question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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the difference in taste or texture, if any, when one orders their drink shaken, not stirred. | Whenever I order a drink and ask them for specifics, I make sure I know what it tastes like before hand.
Something smooth and strong like a shot of vodka with a chaser is usually better stirred in my opinion because it distributes the flavours more evenly except each flavour is strong.
Shaken isn't one of my favourites as it fuses the flavour of the alcohol and the chaser too much that I can't even distinguish what was put into my drink, but of course, different drinks have their different standards.
Then there's straight, which is just drinking it as it is. | [
"In another experiment two groups of people were given a flavored carbonated drink. The first group was later exposed to motion sickness, and these participants developed a taste aversion against the carbonated drink, even if they were made aware that the drink didn't lead to the motion sickness. This shows that th... |
what's the point of one-penny/one-dollar discounts? | It's a ploy to make things appear subconsciously cheaper to the buyer | [
"The discount is usually associated with a \"discount rate\", which is also called the \"discount yield\". The discount yield is the proportional share of the initial amount owed (initial liability) that must be paid to delay payment for 1 year.\n",
"Purchase discount is an offer from the supplier to the purchase... |
How was drinking water distributed during ancient Rome? | Pompeii provides the most complete evidence, but it is worth noting that enough fragments can be found from other cities to lead to the conclusion that this was fairly common across the empire, so we don;t have to worry about falling into the Vesuvian trap. Another note is that it is common to read that fresh water from the aqueducts was something only the elite enjoyed--this is a simplification of a complex archaeological argument. As a matter of fact, the amount of water per person per day pumped into the city of ancient Rome was *significantly* more than the modern city of Rome--*200 gallons*. Much of this would indeed be earmarked for agricultural use, fountains and the baths, but it is virtually impossible to cut this number down enough that there isn't more than enough for everyone. Aqueducts are also found throughout the empire, not just in Italy and the Roman colonies.
Water was piped into the city by aqueducts. It is important to remember that most of the stretch of the aqueduct would not look like the famous [Pont du Gard](_URL_0_). Most of it would be at ground level or slightly underground. Most of them were also only a few kilometers long, the distance from the nearest water source (usually a nearby hill) to the city. When it actually reached the city it would be branched off into [water castles](_URL_2_), which were strategically distributed throughout the city. In some areas, most notably North Africa, they might also go to massive underground cisterns. From the water castles they would be sent to [fountains](_URL_1_)--the tap is modern, in ancient times the water was continuous. These were common throughout a city and could be easily accessed. They may have also played a role in street cleaning--by continuously overflowing they washed water down the street, potentially sending refuse into the sewer systems.
Mary Beard has a good account of this in *Fires of Vesuvius*, about Pompeii. | [
" of water were brought into Rome by 14 different aqueducts each day. Per capita water usage in ancient Rome matched that of modern-day cities like New York City or modern Rome. Most water was for public use, such as baths and sewers. De aquaeductu is the definitive two volume treatise on 1st century aqueducts of R... |
how come video compression is getting better all the time, but sound files are still the same size as ever? | Audio compression is already really good, and has been for ages. People tend to be a bit more picky about audio quality (real or perceived) than they are about video quality, for some reason.
The bottom line is we don't really need better compression for audio files. | [
"Consumer video is generally compressed using lossy video codecs, since that results in significantly smaller files than lossless compression. While there are video coding formats designed explicitly for either lossy or lossless compression, some video coding formats such as Dirac and H.264 support both.\n",
"The... |
why do planes crash into each other when they have so much open sky and space to fly in? when i look up at the sky, it seems almost entirely clear of planes. | Almost all air accidents happen near takeoff/landing where all those planes are in a tight area. There is a very narrow path to use a runway.
That said, air accidents are EXTREMELY UNCOMMON. You're safer on a plane than you are in your own car, by a huge margin. | [
"Because aircraft move so quickly, they can experience sudden unexpected accelerations or 'bumps' from turbulence, including CAT - as the aircraft rapidly cross invisible bodies of air which are moving vertically at many different speeds. Although the vast majority of cases of turbulence are harmless, in rare cases... |
Why does the moon appear to rotate during the night? | It could be a number of reasons but the moon does "wobble" on its axis.
It's called [libration](_URL_0_).
| [
"Because the lunar orbit is also inclined to Earth's ecliptic plane by 5.1°, the rotational axis of the Moon seems to rotate towards and away from Earth during one complete orbit. This is referred to as \"latitudinal libration\", which allows one to see almost 7° of latitude beyond the pole on the far side. Finally... |
(us) why do car manufacturers promote horse power so much in their product marketing when you can’t even use it to its full extent? | You can very much use it to its fullest extent.
Don't switch gears, and let that needle climb all the way to the redline.
If you're asking why cars can go more than 100 mph when there aren't any roads where you're allowed to go that fast, the answer is that it's more fun to drive a 300 hp car than a 100 hp car. | [
"Throughout the 1990s, interest in fuel-efficient or environmentally friendly cars declined among consumers in the United States, who instead favored sport utility vehicles, which were affordable to operate despite their poor fuel efficiency thanks to lower gasoline prices. Domestic U.S. automakers chose to focus t... |
how come hotel beds and pillows are so damn comfortable? | i'm guessing the one at home you bought was some cheap POS mattress and some polyester fill pillow. investing in a quality mattress and down feather pillow/comforter goes a long way. | [
"A pillow menu is a list of available pillows provided by a hotel to guests, usually free of charge. It allows guests to make an alternative pillow choice. Some common pillow alternatives are memory foam, buckwheat hull, and hypoallergenic. Some hotels offer pillows to treat specific conditions such as headaches or... |
why does ecstasy make your jaw swing like a nine iron? | It is a byproduct of the stimulant part of MDMA the MA stands for methamphetamine. Your central nervous system is being extremely stimulated and this causes your jaw to tighten and your body doesn't want tight/locked jaw, so you continually move it to keep that from happening. | [
"Mandibular fracture, also known as fracture of the jaw, is a break through the mandibular bone. In about 60% of cases the break occurs in two places. It may result in a decreased ability to fully open the mouth. Often the teeth will not feel properly aligned or there may be bleeding of the gums. Mandibular fractur... |
If Earth had the orbit of Mars could it harbour life as we know it? | If you just moved the Earth the same distance away from the Sun as is Mars and all other factors were the same, I would argue that life as we know it would still exist there. Through Earth in it's new orbit would receive less solar energy, it's greater atmospheric pressure would still allow liquid water to exist on the surface. The temperature range of Mars is -125 to 23 °F with very little atmosphere, so I think the greater atmospheric pressure of Earth could easily gain us the 10 degrees needed to get above freezing. Also, we are familiar with lots of life in the oceans that would still exist either near geothermal vents or just under a layer of ice in a frozen ocean.
@ sh545 There are mammals that live in Antarctica and it goes down to -50F, so I wouldn't say no mammals. Also, plenty of life bigger than bacteria could still exist in the oceans even without mammals.
I got the atmospheric pressure tidbit from wiki, the Mars temps from NASA.
_URL_0_
_URL_1_ | [
"BULLET::::- Sir Oliver Lodge published an article in the \"Journal of the British Astronomical Association\" theorizing that if there had been intelligent life on Mars, it had been destroyed by a catastrophe two months earlier. Lodge based his theory on observations that suggested that the polar caps of Mars had f... |
Where did European classical singing arise and when did it spread throughout the continent? | It is a bit mysterious how it came to be, but the short answer is Northern Italy, around the mid 16th century, in the church setting. No relation to yodeling at all actually. Yodeling has a [highly emphasized "pop" between vocal registers of head and chest,](_URL_1_) that's its signature move, not just being "weird and loud." Your bel canto and your pre-bel canto techniques actually emphasize doing the exact opposite, a bel-canter should disguise the register switch as much as possible.
But lets think about just how hard it is to answer this relatively simple question for a minute - how do you suppose one would study vocal technique before recorded sound? You've got written music... written music is at best crib notes for live performance, written music hides all sorts of things, go listen to a few different versions of the Star Spangled Banner and marvel that they are the same song. Then you've got written descriptions of vocal music... but do you know what a 17th century Bolognian means by "shake?" Does he mean vibrato, does he mean a trill? Much ink has been spilled on what the hell a "shake" is in the 17th century. The history of vocal technique and pedagogy is actually not terribly popular in musicology, most likely because it's so tricky to study. So a lot of the details about how certain styles and techniques came to be and what time frame, very tricky to guess at, and they are much argued about.
The first treatise on singing we can point to and say that this is close to what we do today is [Observations on the Florid Song](_URL_0_), which was written at the top of the Baroque period, originally in Italian but I linked you to the period English translation. If you take some time to thumb through it though, you'll see a lot you recognize, and the style of music seems rather well developed, indicating it is much older than this book. But it's the first big writing piece about "florid" singing, so it has been studied until the stuffing falls out of it.
There is no single figure who we can point to for the spread of bel canto singing, but several social factors. One would be the general cultural dominance of Italy in the post-Renaissance period in Europe - Italy was just cool, and it was cool to have Italian art in your house, and then what was cooler than having Italian singers in your Hofkappelle? Nothing was cooler or more conspicuous of consumption than having trained Italian singers in your court, people in other countries in the 17th and 18th centuries spent good money bringing Italians out to sing for them. Opera itself was also a tool of this vocal technique's spread, as commercial opera sprung up in the mid 17th century, demand quickly outstripped the amount of singers available to perform it, and we see musical conservatories pop up to train more musicians. Opera also was consumed by foreigners in Italy on the Grand Tour or other travels, and those that enjoyed it sought to bring back to their home cities when they returned, starting up Italian opera companies in places outside of Italy and then hiring Italian singers to come perform in them.
This style of singing was picked up by non-Italians unevenly through Europe and the rest of the world, because singers they had to learn from an Italian trained professional who was living in their country, or they had to go to Italy for a "study abroad" session and learn it there, but by the end of the 18th century in England there were a decent amount of native English singers who could sing in the bel canto style, for example. By the 19th century there were several bel canto teachers all over Europe, and it had even come to North America. France however is unique - they nativized opera very quickly and maintained their own unique style of operatic singing (which we don't know too much about but non-French did complain it was nasal) until around the time of Napoleon, when they homogenized with Italians, and the French style died out. Russian operatic singing techniques were also kinda unique until the wall came down, Cold War era Communist singing has been called "the missing link" of opera technique, but that's another story... Now it's all very homogenized anyway, a Western-style classical singer from Korea is using the same style and techniques as an Italian singer.
> As Tolstoy repeatedly noted, the appreciation for this kind of music has got to be trained or feigned
So this is one of those classic cutesy truisms that, like most classic cutesy truisms, turns out to be completely bullshit. Oddly enough, and hard for people who don't like it to understand, opera usually just "clicks" for some people - they are exposed to it once, and they like it, and seek out cultural education afterwards. Other people hear it and it doesn't click, maybe they have to learn to like it, or maybe they never do, leaving more opera for the rest of us. [There's a very interesting ethnography of South American opera fans that studies how they got into it,](_URL_4_) if you're very keen. (It seems weird but South America has good opera, had a lot of Italian diaspora.) There's also other highly developed styles of singing in other cultures that have similar social cache to opera, Peking Opera is worth listening to, if only to hear how the style differs but a lot of the core vocal technique (breath control mainly) is very similar, leading to some sort of cross-cultural universal theory of theatrical singing requirements, but that's beyond my paygrade. :)
I can point you to more books, but I think the most approachable book on this subject is [Singing: The First Art](_URL_3_) however it's aimed to student singers, just be aware. I also really like [A History of Bel Canto](_URL_2_) but a lot of musicologists like to take a hammer to this book. The author does make an argument that Rossini was the last *Baroque* composer though, which is worth the price of admission if nothing else... I've also assumed a fair amount of fluency with opera and singing writing this, so if something's unclear, let me know. | [
"Opera performances were performed also in the country of Mexico. It is within that nation that the first indigenous opera composers of Latin America emerged, with Manuel de Zumaya (c. 1678–1755) being considered the first and most important early opera composer. Outsider of Perú and Mexico, opera was slower to gai... |
why is it uncomfortable to exercise? it does not seem to make evolutionary sense. | You should keep in mind that for essentially every animal but present-day humans (and even for some of us today), famine is much more likely than feast. So all creatures are evolved with an emphasis on gathering, storing, and preserving reserves of energy in case of famine.
There is a part of your brain that, towards that end, wants you to never exert more energy than you need to. Why run when you can walk? Save the calories. Why walk when you can sit? Save the calories. Why do crunches when you could... not? Save the calories.
Of course, for most of us today, we have too much food, and all could stand to burn extra calories. But our bodies don't know that yet. They still assume we're one bad season away from starving to death. | [
"One such phenomenon is known as biological altruism. This is a situation in which an organism appears to act in a way that benefits other organisms and is detrimental to itself. This is distinct from traditional notions of altruism because such actions are not conscious, but appear to be evolutionary adaptations t... |
Why is geosynchronous orbit around the equator on Earth constrained to one radius? | Because [orbital speed](_URL_0_) is completely determine by the gravitational field (that is, the mass of the planet) and the orbital parameters (that is, radius and eccentricity of the orbit). You don't get to choose your orbital speed without changing the others, and you don't get to change planetary mass, so a change in orbital speed means a change in radius. | [
"Additionally, the radius can be estimated from the curvature of the Earth at a point. Like a torus, the curvature at a point will be greatest (tightest) in one direction (north–south on Earth) and smallest (flattest) perpendicularly (east–west). The corresponding radius of curvature depends on the location and dir... |
In WW2, did Heer officer cadets got sent into battle before being promoted to actual officers? | In the Wehrmacht and other Prussian-influenced military organizations such as the Finnish armed forces, officers first spend some time in an officer training school, and then do a "residency" among troops as a Fänrich/Oberfänrich, acting with the rank of a mid-level NCO but doing the work of an officer, typically under the close supervision of an older officer or a senior NCO. The point of this is to train the officers to be qualified to actually do their job from the moment they gain a commissioned officer rank.
