under 802.11a. Some home networking devices operate in both radio-band signals and fall within the 802.11n or 802.11ac standards. Wi-Fi is a marketing and compliance certification for IEEE 802.11 technologies. The Wi-Fi Alliance has tested compliant products, and certifies them for interoperability.\n", "Some devices with dual-band wireless network connectivity do not allow the user to select the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz band (or even a particular radio or SSID) when using Wi-Fi Protected Setup, unless the wireless access point has separate WPS button for each band or radio; however, a number of later wireless routers with multiple frequency bands and/or radios allow the establishment of a WPS session for a specific band and/or radio for connection with clients which cannot have the SSID or band (e.g., 2.4/5 GHz) explicitly selected by the user on the client for connection with WPS (e.g. pushing the 5 GHz, where supported, WPS button on the wireless router will force a client device to connect via WPS on only the 5 GHz band after a WPS session has been established by the client device which cannot explicitly allow the selection of wireless network and/or band for the WPS connection method).\n", "On phones with built-in Wi-Fi (tested on Nokia E51, E63, E66, E71, N78, N79, N81, N82 and N95 8GB), the Nokia application does not allow a Wi-Fi access point to be used for the data connection, only GPRS access points are allowed, allowing the possibility of revenue sharing between Nokia, the Radio stations and GPRS network operators.\n", "Wi-Fi Array is the name Xirrus uses for a wireless device that allows up to 1,024 wireless users to connect to a wireless network. A single Wi-Fi Array replaces a wireless LAN controller and several wireless access points. \n", "In 2009 802.11n was added to 802.11. It operates in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands at a maximum data transfer rate of 600 Mbit/s. Most newer routers are able to utilise both wireless bands, known as dualband. This allows data communications to avoid the crowded 2.4 GHz band, which is also shared with Bluetooth devices and microwave ovens. The 5 GHz band is also wider than the 2.4 GHz band, with more channels, which permits a greater number of devices to share the space. Not all channels are available in all regions.\n", "In revised \"slim\" models of the Xbox 360, 802.11n connectivity is integrated into the console. However, the integrated adapter is only able to connect to 2.4 GHz networks, so the first-party adapter or a third party bridge is still required to connect to 5 GHz networks.\n", "Wi-Fi also allows communications directly from one computer to another without an access point intermediary. This is called \"ad hoc\" Wi-Fi transmission. This wireless ad hoc network mode has proven popular with multiplayer handheld game consoles, such as the Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, digital cameras, and other consumer electronics devices. Some devices can also share their Internet connection using ad hoc, becoming hotspots or \"virtual routers\".\n" ]
Can humans be predisposed to enjoying warmer or cooler environments?
I've coupled several articles to get this conclusion, and therefore it could be a simplified conclusion: A person with two short (homozygotes) alleles of the upstream regulating region of the serotoninreceptor encoding gene (5-HTT) are likely to be more sensitive to all kind of stimuli, eg. cold temperatures. However, this genotype does also lead to other fenotypic traits such as anxiety-related personality traits.
[ "Humans inhabit hot climates, both dry and humid, and have done so for thousands of years. Selective use of clothing and technological inventions such as air conditioning allows humans to thrive in hot climates.\n", "As in other mammals, thermoregulation in humans is an important aspect of homeostasis. In thermoregulation, body heat is generated mostly in the deep organs, especially the liver, brain, and heart, and in contraction of skeletal muscles. Humans have been able to adapt to a great diversity of climates, including hot humid and hot arid. High temperatures pose serious stress for the human body, placing it in great danger of injury or even death. For humans, adaptation to varying climatic conditions includes both physiological mechanisms resulting from evolution and behavioural mechanisms resulting from conscious cultural adaptations.\n", "Humans are sensitive to humid air because the human body uses evaporative cooling as the primary mechanism to regulate temperature. Under humid conditions, the \"rate\" at which perspiration evaporates on the skin is lower than it would be under arid conditions. Because humans perceive the rate of heat transfer from the body rather than temperature itself, we feel warmer when the relative humidity is high than when it is low.\n", "In general, humans appear physiologically well adapted to hot dry conditions. However, effective thermoregulation is reduced in hot, humid environments such as the Red Sea and Persian Gulf (where moderately hot summer temperatures are accompanied by unusually high vapor pressures), tropical environments, and deep mines where the atmosphere can be water-saturated. In hot-humid conditions, clothing can impede efficient evaporation. In such environments, it helps to wear light clothing such as cotton, that is pervious to sweat but impervious to radiant heat from the sun. This minimizes the gaining of radiant heat, while allowing as much evaporation to occur as the environment will allow. Clothing such as plastic fabrics that are impermeable to sweat and thus do not facilitate heat loss through evaporation can actually contribute to heat stress.\n", "As in other mammals, thermoregulation is an important aspect of human homeostasis. Most body heat is generated in the deep organs, especially the liver, brain, and heart, and in contraction of skeletal muscles. Humans have been able to adapt to a great diversity of climates, including hot humid and hot arid. High temperatures pose serious stresses for the human body, placing it in great danger of injury or even death. For example, one of the most common reactions to hot temperatures is heat exhaustion, which is an illness that could happen if one is exposed to high temperatures, resulting in some symptoms such as dizziness, fainting, or a rapid heartbeat. For humans, adaptation to varying climatic conditions includes both physiological mechanisms resulting from evolution and behavioural mechanisms resulting from conscious cultural adaptations. The physiological control of the body’s core temperature takes place primarily through the hypothalamus, which assumes the role as the body’s “thermostat.” This organ possesses control mechanisms as well as key temperature sensors, which are connected to nerve cells called thermoreceptors. Thermoreceptors come in two subcategories; ones that respond to cold temperatures and ones that respond to warm temperatures. Scattered throughout the body in both peripheral and central nervous systems, these nerve cells are sensitive to changes in temperature and are able to provide useful information to the hypothalamus through the process of negative feedback, thus maintaining a constant core temperature.\n", "Cold and heat adaptations in humans are a part of the broad adaptability of \"Homo sapiens\". Adaptations in humans can be physiological, genetic, or cultural, which allow people to live in a wide variety of climates. There has been a great deal of research done on developmental adjustment, acclimatization, and cultural practices, but less research on genetic adaptations to cold and heat temperatures.\n", "Although homeothermy lends advantages such as increased activity levels, small mammals and birds maintaining an internal body temperature spend up to 100 times more energy in low ambient temperatures compared to ectotherms. To cope with this challenge, these animals maintain a much lower body temperature, staying just over ambient temperature rather than at normal operating temperature. This reduction in body temperature and metabolic rate allows the prolonged survival of animals capable of entering torpid states.\n" ]
Under what conditions does matter emit light?
As far as I'm aware, in order for light (or other electromagnetic radiation) to come into being, an electrostatically charged particle needs to either *a) accelerate*, or *b) transition between states with different energies*. I'm not very clear on how big the overlap between *a)* and *b)* is, but for a) I'm thinking of an unbound electron/proton/ion/etc. slowing down or turning in 'free space', while for b) I'm thinking of an electron bound to an atom moving from one atomic orbital to another with a lower energy. All of the types of emission listed in the comments so far seem to boil down to these two situations: black-body radiation is just b) averaged over a bunch of atoms with electrons in different orbitals; bioluminescence/phosorescence/flourescence/stimulated emission/FRET all boil down to b), too; Bremhsstrahlung and Cherenkov and cyclotron radition fall under a). In the case of b), what color is emitted depends on the difference in energies of the orbitals that the electron jumps between. In lasers and neon signs there are usually fairly few possible 'jumps', leading to very 'clean', identifiable colors. In blackbody-like emitters such as incandescent lightbulbs, there are lots possible jumps, leading to a mixing of lots of colors -- resulting in what we perceive as white. Heating various substances changes what jumps are possible/more likely, changing the mixture of colors that gets emitted. Interestingly, you can change the distribution of colors emitted by a heated lump of matter not only by changing its temperature or the atoms that make it up, but also by changing its surroundings -- for example, putting it between a pair of mirrors. Fake edit: I guess there's also *c) emission of radiation due to particle-antiparticle annihilation*, but as I know even less about that than the other two, I won't delve into it. And naturally, if I'm wrong about any of this, feel free to correct me.
[ "At the end of the 19th century, light was thought to consist of waves of electromagnetic fields which propagated according to Maxwell's equations, while matter was thought to consist of localized particles (See History of wave and particle duality). In 1900, this division was exposed to doubt, when, investigating the theory of black-body radiation, Max Planck proposed that light is emitted in discrete quanta of energy. It was thoroughly challenged in 1905. Extending Planck's investigation in several ways, including its connection with the photoelectric effect, Albert Einstein proposed that light is also propagated and absorbed in quanta. Light quanta are now called photons. These quanta would have an energy given by the Planck–Einstein relation:\n", "These effects also occur when a light wave travels through a medium with a varying refractive index, or when a sound wave travels through a medium with varying acoustic impedance – all waves diffract, including gravitational waves, water waves, and other electromagnetic waves such as X-rays and radio waves. Furthermore, quantum mechanics also demonstrates that matter possesses wave-like properties, and hence, undergoes diffraction (which is measurable at subatomic to molecular levels).\n", "In classical electrodynamics, light is considered as an electromagnetic wave, which is described by Maxwell's equations. Light waves incident on a material induce small oscillations of polarisation in the individual atoms (or oscillation of electrons, in metals), causing each particle to radiate a small secondary wave in all directions, like a dipole antenna. All these waves add up to give specular reflection and refraction, according to the Huygens–Fresnel principle.\n", "Since light is an oscillation it is not affected by traveling through static electric or magnetic fields in a linear medium such as a vacuum. However, in nonlinear media, such as some crystals, interactions can occur between light and static electric and magnetic fields — these interactions include the Faraday effect and the Kerr effect.\n", "Light propagating in a vacuum has its energy and momentum quantized according to an integer number of particles known as photons. Quantum optics studies the nature and effects of light as quantized photons. The first major development leading to that understanding was the correct modeling of the blackbody radiation spectrum by Max Planck in 1899 under the hypothesis of light being emitted in discrete units of energy. The photoelectric effect was further evidence of this quantization as explained by Einstein in a 1905 paper, a discovery for which he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. Niels Bohr showed that the hypothesis of optical radiation being quantized corresponded to his theory of the quantized energy levels of atoms, and the spectrum of discharge emission from hydrogen in particular. The understanding of the interaction between light and matter following these developments was crucial for the development of quantum mechanics as a whole. However, the subfields of quantum mechanics dealing with matter-light interaction were principally regarded as research into matter rather than into light; hence one rather spoke of atom physics and quantum electronics in 1960. Laser science—i.e., research into principles, design and application of these devices—became an important field, and the quantum mechanics underlying the laser's principles was studied now with more emphasis on the properties of light, and the name \"quantum optics\" became customary.\n", "Conversely all normal matter absorbs electromagnetic radiation to some degree. An object that absorbs all radiation falling on it, at all wavelengths, is called a black body. When a black body is at a uniform temperature, its emission has a characteristic frequency distribution that depends on the temperature. Its emission is called black-body radiation.\n", "Light behaves in some aspects like particles and in other aspects like waves. Matter—the \"stuff\" of the universe consisting of particles such as electrons and atoms—exhibits wavelike behavior too. Some light sources, such as neon lights, give off only certain frequencies of light. Quantum mechanics shows that light, along with all other forms of electromagnetic radiation, comes in discrete units, called photons, and predicts its energies, colors, and spectral intensities. A single photon is a \"quantum\", or smallest observable amount, of the electromagnetic field because a partial photon has never been observed. More broadly, quantum mechanics shows that many quantities, such as angular momentum, that appeared continuous in the zoomed-out view of classical mechanics, turn out to be (at the small, zoomed-in scale of quantum mechanics) \"quantized\". Angular momentum is required to take on one of a set of discrete allowable values, and since the gap between these values is so minute, the discontinuity is only apparent at the atomic level.\n" ]
How much was crusader governance and culture in the Kingdom of Jerusalem influenced by local customs?