In practice, the system isn't very different from the American/British system where the cadets gain rank before leaving the officer training, but are first assigned with a senior NCO who they technically outrank but in practice are expected to listen and obey. I guess the Germans just care more about following procedure and so have these ranks so that their freshly minted officers would be outranked by senior NCOs. | [
"During the war he worked in the commercial and the contraband departments. Owing to the national importance of his work at the cipher desk, he was exempted from military service until June 1917, when he joined the Grenadier Guards. He had not actively sought to join the Army but was happy to be “released” as a res... |
Is noise additive in terms of causing hearing damage? | I first want to mention that the "long term safe" levels aren't precise, and quieter is better.
Sound is measured in dB, which is a logarithmic unit.
If your headphones are emitting 80 dB to your ears, and let's say the airplane is emitting 80 dB to your ears, the total sound to your ears would be 83 dB. | [
"In addition to medications, hearing loss can also result from specific chemicals in the environment: metals, such as lead; solvents, such as toluene (found in crude oil, gasoline and automobile exhaust, for example); and asphyxiants. Combined with noise, these ototoxic chemicals have an additive effect on a person... |
In the movie Dr. Strangelove, the bomber aircrew are given survival kits containing a range of supplies both reasonable and comical. What sort of things would Cold War era American soldiers really be issued in these kits? If they got them at all. | To get an idea, I used the list of things that were found on Francis Powers - a US U-2 pilot that was shot down over USSR while on a spy mission:
- A poison needle containing "poison from curare group"
- A gun with a silencer
- A sort of a jackknife
- An inflatable rubber boat
- A set of maps of European part of Soviet Union and nearby countries
- A fire starting kit
- A signalling kit
- An electric torch
- A number of compasses
- A saw
- Some fishing gear
- 7500 roubles in Soviet money (that would be about 1000 dollars at the time)
- 6 golden rings
- 2 golden watches
- 48 golden coins
- a sort of dictionary that would contain simple phrases in 13 languages
Note that Soviets downplayed some of the survival gear and played up the gun, the poison pin, and, particularly, the gold coins and roubles - since they showed the "treacherous nature" of capitalist US spies who expected to bribe their way out of all the trouble. Also note that in 1961 there was a monetary reform in USSR, so the 7500 roubles in 1960 money would be 750 in 1964 money.
Per Powers' testimony, the gold and money were given out separately prior to the flight by his direct superior.
Sources:
Power's case in Soviet court:
_URL_0_
Khruschev's report on the incident:
_URL_1_
More or less, the Powers case was known prior to 1964 movie, so the set contents may be referring back to the contents of the Powers survival kit. | [
"The US Army uses several basic survival kits, mainly for aviators, some of which are stored in carrying bags. Aviators in planes with ejection seats have survival kits in a vest and the seat pan, the survival vest worn by US helicopter crews also contains some basic survival items.\n",
"The M6 Air Crew Survival ... |
Does the speed of light have any special meaning? Why is it the speed that it is? Is the scalar value of the velocity (disregarding units) unique somehow? | It's the scale at which one unit of distance equals one unit of time. Imagine we measured horizontal distances in leagues and vertical distances in fathoms. We would need a conversion scale to tell us how many fathoms were in a league (~3038 or so). Well c is the scale that tells us how many seconds a meter is and how many meters a second is. | [
"In the case where the velocity is close to the speed of light \"c\" (generally within 95%), another scheme of relative velocity called rapidity, that depends on the ratio of V to c, is used in special relativity.\n",
"Faster-than-light communication is, according to relativity, equivalent to time travel. What we... |
What happened to heroin addicts that were drafted into WWII? | You should try expanding your search to focus on drugs policies with regard to conscription and/or narrowing it to focus on a specific country. Finland, the country I'm most familiar with, is at the extreme end of the spectrum. A search for Finland heroin turns [this](_URL_0_) up.
> “It was an interesting time with respect to the substances”, recalls Erik E. Anttinen, Professor Emeritus of social psychiatry.
> Anttinen fought during the Winter War, the Continuation War, and the War of Lapland - first in the artillery and - after going to flight school - in the Finnish Air Force.
> “Substances qualifying as hard drugs were handed out surprisingly freely, in my opinion. If someone had a cough, he might get dozens of heroin tablets, because it was an efficient cough suppressant”, Anttinen recalls. | [
"He was considered to be a lieutenant of Lucky Luciano in the post-World War II heroin business, trafficking heroin produced in France by Corsican gangsters to the US. The opium needed to produce the heroin was cultivated in Turkey and Iran. The opium was processed into morphine base, after it was transported acros... |
[Biology] Will increased ocean acidification have an effect on barnacles & other species that grow on ships? | Without a doubt, OA is *the* dominant issue in Marine Ecology right now, so it is being studied furiously. However, we still have a lot to learn about its effects, and marine organisms have such complicated life histories and community interactions that it can be difficult to say exactly what to expect. Additionally, there are a lot of ecological variables that come into play. That being said, the simple answer is that the effects of OA will undoubtedly be overwhelmingly negative for the vast majority of species and communities, particularly calcifiers such as barnacles.
There are a lot of different species of barnacle, with many different environmental tolerances at different life stages, so it's difficult to say across the board how they will respond. As calcifiers, barnacles will struggle with dissolution, which weakens their shells. Calcifiers often can respond to increased acidity with a variety of inducible defenses, most commonly thickening of their shells. However, the rate at which they can do this is limited, as it is very energetically costly. If done too rapidly, or in poor conditions, even though their shell is thicker, it is structurally compromised. Some will alter the proportions of aragonite and calcite, which also alters the structural integrity of the shell. Those organisms that can, will often spend more time moving to a location with more suitable conditions, or will settle new areas that weren't before. There is also prey switching, hormonal changes (stress), and a variety of other responses, all of which require energy expenditure.
Community responses also play a big role. *Some* species of crab, whelk, and sea star, actually seem to be more successful in *some* locations. So if we have a stronger whelk who is preying on weaker barnacles, there are some pretty big community implications there. Plus, the crabs also prey on the whelks *and* the barnacles, so there's another layer of complexity, and it's difficult yet to say what the outcomes will be (this hasn't really been studied yet, and is something I've been working towards securing funding for). Perhaps barnacles that attach themselves to ocean-going vessels will do quite well because the conditions will be more suitable than on a seasonally hypoxic continental shelf - who knows? From what we have seen in the last few decades however, the outlook for many species and communities is grim. My (educated) guess for barnacles on ships is: not good. | [
"Organisms have been found to be more sensitive to the effects of ocean acidification in early, larval or planktonic stages. As ocean acidification does not exist in a vacuum, the multiple problems facing the Great Barrier Reef combine to further stress the organisms. Not only can ocean acidification affect habitat... |
why do some people's eyes dart back and forth while making eye contact? | Ask someone to stare at you the entire time they're talking to you. It can be rather unnerving. Don't take it as them blowing you off or them not paying attention to what you have to say. They're just being polite and trying not to be intimidating or overbearing. | [
"Eye contact is the instance when two people look at each other's eyes at the same time; it is the primary nonverbal way of indicating engagement, interest, attention and involvement. Some studies have demonstrated that people use their eyes to indicate interest. This includes frequently recognized actions of winki... |
why do people hate limp bizkit so much? | Two reasons really. Firstly, Fred Durst has the reputation of being kind of a douche.
Secondly, LB sort of became the face of the Nu Metal, which a lot of people don't like. The consensus is it's shitty rap and shitty rock, doing neither very well. | [
"Limp Bizkit's influences include The Jesus Lizard, Tomahawk, Dave Matthews Band, Portishead, Mr. Bungle, Sepultura, Ministry, Prong, Tool, Primus, Pantera, Minor Threat, Angry Samoans, Black Flag, the Fat Boys, the Treacherous Three, the Cold Crush Brothers, Urban Dance Squad, Rage Against the Machine, and Korn.\n... |
why is china seen as a threat to the united states? | China is developing into a successful blend of communist style government with capitalist style economics. It is the world's largest nation, with approximately four times the number of citizens as the US. It has MILLIONS of low cost, low skill, but well educated and intelligent work force, that are prime for an industrial and technological explosion of manufacturing (similiar to the US following WW2). China's military is the largest in the world, and is only outclassed by the US because of technological advancement and professional training, although that gap is quickly being closed thanks to the glut of money from greater capitalistic endevours that now allows the Chinese government to shift away from inexperienced cannon fodder to a modern, well trained and well fed military force (While still maintaining large numbers) and the ability to buy the advanced technological advancements that the Soviet Union is still putting out. Soon, they won't NEED soviet assistance in terms of technology. While there military isn't going to be on par with a Soviet Spetnaz battalion, or an Army Rangers company, you could liken the level of competency and capability within the main bulk of their forces to a standard US national Guard unit. Now imagine there are 2 million of them, backed up by a capable air force flying Russian air superiority fighters on the same level as anything the US is fielding, a respectable naval force, and the manufacturing base of the largest nation in the world whose citizens are virtually unflappable when it comes to national support (not very many hippies in China)
Compare to the US, whose people are increasingly LESS qualified for base level manufacturing jobs at low wages, more entitled, and nearly violently opposed to foreign military action. All within a falling economic situation, with less and less emphasis on the advancement of technology and education.
However, no intelligent person would ever see China and the US as a close to war. China depends on the US to bolster it's growing economy, and realizes that a knockdown fight with the only other superpower on the planet will do nothing but set them back 50 years. Most of the confrontations you see are political bandstanding and military bluster. We aren't even remotely at threat of attack by China.
All that being said, IF the chinese and americans were to fight. I would imagine it would go something like this.
Chinese forces would roll over US and US ally military garrisons in their region pretty easily. South Korea, possible the Phillipines, Afghanistan. The US would begin enacting missile and air strikes onto high profile targets in the Chinese mainland, military bases, missile sites, depots, government and power sites, etc). China would respond in kind with missile strikes to military bases in Hawaii, Guam, possibly along the west coast. Civilian causalties on both sides would be relatively light, and the effect on the military capabilites of both sides would be negligible. Chinese and US Naval forces would clash HEAVILY in both China seas and the Pacific, with submarine groups on both sides wreaking a horrific toll on shipping. The chinese may...MAY possible make an attempt for a mainland invasion of US soil, definitely not the west coast, but possibly attempting to create a beachhead on Alaskan soil. The US navy and many, MANY air groups will put a swift end to any attempted invasion with a terrible loss of life for Chinese. US troops will make limited gains in Afghanistan, but at a moderate loss of men and materials. After a few months, the forces will be fairly well stalemated, with the Chinese preparing to smash though Afghanistan and Pakistan with massive numbers of mobilized army groups, and the US effectively maintaining (at high cost) a blockade of the Chinese fleet and troop ships. Cease fire will be declared shortly after, America agrees to withdraw special forces groups from occupied South Korea, the Chinese create a new territory extending about halfway through Afghanistan. American and Chinese soldiers eyeball eachother warily over a desert plain now seeded with anti-tank mines.
No nukes are launched, civilains causalties on both sides are less than 10,000 (substantially less for the US). Chinese forces have lost approximately 70,000 soldiers, airmen, and sailors (mostly from the failed invasion of Alaska and losses of men from the invasion of Korea), and the US has lost around 19,000 men and sailors (split evenly between ground forces in Korea, Afghanistan, and sailors lost to Chinese air attacks and submarines | [
"Even while embroiled in the problems of territorial disputes with its neighbors and the dangers of periodic tensions on the Korean Peninsula and across the Taiwan Strait, China perceives the United States as its major threat. Beijing believes that the United States still maintains its Cold War policy toward China ... |
Do all historians agree that Ancient Sumer was the first civilization | I think this question may be better served on /r/AskAnthropology - the reason being it really gets to the core of a semantic argument about how the dividing line between a "culture" and a "civilization" is nebulous and ill-defined. There were many sedentary "cultures" that exhibit signs of advanced social heirarchies, religion etc. that predate Sumer by a long way. The [Pre Pottery Neolithic Cultures](_URL_0_) around 8000 BC produced what so far is the oldest known town (Jericho), but was it a "civilization"? Difficult to say, they definitely had social structure, animal husbandry, art, cohesive spiritual practices, agriculture, defensive walls etc. but as we have no evidence of government and/or writing then it's not considered a civilization. This is why the question is so tricky. It's the arena of archaeology, not recorded history.
| [
"Sumer (or \"Šumer\") was one of the early civilizations of the Ancient Near East, located in the southern part of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) from the time of the earliest records in the mid 4th millennium BC until the rise of Babylonia in the late 3rd millennium BC. The term \"Sumerian\" applies to all speakers... |
why vitamin supplements can't be used as substitutes? | Legally covering. Keep in mind 100% of the recommended value doesn't mean it is 100% for your size, sex, health, & diet. So, they don't want you taking their very simplified chart as a guide for your entire health. | [
"As with the minerals discussed above, some vitamins are recognized as essential nutrients, necessary in the diet for good health. (Vitamin D is the exception: it can alternatively be synthesized in the skin, in the presence of UVB radiation.) Certain vitamin-like compounds that are recommended in the diet, such as... |
Why do we have so many surviving works of Plato, while most of Aristotle's writings are lost? | The sad truth about the survival of our historical sources is that its just a matter of luck. What survives the night of times and what not its just that, luck. But maybe the most important reason in this particular case is the Macedonian origin of Aristotle. After the death of Alexander the anti Macedonian sentiment in Athens was at its peak, and even after that Aristotle's teaching never quite fit the philosophy of that era, nor was popular among the Romans which were the ones that preserve most of the Greek philosophy. The reason that we have some of his teaching is because the Byzantine preserve some of his works and after them the Arabs found in him a philosophy that matched with their world view. Fast forward a few centurys and the Arab and Jew presence in the Spanish Peninsula with their thriving philosophical school (Maimonides for example) help reintroduce the Aristotelian thought in Western Europe. | [
"The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organisati... |
If not all stars are massive enough to become black holes, then there must be point where a Star becomes massive enough. What is changing once that threshold is reached? | The limit you are referring to is the Chandrasekhar limit, which is 1.39 solar masses. Basically, some stars at the end of their life will collapse down to white dwarfs, but these white dwarfs have a maximum mass of 1.39 solar masses. This is because they are held up by the electron degeneracy pressure, and above this mass, gravity is able to overcome this pressure and the star can collapse down further. This can either mean turning into a neutron star (which are held up by the neutron/quantum degeneracy pressure) or black holes. The stars that end up being black holes are typically 20 or so times the mass of the sun. [This diagram might be helpful](_URL_0_) | [
"If a main-sequence star is not too massive (less than approximately 8 solar masses), it eventually sheds enough mass to form a white dwarf having mass below the Chandrasekhar limit, which consists of the former core of the star. For more-massive stars, electron degeneracy pressure does not keep the iron core from ... |
why can't surgeons just pull out huge chunks of body fat at a time with a glove or a modified vacuum hose? | The fat isn't just floating inside you. Its attached to your organs and blood vessels. Tearing at it is gonna cause issues. | [
"A modular vacuum hose called \"QuickClick\" is available in 10/15/20 foot (3/4.5/6 m) lengths, allowing a custom-length hose to be quickly set up or taken apart by an end user. In addition, a promotional article in a trade magazine says that arthritic testers were able to connect and disconnect the hose in spite o... |
is the saying "red sky at night, a shepherd's delight" true and if so, why? | It is generally correct in temperate zones of the Earth (not too close to the Equator or poles) due to the prevailing winds there (which travel west to east).