This is what I study in the real world, and partially what my thesis is about, so there’s a lot to say about it! Hopefully this answer doesn’t go on and on forever…I think I've written most of this in previous answers, so here they are, all collected in one spot. The Frankish crusaders did try to import a European-style “feudal system” in some ways, but in other ways they also adopted local customs. The most important thing to remember is that Jerusalem was much more diverse than France. It was more like Spain or Sicily, so they didn’t create a completely unknown type of society, but it wasn’t anything like France or England. In Jerusalem there were Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Nestorian, Georgian, Ethiopian, Syriac, and Maronite Christians. There were also Jews and a small number of Samaritans. There were Sunni and Shi’i Muslims, offshoots of the Shi’i like the Druze and the Nizaris. Some Muslims and Christians were Arabs, some were Turks or Kurds. When the First Crusade arrived, there was a Sunni Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, but he was mostly just a figurehead, and political power was held by the Seljuk sultan. Several other Seljuk emirs and atabegs ruled the cities of Syria, somewhat independently. In 1099, Jerusalem was controlled by Shi’i Fatimid Egypt. The Sejuks had captured Jerusalem from them in 1070, but the Fatimids took it back in 1098 while the Seljuks were distracted by the crusade, then the Fatimids lost it again to the crusaders in 1099. We don’t really know how many people lived in the crusader states, but one estimate (by Josiah Russell) suggests that all of Syria had about 2.3 million people at the time of the crusades, living in eleven thousand villages. Three hundred and sixty thousand of them lived in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and two hundred and fifty thousand of those lived in rural villages. (Probably, anyway - we really have no idea about actual numbers.) According to the Persian traveller Naser-e Khosraw, who visited around 1050, the population of Jerusalem was about twenty thousand people, and the city was always full of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish pilgrims. Ibn al-Arabi, who visited Jerusalem only a few years before the crusaders arrived, mentions Sunnis living in Jerusalem, but says the cities along the coast and elsewhere in Fatimid Palestine were majority Shi’i. Christians and Muslims had lived together in Jerusalem until 1063, when they were segregated into separate quarters. The Christian community controlled the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and, outside the city, the town of Bethlehem. The Holy Sepulchre had been destroyed by the Fatimids in 1009, but was rebuilt starting in the 1050s (and then the crusaders later modified it into its current structure in the 1150s) Under the Muslims, Christians and Jews were dhimmis and paid a specific tax, the jizya. The cities were sometimes governed by a qadi (an Islamic judge) or a ra’is (Arabic for “head” or “mayor”), or more directly by a Seljuk or Fatimid governor. In rural areas there was also a semi-feudal system that the crusaders found familiar and easy to adopt: land was granted as an iqta' and revenue was collected by the muqta', who could rule the iqta' as an independent fief. So, that was the situation that the crusaders found when they arrived in 1099. They were now the rulers of this complex, ancient society, and they didn’t really disrupt it too much. They left the agricultural system in place, and the tax system - but now Muslims had to pay the jizya to the crusaders. There were never enough Franks to displace all of the Muslim or eastern Christian leaders, so in all of the towns and villages under crusader rule, there were still qadis or ra’is. The Franks found it easy to adjust to the iqta’ system, so they simply interpreted an iqta’ as a fief and a muqta’ as the fief holder, who owed them taxes and services, just like a fief back in France. They had their own system of fiefs on top of that - in Jerusalem, the king had four major vassals (the Prince of Galilee, the Count of Jaffa, the Lord of Sidon, and the Lord of Oultrejordain), and each of those fiefs had smaller fiefs of their own, and these were all governed by Frankish lords, but the villages and towns and farms within those fiefs were left to the Muslims or eastern Christians who already lived there. Or at least, this is what we're told by one of the crusader lords, John of Ibelin, who was the Count of Jaffa. According to him the County of Jaffa was the most important one. Of course he would say that! It also looks like John of Ibelin was painting an incredibly idealized picture of how “feudalism” was supposed to work in Jerusalem, and not necessarily how it actually worked in everyday practice. Historians in the past usually took him at his word, so Jerusalem has been described as having some sort of “perfect” form of feudalism, but we don’t think of it that way now. “Feudalism” itself is a pretty questionable concept these days (there is a lot of info in the AskHistorians FAQ about that so check that out as well). But in Jerusalem, like in France or England, theoretically the king and his vassals collected taxes from the people who lived in their territories, and those people also owed them military service or some other kind of service. John of Ibelin even lists how many knights each fief owed to the king (he himself owed 100 knights), but again, that is probably an idealized picture. The biggest difference in Jerusalem was that the fief holders didn’t always live in their fiefs. They tended to live in Jerusalem or Acre or one of the other major cities, and they collected income from their fiefs, but these were “money-fiefs” for them. There was a lot of agricultural land in Jerusalem, but it was also much smaller and much more urbanized than, say, the north of France were a lot of crusaders came from. The crusaders were “Franks” so we tend to think of them as “French”, but there were lots of people from all over Europe: the chronicler Fulcher of Chartres, who participated in the crusade and spent the rest of his life in Jerusalem, lists French, Flemings, Frisians, Swiss, Germans, English, Scots, Italians, and Bretons, among probably many others. Fulcher famously wrote that: > “…we who were Occidentals have now become Orientals. He who was a Roman or a Frank has in this land been made into a Galilean or a Palestinian. He who was of Rheims or Chartres has now become a citizen of Tyre or Antioch. We have already forgotten the places of our birth; already these are unknown to many of us or not mentioned any more. Some already possess homes or households by inheritance. Some have taken wives not only of their own people but Syrians or Armenians or even Saracens who have obtained the grace of baptism...People use the eloquence and idioms of diverse languages in conversing back and forth. Words of different languages have become common property known to each nationality, and mutual faith unites those who are ignorant of their descent...He who was born a stranger is now as one born here; he who was born an alien has become as a native.” (Fulcher of Chartres, pg. 271) They all tended to congregate together in the cities, or in rural areas where fellow (eastern) Christians already lived. They didn’t really interact with the Muslims, but that’s probably how it was before the crusaders arrived as well. Everybody kept to their own villages and didn’t mix, so the crusaders did the same. The Franks also established new villages, which is sometimes considered an early form of colonialism. The most famous of these new settlements is probably Bethgibelin. The settlers at Bethgibelin came from: > "...Auvergne, Gascony, Flanders, Lombardy and Catalonia. Generally, the largest number of European settlers...were from the central, southern and western parts of France, and a few also from northern Spain and regions in Italy. In Bethgibelin the other settlers were from nearby Latin villages..." (Nader, pg. 94) The towns and cities, especially along the coast (Acre, Beirut, Tyre, etc) were also full of Italian merchants and settlers. The Italians were kind of a state-within-a-state, since they governed their own neighbourhoods semi-independently of the Frankish lords. They were responsible for overseas trade with Europe - we know basically everything that was imported and exported from the crusader states by Italian and Muslim merchants - they sold dates, onions, sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, linen, shoes, and hundreds of other products! Sugar was especially important - the Italians also ran sugar plantations and this was probably the first time Europe had seen sugar from cane plants. (They also traded “marshmallow” and “liquorice”, but those were medicinal plants, and not, as I like to imagine, the modern candy.)
[ "The Crusader period in the history of Jerusalem decisively influenced the history of the whole Middle East, radiating beyond the region into the Islamic World and Christian Europe. The Crusades elevated the position of Jerusalem in the hierarchy of places holy to Islam, but it did not become a spiritual or political center of Islam. By the end of the Ayyubid period the name of Jerusalem was no longer connected to the idea of jihad, and the city's geopolitical status declined, becoming a secondary city, first for the Mamluk Empire, and later for the Ottomans.\n", "In the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, founded in 1099, at most 120,000 Franks ruled over 350,000 Muslims, Jews, and native Eastern Christians. Following the initial invasion and conquest, sometimes accompanied by massacres or expulsions of Jews and Muslims, a peaceable co-existence between followers of the three religions prevailed. The Crusader states inherited many slaves. To this may have been added some Muslims taken as captives of war. The Kingdom's largest city, Acre, had a large slave market; however, the vast majority of Muslims and Jews remained free. The laws of Jerusalem declared that former Muslim slaves, if genuine converts to Christianity, must be freed. \n", "In the early period of the Crusades, the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem emerged and for a time controlled Jerusalem. The Kingdom of Jerusalem and other smaller Crusader kingdoms over the next 90 years formed part of the complicated politics of the Levant, but did not threaten the Islamic Caliphate nor other powers in the region. After Shirkuh ended Fatimid rule in 1169, uniting it with Syria, the Crusader kingdoms were faced with a threat, and his nephew Saladin reconquered most of the area in 1187, leaving the Crusaders holding a few ports.\n", "After gaining control of Jerusalem the Crusaders created four Crusader states: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli. Initially, Muslims did very little about the Crusader states due to internal conflicts. In the Kingdom of Jerusalem at most 120,000 Franks (predominantly French-speaking Western Christians) ruled over 350,000 Muslims, Jews, and native Eastern Christians.\n", "The fragmentation of the Muslim east allowed for the initial success of the crusade, but as the 12th century progressed, the kingdom's Muslim neighbours were united by Nur ad-Din Zangi and Saladin, who vigorously began to recapture lost territory. Jerusalem itself fell to Saladin in 1187, and in the 13th century the kingdom was reduced to a few cities along the Mediterranean coast. In this period, the kingdom was ruled by the Lusignan dynasty of the Kingdom of Cyprus, another crusader state founded during the Third Crusade. Dynastic ties also strengthened with Tripoli, Antioch, and Armenia. The kingdom was soon increasingly dominated by the Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa, as well as the imperial ambitions of the Holy Roman Emperors. Emperor Frederick II (reigned 1220-1250) claimed the kingdom by marriage, but his presence sparked a civil war (1228-1243) among the kingdom's nobility. The kingdom became little more than a pawn in the politics and warfare of the Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties in Egypt, as well as the Khwarezmian and Mongol invaders. As a relatively minor kingdom, it received little financial or military support from Europe; despite numerous small expeditions, Europeans generally proved unwilling to undertake an expensive journey to the east for an apparently losing cause. The Mamluk sultans Baibars (reigned 1260-1277) and al-Ashraf Khalil (reigned 1290-1293) eventually reconquered all the remaining crusader strongholds, culminating in the destruction of Acre in 1291.\n", "The influence of Crusader architecture on the Islamic architecture of Palestine that followed was both direct and indirect. The direct influence can be seen in the cushion-shaped voussoirs and folded cross-vaults that were adapted for use in the Mamluk buildings of Jerusalem. Additionally, Arab castles constructed following the Crusades, like those of Aljun (Qa'lat Rabad) and Nimrud, adopted the irregular shapes introduced by the Crusaders. The influence could even be seen in religious architecture, such that the minaret of the Great Mosque in Ramla bears a striking resemblance to a Crusader tower. The indirect influence manifested in the development of the counter-Crusade which saw propaganda incorporated into the architecture, specifically via the use of monumental inscriptions and carved elements. For example, on the Lion Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, the lion of Baybars, the famous Mamluk leader and warrior, can be seen catching a mouse.\n", "The late 11th century the Crusaders invaded the region and shortly established the Crusader states, with Kingdom of Jerusalem nominally replacing the Islamic rule of Saffuriya. During this period, control changed over Saffuriya several times. The Crusaders built a fort and watchtower atop the hill, overlooking Saffuriya, and a church dedicated to Anne, the putative mother of the Virgin Mary. This became one of their local bases in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and they called the city Sephory (). In 1187, the field army of the Latin Kingdom marched from their well-watered camp at Sephory to be cut off and destroyed at the Battle of Hattin. After the defeat of the Crusaders by Saladin, the Ayyubid Sultan renamed the city Saffuriya.\n" ]
What would it take for scientists or doctors to be able to see what a human is currently thinking?
We don't know yet -- that's what makes it research! There are many people working on [brain-computer interfaces](_URL_1_) to try to develop algorithms to 'decode' brain activity. At this point, however, the outputs that can be measured are relatively crude, e.g., sending a signal of "up", "down", "left", or "right". [This](_URL_0_) is probably one of the most promising achievement to date. The idea is to match patterns of brain activation, measured by fMRI, to known responses to a series of videos. But this is still a *long* way from what you are suggesting, since: * The method required hours of calibration for each individual participant. * The researchers knew that the participants were watching one of a certain set of videos. The reconstructed images were then also based on those videos (i.e., which video did the brain activity most closely match), not just on the measured brain activity. * The participants were watching a video, not just imagining something. Probably the biggest challenge -- besides not fully understanding how the brain computes information -- is the fact that we don't yet have any imaging technologies with the spatial and temporal resolution necessary to reconstruct any detailed imagery or thoughts just from brain recordings. Supposing we could get a much more comprehensive read-out of brain activity, we could probably develop very detailed algorithms to pull out a lot of information using various signal analysis methods. Mind you, that in itself will be an enormous computational challenge, especially since any such algorithms will likely have to be trained for each individual before the outputs make any sense.