The "red sky" is caused by the light from the sun reflecting off the underside of clouds. If you see this in the morning, then it is assumed that more clouds are on their way, bringing in bad weather. If you see this in the night, then it is assumed that the clouds are moving away from you, followed by clear skies. | [
"In the still of the night, the only source of light radiates in \"Annunciation to the Shepherds\" comes from an angel who has come to tell the shepherds of the birth of the infant Christ. The light is so brilliant that the Bethlehem shepherds must shield their eyes. Aside from the startling angel, the nocturnal pa... |
distillation as it pertains to alcoholic drinks | Once the liquid that they are making the liquor out of has been fermented, and has alcohol in it, then the alcohol needs to be concentrated. Alcohol has a slightly lower boiling point than water, so they heat the liquid (which is called a mash by the way) to just below the boiling point of water. The alcohol boils off while the majority of the water remains liquid, separating the two. The alcohol vapor is then cooled and condensed back into a more concentrated and higher proof liquid. Then they generally age it in a barrel. | [
"A distilled drink, spirit, or liquor is an alcoholic drink containing ethanol that is produced by distillation (i.e., concentrating by distillation) of ethanol produced by means of fermenting grains, fruits, botanicals, vegetables, seeds, or roots. Vodka, gin, baijiu, tequila, rum, whisky, brandy, singani and soju... |
why h2o is vital to life, but h2o2 is dangerous | Take bread. Pretty good, right? Now add some butter. Also good, right? Now add a half pound of butter. Fucking awful now, right?
Like that. Only it's chemistry, so not at all. | [
"Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) increases the overexpression of protein RCAN1. However, anti-oxidants and inhibitors of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) treatment block the increased expression of RCAN1 by H2O2. Demonstrating that the increased expression is a result of generating reactive oxygen species and acti... |
why are we trying to colonize mars? | Some facts about Mars: It has 24.5 hour days, 144 trillion square meters of land area (roughly equivalent to the land area of Earth), and an average temperature of -85F. That's cold, but better than any of our other options.
First, a self sustaining martian colony is a Plan B for Earth, should a catastrophe occur that wipes out humanity.
Second, rare and valuable metals are abundant on Mars, and Deuterium is 5x more abundant, the fuel of choice should we ever achieve nuclear fusion as a power source. There is commercial and economic motivations to mine and manufacture on Mars. Because gravity is 2.4x less than on Earth, escape velocity is thusly lower and exporting of world to Earth is cheaper than going from Earth to Mars.
Third, there is substantial opportunity for scientific research on Mars, looking for martian life and furthering our understanding of the creation of our solar system. There is also materials science and pharmaceutical chemistry that is achievable on Mars due to the lower gravity than here on Earth. For example, did you know you can make aluminum more transparent than your typical silicon glass? The problem is gravitational shear as the metal cools. There are methods to get around this but it's extremely expensive, reserved for high end optics and bulletproof US fighter jet cockpit domes because it's a government contract so fuck it. But in space or on Mars, if the gravity is low enough, they can mass produce aluminum glass; never again will you shatter your phone screen by dropping it. Or shooting it, apparently.
And one that ties economics and science together is the amount of innovation that has to go into successfully establishing such a colony. As Neal deGrasse Tyson said, for every dollar invested in NASA, there is a $14 economic return just from the innovation that comes out of solving problems. Pyrex bakeware came out of trying to develop rocket noses, WD-40 was the 40th attempt at making a compound that would Displace Water, that's Water Displacement attempt #40, the internet as a whole came out of a scientists who wanted a better way of linking scientific papers to the documents they cite in their bibliographies. Just attempting to get to Mars would be a huge economic boom, and we're seeing this already, with the birth of the commercial space flight industry, with Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Boeing - specifically Boeing working beyond NASA and military contracts.
Finally, there are political motivations. Just look how the US rallied behind the space race of the 50s. Imagine if you can motivate whole nations or an entire planet behind a similar cause.
Edit: To quote Tyson again, who wants to build a jet engine that is 20% more fuel efficient? No one that isn't an aviation executive. Who wants to go to Mars? He had more to say in this thread I'm paraphrasing, but basically he was saying frontier science and engineering inspires the next generation, and they get involved and end up solving other problems while trying to achieve the goal in front of them. | [
"Some of the main reasons for colonizing Mars include economic interests, long-term scientific research best carried out by humans as opposed to robotic probes, and sheer curiosity. Surface conditions and the presence of water on Mars make it arguably the most hospitable of the planets in the Solar System, other th... |
why does licking a seemingly dead pen make the pen able to write again? | Pens are a chamber with ink in it and a steel ball jammed in a tight-fitting tube at the lower end. When you write, the ball turns, "rolling" the ink onto the paper, then rotating up into the ink supply to bring more down.
Pens with ink still in them often get jammed up if unused for a while because a crust forms on the outer part of the roller ball that prevents it from turning. Try to write with it, and you just scrape the ball along without it rotating in its little tube.
When you lick it, you're giving that roller ball a tiny bit of extra lubrication that overcome that jammed friction and can help it start rolling again. This unclogs the dried-ink jam, and allows the ball to turn and bring down fresh ink. | [
"I’m listening to classical music one day – Mendelssohn – when all of a sudden I dipped the bulldog pen into a bottle of ink and started drawing – doodling I suppose you’d call it – on the cardboard tabletop. I don’t know why. I just did. In a couple of days – I worked almost ceaselessly – the whole of the tabletop... |
Operation Market Garden | The western allies had landed in northern France in Operation Overlord in June 1944 and then in southern France in Operation Dragoon and had encircled and routed the German counter-attack at Falaise in August 1944. After that, the western allies broke through and liberated most of France.
However, the Germans, while cut-off, still controlled most of the French ports and had supplies and fortifications enough to last in these strongholds for a long time - considering they also often had the ports mined or primed for demolition, they could deny them for the western allies even if twhey were ousted (at great cost). The wstern allies thus opted to levae most of these ports covered, but not make any serious attempts to capture them. Instead they focused on capturing the port of Antwerpen, one of Europe's largest, which was liberated on the 4th of September 1944. However, the Germans managed to keep the northern end of the Scheldt river, and without controlling it, Antwerpen was not safe for shipping, maning the western allies could not use the port to bring in much needed supplies.
The fighting in France, and the bombings carried out to prevent the Germans from reinforcing their counter-attack as well as German sabotage as they retreated had left the French infrastructure in shambles. This, combined with the temporary nature of the Mulberry harbours used in Normandy and the lengthening lines of supply meant that the western allied attack petered out in central Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine due to a general lack of supplies. Divisions use a lot of fuel and ammunition while in offensive operations, and enough could simply not be brought forwards.
Eisenhower favored wide-front attacks to overwhelm the Germans with allied superiority in air support, firepower and supply, but in this case it was not possible to conduct such operations, as there were not enough supply.
The British General Montgomery howevever, favored a limited deep surgical strike to cut through northern Belgium and southern Netherlands and capture a clear path, including brigdes, over the Rhine, allowing allied troops to cross the Rhine, cut of the German forces holding the northern bank of the Scheldt river, flank the defences in Alsace-Lorraine and pout into the vital Ruhr area, which provided a large percentage of German war industry and coal production, without which the country would not be able to continue the war.
Montgomery's plan called for the British 1. Airborne Division and the US 82. and 101. Airborne Divisions, with the Free Polish 1. Airlanding Brigade in reserve, to airdrop behind the German lines in Belgium and capture bridges at Arnhem, Nijmegen and OOsterbek while the British 30. Corps, veterans from the fighting in North Africa, would punch through the German lines and link up with the paratroopers and advance into Germany over the bridge at Arnhem.
The plan had several advantages - the paratroopers were avilable after being used in the initial landings in France to secure rear areas and would be supplied by air from Britain rather than over the devastated French infrastructure. The 30. Corps was a powerful and experienced mechanised formation, but still small enough that if supplies were prioritised, it could be used for offensive operations. Flanking the German defences in Alsace-Lorraine and the Siegfried line behind it and punching into Ruhr held a potential promise of ending the war around christimas time.
Several things went wrong, however. Either allied intelligence missed, or by miscommunication of willful ignorance (sources part on this) Montgomery and his staff missed that the Germans had deployed several depleted formations to rest and refit - which inckluded the II. SS Panzer-korps, which included two depleted but still strong SS Panzer-divisions.
The northern paratroopers had their landing zones and supply points over-run, and much of their airlanded supply ended up in German hands. The Germans reacted quickly, using their skill in improvisation to form several Kampfgruppen to fight both the paratroopers and the advancing 30. Corps from the various units available - which included elite formations resting and various cadre and training units, rear area and garrison forces and even units of wounded convalescents and cripples from ww1.
The allies had also over-estimated the ability of 30. Corps to advance - the terrain was soft and boggy, and autumn rains made it worse. The tanks, trucks and armoured personell carriers of 30. Corps were thus mostly stuck on elevated roads where they were easy targets for hidden German infantry equipped with Panzerschreck and Panzerfaust infantry anti-tank weapon or anti-tank guns, both of which together held up 30. Corps again and again.
In the end, the Germans were able to bring in more troops to the area than the allies were, and 30. Corps only managed to link up with the Americans and the Poles (dropped to reinforce the British at Arnhem, but ending up cut off) but the British 1. Airborne, or what was left of it, had to abandon the bridge at Arnhem and cross in the cover of darkness to escape the Germans - the operation had been as the famous quote 'a brigde too far'.
The western allies abandoned the idea of deep narrow front operations and Eisenhower's strategy of broad front advances became the norm. During the rest of autumn and early Winter, the allies cleared the northern bank of Scheldt river from German resistance and opened the port of Antwerpen to bring in supply - something which was a contributing factor in the Germans launching their offensive at the Battle of the Bulge, which intended to recapture Antwerpen or at least destroy it to deny its usage to the allies.
After pushing back the German offensive, reinforcing and resupplying and advancing their positions in Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium, the allies crossed the Rhine on a broad front in March 1945, surrounding and destroying the Ruhr in the process, and then raced across Germany to little resistance. | [
"Operation Market Garden was a failed World War II military operation fought in the Netherlands from 17 to 25 September 1944. It was the brainchild of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, planned primarily by Generals Brereton and Williams of the USAAF. The airborne part of the operation was undertaken by the ... |
How did parents give their kids 'the sex talk' before modern biology gave us the means to explain the details of reproduction? | First off the modern "Birds and the Bees" discussion acts like sex is a taboo subject, as does our modern society as a whole. However in places like Ancient Greece we can see that was not so true. In places like America, in places like the US you can't show sex (actual not fade to black) or genitalia without being on HBO or other private channels you have to purchase, however on Anceint Greece statutes were routinely shown naked, the Romans even had a winged fascinus, which was a penis amulet worn to ward off envy, (see images [here](_URL_0_) ) opened about sexuality varies from culture to culture still. You can tell a lot about a culture from their art and Mythology/Religion, and I encourage you to investigate that for any specific culture I didn't mention. How the conversation probably went was a matter of how open the culture was about sex. A Roman one was probably very straight forward while, 11th century peasant boys "talk" resembled today's with its idea of sex as "taboo" . | [
"Sexual reproduction first probably evolved about a billion years ago within ancestral single-celled eukaryotes. The reason for the evolution of sex, and the reason(s) it has survived to the present, are still matters of debate. Some of the many plausible theories include: that sex creates variation among offspring... |
why isn't a zip code enough when entering an address, why must i give my state, city and zip code? | I'd assume it's a 2nd check for incorrect zip codes... IE: If you're sending a letter to Scruff McGruff in Chicago, IL 60652, and accidentally mix up your 5's and 6's and send it to Scruff McGruff Chicago, IL 50562, (Which is the zip code for Mallard, IA) they can say "Chances are, it was meant to go to Chicago, rather than Mallard, Iowa." And would therefore reduce "return to senders". | [
"Postal designations for place names become \"de facto\" locations for their addresses, and as a result, it is difficult to convince residents and businesses that they are located in another city or town different from the \"preferred\" place name associated with their ZIP Codes. Because of issues of confusion and ... |
What keeps our gut bacteria from eating our live tissues? | Our immune system stops them from invading deeper into the body by providing physical barriers, secreting antibodies (IgA) into the gut and sensing and fighting ones that get too invasive. For instance while it was previously thought that bacteria being in the blood was a rare and deadly event, it is actually quite common. Studies have shown that bacteria can circulate briefly in the blood after a bowel movement (~10% of the time) or after brushing or flossing your teeth. Your body fights all these invaders off. | [
"The gut flora community plays a direct role in defending against pathogens by fully colonizing the space, making use of all available nutrients, and by secreting compounds that kill or inhibit unwelcome organisms that would compete for nutrients with it. Disruption of the gut flora allows competing organisms like ... |
Why would centrifugal space cylinders for artificial gravity work? | In space, yes, you could be near the spinning surface and not be affected. In atmosphere, though, atmospheric gases would be affected by the spin, and thus centrifugal forces, and would slowly act on you until the centrifugal force became strong enough to "pull" you towards the outer cylinder. | [
"Even though this technology has potential to aid in counteracting the detrimental effects of prolonged spaceflight, there are difficulties in applying these artificial gravity systems in space. Rotating the whole spacecraft is expensive and introduces another layer of complexity to the design. A smaller centrifuge... |
how does putting black charcoal marks below your eyes help you see better in sunlight? | It reduces glare from light reflected under your eye and then into the eye.
It's like standing in the sand, the glare from the sand makes it harder to see. | [
"After the foundation layer is applied, a sponge is patted all over the face, throat, chest, the nape and neck to remove excess moisture and to blend the foundation. Next the eyes and eyebrows are drawn in. Traditionally, charcoal was used, but today, modern cosmetics are used. The eyebrows and edges of the eyes ar... |
How did "The Eclipse of Darwinism" in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries occur simultaneously with the rise of eugenic Social Darwinism? Was there a schism in biology and anthropology at the time? | The Eclipse of Darwinism was a period in which biologists doubted that Darwinian natural selection (with its heavy emphasis on gradualism) was responsible for species change. Alternative theories proposed and discussed at the time to explain speciation included orthogenesis (that there were "internal drives" to species that inclined them to evolve in one direction or another), mutationism (that species could, non-gradually, suddenly change from generation to generation), or even variations on neo-Lamarckism (which Darwin himself did not wholly rule out; his own views of heredity were rife with Lamarckian aspects). It did _not_ involve a questioning of whether evolution of some sort was happening.
Eugenics was developed initially by Francis Galton, Darwin's cousin. Galton's own hereditary views started with Darwin's, but then modified them substantially, removing all Lamarckian aspects. Essentially, Galton was what we would today call a hard-hereditarian and a biometrician, someone who believed that Darwinism essentially was correct, though with some corrections to Darwin's own views. The biometrician school in general contained many of the earliest eugenicists, like Galton's protege, Karl Pearson, and is about as close as you can come to a Darwinian view of evolution, with the main different being their methods (which were highly mathematical and statistical).
But around 1900, something else got added to the mix: the "re-discovery" of Mendelian heredity. This initially appeared to support mutationism rather than Darwinian gradualism: heredity worked in large "jumps" and not imperceptibly tiny steps. For the next 30 years, the biometricians fought it out with the Mendelians, each with their respective evidence and interpretations, each getting somewhat further from Darwin's original program. By the 1930s and 1940s, however, it turned out that they were _both_ right about different aspects of the complexity that is evolution and heredity, and out of all this work the modern evolutionary synthesis was forged, merging both Mendelian and statistical approaches into a robust study of population genetics.
To step back to your original question: of the models of evolution and heredity described above, eugenics is still superficially applicable in _most_ of them. If you were a biometrician, you were trying to weed out the lower ends of the bell curve of talent, which is how Galton himself initially conceived of eugenics. If you were a Mendelian, you were trying to breed out undesirable "unit traits" — e.g., dominant or recessive traits. And so there were two different types of eugenicists out there, both arguing for similar kinds of policies. (In practice, the British geneticists tended to be biometricians, and the Americans tended to be Mendelians.) The only group that might not think eugenics was a good idea might be neo-Lamarckians; I've no idea if any of them became eugenicists or not.
Note that the debate over eugenics shifts the discussion far away from the mechanism of _evolution_ and to the mechanism of _heredity_. They are obviously related but _not the same discussion_. This was Galton's doing and his main impact: Darwin was interested in species, Galton was interested in heredity. It is important to note that _none of these people_ had a great understanding of heredity by modern standards: heredity was _way_ more complicated than they grasped, and occasionally there would be some great example of this made clear to them. But that rarely stopped them from using their rudimentary understanding to justify eugenic policies, because the eugenic policies dovetailed very nicely with their other concerns (whether they be immigration, racism, classism, fear of the "feebleminded," etc.). And evolution rarely came into the eugenics discussion except in a hand-waving way.
(Ironically — or not — some of these same statistical tools came to be used to show the fallacy of some of these eugenic "solutions." Compulsory sterilization, for example, cannot effectively work against recessive traits, as the Hardy-Weinberg principle points out: if you only sterilize the few people who are showing the double-recessive characteristic, and not the many more people who are "normal" but are "carriers," then you will never change the representation in the gene pool.)
Anyway. I have not really addressed your question of anthropology — it's an even more separate discussion to be had. (There was no schism early on, but there would become one, as the Boasian school gradually exerted a stronger and anti-eugenics influence on the field.)
The key thing to keep in mind that the eclipse of Darwinism was _not_ a rejection of the idea of evolution, but a period of uncertainty about its mechanism. Eugenics in general was fueled by an emphasis on _heredity_, and was compatible with the dominant hereditary theories at the time.
For a great discussion of these debates, see Peter Bowler's _Evolution_, or his _The Mendelian Revolution_. My favorite little book on the history of eugenics is Diane Paul's _Controlling Human Heredity_. | [
"The period of the history of evolutionary thought between Darwin's death in the 1880s, and the foundation of population genetics in the 1920s and the beginnings of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s, is called the eclipse of Darwinism by some historians of science. During that time many scientists and ... |
how come some countries' currency cannot be exchanged like incidentally mine (tunisia) | Exchanging currency isn't really 'exchanging currency', it's selling your money like selling anything else. In order to 'convert' CAD to USD for example I must find someone willing to pay me in USD for my CAD.
If I can't find a buyer then I can't convert the money in exactly the same way if I can't find someone to buy my car then I can't convert my car into money.
If nobody is willing to buy your TND right now, nor are they willing to accept it as payment, then unfortunately you just can't do business. | [
"Countries often have several important trading partners or are apprehensive of a particular currency being too volatile over an extended period of time. They can thus choose to peg their currency to a weighted average of several currencies (also known as a currency basket) . For example, a composite currency may b... |
how can the ups trademark the color brown? | They actually trademarked Pullman Brown, and the limitations of the trademark are likely to prevent other shipping companies from using the same color, this is to prevent market confusion. | [
"The color brown is said to represent ruggedness when used in advertising.\" \" is the color of the United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery company with their trademark brown trucks and uniforms; it was earlier the color of Pullman rail cars of the Pullman Company, and was adopted by UPS both because brown is easy to ... |
how does buying us treasury bills help in keeping chinese yuan low? | If China spends yuan to buy dollars (which you have to do because T-Bills are sold in dollars), this increases the supply of available yuan and decreases the supply of available dollars. Due to the free market, this drives down the price of yuan and drives up the price of dollars. | [
"In the 1990s and 2000s, there was a marked increase in American imports of Chinese goods. China's central bank allegedly devalued yuan by buying large amounts of US dollars with yuan, thus increasing the supply of the yuan in the foreign exchange market, while increasing the demand for US dollars, thus increasing ... |
If the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, does that imply that certain parts of the universe are in principle unobservable/unknowable? | Yes. Although more and more galaxies will continue to enter our observable universe, any galaxy that is currently farther than about 65 Gly will never be seen at all. (For reference the current radius of the observable universe is about 47 Gly.) This occurs because of the acceleration of the expansion. Without dark energy, all galaxies would eventually enter the observable universe.
There is also a so-called cosmological event horizon, beyond which any signal emitted right now will never reach us. The current distance to the event horizon is 16 Gly, and this distance shrinks over time. Eventually the only galaxies with which we will be able to communicate will be those within our own local cluster. | [
"Another common source of confusion is that the accelerating universe does \"not\" imply that the Hubble parameter is actually increasing with time; since formula_21, in most accelerating models formula_22 increases relatively faster than formula_23, so H decreases with time. (The recession velocity of one chosen g... |
What happens when you try to fertilize a chimpanzee egg with human sperm? And a human egg with chimpanzee sperm? | Chimps have 24 chromosome pairs, Humans have 23. I think the resulting fertilized egg would be unable to undergo mitosis. | [
"Because of this inability to create or nurture life, the method of the creation of a cambion is necessarily protracted. A succubus will have sex with a human male and so acquire a sample of his sperm. This she will then pass on to an incubus. The incubus will, in his turn, transfer the sperm to a human female and ... |
Did knights/athletes/anybody in the early to late middle ages know about stretching? Do we know if it was suggested or practiced? | You could try asking on /r/wma, where they do a lot of reading of late medieval fighting manuals. | [
"Such forms of sportive equipment during the final phase of the joust in 16th-century Germany gave rise to modern misconceptions about the heaviness or clumsiness of \"medieval armour\", as notably popularised by Mark Twain's \"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court\".\n",
"From the 11th to 14th centuries wh... |
Wasp Sealing Own Nest? | They are sealing in their young. They will implant food and an embryo and seal it up to protect the baby till the baby can come out. It's sealed with the same thing the nest is made of - what that is I do not know. | [
"\"P. jacobsoni\" wasps reproduce via oviposition. Egg laying is divided into three stages. First, the female produces a substance from the Dufour's gland and collects a patch of it in her mouth. Then, after stretching the gaster, the wasp brings it back toward her mouth and collects the eggs as they emerge, adheri... |
What was marriage like with the slaves in the United States? What were their traditions and ceremonies like? What reasons would they choose a partner? How did slave owners look at the marriages? | It depends on the date as well. There was slavery all over the world and long before American slavery. The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was founded only a short eight years after the Virginia Bay Co. set up shop and they had African slaves from the offset.
However, their laws pertaining to those slaves were relatively laid back. They could marry, engage in a myriad of professions, and sometimes get their freedom. There was less stigma attached to it. Also, women in New Amsterdam had property rights, and could inherit their husbands dynasties or trade boats and become successful merchants.
William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania (a latecomer to the colonial settlement) showed up he said no slavery whatsoever. He was a Quaker, and he thought the very idea of it was abhorrent.
I can't remember what the (Puritans) Mass Bay Co.'s stance was, but I think at the very least they didn't have much to do with slavery. Certainly not as much as Virginia Bay Co. would in time. It wasn't profitable and many found it abhorrent to their religion like the Quakers did.
The Virginia Bay Co. didn't have any interest in slaves in the early years (1608-1660-ish), although they could purchase them from the Dutch. Life expectancy was so low it was generally cheaper to bring over indentured servants.
Now, in 1663 another latecomer would be the Carolina Colony. History takes a rather dark turn here. These colonies were supposed to be sugar plantations, but that didn't pan out (climate was sub-tropical, not tropical) so they grew rice. Now, the people who settled here were mostly plantation owners from Barbados where slavery was 1000 times worse than in the states at this time.
In this place slaves outnumbers whites by quite a bit to so quell uprisings the laws tightened up. Then worse happened when, after a long time growing tobacco, and as result of Bacon's Rebellion (similar to the feeling of the people who call themselves the 99% today) Virgina starts to follow in Carolina's footsteps. After the death of William Penn, Pennsylvania legalizes slavery.
Also, in 1665 King Charles II decides he wants the thriving port of New Amsterdam and so appropriates it for his brother James, the Duke of York (hence New York). James would later go on to be king, but the rights of slaves and women in the once city of New Amsterdam were basically revoked back to the English standards.
It all kind of snowballed from there. So if you were a slave in those early years, especially somewhere like New Amsterdam sure you could marry. South Carlonia... eh maybe there wasn't a lot of oversight.
So most people at the time, Thomas Jefferson included believed that the slave trade would die out on it's own. Become antiquated. This is why not a lot was done about it, although there was almost a constitutional provision against it in the drafting it was excluded so the Southern states would join. As Benjamin Franklin prophetically said in 1754 'Unite or Die' Oddly enough, only New York abstained from voting.
Now slavery probably would have died out, but then in 1793 an abolitionist by the name of Eli Whitney designs a cotton engine that he hoped would make slaves obsolete, and make him wealthy beyond reckoning.
The opposite happens, low stock cotton can now be grown at immense profits and because patents aren't a thing he never sees a penny of the wealth his idea generates.
Here, on the verge of 1800 is where slavery takes an even darker turn. Now slaves are a commodity again, and this really begins the era of the draconian slave laws that eclipse the idea of worldwide, and past, and present incidences of slavery from the minds of non-history seeking individuals. Because they really were awful and dehumanizing.
I'm not an expert on slavery, but I would be really surprised if marriage happened much during this time period, and certainly not without the slave owners consent.
That is my understanding of the subject. I'm a little foggy on bits of it so if I've gotten anything wrong I apologize. | [
"Slave-owners were faced with a dilemma regarding committed relationships between slaves. While some family stability might be desirable as helping to keep slaves tractable and pacified, anything approaching a legal marriage was not. Marriage gave a couple rights over each other which conflicted with the slave-owne... |
What areas of the earth would best weather global warming? | The problem of global warming is not the change in climate itself - it is the rate of change coupled with the fact that we have adapted to a specific climate in the areas we inhabit.
Change is harmful to most species that have adapted to a particular local eco-system. However, change also presents opportunities.
Climate change may increase desertification in one area, but it may also allow another area to change from desert to forest. In both these instances the change is harmful to species that have adapted to the current climate.
You could argue that a forest is a more dense biome than a desert and therefore better - but this is subjective.
In absolute terms, the temperature change at the poles is currently greater than at the equator. On the other hand, habitation at the poles is quite low so a smaller change in temperature at temperate or tropical latitudes could be considered to have greater impact.
On the other (other) hand, change in temperature is often not the relevant factor, changes in frequency of extreme events and long standing weather patterns are what make the most difference.
So... Global warming predictions [map](_URL_0_). | [
"Eltahir's research focuses on how global climate change may impact society, specially in Africa and Asia. He spent the last 25 years developing sophisticated computer models suitable for predicting regional and local impacts of climate change, and testing them against field and satellite observations. Using these ... |
Is there any truth to the idea that Coca Cola secretly made special "White Coke" without colouring, at the request of Soviet Marshall Georgy Zhukov? (x-post r/AskHistory) | I'm assuming you've looked at the Wiki page for this, so I won't bother pointing you there.