[ "Developments in technology and medicine mean that doctors and scientists can examine our brains in more ways and more detail than ever before, all without having to open up the body. In this issue, we explore how imaging research has changed the way we can look inside the human brain.\n", "It has become possible to study the living brain, and researchers can now watch the brain's decision-making process at work. A seminal experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, in which he asked each subject to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he measured the associated activity in their brain; in particular, the build-up of electrical signal called the readiness potential (after German Bereitschaftspotential, which was discovered by Kornhuber & Deecke in 1965.) Although it was well known that the readiness potential reliably preceded the physical action, Libet asked whether it could be recorded before the conscious intention to move. To determine when subjects felt the intention to move, he asked them to watch the second hand of a clock. After making a movement, the volunteer reported the time on the clock when they first felt the conscious intention to move; this became known as Libet's W time.\n", "He has released a book titled \"The Brain from Inside Out\" in 2019, which proposes a new framework of thinking of the brain as an explorer constantly controlling the body to test hypotheses and not as an information absorbing coding device.\n", "Motahhari also believed that there were great challenges between scientists for knowing the human as a phenomenon and at the same time we can rarely find two philosophers who have common ideas in their approach toward studying humanity.\n", "As it has become possible to study the living human brain, researchers have begun to watch decision-making processes at work. Studies have revealed unexpected things about human agency, moral responsibility, and consciousness in general. One of the pioneering studies in this domain was conducted by Benjamin Libet and colleagues in 1983 and has been the foundation of many studies in the years since. Other studies have attempted to predict participant actions before they make them, explore how we know we are responsible for voluntary movements as opposed to being moved by an external force, or how the role of consciousness in decision making may differ depending on the type of decision being made.\n", "Currently, modern science can image nearly all aspects of the brain as well as control a degree of the function of the brain. It can help control depression, over-activation, sleep deprivation, and many other conditions. Therapeutically it can help improve stroke victims' motor coordination, improve brain function, reduce epileptic episodes (see epilepsy), improve patients with degenerative motor diseases (Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, ALS), and can even help alleviate phantom pain perception. Advances in the field promise many new enhancements and rehabilitation methods for patients suffering from neurological problems. The neurotechnology revolution has given rise to the Decade of the Mind initiative, which was started in 2007. It also offers the possibility of revealing the mechanisms by which mind and consciousness emerge from the brain.\n", "A central tenet of cognitive science is that a complete understanding of the mind/brain cannot be attained by studying only a single level. An example would be the problem of remembering a phone number and recalling it later. One approach to understanding this process would be to study behavior through direct observation, or naturalistic observation. A person could be presented with a phone number and be asked to recall it after some delay of time; then the accuracy of the response could be measured. Another approach to measure cognitive ability would be to study the firings of individual neurons while a person is trying to remember the phone number. Neither of these experiments on its own would fully explain how the process of remembering a phone number works. Even if the technology to map out every neuron in the brain in real-time were available and it were known when each neuron fired it would still be impossible to know how a particular firing of neurons translates into the observed behavior. Thus an understanding of how these two levels relate to each other is imperative. \"The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience\" says “the new sciences of the mind need to enlarge their horizon to encompass, both, lived human experience and the possibilities for transformation inherent in human experience.” This can be provided by a functional level account of the process. Studying a particular phenomenon from multiple levels creates a better understanding of the processes that occur in the brain to give rise to a particular behavior.\n" ]
why is president obamas amnesty executive order being brought before the supreme court?
Reagan amnesty was a lawful compromise with Congress, tax cuts for so many immigrants. I am not familiar with any Bush amnesty so I decline to remark. Obama's executive amnesty otoh is a complete go around of Congress. Executive orders bear no legal weight, they are not law. They are directives to agencies of the executive branch. Once he leaves office, unless resigned by the next POTUS they become null and void. This is seen as an overstep by the executive branch into the legislative branch.
[ "Brown's dissenting opinion in \"Omar v. Harvey\" sets forth her judicial outlook on the constitutional balance of powers. The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld an injunction that forbade the U.S. military to transfer Omar, a suspected insurgent, out of U.S. custody while his \"habeas corpus\" suit was pending. Brown's dissent took the view that the majority was trespassing on the Executive Branch's authority:\n", "In their court papers on September 14, 2012 government lawyers said the plaintiffs had no basis to fear being locked up for their activities, and that the judge's order interfered with the president's powers at a time of war. Government attorneys argue that the executive branch is entitled to latitude when it comes to cases of national security and that the law is neither too broad nor overly vague. Judge Forrest's opinion is \"unprecedented, and the government has compelling arguments that it should be reversed,\" prosecutors said. They called the permanent injunction an \"extraordinary injunction of worldwide scope\". Lawyers for the Obama administration also argued that the United States will be irreparably harmed if it has to abide by a judge's ruling that it can no longer hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial in military custody. The government said that the injunction was an \"unprecedented\" trespass on power of the president and the legislature that by its very nature was doing irreparable harm. They also argued that the injunction places an undue burden on military commanders in a time of war while the plaintiffs had no reasonable fear of ever being detained \"in the foreseeable future\".\n", "Jefferson pardoned several of those imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts. Congressional Republicans repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, which removed nearly all of Adams's \"midnight judges\" from office. A subsequent appointment battle led to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in \"Marbury v. Madison\", asserting judicial review over executive branch actions. Jefferson appointed three Supreme Court justices: William Johnson (1804), Henry Brockholst Livingston (1807), and Thomas Todd (1807).\n", "In 2012, after the Obama Administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without \"habeas corpus\". He was later joined in the suit, \"Hedges v. Obama\", by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.\n", "President Barack Obama issued executive orders following his inauguration. He ordered the Guantanamo commissions to be suspended, while his own team could assess whether they should be preserved, modified, or closed. James Pohl, another Presiding Officer, took the position that the President didn't have the authority to order him to suspend the commissions. But Parrish complied.\n", "The Supreme Court gives advice to the President in cases concerning the right to grant a pardon, and to the Ministry of Justice in cases concerning extradition. It may provide legal opinions on Government Bills at different stages of the legislative process, and the President may consult it on Bills passed by Parliament before ratifying them. The Supreme Court may also approach the President on its own initiative, and propose enactment of a new Parliament Act or an amendment to an existing Act.\n", "In April 2012, during oral argument in a Fifth Circuit case involving the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA), Judge Smith ordered the Department of Justice to provide his panel of three judges with a three-page, single-spaced report explaining President Obama's views on judicial review. Judge Smith's order was prompted by Obama's recent press conference remarks on a case pending before the Supreme Court in which the Court was considering, among other things, whether to strike down the entire ACA as unconstitutional. Obama had said that if the Supreme Court overturned the ACA, it would be \"an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,\" and that a law that was passed by Congress on an economic issue had not been overturned by the court \"going back to the ’30s, pre New Deal,\" remarks that were criticized by many as historically and legally inaccurate. Though Judge Smith's response and order were criticized by some legal scholars and members of the press, Bush administration U.S. Attorney General and former judge Michael Mukasey defended Smith, stating that Obama's remarks had called judicial review \"into question,\" so that \"the court has, it seems to me, every obligation to sit up and take notice of Mr Obama.\" U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said that the Justice Department would respond \"appropriately\" to the judge's request and filed a short response, conceding that the federal courts have the power to strike down laws passed by Congress but citing Supreme Court precedent for the proposition that those laws are presumed constitutional and should only be overturned \"sparingly\".\n" ]
what incentivizes companies to raise wages?
When labor is short in supply, companies must increase wages to attract workers. You can see this in (pre-oil-bust) Alberta, Canada. You can get paid $15/hr to be a Barista in Fort McMurray, while a few hundred kilometers away, in Calgary or Edmonton, they only make $10. Willing to do unskilled or trained-on-site physical labor? You could easily make $30/hr to start, which is unheard of in the bigger cities in Canada. This would theoretically happen in a more widespread fashion if a nation nears full employment (less than 4% unemployment). As there are fewer and fewer potential candidates for each job, companies are willing to (or rather forced to) offer more money to try to lure workers.
[ "Advocates of unions claim that the higher wages that unions demand can be paid for through company profits. However, as Milton Friedman pointed out, profits are only very rarely high enough. 80% of national income is wages, and only about 6% is profits after tax, providing very little room for higher wages, even if profits could be totally used up. Moreover, profits are invested leading to an increase in capital: which raises the value of labor, increasing wages. If profits were totally removed, this source of wage increase would be removed.\n", "BULLET::::- Wages: In capitalism, workers are rewarded according to their contract with their employer. Power elites propagate the illusion that market forces mean wages converge to an equilibrium at which workers are paid for precisely the value of their services. In reality, workers are paid less than the value of their productivity — the difference forming profit for the employer. In this sense, all paid employment is exploitation and the worker is \"alienated\" from their work. Insofar as the profit-motive drives the market, it is impossible for workers to be paid for the full value of their labour, as all employers will act in the same manner.\n", "BULLET::::- Wages: In capitalism, workers are rewarded according to their contract with their employer. Power elites propagate the illusion that market forces mean wages converge to an equilibrium at which workers are paid for precisely the value of their services. In reality workers are paid less than the value of their productivity — the difference forming profit for the employer. In this sense all paid employment is exploitation and the worker is \"alienated\" from their work. Insofar as the profit-motive drives the market, it is impossible for workers to be paid for the full value of their labour, as all employers will act in the same manner.\n", "While labor advocates claim union busting as one possible cause of outsourcing, another claim is high corporate income tax rate in the U.S. relative to other OECD nations, and the practice of taxing revenues earned outside of U.S. jurisdiction, a very uncommon practice. Some counterclaim that the actual taxes paid by US corporations may be considerably lower than \"official\" rates due to the use of tax loopholes, tax havens, and \"gaming the system\".\n", "BULLET::::- Reduced wages and benefits: a 2014 report by In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization, argues that \"outsourcing public services sets off a downward spiral in which reduced worker wages and benefits can hurt the local economy and overall stability of middle and working class communities.\"\n", "It (see \"arguments in favor\" above) is sometimes argued by proponents of dividend taxation that employee wages are subject to the same double taxation, on the theory that corporate tax reduces the company's income available to pay wages, just as much as it reduces the amount available to pay dividends. However, employee wages are determined by employee contracts and the (employer would therefore have to wait for the expiration of these contracts) before wages can be lowered in response to a corporate tax bill increase. Shareholders, on the other hand, are entitled only to the residue of profits after meeting all other expenses, including corporate taxes. So if corporate taxes rise, the shareholder is entitled to less. Moreover, wages, unlike dividends, are deductible in the computation of corporate taxable profits, and so pass to employees with no amount deducted for tax at the corporate level. (These factors make it a priori more likely for corporations to pass on an increased corporate tax bill to the shareholders), still, in the long term market pressures could in theory lead to at least some of the additional cost being passed on to employees.\n", "BULLET::::- reducing wages — this can only go to a certain point, because if wages fall below the ability of workers to purchase their means of subsistence, they will be unable to reproduce themselves and the capitalists will not be able to find sufficient labor power.\n" ]
how does executive order qualify as constitutional and fall in line with the system of checks and balances?
Executive orders (at least in theory) don't grant the executive branch more powers, they work within the powers already granted to the President by the Constitution or by Congress. The courts can overrule an EO if it's overstepped its bounds, and Congress can pass a law overruling an EO if it's based in powers they delegated to the executive.
[ "The U.S. Supreme Court has held that all executive orders from the president of the United States must be supported by the Constitution, whether from a clause granting specific power, or by Congress delegating such to the executive branch. Specifically, such orders must be rooted in Article II of the US Constitution or enacted by the congress in statutes. Attempts to block such orders have been successful at times when such orders exceeded the authority of the president or could be better handled through legislation.\n", "Executive orders, which are instructions from the President to the executive branch of government, are decrees in the general sense in that they have the force of law, although they cannot override statute law or the Constitution and are subject to judicial review.\n", "In the United States, an executive order is a directive issued by the president of the United States that manages operations of the federal government and has the force of law. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources. Article Two of the United States Constitution gives the president broad executive and enforcement authority to use their discretion to determine how to enforce the law or to otherwise manage the resources and staff of the executive branch. The ability to make such orders is also based on express or implied Acts of Congress that delegate to the president some degree of discretionary power (delegated legislation).\n", "The United States Constitution does not have a provision that explicitly permits the use of executive orders. The term \"executive power\" in Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution is not entirely clear. The term is mentioned as direction to \"take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed\" and is part of Article II, Section 3. The consequence of failing to comply could possibly be removal from office.\n", "Like both legislative statutes and regulations promulgated by government agencies, executive orders are subject to judicial review and may be overturned if the orders lack support by statute or the Constitution. Major policy initiatives require approval by the legislative branch, but executive orders have significant influence over the internal affairs of government, deciding how and to what degree legislation will be enforced, dealing with emergencies, waging wars, and in general fine-tuning policy choices in the implementation of broad statutes. As the head of state and head of government of the United States, as well as commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, only the president of the United States can issue an executive order.\n", "Executive orders ( \"Kautusang tagapagpaganap\"), according to \"Book III, Title I, Chapter II, Section 2\" of Administrative Code of 1987, refer to the \"\"Acts of the President providing for rules of a general or permanent character in implementation or execution of constitutional or statutory powers.\"\" \"Executive Order No. 292\", which instituted the Administrative Code of 1987, is an example of an executive order.\n", "Others argue that Article II of the Constitution requires the President to execute the law, such law being what the lawmaker (e.g. Congress, in the case of statutory contempt) says it is (per Article I). The Executive Branch cannot either define the meaning of the law (such powers of legislation being reserved to Congress) or interpret the law (such powers being reserved to the several Federal Courts). They argue that any attempt by the Executive to define or interpret the law would be a violation of the separation of powers; the Executive may only—and is obligated to—execute the law consistent with its definition and interpretation; and if the law specifies a duty on one of the President's subordinates, then the President must \"take care\" to see that the duty specified in the law is executed. To avoid or neglect the performance of this duty would not be faithful execution of the law, and would thus be a violation of the separation of powers, which the Congress and the Courts have several options to remedy.\n" ]
why does the face of a golf club have lines on it?