The only vaugley scholarly source that addresses this in any detail is Mark Pendergast's *For God, Country, and Coca-Cola*. Basically, Pendergast concludes that the "white coke" story is at least plausible, and very even probable. When the book was written in 1993, Pendergast intervied Mladin Zarubica, an American-raised engineer who had worked for Coca-Cola in Austria after the war, and Zarubica claimed the story was true, but that it was only one of several wild-and-wooly schemes that Coca-Cola was using at the time to try to gain market share in Central Europe.
Pendergast's book is quite positive toward the company, but on the other hand, it seems quite well-researched, so if the story is false, it's a falsehood that's within the realm of possibility. The Coca-Cola Company has always been very aggressive in trying to open new markets, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the would authorize one of their European subsidiaries to produce such a product if they thought it might help them open up otherwise closed markets in Eastern Europe. | [
"White Coke (, \"colorless Coca-Cola\") is a nickname for a clear variant of Coca-Cola produced in the 1940s at the request of Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov. Like other clear colas, it was of the same original flavor, virtually unchanged by the absence of caramel coloring.\n",
"The colorless version o... |
i wipe my bottom very well until the tp comes back clean - without fail 20 minutes later i have to "re-wipe" - what the hell is going on? | It's because you are wiping away the poo on your butt, the TP is absorbing the moisture as you wiping, leaving behind dry poo that won't wipe away any more.
So when you walk around for 30 minutes or sit, with your butt cheeks together, they release moisture and re-moistening the dried poop you left behind, giving you mud butt. | [
"For wiping of the anal area after defecation—or for wiping after urination—UDDT users can avail themselves of the same materials that are utilized while using other types of toilets. Suitable biodegradable materials available in the surroundings can also be used, such as toilet paper, leaves, corn cobs or sticks. ... |
Can the strands of DNA accidentally get tied into a knot? | Yes. Any sufficiently long polymer has essentially a 100% chance of being knotted, and DNA is no exception. Viruses, which contain very compacted DNA, when they splort out DNA into cells [have a chance of splorting out knotted DNA](_URL_0_). In our cells, however, we have enzymes called topoisomerases that untie knots in DNA by passing strands through each other. If we didn't have these, you can imagine that post-mitosis daughter cells would have entangled genomes and wouldn't be able to separate. | [
"When the ends of a piece of double stranded helical DNA are joined so that it forms a circle the strands are topologically knotted. This means the single strands cannot be separated any process that does not involve breaking a strand (such as heating). The task of un-knotting topologically linked strands of DNA fa... |
Why weren't huge dinosaurs crushed under their own weight? | They weren't fat, they were big-boned.
But seriously, they had big bones and big muscles, big lungs and a big heart, and had evolved into that body-size. Imagine an ant looking up at a human thinking "how does it not collapse or fall over?" : ). But sick, injured or sedated rhino's and elephants have to helped if they are lying on one side, because they can damage themselves through their own body-weight, I can imagine similar problems for huge dinosaurs under similar conditions. | [
"Body size is important because of its correlation with metabolism, diet, life history, geographic range and extinction rate. The modal body mass of dinosaurs lies between 1 and 10 tons throughout the Mesozoic and across all major continental regions. There was a trend towards increasing body size within many dinos... |
What do EEG signals really mean? | The EEG signal at the scalp is a measure of the mean voltage of an area of cortex induced by synchronous excitatory and inhibitory post-synaptic potentials on large pyramidal neurons. A negative amplitude peak at the scalp corresponds to synchronous excitatory post-synaptic potentials in at least 6 cm² of cortex.
The sharpness of a particular EEG feature is related to the degree of synchrony. Highly synchronous PSPs produce a quick peak in EEG; less synchronous PSPs are smeared out over rounder waves.
Clinically, EEG is used to detect normal function (normal background oscillations and variability), focal dysfunction (polymorphic slow waves), cortical damage (focal amplitude suppression), and epileptiform potential (sharp waves).
I can go on for pages and pages. I am a clinical neurophysiologist and epileptologist. Just ask. | [
"EEG measures the gross electrical activity of the brain that can be observed on the surface of the skull. In the metastability theory, EEG outputs produce oscillations that can be described as having identifiable patterns that correlate with each other at certain frequencies. Each neuron in a neuronal network norm... |
Creative history writing assignment or project? | One of my art history classes gave an interesting assignment where we had to curate a "imaginary museum". We had to draft catalog entries, exhibition labels, and bibliographies, as well as a initial proposal explaining the topic of our exhibit and the works to be selected that justifies why we chose those works. It was reasonably writing and argumentation-intensive, and was a good way to force us to experiment with other modes of argumentation both because much of the argument's weight lies on what objects you choose(which is a very, very good thing to force art historians to learn) and because you're forced to write shorter pieces that aren't already directed towards a scholarly audience(also a very good skill to exercise).
EDIT: The individual writing assignments were fairly short(which poses its own set of challenges) but they added up to something like IIRC 6-8 pages(labels+catalog entries; you can fiddle with this by changing the number of objects per exhibit) | [
"The Federal writer's Project was a project funded by the federal government through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The project, founded in 1935, was intended to “provide work relief for writers and to develop writing and research projects.”(Mullen). As a result of the project, the FWP was able to documen... |
how do you doctors diagnose bacterial/viral illness? | Clinically, some bacterial/viral illnesses have very distinguishing features that give you a hunch towards what the disease may be caused from. Symptoms such as a certain rash, whether there is a fever, whether there is any pus, etc., point you in the direction of viral, bacterial, or even fungal infection.
If you think it's a bacteria, or fungus, you can sample it (from blood, urine, wound, etc) and allow it to grow or "culture". From there microbiologists can perform different tests on the bacteria that grow to determine which species it is and which antibiotics/antifungals are best for fighting them off (known as determining the bacteria's sensitivities).
If you believe it's viral you often don't need to pursue it any further (especially if we're talking about a respiratory or sinus infection) as you often just treat the patient's symptoms until the virus resolves. However, there are a few instances in which you need to determine the exact virus for treatment. In those cases, you would also similarly sample it (blood, CSF/fluid around your brain and spinal cord, cervix, etc.) and perform fancy biochemical tests to determine what type of viral strain it is. | [
"Specific diagnosis of infection with ' is made by finding the virus in the child's stool by enzyme immunoassay. There are several licensed test kits on the market which are sensitive, specific and detect all serotypes of '. Other methods, such as electron microscopy and PCR (polymerase chain reaction), are used in... |
After WW2, how was Japan and Germany treated in the following Olympics? | The 1948 Olympics were held in London and Germany and Japan were not invited to participate as a result of their role as aggressors. | [
"Japan and Germany were both reinstated and permitted to send athletes after being banned for 1948 for their instigation of World War II. Due to the division of Germany, German athletes from Saar entered a separate team for the only time. Only West Germany would provide athletes for the actual Germany team, since E... |
why do we rely on donations from the public for disaster relief? isn't this the government's responsibility? | > Shouldn't the government be able to fully fund disaster relief without relying on contributions from the general public?
If you want to fully fund disaster relief, that means convincing voters to raise taxes, or cut spending elsewhere.
getting Disaster funding is notoriously tricky. No one wants to pay for it until it happens (especially if it happens to them), and no one wants to subsidize areas that are disaster prone. If federal funds are used, it means places that don't get hit (say, Wyoming) will pay for something only FL/Texas would use. Voters in Wyoming might not be super keen on that.
> I believe the federal government should pay for these resources - even if they just cut a private company a check to feed/temporarily house/etc. victims. Our tax dollars should cover this.
If you think it should- great! convince other voters. Right now, you're in the minority. The government does do quite a bit for relief. It's just not fully funded.
It's not a question of whether the government can or can't. It can, but people don't necessarily agree with you.
> I'm focused more on why the public is being urged (and many corporate leaders have donated millions) to donate to disaster relief - which goes to companies like the Red Cross. The Red Cross in turn pays for food, water, etc. to help people during disaster time.
The idea is that the federal government covers the bare minimum of what people want federally covered. However, private donations are encouraged for people who feel more should be done. This allows people who wish to help more, to do so. The people who don't, don't. | [
"Because of this myth, more supplies are often sent than the disaster area typically needs. In addition to excess quantity, much of the supplies end up being of little to no use. Relief organizations often do not wait for an assessment of the disaster area and an identification of needs which can be provided by loc... |
Why do some people have good sense of direction while other don't? Do we know how the brain differs in such people? | This article explains it pretty well. It's like language, we are born with the ability and the amount of time we spend on tasks that use sense of direction directly influences how developed or underdeveloped our directional awareness becomes. There's a lot of cool ethnographic research about sense of direction. We use egocentric coordinates that depend on where we are...but many cultures describe where they are and how to get places using fixed geographic locations....that requires them to basically have a compass updating constantly in their brain. I wouldn't quote me on the exactness of these details because I read this quite a while ago in a cultural anthropology textbook, but some cultures have such a highly developed sense of direction that anyone can be taken out into the woods blindfolded at night and spun around a bunch of times and still know exactly what direction they were facing when the blindfold came off....really cool stuff.
Hope that helps!
_URL_0_
UPDATE: This is the article that was in my textbook and the part about language and space is almost toward the middle of the page...right below the graphic with all the mouths
_URL_1_ | [
"Thus humans are indeed vulnerable and susceptible to the riddle of existence (see vv. 13-14{17-18}). It is their sense of real ascertainment, their capability of applying their judging faculties with right measure (see vv. 15-16{19-20}), that gives them the right sense of direction.\n",
"We get our sense of dire... |
Why is Sulphur used in the vulcanization process instead of some other element? | Ok so I worked in Zinc Oxide which is used as a catalyst for the rubber curing. I only did a bit on the rubber side so hopefully someone can come and fill that in, but yes Sulphur I presume works to form di/trisulfide bridges similar to what it does with amino acid structure. Oxygen is more likely just to burn it and you would probably have to add oxygen as peroxide.
There is also a range of metallic elements used to aid in the curing of rubber and there is certainly a difference between synthetic and normal rubbers in curing. Recipes and times are totally different (one uses 5% parts per hundred (pph) ZnO and the other uses 0.5%).
I don't think selenium is capable of bridging rubber bonds as I have never seen it be an element to be tracked for rubber manufacture, although again its not something I have looked for.
One thing of interest is copper greatly inhibits rubber curing - not sure on the mechanism there. Feel free to pm me any more questions you might have and I can see what I can do. | [
"Sulfur vulcanization or sulfur vulcanisation is a chemical process for converting natural rubber or related polymers into more durable materials by heating them with sulfur or other equivalent curatives or accelerators. Sulfur forms cross-links (bridges) between sections of polymer chain which results in increased... |
why are insulated cups made from seemingly highly conductive materials like stainless steel or aluminum? | Oh I think I actually know this one!
Okay, so there's actually three layers in the cup: an outer layer of metal, a vacuum layer, and an inner layer of metal. You want to use a metal that doesn't "off-gas" (i.e. release gas into the vacuum) after you seal off the center layer.
You want that vacuum to be as empty as possible, because if it's empty, you can't transfer heat through conduction or convection, so the heat transfers very slowly into/out of your liquid. Having the surface be reflective also reflects most of the radiation back into the liquid (if it's hot) or the environment (if it's cold). This is also the idea behind Dewer flasks, except that they use reflective glass (which is even better about not off-gassing). However, if you drop a Dewer flask, they have a nasty habit of exploding. Loudly. Steel doesn't. | [
"Ceramic is a general term for all clay materials excluding porcelain. It is a more sturdy material than porcelain, and since the material is thicker the cup walls have better heat retention abilities. Ceramic is a preferred material when the coffee cup must be more robust and resistant to damage.\n",
"Insulators... |
Why do we recycle paper? | Because in order to make paper, you have to cut down trees, which stops them from fixing more carbon. Plus the production of paper also releases carbon. | [
"The recycling of paper is the process by which waste paper is turned into new paper products. It has a number of important benefits besides saving trees from being cut down. It is less energy and water intensive than paper made from wood pulp. It saves waste paper from occupying landfill and producing methane as i... |
how does a store know i'm stealing something? | I’m not sure if I can write enough words for ELI5:
Sensors by the door don’t work for everything, it’s only certain high value items, such an item will have a little strip on them that the cashier passes over something several times to deactivate when you buy it. I guess the strip is probably an RF chip, but I’m not sure.
If you try to pilfer something that doesn’t have this tag, the alarm will not go off, but the store may or may not have other loss prevention measures such as people monitoring cameras that would watch you try to steal the other thing. | [
"Theft by finding occurs when someone chances upon an object which seems abandoned and takes possession of the object but fails to take steps to establish whether the object is genuinely abandoned and not merely lost or unattended. In some jurisdictions the crime is called \"larceny by finding\" or \"stealing by fi... |
why do we sometimes think someone's first name fits that particular person? i.e; "you look like a dave" and when we try to associate a different name to them it feels weird and mismatched | I base this answer off no hard science but.... I would assume that it comes from other people you've met named Dave. You associate those physical attributes with Dave. The more Daves you meet the larger your Dave library gets. You meet someone with the same eyes as Dave Smith, the same hair style as Dave Jr, and a similar body type of Dave Johnson.... BOOM you look like a Dave. | [
"\"Because it was so strange to see that the name like that is existing. You know, with the two \"o\"s and the exclamation mark at the end. It was strange, you know, the visual aspect and pronunciation. And, you know, it’s always good to have a name where somebody is like \"What was that?\" You know, if your band n... |
Why when bacteria are becoming antibiotic resistant, are we not using Phages to attack bacterial infections more. | /u/theuncool points out one of the big problems - a particular phage isn't wide spectrum. Another very big problem is that bacteria can develop resistances to phages, too. I can take a phage called lambda vir, which kills E. coli with zero chance of lysogeny (the vir mutation in this phage means it cannot stably integrate into the host bacterial chromosome - and in this case, you don't want integration, you want outright killing), mix it with live wild type E. coli, and plate a bunch of it to an agar media plate. The next day, I'll see E. coli growing on the plate... only a few colones, sure, but I'll see them. Why? Because they happened to have one of two easily achievable mutations which removes the receptor for phage lambda's binding to the coli's outer membrane - and that is a requisite for this phage's ability to infect coli.