The grooves are cut into the face of the club to increase the grip between the ball and the face. The puts a controlled spin on the ball, which makes the ball travel in a predictable path. If the ball does not have a controlled spin, it will move in a random path as spin is created and lost as the ball moves through the air - kind of how a knuckleball drifts randomly in baseball.
[ "According to the rules of golf, all club grips must have the same cross-section shape along their entire length (the diameter can vary), and with the exception of the putter, must have a circular cross-section. The putter may have any cross section that is symmetrical along the length of the grip through at least one plane; \"shield\" profiles with a flat top and curved underside are common. Grips may taper from thick to thin along their length (and virtually all do), but they are not allowed to have any \"waisting\" (a thinner section of the grip surrounded by thicker sections above and below it) or \"bulges\" (thicker sections of the grip surrounded by thinner sections). Minor variations in surface texture (such as the natural variation of a \"wrap\"-style grip) are not counted unless significant.\n", "The face of the club starts square to the target line. The club goes straight back and straight through along the same path like a pendulum. One strategy is to aim the ball 10% past the hole. Another is to look at the hole for long putts instead of the ball.\n", "The logo for the entire golf complex is a profile of a boy caddie carrying a golf bag with three golf clubs sticking up from it. It is based on the images carved into the black exterior window shutters on its clubhouse.\n", "Each head has one face which contacts the ball during the stroke. Putters may have two striking faces, as long as they are identical and symmetrical. Some chippers (a club similar in appearance to a double-sided putter but having a loft of 35–45 degrees) have two faces, but are not legal. Page 135 of the 2009 USGA rules of golf states:\n", "BULLET::::- Adhesive clubface surfaces attach to the face of irons or woods and create extra backspin to reduce roll or make the face of the club softer for more consistent shorter-distance shots. These are illegal in competitions.\n", "Golfers start with the non-dominant side of the body facing the target (for a right-hander, the target is to their left). At address, the player's body and the centerline of the club face are positioned parallel to the desired line of travel, with the feet either perpendicular to that line or slightly splayed outward. The feet are commonly shoulder-width apart for middle irons and putters, narrower for short irons and wider for long irons and woods. The ball is typically positioned more to the \"front\" of the player's stance (closer to the leading foot) for lower-lofted clubs, with the usual ball position for a drive being just behind the arch of the leading foot. The ball is placed further \"back\" in the player's stance (toward the trailing foot) as the loft of the club to be used increases. Most iron shots and putts are made with the ball roughly centered in the stance, while a few mid- and short-iron shots are made with the ball slightly behind the centre of the stance to ensure consistent contact between the ball and clubface, so the ball is on its way before the club continues down into the turf.\n", "Each hole has its own name, and some holes are named after famous courses or golf holes. The signature hole is the fifth hole (named Oak Tree), a 592-yard par five where players must avoid the oak tree that is used in the club's logo. Other notable holes include the eighth hole (named Harbor Town after Dye's Harbour Town Golf Links), par three with water down the entire left side. The tenth hole (named after the Prairie Dunes Country Club) is a long, tight par four. The 13th hole is named due to its size, after a postage stamp. Golfers liken landing a ball on the green to landing a ball on a space the size of a postage stamp.\n" ]
what's the difference when a medication commercial says a child under 6 can't take it, and kids 6-18 should not take it?
Pediatric medication is weight-based, so for many medications, the dosage strength would have to be severely diluted to be usable for young children to avoid overdose. This is why certain drugs are good for certain age groups of children - the weight difference between an 11 yr old and a 5 yr old, for example. Other factors come into play as well. The structure of medication (liquid vs tablet vs capsule vs a crushed tablet/split capsule can affect how fast a drug works or how easily it can be ingested down tiny throats.
[ "While they have been used by 10% of American children in any given week, they are not recommended in Canada or the United States in children 6 years or younger because of lack of evidence showing effect and concerns of harm. One version with codeine, guaifenesin, and pseudoephedrine was the 241st most prescribed medication in 2016 in the United States with more than 2 million prescriptions.\n", "Due to allegations that school officials coerced parents into administering medication such as Ritalin to their child, an amendment to the IDEA was added called prohibition on mandatory medication. Schools may not require parents to obtain a controlled substance as a condition of:\n", "Prior to the 1990s, only 20% of all drugs prescribed for children in the United States were tested for safety or efficacy in a pediatric population. This became a major concern of pediatricians as evidence accumulated that the physiological response of children to many drugs differed significantly from those drugs' effects on adults. Children react different to the drugs because of many reason, including size, weight, etc. There were several reasons that not many medical trials were done with children. For many drugs, children represented such a small proportion of the potential market, that drug manufacturers did not see such testing as cost-effective.\n", "Partially because of these issues many drugs that are used in children have never been formally studied in children. Many drugs work differently in children. Reye's syndrome, for example, is a potentially fatal complication of aspirin therapy in children that is very rare in adults.\n", "Children up to the age of five can find it difficult to distinguish between the main program and commercial breaks. This is particularly so when a toy range is linked to a television series they are watching. Many children do not understand the intentions of marketing and commercials until the age of eight. Media literacy programmes such as Media Smart are being used to help children understand and think critically about advertising.\n", "Issues regarding youth marketing and advertising and the effect they have on children are taken into consideration all across the world. The regulations to protect young child audiences against certain advertisements vary across different countries. In Greece, commercials for toys cannot be aired before 10 pm, and in Belgium, it is forbidden to broadcast commercials during children's shows. Putting a restriction on when certain advertisements are allowed to be shown, will result in less young consumers watching and absorbing the information shown. This will reduce the degree of influence the advertisement would have had on them.\n", "Manufacturers often display information about the intended age of the children who will play with the toy. In the U.S. this label is sometimes mandated by the CPSC, especially for toys which may present a choking hazard for children under three years of age. In most countries the intended age is either shown as a minimum age or as an age range. While one reason for this is the complexity of the toy and how much it will interest or challenge children of different ages, another is to highlight that it may be unsafe for younger children. While a toy might be \"suitable\" for children of one age, and thus this is the age \"recommended\" on the product, there may be safety hazards associated with use by a lower age group, necessitating a mandatory warning. Some manufacturers also explain the specific dangers next to the advised age (as is mandated by European and International toy safety standards EN71 and ISO 8124 respectively, but not US standard ASTM F963). Some accidents occur when babies play with toys intended for older children.\n" ]
why do my ears tickle/itch when listening with headphones?
I'm not a doctor, yet, but every time I have experienced something similar to this, and found that I have the option of "scratching" it as best I can or turning down the volume. I think that the itch is a response to inner ear damage, because every time I have turned down the volume the itch goes away on its own after a moment. This may not be the case for you, hopefully, but try reducing the volume next time instead of scratching and see if that works. Call it an experiment that may save your hearing later on.
[ "Supra-aural headphones or on-ear headphones have pads that press against the ears, rather than around them. They were commonly bundled with personal stereos during the 1980s. This type of headphone generally tends to be smaller and lighter than circumaural headphones, resulting in less attenuation of outside noise. Supra-aural headphones can also lead to discomfort due to the pressure on the ear as compared to circumaural headphones that sit around the ear. Comfort may vary due to the earcup material.\n", "Itching ears is a term used in the Bible to describe individuals who seek out messages and doctrines that condone their own lifestyle, as opposed to adhering to the teachings of the apostles. The term is found only once in the Bible, in 2 Timothy 4.\n", "The outer shells of in-ear headphones are made up of a variety of materials, such as plastic, aluminum, ceramic and other metal alloys. Because in-ear headphones engage the ear canal, they can be prone to sliding out, and they block out much environmental noise. Lack of sound from the environment can be a problem when sound is a necessary cue for safety or other reasons, as when walking, driving, or riding near or in vehicular traffic.\n", "According to several sites there have been early complaints of a high-pitched whine during audio playback through the headphones. With the first officially available update, released to testers on 9 December 2011, this issue was solved.\n", "Open-back headphones have the back of the earcups open. This leaks more sound out of the headphone and also lets more ambient sounds into the headphone, but gives a more natural or speaker-like sound, due to including sounds from the environment.\n", "The stereocilia (hair cells) of the inner ear can become subjected to bending from loud noises. Because they are not regeneratable in humans, any major damage or loss of these hair cells leads to permanent hearing impairment and other hearing-related diseases. Outer hair cells serve as acoustic amplifiers for stimulation of the inner hair cells. Outer hair cells respond primarily to low-intensity sounds.\n", "Spinose ear ticks are a constant source of annoyance and irritation for their definitive hosts. Their tendency to occur in large numbers can cause ulceration of the inner ear, high sensitivity of the ears, large amounts of blood loss, and even deafness. Heavily infested animals often shake and rub their heads, which can cause their outer ears to become excoriated and raw. Several cases of human infestation have been reported, and the tick has been incriminated in some instances of pathogen transmission.\n" ]
why do you say "a european" and not "an european"
You use an when the beginning *sounds* like a vowel regardless of if it is one. European starts with a "y" sound which in this case counts as a consonant. Edit: another example you would say "an hour" because the h is silent.
[ "The term \"Europe\" may be used in one of several different contexts by British and Irish people: either to refer to the whole of the European continent, to refer to only to Mainland Europe, sometimes called \"continental Europe\" or simply \"the Continent\" by some people in the archipelago. \"Europe\" may also be used in reference to the European Union (or, historically, to the European Economic Community). A comedic treatment of the different uses of this word appears in an episode of the BBC sitcom \"To the Manor Born\". When tradesmen are taking measurements in metric, and Audrey fforbes-Hamilton objects on the grounds that the house was built \"in feet and inches\", a tradesman says \"We're in Europe now\", referring to the European Economic Community. Audrey fforbes-Hamilton retorts \"Well you may be, but I'm staying here!\" - implying that to her, the word \"Europe\" referred only to mainland Europe, excluding Britain and Ireland.\n", "The concept of \"Europe\" referring to Western Europe or Germanic Europe arises in the 19th century, contrasting with the Russian Empire, as is evidenced in Russian philosopher Danilevsky's \"Russia and Europe\".\n", "BULLET::::- EU/Europe: Just as the terms 'America' and 'American' are frequently used to refer only to the United States and its people, the terms 'Europe' and 'European' are also frequently used to refer only to the European Union and its people, and this similarly sometimes causes resentment among some non-EU Europeans, although the enlargement of the EU means that there are now fewer non-EU Europeans left to take offence than there used to be when the EU was smaller.\n", "BULLET::::3. The feeling that a European Society should keep the doors open for other communities, and accept members from regions such as Eastern European and Oeral, United States but also Asian, African, Oceania and America's. Hence the Acronym was changed to 'International' instead of 'European' Society, as was decided in London on October 23, 2013.\n", "Debate on European unity is often vague as to the boundaries of 'Europe'. The word 'Europe' is widely used as a synonym for the European Union, although most of the European continent's geographical area is not in the EU, and some of the EU is outside of Europe (e.g. French Guiana). Most of Europe's people do, however, live in the EU.\n", "From the later 20th century, 'Europe' has come to be widely used as a synonym for the European Union even though there are millions of people living on the European continent in non-EU member states. The prefix \"pan\" implies that the identity applies throughout Europe, and especially in an EU context, and 'pan-European' is often contrasted with national identity.\n", "According to an article by \"The Guardian\" entitled \"European stereotypes: what do we think of each other and are we right? - interactive\", the Europe stereotype towards Britain is as \"drunken, semi-clad hooligans or else snobbish, stiff free marketers\", their view towards France is \"cowardly, arrogant, chauvinistic, erotomaniacs\", and they see Germany as \"uber-efficient, diligent [and] disciplined\". To Europe, Italy is \"tax-dodging, Berlusconi-style Latin lovers and mama's boys, incapable of bravery\", Poland is \"heavy-drinking ultracatholics with a whiff of antisemitism\", and Spain is \"macho men and fiery women prone to regular siestas and fiestas\". While some countries such as Germany proudly own their stereotype, others like Spain argue that theirs is a warped view based on experiences while on holiday instead of having actually lived there.\n" ]
why is pre-made food cheaper than the ingredients?
Especially when talking about fresh ingredients, it's because there's a lot of waste. Frozen pizza has a huge shelf life, so if a store buys 100 of them, they're going to sell 100 of them. If a store buys 100 tomatoes, they're probably going to sell 60-70, and the rest will end up in the trash because they're not pretty enough, bruised or rotten. That instantly makes the good tomatoes 50% more expensive. The same happens at the wholesale stage because a truck may have been sitting in customs for too long, they weren't stored properly at some point, or the wholesaler bought too much and couldn't resell them in time. So when you buy one tomato, you're also paying for the other two that the farmer, wholesaler or grocer had to throw away somewhere along the way.
[ "As often happens with gourmet recipes which become popular, the ingredients that were rare, expensive, seasonal, or difficult to prepare were gradually replaced with cheaper and more readily available foods.\n", "Bread, cheese, salted food and other prepared foods have been sold for thousands of years. Other kinds were developed with improvements in food technology. Types of convenience foods can vary by country and geographic region. Some convenience foods have received criticism due to concerns about nutritional content and how their packaging may increase solid waste in landfills. Various methods are used to reduce the unhealthy aspects of commercially produced food and fight childhood obesity.\n", "The recovered food is edible, but often not sellable. Products that are at or past their \"sell by\" dates or are imperfect in any way such as a bruised apple or day-old bread are donated by grocery stores, food vendors, restaurants, and farmers markets. Other times, the food is unblemished, but restaurants may have made or ordered too much or may have good pieces of food (such as scraps of fish or meat) that are byproducts of the process of preparing foods to cook and serve. Also, food manufacturers may donate products that marginally fail quality control, or that have become short-dated.\n", "\"Cookin' Cheap \"contrasted itself with contemporary cooking shows of its time by not attempting to hide the tedious preparation work that goes into cooking a recipe, and by using common ingredients purchased at local supermarkets in Roanoke, Virginia, where the show was produced. Johnson stated that the idea for the show was born from the frustration he suffered when trying to recreate the recipes of Julia Child, lacking ingredients that are unavailable in a small southern town.\n", "Packaged foods are manufactured outside the home for purchase. This can be as simple as a butcher preparing meat, or as complex as a modern international food industry. Early food processing techniques were limited by available food preservation, packaging, and transportation. This mainly involved salting, curing, curdling, drying, pickling, fermenting, and smoking. Food manufacturing arose during the industrial revolution in the 19th century. This development took advantage of new mass markets and emerging technology, such as milling, preservation, packaging and labeling, and transportation. It brought the advantages of pre-prepared time-saving food to the bulk of ordinary people who did not employ domestic servants.\n", "Expensive ingredients would replace the common ingredients, making the dishes much less humble. The third source of recipes was Escoffier himself, who invented many new dishes, such as pêche Melba and crêpes Suzette. Escoffier updated \"Le Guide Culinaire\" four times during his lifetime, noting in the foreword to the book's first edition that even with its 5,000 recipes, the book should not be considered an \"exhaustive\" text, and that even if it were at the point when he wrote the book, \"it would no longer be so tomorrow, because progress marches on each day.\"\n", "The canned food industry (\"tinning\" in the UK) has been used to preserve food for around a century. Before this it was common to buy food either salted, dried or fresh. The industries that produced these cans, or \"tins,\" were small and usually family owned, and only mildly able to compete with one another because the market was so large.\n" ]
how long do you have to stop drinking for your tolerance to alcohol to go down to that of a new drinker's?
I ACTUALLY KNOW THE ANSWER!!! It will never go back down to that tolerance. Tolerance is built by your brain being conditioned to react to alcohol. The time varies from person to person to get close, but that could be 6 months to 5 years. So let's say the first drink you ever had was in a bar, when you were wearing a blue shirt, standing with three friends, out of a shot glass, at 5pm. If every single day for 30 days you have a drink the same exact way, by the 30 day mark you will have built up a significant tolerance. That's because all of those factors will alert your body that you're about to start drinking and your body starts acting as if it is about to start breaking down alcohol before you even start drinking to keep your body at homeostasis. Now obviously that's now how you drink because it won't be exactly the same every time so that would be a very strong association, but your body does know when it's about to drink because we are creatures of habit and largely drink in the same way every time. So when you're at the bar or a club where you normally drink, your body will start working toward eliminating the substance. When you're even thinking about it it will happen. Now let's say you stop drinking. You still go to the bar and with your friends and all the usual places and times you used to drink pass by. Your body will then start going through extinction where the conditions that used to alert your body that you're about to drink will no longer result in drinking and therefore you don't need to start working toward eliminating the drink from your system. And tl;dr finally, even if you stop drinking for 50 years after building up a high tolerance, your body will later react in the same way as it did before and start working toward eliminating the substance even before you drink it because of something called spontaneous recovery. That's where a previously conditioned stimulus regains its conditioned response after extinction. **Edit: After those 50 years you do still have some tolerance but it will not be as strong as your tolerance the last time you drank.** This is because a body that has never drank has no idea how to handle alcohol, but a body that has drank obviously does and your body will begin to take the steps immediately instead of trying to figure out how to do it later. If you want to simulate this effect, go drinking in a way that you don't normally drink. Drink spontaneously and your body will be surprised into drinking and the reaction will be delayed. There's a lot of research on tolerance and heroin done with mice on the topic of classical conditioning. This explains why people overdose. When you do heroin at home 50 times, your body needs more and more every time because your body is breaking it down before it gets in your system. So when you do it the 51st time in a place you're not familiar with (a hotel room for example), you do that same large amount, but your body did not prepare for it to take in heroin so it doesn't get to fight off the drug before it gets injected.
[ "The Ministry of Health and Medical Education has developed a national programme to reduce alcohol consumption by 10% between 2015 and 2025, but the religious-driven zero-tolerance alcohol policy impedes the development of an effective harm-reduction approach.\n", "The consumption of alcohol itself is not considered a \"licensable activity\" under the new Licensing Act. Therefore, \"drinking-up time\" (DUT) has no legal meaning and has disappeared. For many years ten minutes (and later extended to twenty minutes) was the legal dispensation which allowed the consumption of alcohol to continue after the official closing time, which in recent times meant that customers could still drink what they had already bought until 23:20, subject to the licensee's discretion. After that time consumption had to also stop.\n", "In 2007, the drinking age debate in the United States was renewed when Choose Responsibility began promoting the lowering of the drinking age coupled with education and rules to persuade people to drink responsibly before they are of legal age. Before one is eligible to buy, possess and consume alcohol, an alcohol education class must be completed in its entirety and each teen must pass a final examination before licensing can occur. If a teen has any alcohol-related law violations before they turn 18, they will have a minimum of one year per violation before they are eligible to be licensed.\n", "BULLET::::- alcohol abuse is responsible for lost of 9.5 years of life for man and 1.7 years of life for woman. Average alcohol consumption is 10.7 litres per person/year, which is slightly higher than European average of 10,2 litres\n", "A UK report came to the result that the effects of low-to-moderate alcohol consumption on mortality are age-dependent. Low-to-moderate alcohol use increases the risk of death for individuals aged 16–34 (due to increased risk of cancers, accidents, liver disease, and other factors), but decreases the risk of death for individuals ages 55+ (due to decreased risk of ischemic heart disease).\n", "In July 2009, the University of Notre Dame released the findings of its review on the first 12 months of restrictions. Their report, \"Fitzroy Valley Alcohol Restriction Report: An evaluation of the effects of a restriction on take-away alcohol relating to measurable health and social outcomes, community perceptions and behaviours after a 12 month period,\" suggested that nearly all people surveyed on the impact of restrictions believed some type of limit on alcohol consumption was required, and none of them wanted their community to go back to what it was like before restrictions were introduced.\n", "BULLET::::- The minimum age to purchase beverages above 3.5% alcohol is 20 years of age. A main reason to have Systembolaget as a monopoly is to enforce this age limit. Several tests have shown that food shops often sell 3.5% beer to people below the minimum legal age of 18.\n" ]
in determining blood type, the o allele is recessive to both the a and b alleles. why is it then that o is the most common blood type and it's prevalence hasn't declined?
So this is an interesting question. If I recall correctly from school, type O is what the earliest people had (postulated). Over time mutations have occurred leading to difference surface antigens like the A and B antigen. So while they are recessive, there are still many people with this. If two people who are both O get together and have a baby every single one of them will be type O. But is someone who is AO mates with a BO, they have a chance of creating a O as well. So you can see how they won't be totally phased out.
[ "Some evolutionary biologists theorize that there are four main lineages of the ABO gene and that mutations creating type O have occurred at least three times in humans. From oldest to youngest, these lineages comprise the following alleles: \"A101/A201/O09\", \"B101\", \"O02\" and \"O01\". The continued presence of the O alleles is hypothesized to be the result of balancing selection. Both theories contradict the previously held theory that type O blood evolved first.\n", "The two common O alleles, O01 and O02, share their first 261 nucleotides with the group A allele A01. However, unlike the group A allele, a guanosine base is subsequently deleted. A premature stop codon results from this frame-shift mutation. This variant is found worldwide, and likely predates human migration from Africa. The O01 allele is considered to predate the O02 allele.\n", "Yamamoto \"et al.\" further note: \"Although the O blood type is common in all populations around the world, there is no evidence that the O gene represents the ancestral gene at the ABO locus. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that a defective gene would arise spontaneously and then evolve into normal genes.\n", "Hereditary angioedema (HAE) exists in three forms, all of which are caused by a genetic mutation inherited in an autosomal dominant form. They are distinguished by the underlying genetic abnormality. Types I and II are caused by mutations in the \"SERPING1\" gene, which result in either diminished levels of the C1-inhibitor protein (type I HAE) or dysfunctional forms of the same protein (type II HAE). Type III HAE has been linked with mutations in the \"F12\" gene, which encodes the coagulation protein factor XII. All forms of HAE lead to abnormal activation of the complement system, and all forms can cause swelling elsewhere in the body, such as the digestive tract. If HAE involves the larynx, it can cause life-threatening asphyxiation. The pathogenesis of this disorder is suspected to be related to unopposed activation of the contact pathway by the initial generation of kallikrein and/or clotting factor XII by damaged endothelial cells. The end product of this cascade, bradykinin, is produced in large amounts and is believed to be the predominant mediator leading to increased vascular permeability and vasodilation that induces typical angioedema \"attacks\".\n", "\"S\" is incomplete dominant (towards co-dominant) to \"s\". DNA studies have not yet confirmed the existence of all four alleles, with some research suggesting the existence of at least two alleles (\"S\" and \"s\") and other research suggesting the possible existence of a third allele (\"s\").\n", "Given that SLOS is an autosomal recessive disorder, mutations in \"DHCR7\" on both copies of chromosome 11 are necessary to have the disorder. More than 130 different types of mutations have been identified. Missense mutations (single nucleotide change resulting in a code for a different amino acid) are the most common, accounting for 87.6% of the SLOS spectrum. These typically reduce the function of the enzyme but may not inhibit it completely. Much depends on the nature of the mutation (i.e. which amino acid is replaced and where). Null mutations are much less common, these mutations produce either a completely dysfunctional enzyme, or no enzyme at all. Thus, missense mutations may be more common overall because they are less lethal than nonsense mutations; nonsense mutations may simply result in spontaneous abortion.\n", "With the development of DNA sequencing, it has been possible to identify a much larger number of alleles at the ABO locus, each of which can be categorized as A, B, or O in terms of the reaction to transfusion, but which can be distinguished by variations in the DNA sequence. There are six common alleles in white individuals of the ABO gene that produce one's blood type:\n" ]
The big bang theory is the accepted theory for the genesis of the universe. I've always accepted and (I thought) understood this as a scientific theory. How does this theory justify/explain the creation of something (spacetime, matter) out of essentially nothing?
No, that is not what Big Bang Theory is. It's a common misconception. Big Bang Theory is about the state of the very (very) early universe and how it evolved from that. It is *not* a theory about how or why the universe got here in the first place. I'm not saying that's not a valid question, I'm just saying that's not what this particular theory is about. There's no broadly accepted theory on how we got to that point.