So, you have the same problems with phages as you do antibiotics. Your target are going to get resistant somehow, and there's shit all you can do about that phenomenon.
Also, you can't introduce phage to the blood without triggering a strong inflammatory response. It's made of protein and DNA, and sometimes fats, just like bacteria are. After all, they're just a virus that happens to go after bacteria and not you. Your immune system doesn't know this and could care less. It's a non-authorized entity and it must be dealt with. Cue the inflammatory response.
This is no good for treating septicemia, which is where you really, really want to have something that can slow the growth of the critters in your blood and elsewhere. Phages aren't good for this. | [
"However, due to selective pressure, bacteria can develop resistance through mutations in the porin gene. The mutations may lead to a loss of porins, resulting in the antibiotics having a lower permeability or being completely excluded from transport. These changes have contributed to the global emergence of antibi... |
how the large hadron collider could help scientists understand how something can come from nothing. | In order to even begin learning about the origins of the universe we first have to understand how the tiniest bits of matter actually work. In the world we know things are governed by basic physics (Newton's Law's of motion), but at the moment of the big bang the universe was, as they say, infinitely small and infinitely dense. So we need to know what laws govern things on the smallest possible scale, so that we can see what the universe was like at the big bang, and what could and couldn't have happened. At the LHC they take the smallest pieces of matter we know of, and they smash them together at speeds just under the speed of light, in hopes of learning more about the laws governing these particles, among other things. | [
"The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration studies high energy particle collisions from the Tevatron, the world's former highest-energy particle accelerator. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and inter... |
Force-carrying particles and other misc questions? | Your confusion comes from the idea that interacting objects are constantly shooting particles at each other, which isn't the case. If that were true, we'd see, for example, glowing light between two magnets. Really, it's an idea that perturbations in a field due to a particle can be treated like another virtual particle, which is useful for doing calculations about how particles scatter off one another but not really representative of reality. | [
"In particle physics, force carriers or messenger particles or intermediate particles are particles that give rise to forces between other particles. These particles are bundles of energy (quanta) of a particular kind of field. There is one kind of field for every type of elementary particle. For instance, there is... |
How do our lungs not freeze when we breathe in extremely cold air? | The answers I've seen so far in this are fine, but just to get a bit more specific; within the nasal cavity are several (three, if I remember correctly, on the lateral walls) folds of epithelium and mucosal membranes that the air passes through on its way down to the lungs.
These folds are called the nasal conchae, and they're packed with blood vessels and such. One of the purposes of blood is to act as a thermoregulator; it shunts off body heat to exterior surfaces to cool you down when you get to hot, and in the nose, that heat both warms and moisturises the air, in turn making it suitable for the respiratory bronchioles to deal with.
The process isn't perfect, though. If you're breathing rapidly or exercising, you'll get more air in, and the conchae can only warm up so much air. You'll notice the effect characterised by the feeling that your lungs are very cold.
Additionally, you asked that if we're constantly breathing cold air, how are we maintaining suitable body temperatures? Again, this is due to thermoregulation, but also due to shivering and another process called thermogenesis.
Thermoregulation means that the body maintains heat by minimising blood flow to the extremities to ensure that your visceral organs are still functioning. This is why your hands and feet get cold first; the body's focusing on keeping the organs that will keep you alive going.
Shivering, you probably know about. It's an autonomic process to keep your muscles moving, and in so doing, generate heat.
Thermogenesis is a bit more in-depth. Basically, there are three kinds of fat in the human body. White, brown and beige (also called brite). White fat is made of white adipocytes, that have a single droplet of lipid (the fat) and one or two mitochondria to catalyse them. This is the stuff that accumulates near the surfaces and makes you actually fat.
Brown fat is made of brown adipocytes, which have multiple smaller lipid droplets and a much higher number of mitochondria (which make is it brown). Brown fat is coalesced into pads that reside within the deep tissues of the body. From memory, the biggest pads are near the kidneys.
Beige fat is a sort of precursor that can shift between white and brown form.
Brown fat is used as a thermogenerator. The body burns it when it's cold. This is especially true of newborn; they can't shiver, so they burn the brown fat. We don't lose them as we develop into adulthood, but shivering takes up the bulk of their work for them.
Anyway, the point is this; these processes all work together to overcome the effects of the cold. That's why you're not freezing at -29 C; you've got readily available sources of energy to power these processes.
Hope this helped. I think I've got this correct. | [
"Breathing involves expelling stale air from the blowhole, forming an upward, steamy spout, followed by inhaling fresh air into the lungs; a spout only occurs when the warm air from the lungs meets the cold external air, so it may only form in colder climates.\n",
"Air trapping, also called gas trapping, is an ab... |
What would happen if Planck's Constant was much bigger than it is? | Yes, things would act more quantum-mechanically. Atoms would be much larger, as electrons (and everything else) would be more spatially spread-out ("wave-like", if you want) because of this. You'd soon not have matter-as-we-know-it, as the ratio between electron and nuclear masses and Planck's constant would change. In all of chemistry, you have the almost-implicit idea of chemical structure; that nuclei have (relatively) fixed position within molecules even if the electrons don't. That likely wouldn't hold any longer. You'd see more macroscopic quantum behavior such as seen in [superfluid liquid helium](_URL_2_).
But things would not act Minecraft-ish. Time and distances are not discretized in Planck-unit-sized chunks according to any physics that's currently accepted as true. It's an apparently-common misconception that's been [debunked here](_URL_1_) quite a few times. As far as well-established physics is concerned, Planck units are just one of many sets of [natural units](_URL_0_) without any physical significance in-themselves. It just simplifies certain equations if you work in those units.
| [
"The Planck constant is one of the smallest constants used in physics. This reflects the fact that on a scale adapted to humans, where energies are typically of the order of kilojoules and times are typically of the order of seconds or minutes, the Planck constant (the quantum of action) is very small. One can rega... |
What happened to the women in the emperor's harem after the death of "their" emperor during the Qing Dynasty in China? | I can't be sure this information applies to the system as it was under the Qing, but during the Tang dynasty an emperor's concubines would have their heads shaved and be required to retire to a nunnery after the emperor's death. This was because it would have been an insult to the dead ruler's memory for the women to have relations with another man.
We know that his was the fate of Wu Zetian in the seventh century. She had entered the palace as a concubine of the Taizong emperor, but was retrieved from her nunnery on the orders of his successor Gaozong, whose concubine and, eventually, successor as ruler she became. This was an apparently unique reversal of the usual custom and caused significant scandal in Wu's time.
I wrote about Wu and her life and times, including her consignment to a nunnery, in much more detail [here](_URL_0_). | [
"Zaifeng (12 February 1883 – 3 February 1951), formally known by his title Prince Chun, was a Manchu prince and regent of the late Qing dynasty. He was a son of Prince Chun, the seventh son of the Daoguang Emperor, and the father of Puyi, the Last Emperor. He served as Prince-Regent from 1908–11 during the reign of... |
is it possible to do insider trading accidentally and be convicted? | In this scenario, it doesn't sound like you have any insider knowledge. In order to be convicted, the prosecutors need to prove that you were in possession of inside information. | [
"Different courts of appeals had come to different conclusions about what constituted insider trading under Rule 10b-5 — specifically, whether someone could be held liable for insider trading simply by trading while in possession of inside information, or whether a trier of fact must find that the person actually u... |
the differences between "franchised" mcdonalds and non-"franchised" mcdonalds | It's corporate and franchise stores.
The corporate ones are owned by McDonald's. The franchise store's owner pays a fee to corporate McDonald's to use the name, signage, menu and products.
Not all the franchise stores are run exactly the same, which is why some MacDonald's never carry the ribwhich or don't have 20 piece nuggets value meals, and some do. The franchisee has a little leeway to run his store, but he also has standards he has to meet as well. | [
"BULLET::::- Franchises: A franchise is a system in which entrepreneurs purchase the rights to open and run a business from a larger corporation. Franchising in the United States is widespread and is a major economic powerhouse. One out of twelve retail businesses in the United States are franchised and 8 million p... |
How Long did it take to get places by ship? | I hope that by '1800s' you mean 19th century, not only the first decade of it, as the following addresses almost whole century.
In the beginning of the 19th century, the speed of an average merchant ships used for transoceanic trade, such as British Indiamen was in the ballpark of 4 knots, i.e. 4 nautical miles per hour. As the ship was able to travel around the clock provided good conditions, this meant that such ship was able to cover 96 nautical miles or 110 land miles within 24 hours. Clippers, arguably fastest transocceanic merchant ships of the 19th century were very fast in comparison, capable of pulling 7-8 knots on regular basis. The distance of 16000 nm between Fuzhou and London has been covered in 99 days during the Great Tea Race of 1866 and in 90 days by American clipper 'Witch of the Wave' in 1852. Just remember that we're speaking of loaded merchant sailships here carrying roughly 500 tons of cargo.
Since the early 1830's ships started to use steam engines as an auxiliary and then main then the only power source. These required a network of coaling stations along the route to operate with maximum efficiency, but were still pretty fast and, what is more important, largely independent of the winds. Average speed of 'Great Western', steam and sail ship built in 1837 was in the ballpark of 11 knots (488 km or 305 miles per day). Average time of travel on the Liverpool-New York route was 12 days, although this was considered quick travel, as most ships of the this decade could muster 8-9 knots tops (thus lengthening the cross-Atlantic travel to 17-18 days. 'Great Britain', the first ship with an iron hull and screw propeller (along with six masts) had an average speed of 12-12.5 knots. Same was true for the French battleship 'Le Napoleon' launched in 1850.
Nellie Bly, an American journalist, inspired by Jules Verne's 'In 80 days around the world' took a similar trying to beat the Fogg's challenge in 1888. She left detailed notes from this journey (finished in 72 days) that are a good source for the data relevant to your question. For example, New York-Southampton stage by Hamburg America Line took 7 days (3150 nm, what gives us roughly 18 kn); Brindisi-Colombo by P & O line (4410 miles, via Suez) took 16 days, what gives us 11.5 kn. Hong Kong-Yokohama stage was similar (1600 nm in 5,5 days, what gives 12.5 knots on average), same for Yokohama-San Francisco (4500 nm in 15 days, i.e. 13.5 kn on average). So, you can safely assume that in the 1888/1889, average speed of a passenger ship was roughly 12-14 knots with state of the art vessels being capable of travelling almost half as fast. | [
"The original intention was to make a coastal trip by sea, but it became clear early on in the venture that this was not practical, and most of the journey around the coast had to be made by road. The journey was completed in six separate trips, over the period 1813 to 1823. In the summer of 1813, Daniell and his c... |
how do doctors keep up to date with new information/techniques? | They are required to recertify every now and then, as well as being mandated to attend seminars and conferences about the latest of medical science in their fields.
Also, a doctor in a specific field is likely to want to learn about improvements in their field. They're clearly interested in whatever field they spent so much time studying. | [
"Taking a personal history along with clinical examination allow the health practitioners to fully establish a clinical diagnosis. A medical history of a patient provides insights into diagnostic possibilities as well as the patient's experiences with illnesses. The patients will be asked about current illness and ... |
Is it true that during the medieval era, the Islamic world was the home of science and research? | Hi there, while you wait for a more comprehensive answer, you may be interested in these older posts on the subject:
_URL_2_
_URL_0_
_URL_1_ | [
"Science in the medieval Islamic world was the science developed and practised during the Islamic Golden Age under the Umayyads of Córdoba, the Abbadids of Seville, the Samanids, the Ziyarids, the Buyids in Persia, the Abbasid Caliphate and beyond, spanning the period roughly between 786 and 1258. Islamic scientifi... |
Could relations between Europeans and Native Americans have turned out any other way in the 18th century? | This might be more of a question for /r/HistoricalWhatif | [
"Interracial relations among Native Americans and Europeans occurred from the earliest years of British, French and Spanish exploration. explorers and trappers. European impact was immediate, widespread and profound—more than any other race that had contact with Native Americans during the early years of colonizati... |
Why don't sound waves of same frequenvies cancel out each other? | It definitely applies to waves as well. For your example of sound waves, set up two speakers about 1m apart and then walk along in front of them a few metres away and you will notice loud patches and quiet patches. These patches are due to constructive and destructive interference.
This is the process behind high quality noise cancelling headphones.
Waves of different frequencies also interfere in whats known as beating.
This causes the sounds to oscillate at a frequency of the difference between them.
The next time someone tunes a guitar without an electronic tuner, listen to the sound when two strings are out of tune, the 'vibrating' of the sound you hear is the beating.
Light and matter waves also undergo interference, and this interference of waves is a crucial part of quantum mechanics. | [
"Ships signal to each other and to the shore with air horns, sometimes called whistles, that are driven with compressed air or from steam tapped from the power plant. Low frequencies are used, because they travel further than high frequencies; horns from ships have been heard as far as ten miles away. Traditionally... |
How would the eruption of a volcano like Krakatoa compare to an eruption of The Yellowstone Caldera? | Here's a fun image that compares some of the largest and most notable eruptions in history:
[_URL_6_](_URL_6_)
As we can see Krakatoa (Krakatau) is close to 2 orders of magnitude smaller in erupted volume compared to Yellowstone (\~1000 cubic kilometers for yellowstone, vs 20 cubic kilometers for Krakatau).
Now let's assume that both are placed where the current Yellowstone hotspot is (Northwest Wyoming). Karaktau is an explosive, largely felsic volcano, and so lava might kill a few people, worse depending on early warning, evacuations, etc. NOW the real danger with these volcanoes is the material they eject upwards, into the Earth's various spheres. We can study the impact of two of these eruptions: Mt Tambora in 1815 [_URL_7_](_URL_2_) and Krakatoa in 1883 [_URL_4_](_URL_8_). Tambora ejected about twice the volume of Karatoa and ultimately lead to the "year without a summer" [_URL_3_](_URL_0_) that basically lowered temperatures enough that, well things were kinda cold for a bit, and at the time it's possible some individuals, poorly provisioned or without food stores, may have starved to death as crops didn't take, couldn't grow, etc; but we don't know as back then deaths census weren't exactly that great. Krakatoa lowered Northern Hemisphere temperatures by about 1.2 degrees C for a year or two, lead to some wacky weather in California, etc, but had really minimal global impact beyond killing a lot of poor souls in Indonesia.