[ "The Big Bang itself is a scientific theory and as such stands or falls by its agreement with observations. However, as a theory which addresses the nature of the universe since its earliest discernible existence, the Big Bang carries possible theological implications regarding the concept of creation out of nothing. Many atheist philosophers have argued against the idea of the Universe having a beginning - the Universe might simply have existed for all eternity, but with the emerging evidence of the Big Bang theory, many theologians and physicists have viewed it as implicating theism; a popular philosophical argument for the existence of God known as the Kalam cosmological argument rests in the concepts of the Big Bang. In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state Universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the steady state theory, who rejected the implication that the universe had a beginning.\n", "Since this discovery, the Big Bang theory has been considered to provide the best explanation of the origin of the universe. In most astrophysical publications, the Big Bang is implicitly accepted and is used as the basis of more complete theories.\n", "Since the 1980s, the big-bang theory has been the prevailing cosmological model for the universe. It was envisioned by a Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor Georges Lemaître in the 1930s. Lemaître suggested that the evident expansion of the universe, if projected back in time, meant that at some finite time in the past all the mass of the universe was concentrated into a single point, a \"primeval atom\" where and when the fabric of time and space came into existence. However, in the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist subscribed to a view that the universe is in an eternal steady state. After Lemaître proposed his theory, some scientists complained that its assumption that time had a beginning amounted to a reimportation of religious concepts into physics. When the expression \"Big Bang\" was coined by Fred Hoyle in 1949, he meant it to be slightly pejorative, but the term stuck and gained currency. Lemaître himself concluded that an initial \"creation-like\" event must have occurred. The Big-Bang is contrary to young-Earth creationism, sensu stricto. But it has been welcomed by other Christian creeds, and it is in line with the Roman Catholic concept of creation. Under the Anthropic principle, by which the properties of the universe is seemingly fine-tuned for our own existence, some Christians see evidence that a divine creator has purposefully designed the universe.\n", "\"The Big Bang as the origin of the universe:\" One of the common misconceptions about the Big Bang model is that it fully explains the origin of the universe. However, the Big Bang model does not describe how energy, time, and space was caused, but rather it describes the emergence of the present universe from an ultra dense and high-temperature initial state.\n", "The Big Bang explains the evolution of the universe from a density and temperature that is well-beyond humanity's capability to replicate, so extrapolations to most extreme conditions and earliest times are necessarily more speculative. Georges Lemaître called this initial state the \"\"primeval atom\"\" while George Gamow called the material \"\"ylem\"\". How the initial state of the universe originated is still an open question, but the Big Bang model does constrain some of its characteristics. For example, observations indicate the universe is consistent with being flat which implies a balance between gravitational potential energy and other forms requiring no additional energy to be created, while quantum fluctuations in the early universe can provide the circumstances for dense regions of matter (such as superclusters) to form. Ultimately, the Big Bang theory, built upon the equations of classical general relativity, indicates a singularity at the origin of cosmic time, and such an infinite energy density may be a physical impossibility. In any case, the physical theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics as currently realized are not applicable before the Planck Epoch, and correcting this will require the development of a correct treatment of quantum gravity Certain quantum gravity treatments, such as the Wheeler–DeWitt equation, imply that time itself could be an emergent property. As such, physics may conclude that time did not exist before the Big Bang so there might be no \"beginning\" or \"before\". \n", "English astronomer Fred Hoyle is credited with coining the term \"Big Bang\" during a 1949 BBC radio broadcast, saying: \"These theories were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past.\"\n", "The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution. Despite its success in explaining many observed features of the universe including galactic redshifts, the relative abundance of light elements such as hydrogen and helium, and the existence of a cosmic microwave background, there are several questions that remain unanswered. For example, the standard Big Bang model does not explain why the universe appears to be same in all directions, why it appears flat on very large distance scales, or why certain hypothesized particles such as magnetic monopoles are not observed in experiments.\n" ]
what does it mean when a cough “moves into your chest”? was it somewhere else before?
People generally say that in references to colds.A “cold” is a blanket term for any viral infection of the nose and throat. In the early stages of a cold, your body is fighting the cold directly and most of the symptoms are in your sinuses, nose, and throat. After a few days the virus is pretty much dead and the nose starts to feel better, but at that point so much mucus has drained down your throat that you start coughing to clear it out. So it feels like the cold has moved from your nose into your chest, when in reality the chest symptoms are your body cleaning up after the cold.
[ "A cough is a sudden, and often repetitively occurring, protective reflex which helps to clear the large breathing passages from fluids, irritants, foreign particles and microbes. The cough reflex consists of three phases: an inhalation, a forced exhalation against a closed glottis, and a violent release of air from the lungs following opening of the glottis, usually accompanied by a distinctive sound.\n", "A foreign body can sometimes be suspected, for example if the cough started suddenly when the patient was eating. Rarely, sutures left behind inside the airway branches can cause coughing. A cough can be triggered by dryness from mouth breathing or recurrent aspiration of food into the windpipe in people with swallowing difficulties.\n", "BULLET::::- Rales: Small clicking, bubbling, or rattling sounds in the lungs. They are heard when a person breathes in (inhales). They are believed to occur when air opens closed air spaces. Rales can be further described as moist, dry, fine, and coarse.\n", "When air enters the veins, it travels to the right side of the heart, and then to the lungs. This can cause the vessels of the lung to constrict, raising the pressure in the right side of the heart. If the pressure rises high enough in a patient who is one of the 20% to 30% of the population with a patent foramen ovale, the gas bubble can then travel to the left side of the heart, and on to the brain or coronary arteries. Such bubbles are responsible for the most serious of gas embolic symptoms.\n", "Inhalation begins with the contraction of the muscles attached to the rib cage; this causes an expansion in the chest cavity. Then takes place the onset of contraction of the diaphragm, which results in expansion of the intrapleural space and an increase in negative pressure according to Boyle's law. This negative pressure generates airflow because of the pressure difference between the atmosphere and alveolus. Air enters, inflating the lung through either the nose or the mouth into the pharynx (throat) and trachea before entering the alveoli.\n", "BULLET::::- Upper airway cough syndrome is the most common cause of chronic coughing. It is diagnosed when the secretion of excess mucus from the nose / sinus drains into the pharynx or the back of the throat causing an induced cough.\n", "Situated above the larynx, the epiglottis acts as a flap which closes off the trachea during the act of swallowing to direct food into the esophagus. If food or liquid does enter the trachea and contacts the vocal folds it causes a cough reflex to expel the matter in order to prevent pulmonary aspiration.\n" ]
Is there any evolutionary benefits other than sexual selection in having blue or green eyes instead of brown?
Like skin tone, lighter eye color is simply a reflection of lower pigmentation (less melanin). As with many genes, if those genes that influence eye color can mutate to less active forms without dicouraging the survival of a given organism, they may continue to mutate to less and less active forms. This means that if higher pigmentation isn't all that advantageous to some animal, lower pigmentation may result. There may be a selective factor at work, however: lighter skin tone was favored for north-dwelling human ancestors because it generates more vitamin D (which, closer to the equator, would have been supplied by the abundant sunlight). Because some of the genes that govern skin and eye pigmentation overlap, lighter eye color may have been coincident with lighter skin color.
[ "All three colours have evolutionary advantages in different ways. While yellow females have higher fitness due to their large clutch sizes, orange females enjoy high fitness due to their large body size and increase competitive advantages. Mixed females exhibit both of these advantages.\n", "While sexual selection generally favours red males, natural selection maintains variation by selecting for more energetically efficient yellow males. Both colour traits have an evolutionary advantage, which explains the maintenance of this polymorphism in nature.\n", "Haemophilia and red-green colour blindness are recessive, X-linked, pseudodominant genetic disorders, expressed mainly in human males because human females need to be homozygous (i.e., to have inherited the recessive allele from both parents) to show these traits.\n", "In chapter 4, he mentions that they all have common physical characteristics, blue eyes (\"truces et caerulei oculi\" = \"sky-coloured, azure, dark blue, dark green), reddish hair (\" rutilae comae\" = \"red, golden-red, reddish yellow\"), and large bodies, vigorous at the first onset but not tolerant of exhausting labour, tolerant of hunger and cold, but not of heat or thirst.\n", "Trichromacy may also be evolutionarily favorable in offspring health (and therefore increasing fitness) through mate choice. M and L cone pigments maximize sensitivities for discriminating blood oxygen saturation through skin reflectance. Therefore, the formation of trichromatic color vision in certain primate species may have been beneficial in modulating health of others, thus increasing the likelihood for trichromatic color vision to dominate a specie’s phenotypes as the fitness of offspring increases with parental health.\n", "Research on freshly emerged imagines of \"P. demoleus\" showed that they have an inborn or spontaneous preference while feeding for blue and purple colours, while the yellow, yellowish-green, green, and blue-green colours are completely neglected.\n", "This theory is centered around the idea that the benefit for possessing the different M and L cone pigments are so that during times of fruit shortages, an animal's ability to identify the younger and more reddish leaves, which contain higher amounts of protein, will lead to a higher rate of survival. This theory supports the evidence showing that trichromatic color vision originated in Africa, as figs and palms are scarce in this environment thus increasing the need for this color vision selection. However, this theory does not explain the selection for trichromacy polymorphisms seen in dichromatic species that are not from Africa.\n" ]
why do these videos of opening kinder eggs receive hundreds of millions of views.
Because kids love to watch them being open and seeing what surprises are in them, even if they aren't getting the toy.
[ "The Eggs is an Australian children's animated television program that first screened on the Nine Network in 2004. There are 52 episodes of 12 minutes duration. Two episodes are usually screened together in a half hour timeslot.\n", "Numerous easter eggs have been found in the digital files for \"Mouth Sounds\" and \"Mouth Silence\" that each relate to \"All Star\". For example, when the metadata of every track on the former is viewed, the creation date of all the files is May 4, 1999 which was the release date of \"All Star.\"\n", "To promote the series and the episode where Ash obtains an egg, \"Pokémon Black\" and \"White\" players were able to obtain an egg containing either an Axew, a Pansage or a Pidove exclusively at US Toys \"R\" Us stores between April 27, 2011 and May 31, 2011. Each one contained their moves like anime counterparts (Ash's Pidove, Cilan's Pansage and Iris' Axew). Players were only able to get one egg and which of the Pokémon the egg hatched into was random.\n", "Many of the shortlisted clips are available on the BBC Earth Youtube channel. The lyrebird clip has been viewed more than 3 million times since it was first made available. Web users in the UK can also find them, along with many other clips, in the David Attenborough's Favourite Moments collection on the BBC Wildlife Finder.\n", "Two More Eggs is a web series of animated shorts produced by The Brothers Chaps for Disney XD's YouTube channel and Disney XD. The Brothers Chaps previously produced the web series \"Homestar Runner\". \"Two More Eggs\" is considered to be Disney's first animated web series.\n", "The show was successful, but it was largely ignored by critics. It never received a video release, despite the official \"Pokémon\" site mentioning that one would be announced in the future. A cast recording CD of the show, however, had a limited release.\n", "Egg hatching minigame is where players buys an egg from the egg dispenser and publish videos with the theme that the egg likes to hatch it. To find out the egg's theme, players have to publish videos to find out. Afterwards, when the player clicks on the egg there should be a small icon indicating the egg's theme. \n" ]
what's the difference between embezzlement and theft?
Embezzlement is taking funds that you been entrusted with, and converting them to your own use. Theft is just taking property to which you are not entitled. So, Janice is a teller at a bank. She's required to keep a drawer full of cash, count it, dispense it to customers as needed, etc. That money has been entrusted to her, so she's given access to it. If she were to take $20 from that drawer for herself, that'd be embezzlement. If she were to go into the McDonald's across the street and take $20 from their till while someone wasn't watching, that'd be theft.
[ "It is important to make clear that embezzlement is not always a form of theft or an act of stealing, since those definitions specifically deal with taking something that does not belong to the perpetrators. Instead, embezzlement is, more generically, an act of deceitfully secreting assets by one or more persons that have been \"entrusted\" with such assets. The persons entrusted with such assets may or may not have an ownership stake in such assets.\n", "Embezzlement is the act of withholding assets for the purpose of conversion (theft) of such assets, by one or more persons to whom the assets were entrusted, either to be held or to be used for specific purposes. Embezzlement is a type of financial fraud. For example, a lawyer might embezzle funds from the trust accounts of their clients; a financial advisor might embezzle the funds of investors; and a husband or a wife might embezzle funds from a bank account jointly held with the spouse.\n", "Embezzlement is misappropriation when the property or funds involved have been lawfully entrusted to the embezzler. In circumstances where the funds are accessible to, but not entrusted to, the perpetrator, it is not embezzlement but can still be considered larceny, misappropriation, misapplication, or some other similar term.\n", "Embezzlement is the theft of entrusted funds. It is political when it involves public money taken by a public official for use by anyone not specified by the public. A common type of embezzlement is that of personal use of entrusted government resources; for example, when an official assigns public employees to renovate his own house.\n", "Embezzlement is the unlawful taking of property by someone who it was entrusted to. For example, if a named person trusts their friend enough to allow them to hold their wallet, and the friend goes home without returning the wallet with the intention of keeping the money, the friend would have committed embezzlement.\n", "BULLET::::- \"Embezzlement\" is the illegal taking or appropriation of money or property that has been entrusted to a person but is actually owned by another. In political terms this is called graft which is when a political office holder unlawfully uses public funds for personal purposes.\n", "Embezzlement usually is a premeditated crime, performed methodically, with precautions that conceal the criminal conversion of the property, which occurs without the knowledge or consent of the affected person. Often it involves the trusted individual embezzling only a small proportion of the total of the funds or resources they receive or control, in an attempt to minimize the risk of the detection of the misallocation of the funds or resources. When successful, embezzlements may continue for many years without detection. The victims often realize that the funds, savings, assets, or other resources, are missing and that they have been duped by the embezzler, only when a relatively large proportion of the funds are needed at one time; or the funds are called upon for another use; or when a major institutional reorganization (the closing or moving of a plant or business office, or a merger/acquisition of a firm) requires the complete and independent accounting of all real and liquid assets, prior to or concurrent with the reorganization.\n" ]
Would I measure the generated magnetic field of a charged particle, if I am moving alongside with it?