Yellowstone is a different animal, with 1000 cubic kilometers of ejected volume it's likely that a LOT more material is going to be put into Earth's various spheres. Now the impacts of these kinds of things aren't greatly know. Most of what's been put out there is in regards to Mt. Toba, another supervolcano eruption about 70000 years ago [_URL_1_](_URL_5_) . Some scholars have argued that the eruption 'bottlenecked' humanity on our early spread across the globe, reducing our numbers between 3000-10000 individuals. HOWEVER, this is controversial and by no means concrete, with some arguing it had very minimal affect on human populations and EVEN temperature (i.e. no global winter hypothesis). Unfortunately, Toba represents the most well studied large eruption, and as you can see it's kinda of a crap shoot for the effects. It's possible that Toba had a pretty solid impact on global temperatures for more than a few years, this would be devastating on our largely farming based societies of today, as we'd lack the ability to feed billions of people over multiple years if crops continued to not take due to cooler temperatures, and odd weather conditions. Early humans likely skirted this due to them being largely nomadic and few in numbers, we today would likely not be as lucky and it's possible we'd see global famine, with poor countries especially hard hit. | [
"Eruptions at Krakatoa started again around 16 June, with loud explosions and a thick black cloud covering the islands for five days. On 24 June, a prevailing east wind cleared the cloud, and two ash columns could be seen issuing from Krakatoa. The seat of the eruption is believed to have been a new vent or vents t... |
why did the hobbit movies use so much cgi (like in the famous ian mckellen crying picture) instead of real sets/ actors? | I guess no one remembers how cgi intensive the lord of the rings were with the battle of Rohan. It would a lot more time and money to create those sets and hire the actors. The Lotr took a long time to film. While the hobbit wasn't that much compared respectively. So all in all many people wanted them quickly unlike Lotr so they had to cut corners.
TLDR: Money & Time. | [
"A few of the previous Ghibli movies had used CGI, but the whole computer graphics section at the studio had closed before the production of this feature, as it was decided they wanted to focus on hand-drawn animation.\n",
"Nevertheless, despite the fluidity of CGI animals and monsters, purely visual effects are ... |
Can anyone tell me the history of this trench art? | _URL_0_
More info: it has many names on it, including, although I’m sure unrelated, “Walter Churchill”. I’m just curious as to any info on “BTR” or their names, or anything. It’s quite a beautiful piece. | [
"Not limited to the World Wars, the history of trench art spans conflicts from the Napoleonic Wars to the present day. Although the practice flourished during World War I, the term 'trench art' is also used to describe souvenirs manufactured by service personnel during World War II. Some items manufactured by soldi... |
The Earth is an oblate spheroid, but what about the atmosphere? Does it fit the shape of the Earth or is it more perfectly spherical? | The density profile of the atmosphere is fixed by the total force, gravitational + centrifugal. The Earth takes the shape it does, oblate spheroid, because most of it is really liquid and it flows until its surface is composed of points all at the same total potential (being gravitational potential + centrifugal potential) - these turn out to be oblate spheroids. The atmosphere is affected by the same forces, and surfaces of constant pressure are again surfaces of constant total potential. I mean it follows the same shape, and the pressure at sea level is the same everywhere.
Local features such as mountains are not shaped by these forces and are instead features of the solid crust. These come and go on geological timescales and have little to do with the hydrostatic equilibrium of the Earth. So the atmosphere does not follow the shape of these things. At 8 km above sea level, the pressure will be significantly lower than at sea level.
In conclusion the atmosphere is shaped roughly like an oblate spheroid, the same spheroid the ocean is shaped in. | [
"For rigid-surface nearly-spherical bodies, which includes all the rocky planets and many moons, ellipsoids are defined in terms of the axis of rotation and the mean surface height excluding any atmosphere. Mars is actually egg shaped, where its north and south polar radii differ by approximately , however this dif... |
The Hindenburg disaster: The real cause for the decline of air travel by balloon? | I would argue it's less history, more business. You've got to look at speed (airplanes are faster), cost to build (airplanes require less material), and passenger capacity (typically greater on a plane). Plus, after WWII, you had an amazing airplane industry ready to retool for peacetime passenger planes, a huge pool of experienced pilots to employ, and world that kept demanding more cargo, faster, cheaper. That said, I'm still surprised there's not more of a niche demand for airship travel. | [
"The newsreels and photographs, along with Morrison's passionate reporting shattered public and industry faith in airships and marked the end of the giant passenger-carrying airships. Also contributing to the downfall of Zeppelins was the arrival of international passenger air travel and Pan American Airlines. Heav... |
Is medieval portrayal of witches linked to anti-semitism? | [This thread] (_URL_0_) with answer by u/TheLionHearted may interest you. | [
"The stereotype of the witch finally solidified in the late Middle Ages. Numerous texts singled out women to be especially inclined to witchcraft. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, women defendants outnumbered men two to one. This difference only became more pronounced in the following centuries. The dispa... |
uptown vs downtown | The terms started with New York, where the southern tip of the island was the original core of the city and has since grown into the central business district. It also had access to port space, so it was originally rather commercial/industrial focused. As the city expanded north, that was mainly residential. Maps tend to show north as up, so the new residential areas were termed uptown.
During the housing boom of the 50s, historical city cores hollowed out, with everyone who could afford it moving to the newly growing suburbs. The old city centers were destroyed through urban renewal projects and saw a lot of high-rise development which tends to be nice for commercial/office space so the downtowns of most cities came to be centers for whatever industries operated within the city.
Residential areas also tend to be up-river from industrial areas for pollution reasons. And rich folks like to put their houses on hills, leaving the lower-lying geography for business. They also like to not be too close to rivers because they flood, so housing tries to stay away from the lower-elevation rivers, but business likes access to the rivers for transportation, so again, businesses tended to congregate in lower-elevation areas. | [
"BULLET::::- uptown : (noun, adj., adv.) (in, to, toward, or related to) either the upper section or the residential district of a city; e.g., in Manhattan, New York City the term refers to the northern end of Manhattan, generally speaking, north of 59th Street; see also Uptown, Minneapolis; Uptown, Chicago; Uptown... |
Can epigenetics alter the expression of traits dependent on genetic tract length? | Is there a reason you're asking about a 3 base pair repeat in particular? Variations in these kinds of repeats are usually associated with trinucleotide repeat syndromes, where having too many copies causes some sort of genetic syndrome. Huntington's disease and fragile X syndrome are probably the most well known. The more copies of the repeat, the more serious the symptoms. There are some efforts to try treat these conditions using drugs that modify epigenetics, I'll post some links when I'm at my computer.
If you're not specifically concerned with repeats then consider that the overall function of a gene is a product of both its sequence and its expression pattern (when and where it's expressed). So if you had a variant of a gene typically associated with being taller but it was epigenetically modified to be expressed at a low level (like by DNA methylation) then possibly that would negate the usual effect of increased height. | [
"Whereas the mutation rate in a given 100-base gene may be 10 per generation, epigenes may \"mutate\" several times per generation or may be fixed for many generations. This raises the question: do changes in epigene frequencies constitute evolution? Rapidly decaying epigenetic effects on phenotypes (i.e. lasting l... |
coal-fired power plants | Burn coal. Gets hot. Boils water. Spins turbine. Generates electricity. Exhaust heat used to preheat the water. Soot captured with sulfur compounds for emissions. Makes gypsum for drywall and plaster. | [
"A coal-fired power station is a type of fossil fuel power station. The coal is usually pulverized and then burned in a furnace with a boiler. The furnace heat converts boiler water to steam, which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators. Thus chemical energy stored in coal is converted successively int... |
What is the next major evolutionary change the human race is most likely to undergo? | In evolution there is nothing "major". There is no intention, direction and purpose. There are random changes that are confirmed or rejected by the natural selection mechanism.
What humans can add to this is their ability to intervene in the natural selection process - by keeping alive and allowing humans to reproduce who otherwise would not survive. So if there is anything "major" it is because of the medical development. Still, nobody can predict at this point what mutations would be confirmed by the aid of the medicine... | [
"Human evolution is characterized by a number of morphological, developmental, physiological, and behavioral changes that have taken place since the split between the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. The most significant of these adaptations are 1. bipedalism, 2. increased brain size, 3. lengthened o... |
Is there any evidence to show Shakespeare's actions and response to his son Hamnet's death? | Unfortunately we don't have much, if anything, to record Shakespeare's immediate emotional responses to his son's death; what we do have is rich grounds for speculation in the form of Shakespeare's plays. The impact of Hamnet's death on William Shakespeare is often interpreted through the lens of the play *Hamlet* as it premiered a handful of years later, a theory generously helped along by their similar-sounding names -- but Shakespeare didn't invent the name of its principal character out of whole cloth (at least one Early Modern adaptation of *Hamlet* predated Shakespeare's, and has since been lost) and the precedent for Hamnet Shakespeare's own name is likely the name of an unremarkable Stratford-native: his godfather, Hamnet Sadler. Regardless, other biographers have remarked on apparent resonances from the name on down; it's possible for a Shakespeare biographer like Stephen Greenblatt to make [an interesting case for a Hamlet-Hamnet connection,](_URL_0_) and for readers with a Romantic bent to scrutinize the plays through the lens of Shakespeare's real-life biographic narrative and vice versa. (Hamnet was also the fraternal twin of Shakespeare's surviving daughter Judith, and some see a resonance between Shakespeare's twins and the twins in Shakespeare's plays, for instance.) It would be hard for me to say with any firmness that any of this is a documentable fact, or that it's so likely that it should be taken into account by anyone who picks up *Hamlet*. Those possibilities are fertile ground for literary analysis and psychoanalytical readings of Shakespeare's works, both well and good in their own right but not compelling historical scholarship.
Hamnet was buried in Holy Trinity Church on August 11, 1596, as indicated in a [parish register](_URL_3_) where he's listed as "filius William Shakspere"; the twins had been baptized at Holy Trinity eleven years earlier, and the church was (and is) affiliated with the Church of England. If Hamnet's death had been accompanied with Catholic ceremony, it would be effectively the smoking gun of William Shakespeare's own Catholic sympathies -- or at least those of the Shakespeare family in Stratford, given that William was likely absent at the time of his son's death, working in London -- but I can find no hard evidence of this. All signs point toward a fairly normal Protestant burial, whether or not Hamnet's parents and grandparents harbored Catholic sentiments in their private lives.
We don't know as much about Shakespeare's personal experience of grief as we know about, say, Ben Jonson's -- Jonson's ["On My First Sonne"](_URL_2_) is quite frank about the emotions felt in the wake of the death of Jonson's young son Benjamin, as is ["On My First Daughter"](_URL_1_), Jonson's poem about the death of his infant daughter Mary. Jonson and Shakespeare were hardly two of a kind in terms of personality, but if nothing else Jonson's works are a small window onto the landscape of parental grief among Shakespeare's contemporaries -- Elizabethan parents did grieve for their children, and this grief often assumed religious overtones as well as the more familiar registers of loss and affection. In the absence of any firsthand accounts or descriptions of Shakespeare's behavior at the time, we can't say whether he rushed to Hamnet's bedside in the last days of a fatal sickness or was blindsided by news of a sudden death while on tour, whether he felt guilty for not being more present in his children's lives or whether he experienced relief, whether he consciously or unconsciously drew on his experiences with parenthood and grief in the writing of his sonnets and plays. It would be neat if we did know, but the historical facts are so sparse here that all biographers who editorialize on the death of Hamnet are by necessity using their imagination to fill the gaps.
Some reading:
- "Deaths in the Family: The Loss of a Son and the Rise of Shakespearean Comedy", Richard P. Wheeler
- "The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet", Stephen Greenblatt (for a pro-Hamnet/Hamlet account) | [
"1609: Shakespeare is struggling to complete his sonnets while plague rages. He sees the body of a young child and remembers the moment in 1596 when he learned of the illness of his son Hamnet while rehearsing a play in London. Returning to Stratford-upon-Avon he was subjected to abuse from his shrewish wife Anne f... |
What would happen if an Astronaut in a spacestation with artifical gravity due to a spinning station would jump? | > shouldn't the Astronaut when making a little jump [...] negate the effect of the spinning wheel
No. During the jump the astronaut will keep moving sideways due to inertia. Since the astronaut is moving in a straight line and the floor is moving in a circle, eventually they will come closer and he'll land nearly on the same spot.
And while walking, the contact force is not that low. It is comparable to gravity, so the feet of the astronaut will experience pressure against the floor and have friction pretty much like your feet on the ground.
There are only two caveats with spinning artificial gravity. One Coriolis forces: when the astronaut jumps, he gets closer to the center, which is a part of the station that moves slower. This could cause the astronaut to appear to drift sideways.
The other is negating gravity, not by jumping as you say, but by running opposite to the direction of movement until it's totally canceled out.
But if the station has a large radius then a human won't be able to jump high enough for the Coriolis effect to be noticeable, and if it spins fast enough then he won't be able to outrun the rotation. | [
"Astronaut Buzz Aldrin called the visual effects \"remarkable\", and said, \"I was so extravagantly impressed by the portrayal of the reality of zero gravity. Going through the space station was done just the way that I've seen people do it in reality. The spinning is going to happen—maybe not quite that vigorous—b... |
how male animals know which young is theirs so they can protect it. | They don't know. Many males of various species (like lions and gorillas) kill all the children once they rise to power, and they'll jealously and violently guard access to the females. | [
"Precocial young are born with a highly developed sensory and motor system. At birth they are able to see, hear, and most can walk or will learn to walk within the first few days after birth. The females in these species have adapted to be able to recognize their own young, which allows them to be selective about w... |
is there a reason why humans have an arch in their feet or is it just from evolution? | Everything is "just from evolution".