The fields produced by a point electric charge moving arbitrarily are given [here](_URL_0_). If you assume that the particle has no magnetic moments, these are the only fields it will produce. If you look at the magnetic field equation, it looks complicated, but you can see that the whole thing is zero if the speed of the particle is zero. So in an inertial frame in which the particle is at rest, the magnetic field that it produces is zero.
[ "A charged particle moving in a -field experiences a \"sideways\" force that is proportional to the strength of the magnetic field, the component of the velocity that is perpendicular to the magnetic field and the charge of the particle. This force is known as the \"Lorentz force\", and is given by\n", "Any charged particle in an electric field will feel a force proportional to the charge and field strength such that formula_1, where F is force, q is charge, and E is electric field strength. Similarly, any particle moving in a magnetic field will feel a force proportional to the velocity and charge of the particle. The force felt by any particle is then equal to formula_2, where F is force, q is the charge on the particle, v is the velocity of the particle, B is the strength of the magnetic field, and formula_3 is the cross product. In the case of a velocity selector, the magnetic field is always at 90 degrees to the velocity and the force is simplified to formula_4 in the direction described by the cross product.\n", "Often the magnetic field is defined by the force it exerts on a moving charged particle. Experiments in electrostatics show that a particle of charge in an electric field experiences a force . Other experiments show that a charged particle experiences a force proportional to its relative velocity to a current-carrying wire. The velocity dependent portion can be separated such that the force on the particle satisfies the \"Lorentz force law\",\n", "All moving charged particles produce magnetic fields. Moving point charges, such as electrons, produce complicated but well known magnetic fields that depend on the charge, velocity, and acceleration of the particles.\n", "A charged particle moving in the direction perpendicular to the magnetic field line is subject to the Lorentz force which is normal to the plane individuated by the velocity and the magnetic field. This force bends the path of the particle. In general, since particles also have a velocity component along the magnetic field line, the Lorentz force constrains them to bend and move along spirals around the field lines at the cyclotron frequency.\n", "The motions of low-energy charged particles in the Earth's magnetic field (or in any nearly-dipolar magnetic field) can be usefully described in terms of McIlwain's \"(B,L)\"  coordinates, the first of which, \"B\"  is just the magnitude (or length) of the magnetic field vector.\n", "Charged particles in a uniform electric field follow a parabolic trajectory, since the electric field term (of the Lorentz force which acts on the particle) is the product of the particle's charge and the magnitude of the electric field, (oriented in the direction of the electric field). In a uniform magnetic field however, charged particles follow a circular trajectory due to the cross product in the magnetic field term of the Lorentz force. (That is, the force from the magnetic field acts on the particle in a direction perpendicular to the particle's direction of motion. See: Lorentz force for more details.)\n" ]
What are the best books or online resources for acquiring a pre-Federalist Papers understanding of the debates of the United States Constitutional Convention?
The [Avalon Project](_URL_2_) at Yale is one place where you can find many of primary sources related to the topic you are interested in. In addition, [this website](_URL_0_) also provides numerous documents. Lastly, the [Liberty Fund](_URL_1_) also contains numerous sources that touch on the Revolutionary period. Each site contains a treasure trove of unedited transcribed documents that detail the lead up to the revolution, the formation of the Articles of Confederation, and extend beyond the Constitutional Convention. Hope this helps.
[ "BULLET::::- Story, Joseph (Mar 26, 2008) \"Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States Before the Adoption of the Constitution 4th Edition\" (2 volumes) (March 26, 2008) with Notes and Commentaries by Cooley, Thomas M. (Clark, New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange) ; .\n", "In September 2016, CSG held a simulated convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution in Williamsburg, Virginia. Of the simulation, Meckler said: \"People from all states gathered, proposed six amendments and ran a simulated convention. It has never been done before in American history. The point was proof of concept.\" Meckler said an Article V convention would have three focuses, including imposing financial restraints on the federal government, limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and imposing term limits on officials and members of Congress.\n", "The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation (popularly known as the Constitution Annotated or CONAN) is a publication encompassing the United States Constitution with analysis and interpretation by the Congressional Research Service along with in-text annotations of cases decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. The centennial edition of the Constitution Annotated was published in 2013 by the 112th Congress, containing more than 2,300 pages and referencing almost 6,000 cases.\n", "Padover and Jacob W Landynski co-authored \"The Living U.S. Constitution\", an examination of the forming of the United States Constitution, with character sketches of the delegates penned by their contemporaries. The book highlights the complete text of the Constitution and pertinent decisions of the United States Supreme Court affecting issues of constitutionality. Similar Padover works are \"The World of the Founding Fathers\" and \"Sources of Democracy: Voices of Freedom, Hope, and Justice\".\n", "BULLET::::- Pauline Maier (\"American Scripture\" on the Declaration and \"Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788\", winner of the 2011 George Washington Book Prize and the Fraunces Tavern Book Prize);\n", "This book is currently used in both college and Advanced Placement high school courses across the United States. The book is roughly 780 pages and includes the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Bill of Rights, outcomes of various elections throughout American history, and famous court cases. It is accompanied by a companion website that features practice test questions and detailed explanations on each chapter.\n", "McLaughlin's magnum opus \"A Constitutional History of the United States\" (1935) won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for History. Written for the average reader, the purpose is \"to present briefly and clearly the constitutional history of the United States during nearly two centuries\", not giving a history of constitutional law as announced by the courts, but of the development of constitutional principles in relation to political and social conditions and forces outside of the courtroom. \"The most significant and conclusive constitutional decision was not rendered by a court of law but delivered at the famous meeting of General Grant and General Lee at Appomattox.\"\n" ]
why are france and spain 1 hour ahead of the uk when part of those countries are directly below us?
Because Nazis. They used to be in the same time zone as the UK. But then when the Nazis took over France in WW2, they switched them to the same time zone as Germany. Spain wasn't directly involved in WW2, but were on fairly good terms with the Nazis so also switched to have a matching time zone to aid cooperation. For both it turned out to be more convenient after the war was over so they stayed that way. Now they all work quite closely together, and people and goods cross the borders all the time, so it's easier to be in a single time zone.
[ "Tourist links between the two countries are significant, with over 400,000 Australians visiting France each year. Almost 98,000 visitor visas were granted to French nationals to visit Australia in 2005–06, making France the 10th largest source of visitor visa grants, and 1,867 student visas were granted. A working holiday-maker agreement signed between the two countries in November 2003 makes it easier for young French and Australian people to spend time in each other's countries. In 2005–06, 6,126 Australian working holiday visas were granted to French nationals, making France the 7th largest source of working holiday visitors, and 483 were granted to Australians.\n", "Unlike France, the United Kingdom plans to leave the European Union in 2019, after the United Kingdom voted so in a referendum held on 23 June 2016. It is estimated that about 350,000 French people live in the UK, with approximately 400,000 Britons living in France.\n", "Over the years, the UK and France have often taken diverging courses within the European Community. British policy has favoured an expansion of the Community and free trade while France has advocated a closer political union and restricting membership of the Community to a core of Western European states.\n", "In the present day, Spain and the United Kingdom maintain very good relations, both being members of NATO, OECD, and for the moment the European Union. They have many common laws due to EU membership. However, there are a few problems that strain relations slightly, and the withdrawal negotiations may increase strains over some issues.\n", "Spain has borders with four countries: Portugal, France, Andorra, and Morocco; as well as with the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Clocks must normally be set one hour earlier than in Spain after crossing the borders with Portugal.\n", "In October 2015, France played in the 2015 European Cup. During the tournament in November, after already confirming before the tournament's details were announced, France took on England in Leigh. The match was a warm-up game for England before their end-of-year test-series against New Zealand. The French were hammered by a record 80-point margin.\n", "Discussions have shown support for year-round \"winter time\" in e.g. Denmark, the Netherlands (), and Finland () while permanent summer time was supported in Portugal (), Poland (), and Cyprus (). Spanish opinion is split on the matter; the mainland largely favours shifting to UTC, while the Balearic Islands would prefer to remain on and the Canary Islands on . The United Kingdom is due to leave the EU before the reform becomes effective; any new EU directive would apply during the transition period (if any) but thereafter the UK could choose to make its own arrangements. If the UK were thus to continue observing summer/winter time, Northern Ireland would have a one-hour time difference for half the year either with the rest of Ireland or with the rest of the UK. The Irish government is to hold a public consultation on the EU proposal; , the UK Government \"has no plans\" to end daylight saving.\n" ]
if we can achieve every existing color by mixing the basic ones, why do cymk and rgb look different?
Red, green, and blue (RGB) are the primary colors for **light (i.e., additive color)**. In this case, "black" is the absence of any light, and "white" is 100% of all three colors. Cyan, yellow, and magenta (CYM) are the primary colors for **pigment (i.e., substractive color)**. In this case, "white" is the absence of any pigment, and "black" is 100% of all three pigment colors. Each of these pigments get their color from absorbing one of the primary light colors, and reflecting the other two. Thus cyan is the mix of green and blue (absorbs red), yellow is the mix of red and green (absorbs blue), and magenta is the mix of red and blue (absorbs green). The "K" in CYMK is "black". Printers will often add a separate reservoir of black ink for darker shades of color and for black & white printing. **EDIT:** Bolded some terms and added language for clarity.
[ "In modern color theory, also known as the RGB color model, red, green and blue are additive primary colors. Red, green and blue light combined together makes white light, and these three colors, combined in different mixtures, can produce nearly any other color. This is the principle that is used to make all of the colors on your computer screen and your television. For example, magenta on a computer screen is made by a similar formula to that used by Cennino Cennini in the Renaissance to make violet, but using additive colors and light instead of pigment: it is created by combining red and blue light at equal intensity on a black screen. Violet is made on a computer screen in a similar way, but with a greater amount of blue light and less red light.\n", "Theoretically, only RGB-implemented colors which might be really spectral are its primaries: red, green, and blue, whereas any other (mixed) color is inherently non-spectral. But due to different chromaticity properties of different spectral segments, and also due to practical limitations of light sources, the actual distance between RGB pure color wheel colors and spectral colors shows a complicated dependence on the hue. Due to location of R and G primaries near the almost \"flat\" spectral segment, RGB color space is reasonably good with approximating spectral orange, yellow, and bright (yellowish) green, but is especially poor in reaching a visual appearance of spectral colors between green and blue, as well as extreme spectral colors. The sRGB standard has an additional problem with its \"red\" primary which is shifted to orange due to a trade-off between purity of red and its reasonable luminance, so that the red spectral became unreachable. Some samples in the table below provide only rough approximations of spectral and near-spectral colors.\n", "The RG or red-green color space is a color space that uses only two colors, red and green. It is an additive format, similar to the RGB color model but without a blue channel. Thus, blue is said to be out of gamut. This format is not in use today, and was only used on two-color Technicolor and other early color processes for films; by comparison with a full spectrum, its poor color reproduction made it undesirable. The system cannot create white naturally, and many colors are distorted.\n", "The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additive primary colors, red, green, and blue.\n", "Most televisions, computer displays, and projectors produce colors by combining red, green, and blue light in varying intensities—the so-called RGB additive primary colors. The resulting mixtures in RGB color space can reproduce a wide variety of colors (called a gamut); however, the relationship between the constituent amounts of red, green, and blue light and the resulting color is unintuitive, especially for inexperienced users, and for users familiar with subtractive color mixing of paints or traditional artists' models based on tints and shades (). Furthermore, neither additive nor subtractive color models define color relationships the same way the human eye does.\n", "The RGB color model itself does not define what is meant by \"red\", \"green\" and \"blue\" colorimetrically, and so the results of mixing them are not specified as absolute, but relative to the primary colors. When the exact chromaticities of the red, green, and blue primaries are defined, the color model then becomes an absolute color space, such as sRGB or Adobe RGB; see RGB color spaces for more details.\n", "The RGB color model is \"additive\" in the sense that the three light beams are added together, and their light spectra add, wavelength for wavelength, to make the final color's spectrum. This is essentially opposite to the subtractive color model, particularly the CMY color model, that applies to paints, inks, dyes, and other substances whose color depends on \"reflecting\" the light under which we see them. Because of properties, these three colors create white, this is in stark contrast to physical colors, such as dyes which create black when mixed.\n" ]
Any good books on Stone Age?
Although it is not a book about the Stone Age, Ian Morris's book *Why the West Rules -- for Now* spends several chapters on prehistory as part of a sweeping treatment of the entire history of East and West. Otherwise, I suggest asking this on /r/AskAnthropology.
[ "Other depictions of the Stone Age include the best-selling \"Earth's Children\" series of books by Jean M. Auel, which are set in the Paleolithic and are loosely based on archaeological and anthropological findings.\n", "Back to the Stone Age is a novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fifth in his series set in the lost world of Pellucidar. It first appeared as a six-part serial in \"Argosy Weekly\" from January 9 to February 13, 1937 under the title \"Seven Worlds to Conquer\". It was first published in book form in hardcover by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. in September, 1937 under the present title, and has been reissued a number of times since by various publishers.\n", "The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (from Greek: παλαιός, \"palaios\", \"old\"; and λίθος, \"lithos\", \"stone\" lit. \"old stone\", coined by archaeologist John Lubbock and published in 1865) is the earliest division of the Stone Age. It covers the greatest portion of humanity's time (roughly 99% of \"human technological history\", where \"human\" and \"humanity\" are interpreted to mean the genus \"Homo\"), extending from 2.5 or 2.6 million years ago, with the first documented use of stone tools by hominans such as \"Homo habilis\", to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BCE. The Paleolithic era ended with the Mesolithic, or in areas with an early neolithisation, the Epipaleolithic.\n", "The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age, is a period in human prehistory distinguished by the original development of stone tools that covers  99% of human technological prehistory. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins  3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene  11,650 cal BP.\n", "The term Late Stone Age was introduced for South Africa in 1929 by John Hilary Goodwin and C. van Riet Lowe The Lupemban is followed by the so-called Albany industry (12,000 to 9,000 years ago). Finally, the time from 9,000 to 2,000 years ago (7th to 1st millennia BC) is accounted for by the so-called \"Wilton inventory\" microliths.\n", "The concept of a \"Stone Age\" is found useful in the archaeology of most of the world, though in the archaeology of the Americas it is called by different names and begins with a Lithic stage, or sometimes Paleo-Indian. The sub-divisions described below are used for Eurasia, and not consistently across the whole area.\n", "The Stone Age is a prehistoric period in which stone was widely used in the manufacture of implements. This period occurred after the appearance of the genus \"Homo\" about 2.6 million years ago and roughly lasted 2.5 million years to the period between 4500 and 2000 BC with the appearance of metalworking.\n" ]
why do people have the urge to grab cute babies' cheeks and smush their face?
[This article explains why.](_URL_0_) TL;DR "Cute Aggression" is the brains response that could be protective, or a way of venting extreme feelings of giddiness and happiness
[ "A \"kunik\" is a form of expressing affection, usually between family members and loved ones, that involves pressing the nose and upper lip against the skin (commonly of the cheeks or forehead) and breathing in, causing the loved one's skin or hair to be suctioned against the nose and upper lip. A common misconception is that the practice arose so that Inuit could kiss without their mouths freezing together. Rather, it is a non-erotic but intimate greeting used by people who, when they meet outside, often have little except their nose and eyes exposed. \n", "\"Cute\" is a much more ambivalent description than social niceties will allow us to admit. When we snatch up something cute in an embrace, we pantomime the act of defending a defenseless little pal from an imaginary threat, but the rigid urgency of our embrace, and the concomitant 'devouring-in-kisses' suggests that what we're protecting the cute thing from is ourselves.\n", "According to a survey by People's Daily Online, almost half of the parents who responded said that their children cannot eat, bathe or dress themselves independently and 15% of the respondents even said their children could not use the toilet independently. When faced with difficulty, \"Kong Kids\" expect others to solve the problems, because they are inexperienced with managing setbacks and have low self-esteem.\n", "Cute aggression is superficially aggressive behaviour caused by seeing something cute, such as a human baby or young animal. People experiencing cute aggression may grit their teeth, clench their fists, or feel the urge to pinch and squeeze something they consider cute, while not actually causing or intending to cause any harm.\n", "There are suggestions that hormone levels can affect a person's perception of cuteness. Konrad Lorenz suggests that \"caretaking behaviour and affective orientation\" towards infants as an innate mechanism, and this is triggered by cute characteristics such as \"chubby cheeks\" and large eyes. The Sprengelmeyer et al. (2009) study expands on this claim by manipulating baby pictures to test groups on their ability to detect differences in cuteness. The studies show that premenopausal women detected cuteness better than same aged postmenopausal women. Furthermore, to support this claim, women taking birth control pills that raise levels of reproductive hormones detect cuteness better than same aged women not taking the pill.\n", "Maewnam (Lapassalan Jiravechsoontornkul) is a girl who suffered from trauma as a child, she had confessed to a boy she liked, but was rejected and called ugly. This started a chain, in which the other children also called her ugly. Every since that accident she had always worn a box over her head and had always stayed at home not interacting with anyone. She relents to attend the school after much pleading from her father. In the school, she befriends Minton (Chatchawit Techarukpong), a sweet, flirty, genuine boy and a rude, rowdy, bad boy, Zero (Jirakit Thawornwong), who always creates troubles. She faces new problems related to social life. But one fine day she is forced to remove her box and everyone sees that she is pretty. Minton and Zero confess their love to her, but whom will she choose?\n", "What I've observed when kids watch my program is they become pretty uncomfortable ... People cover up their faces. They can't look ... They feel sick to their stomach. But I think the most visible thing is their facial expression or the verbal utterances they make – gasps in the audience ... I want that shock value to be there. I want to make an impact that lasts with these people. I want them to not forget what they've seen.\n" ]
the concept of wells/underground water. is there just water everywhere beneath our feet that we can access as long as we dig/drill far enough down?
Technically yes. There are a few types of underground water supplies. The first is the water table. When it rains where does that water go? Well you do see most of it run down the sidewalks, and streets. Where does the rest go? Underground of course. It drains through cracks, and soft soil till it reaches the point of saturation. The bottom of that point is the water table. For example this water table is at 75ft. You take a drill,or even shovels, and started digging a hole you will hit water (depending on the last good rain) anywhere from just below the surface of top soil to 75ft. Where you place the pump in that type of well will give you so much water. If you go into a drought that type of well goes dry rather quickly. The second type of underground water supply is an aquifer. Aquifers are deep. My example will be the one near me in San Antonio Texas. Surrounding San Antonio you have rivers. Comal, Guadeloupe, San Antonio, etc. They start in the hills, and flow down to the sea. Rivers are the blood vessels of the earth. What you see on the surface is just one vain. Underneath them in the cracks in the bedrock are the rest. All that water from the rain that didn't soak into the ground runs off into the creeks that supply most of the river's water. As time goes on between rain storms the upper layer of soil drains the rest of the water tables into the river. Then the river supplies the underground aquifer. The San Antonio aquifer is larger than the city itself by hundreds of square miles. Test wells drilled into it at several locations is how it is measured. Every night the local weatherman on the news will tell you what the level is. On average it is around 640 feet. The water dept keeps an eye on that daily to make sure the population and agriculture have adequate allocations. If it gets low you have restrictions put in place. Like not watering your lawn on certain days. To extreme examples of limiting total number of gallons used per day. Sorry if I put you to sleep. I know a five year old would be.
[ "A water well is a mechanism for bringing groundwater to the surface by drilling or digging and bringing it up to the surface with a pump or by hand using buckets or similar devices. The first historical instance of water wells was in the 52nd century BC in modern-day Austria. Today, wells are used all over the world, from developing nations to suburbs in the United States.\n", "There are three main types of wells, shallow, deep, and artesian. Shallow wells tap into unconfined aquifers, and are, generally, shallow, less than 15 meters deep. Shallow wells have a small diameter, usually less than 15 centimeters. Deep wells access confined aquifers, and are always drilled by machine. All deep wells bring water to the surface using mechanical pumps. In artesian wells, water flows naturally without the use of a pump or some other mechanical device. This is due the top of the well being located below the water table.\n", "Wells are constructed for use in developing nations, as well as for use in developed nations in places which are not connected to a city water system. Wells must be designed and maintained to uphold the integrity of the aquifer, and to prevent contaminants from reaching the groundwater. Controversy arises in the use of groundwater when its usage impacts surface water systems, or when human activity threatens the integrity of the local aquifer system.\n", "A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn up by a pump, or using containers, such as buckets, that are raised mechanically or by hand. Water can also be injected back into the aquifer through the well. Wells were first constructed at least eight thousand years ago and historically vary in construction from a simple scoop in the sediment of a dry watercourse to the qanats of Iran, and the stepwells and sakiehs of India. Placing a lining in the well shaft helps create stability, and linings of wood or wickerwork date back at least as far as the Iron Age.\n", "The earliest wells were water wells, shallow pits dug by hand in regions where the water table approached the surface, usually with masonry or wooden walls lining the interior to prevent collapse. Modern drilling techniques utilize long drill shafts, producing holes much narrower and deeper than could be produced by digging.\n", "Underwater tunnels are either bored or immersed: tunnel boring is common for deepwater tunnels longer than 4 or , while immersion is commonly used for tunnels which cross relatively shallow waters. Immersion involves dredging a trench across the seafloor, laying a foundation bed of sand or gravel, and then lowering precast concrete tunnel sections into the excavation and covering it with a protective layer of backfill several metres thick.\n", "An underground crawl space (as the name implies) is a type of basement in which one cannot stand up—the height may be as little as one foot (30 cm), and the surface is often soil. Crawl spaces offer a convenient access to pipes, substructures and a variety of other areas that may be difficult or expensive to access otherwise. While a crawl space cannot be used as living space, it can be used as storage, often for infrequently used items. Care must be taken in doing so, however, as water from the damp ground, water vapour (entering from crawl space vents), and moisture seeping through porous concrete can create a perfect environment for mould/mildew to form on any surface in the crawl space, especially cardboard boxes, wood floors and surfaces, drywall and some types of insulation.\n" ]
was there a large difference between various Native American tribe creation myths?
Most tribes had their own unique myths but most of these myths shared many common themes. In North America in particular, a common theme is the idea of humans climing out of a dark, shadowy underworld into the earth. In this view life originated in the underworld and at some point for some reason they found their way out, often times by climbing a tree or vien (I cannot remember the explanation as to why they finally found the way out but in many cases thier is a reason). Also in this world view, the world is believed to be in teirs (an underworld, the earth, the heavenly world above them). Another common creation myth (particularlly in the North West) was the idea that a creator god formed man out of clay. I can remember one myth in which the creator god did this but that old trickster Coyote distracted god and made him burn the people, they were sent to Africa. God tried again but Coyote made god take them out before they were ready, they were sent to Europe. The ones who came out just right were Native American. (Many creation myths were revised after the arrival of Europeans) Another common theme in these myths were animals with human and spiritual features. Sorry I could not get into any real detail or provide sources im in a bit of a rush and its been a while since i studied the Native Americans. Mythology is a very interesting subject though, especially cosmology. When studied on various levels these myths reveal all different types of ideas and beliefs that a culture had. Another interesting note is many cultures from across the globe share many similarities in their cosmology. Sometimes its uncanny and it will give you an interesting perspective on human nature. If you want to further research this a simple google search will provide you with many native American myths. For the study of mythology and cosmology in gerneral I would recoment the books "Cosmos and Chaos" by Norman Cohn or "The Sacred and the Profain" by Mercea Eliade
[ "Native American cultures are numerous and diverse. Though some neighboring cultures hold similar beliefs, others can be quite different from one another. The most common myths are the creation myths, that tell a story to explain how the earth was formed, and where humans and other beings came from. Others may include explanations about the sun, moon, constellations, specific animals, seasons, and weather. This is one of the ways that many tribes have kept, and continue to keep, their cultures alive; these stories are not told simply for entertainment, but as a way of preserving and transmitting the nation, tribe or band's particular beliefs, history, customs, spirituality and traditional way of life. \"[S]tories not only entertain but also embody Native behavioral and ethical values.\"\n", "The notion of \"tribe\" in Apache cultures is very weakly developed; essentially it was only a recognition \"that one owed a modicum of hospitality to those of the same speech, dress, and customs.\" The six Apache tribes had political independence from each other and even fought against each other. For example, the Lipan once fought against the Mescalero.\n", "The mythology of the Miwok Native Americans are myths of their world order, their creation stories and 'how things came to be' created. Miwok myths suggest their spiritual and philosophical world view. In several different creation stories collected from Miwokan people, Coyote was seen as their ancestor and creator god, sometimes with the help of other animals, forming the earth and making people out of humble materials like feathers or twigs.\n", "Cryptozoologists suggest that the Native American folklore can be explained by prehistoric mammals such as hyaenodons, dire wolves, members of the subfamily Borophaginae (hyena-like dogs), or \"Chasmaporthetes\" (the only true American hyena).\n", "Early European American scholar described the Native Americans (as well as any other tribal society) as having a society dominated by clans or gentes (in the Roman model) before tribes were formed. There were some common characteristics:\n", "Native American culture is very much involved with mythology. They used mythology to tell great stories about their lives and the lives of their ancestors. They also would use stories to explained the supernatural connection between humans and certain animals. One very important aspect of the Native American mythology was the buffalo, also known as the Bison. The buffalo was seen as a potential food source to the Native Americans but were too hard to hunt especially before the invention of guns so instead they were used in many rituals that included dancing and prayer. Most of the rituals were related to the difficulty of the catching and the killing of the buffalo.\n", "Native American tribes have maintained numerous mythologies regarding deities throughout their histories. Native American belief systems include many sacred narratives. Such spiritual stories are deeply based in Nature and are rich with the symbolism of seasons, weather, plants, animals, earth, water, sky & fire. Deities play a large part in these narratives.\n" ]