So... yes and yes?
Arched feet are easier to support a body that stands upright (like humans do). It also gives space for muscle which can soften the blow of walking and can be more springy, which wastes less effort when walking.
I'm not sure it's right to say these are "reasons why humans have an arch in their foot", but these are benefits of the arch, and the benefits (as well as the drawbacks) are products of evolution like everything else. | [
"There has been some speculation as to whether arch height has an effect on pronation. After conducting a study at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Maggie Boozer suggests that people with higher arches tend to pronate to a greater degree. However, the generally accepted view by professionals is that the mos... |
Does the human brain use any form of quantum entanglement? | Probably not. You might want to read this article:
_URL_0_
The abstract provides a very clear summary:
We argue that computation via quantum mechanical processes is irrelevant to explaining how brains produce thought, contrary to the ongoing speculations of many theorists. First, quantum effects do not have the temporal properties required for neural information processing. Second, there are substantial physical obstacles to any organic instantiation of quantum computation. Third, there is no psychological evidence that such mental phenomena as consciousness and mathematical thinking require explanation via quantum theory. We conclude that understanding brain function is unlikely to require quantum com- putation or similar mechanisms. | [
"Many quantum information applications, such as quantum teleportation, quantum error correction, and superdense coding, rely on entanglement. However, entanglement is a fragile quantum property between particles and can be easily destroyed by loss and noise arising from interaction with the environment, leading to ... |
Do you get any of the benefits of sleep from just lying still in bed with your eyes closed (as happens with insomnia)? | There's some discussion of this in [this thread](_URL_1_) about a year ago. That thread prompted [an article on the subject in The Atlantic](_URL_0_). The conclusion from that article is:
> "Lying down isn't completely useless -- it does help your muscles and other organs relax. But you'd get the same results just from reclining on the couch. So sleep is still your best friend. The useful takeaway is that your best move, if you've been in bed for 20 minutes and still aren't dozing off, is to get up and engage in a low-light, low-stress activity like reading until you begin to feel tired. Taking your mind off of "Why am I not sleeping?! I need to sleep!" is crucial. When you do get up, though, don't use your computer or phone or watch TV -- the blue-colored light from the screens tricks your body into thinking it's daytime and not releasing melatonin."
There's evidence that various kinds of rest other than sleep can also be important, but sleep apparently involves a kind of "brain housekeeping" function which can't be achieved any other (known) way.
| [
"Generally, for people experiencing difficulties with sleep, spending less time in bed results in deeper and more continuous sleep, so clinicians will frequently recommend eliminating use of the bed for any activities except sleep (or sex).\n",
"Sleeping issues in children have been linked to many physical and me... |
why does putting food in a plastic bag prevent it from going stale? | Putting food in any container that doesn't allow air in will prevent food from going stale. Well, not *prevent*, but slow the process down. A plastic bag, when wrapped tight enough, does an okay job, but there are other, better things that work. | [
"Lightweight plastic bags are also blown into trees and other plants and can be mistaken for food. Plastic bags break down by polymer degradation but not by biodegradation. As a result, any toxic additives they contain—including flame retardants, antimicrobials, and plasticizers—will be released into the environmen... |
How much energy is contained in the trace amounts of uranium in coal? | From [this page](_URL_0_) I have that the uranium content of coal is optimistically on the order of magnitude of 10ppm, depending on the source. Fissionable uranium, however, only makes up 0.71% of naturally occurring uranium.
Assuming, again optimistically, that coal is primarily elemental carbon, that gives us 4.55 * 10^28 atoms of carbon in 1 ton of coal.
That gives us about 5 * 10^23 atoms of uranium in a ton of coal, of which about 3 * 10^21 are fissionable. This gives us a little over a gram of fissionable uranium.
According to wikipedia, 1 kg of U235 gives 83.14 TJ, so our little over 1g of U235 will provide about 90 GJ.
By comparison, burning that ton of coal will give you [about 30 GJ](_URL_1_).
Nuclear power is pretty cool.
Edit: I'll add that these are extremely rough figures with a lot of error, so I won't say that it's necessarily more or less, but it's a lot closer than you would think. | [
"A kilogram of uranium-235 (U-235) converted via nuclear processes releases approximately three million times more energy than a kilogram of coal burned conventionally (7.2 × 10 joules per kilogram of uranium-235 versus 2.4 × 10 joules per kilogram of coal).\n",
"Although only several parts per million average co... |
what's the limiting factor in how much memory companies like sandisk can make sd cards? | The circuits that make up the memory of the SD card take up a certain amount of space. Smaller components require more research time and more advanced manufacturing and so cost more money. Either 256 GB of memory cannot be made to fit or they would cost so much that nobody would consider spending 20x extra just to not swap out the card. (128 GB is already many hours of video, days of music etc) | [
"Like most memory card formats, SD is covered by numerous patents and trademarks. Excluding SDIO cards, royalties for SD card licenses are imposed for manufacture and sale of memory cards and host adapters (US$1,000/year plus membership at US$1,500/year)\n",
"SD cards are not the most economical solution in devic... |
I read that a large steel rod from orbit would hit a land target with the force of a small nuclear weapon. Does this mean it requires the energy of a nuclear weapon to get it into orbit? | Time for some algebra. Let's assume that figure is calculated as the sum of the gravitational potential energy and the kinetic energy. Fortunately for us the [Virial Theorem](_URL_1_) tells us that for bodies in gravitational orbit, averaged over their orbit, their kinetic energy is -1/2 the potential energy. For a body in orbit, the potential energy is given as -V = -GmM/R. The potential is defined to be 0 at an infinite distance. Let's assume the bar starts in geosynchronous orbit, which according to wolfram alpha is 6.6107 earth radii. So the kinetic energy of the bar is (1/2)*(1/6.6107) * GmM_E/R_E. How much energy will we get if we bring the bar out of orbit and to the surface, converting all that potential energy into kinetic energy? The change in V is V(geosynchronous orbit)-V(surface). This amount is GmM_E/R_E(1-1/6.6107). So if the bar were to suddenly change direction toward the earth, and ignoring air resistance, it would strike the surface with an energy of GmM_E/R_E(1-1/(2*6.6107)). Plugging in some numbers gives a result of 5.77526x10^7 J/kg * m. According to [Wikipedia](_URL_2_) The Davy Crockett had a yield of .042 TJ. So a bar of weight 727kg would have a comparable energy.
727kg is a large amount of steel, but not that much. The ISS weighs in at [19,323 kg](_URL_0_).
However Little Boy, the bomb detonated over Hiroshima is estimated to have had a yield of 54-75 TJ which corresponds to 935022-1298642kg of steel, which is not a "steel bar". Additionally a steel rod entering from orbit would have to have a reduced initial kinetic energy to have a collision course. Plus air resistance is by no means negligible. So the article was technically "true", but I consider that statement to be misleading. Keep in mind a large nuclear bomb, the Tsar Bomba had a yield of around 2,135,000TJ. So once again measuring energy in nuclear bombs is very much for a shock factor.
Yes getting things into orbit takes a tremendous amount of energy. This is made even worse by the fact that most of the rocket that lifts of the launch pad doesn't actually make it to orbit. Rockets are essentially very large bombs designed to detonate in a controlled manner. | [
"The idea is that the weapon would naturally contain a large kinetic energy because it moves at orbital velocities, around 8 kilometers per second in orbit and 3 kilometers per second or Mach 10 at impact. As the rod would reenter Earth's atmosphere it would lose most of the velocity, but the remaining energy would... |
How did English language names for other countries/cultures originate? | hi! there's room for responses covering more country names, but FYI, you can get started in the FAQ
* [Why do countries have different names in other languages?](_URL_0_)
and the /r/Linguistics FAQ
* [Why are our names for countries so different from what the people call their own country?](_URL_1_) | [
"Anglicisation of non-English-language names was common for immigrants, or even visitors, to English-speaking countries. An example is the German composer Johann Christian Bach, the \"London Bach,\" who was known as \"John Bach\" after emigrating to England.\n",
"Countries which have seen repeated large-scale cul... |
Christianization after converting Europe to Christianity - What did it entail? | From how I understand your blurb, what you're getting at is the increasing orthodoxy of Christianity in Europe, following the conversion process.
As regards England, conversion began in the late sixth century with Augustine's mission to Kent. Whether the clergy today doesn't like the idea of pagan syncretism I can't say, but they certainly did in the Early Middle Ages. Pope Gregory the Great, who sent Augustine and later Mellitus (who was to become Bishop of London) said the following in a letter during Mellitus's journey to England: "*tell [Augustine] what I have decided after long deliberation concerning the affair of the English:... the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols, which are in them, be destroyed; let water be blessed and sprinkled in the said temples, altars erected and relics placed there. For, if those temples are well built, it is needful that they should be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the nation... may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. And because they are accustomed to slaughter many oxen in sacrifice to devils, some solemnity ought to be given to them in exchange for this also; as that, on the day of dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs... no longer sacrifice animals to the devil, but kill cattle for their food and to the praise of God... that, while some outward rejoicings are preserved for them, they may be able the more easily to consent to the inward joys. For there is no doubt that it is impossible to cut off everything at once from their obdurate hearts, for he who strives to ascend to the highest place, rises by degrees or steps, not by leaps.*"
The last phrase - "he who strives to ascend to the highest places, rises by degrees or steps, not by leaps" - epitomises Gregory's approach, and the early English Church. Efforts were made so that, perhaps not the most orthodox Christianity, but Christianity nonetheless, took hold in England. In the decades following Augustine's 597 landfall in Kent, Christianity remained a minority and tenuous religion. Æthelberht, the first Christian king, passed the throne of Kent to pagans on his death. For others like Rædwald of East Anglia, the dual worship of both pagan gods and Jesus Christ was a sort of double insurance against misfortune. Beyond that, in a large part it seems that Christianity was a political move over a spiritual one. Kent, and the south and especially east of England more generally, had long associations with the Continent. Æthelberht's wife Bertha was a Frank, for example. As Christianity became further embedded in Merovingian France, it was to the advantage of English rulers to follow suite. So, while increasing parts of England were at least nominally Christian for much of the seventh century, this had little bearing on how widespread Christianity was - to say nothing of its accordance with Roman Christianity.
Beginning in the 670s, though, Christianity moved beyond a politically advantageous choice. It was in this period of about 670 to the 740s that a monastic boom took place in England, with the foundation of numerous Christian institutions across the island. Bede famously decried many as corrupt, for "*others by a still heavier crime, since they are laymen and not experienced in the usages of the life according to the rule or possessed by love of it, give money to kings, and under the pretext of founding monasteries buy lands on which they may more freely devote themselves to lust, and in addition cause them to be ascribed to them in hereditary right by royal edicts*." To trust Bede would seem to say that once again Christianity was really nothing more than an opportunity for personal gain - in this case of inheritable land rights. However, I side here with the ideas of P Sims-Williams, who has argued that Bede was employing nothing more than a standard monastic polemic technique. What seems to really be happening, is the foundation of religious institutions within households. This was a fairly common practice in the Mediterranean world, and what Bede's argument really boiled down to was griping over a strict or loose interpretation of monastic obligation. These household, or family monasteries, then, shouldn't be discounted as non- or nominally Christian, but rather just not as militantly so (Bede goes on to say that the people of these monasteries were simply household members, presumably as opposed to being raised in a monastic foundation as oblates like himself). The christianity of these institutions seems all the more tenable for me when taken in wider context. It was during the eighth century (Bede wrote his letter in 734) that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes a string of kings abdicating for a life of monasticism, or traveling to Rome to die. To surrender power of a kingdom to pursue a religious goal hardly seems the actions of the politically greedy, but rather the pious and devout. It is telling too that during this period the pressing issues at hand were no longer whether or not to be Christian, but rather questions of faith itself.
As the centuries pass, the English church continued to develop and further align itself with Continental notions. Offa's move in the eighth century to establish an archbishopric in Lichfield, while on the one hand politically driven (allowing Offa to consecrate a successor), shows too an attempt to work within a Continental mindset. Not long earlier, Charlemagne, who was in contact with Offa, had consecrated heirs. Were Offa to have succeeded in choosing a lasting heir, that Christian-based process would be the first of its kind in England, as opposed to the norm of interregnum wars for the throne. Furthermore, Offa's attempt can be looked at alongside Gregory the Great's initial goal of twenty-four sees and two metropolitans in England, a goal as yet incomplete. Later on in the 10th century, the Benedictine reforms emanating from Cluny and Fleury abbeys took hold in England, spurring the adoption of a formal monastic rule in England. The argument, like Bede 200 years prior, fell along the lines of strict and loose clergy, and ultimately was resolved in alignment with Cluniac ideas.
A transition, from variegated, syncretic Christianity to increasingly orthodox and Rome-centric Christianity is not isolated to England. Farther north, Iceland formally converted in 1000 AD. In a large part, though, early bishops in Iceland were essentially the same as chiefs, and non-celibacy and simony were not uncommon. Accordingly during the Hildebrandine reforms of the late eleventh century (works by Pope Gregory VII against simony and lay investiture), Iceland remained unaffected (albeit by willful ignorance or not I'm not so sure) for decades.
To paint in broad brushstrokes, then, Christianity in Europe can be broken down into two phases as it spread: one of nominal conversion, and the long following period of alignment with Rome. As I understand it, this alignment is what you're getting at with the idea of being "'religionized.'" Granted, this answer was speaking pretty loosely and in terms mostly of England, but I think you'll find similar situations play themselves out in Scandinavia, Germany, and elsewhere where the Christianity of the Roman Empire needed re-establishing (or establishing in the first place).
Sources:
For Gregory's letter my translation of Bede was *English Historical Documents volume I* no. 151, likewise Ecgbert's letter for Bede's opinion on family monasteries is *EHD* no. 170
Anglo Saxon Chronicle: _URL_0_
For family monasteries and Bede's polemic, P Sims-Williams, *Religion and Literature in Western England, 600-800*
For Iceland, William Ian Miller, *Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland* | [
"The process of the Christianization of Europe typically involved Christian missionaries managing to convert a King or other ruler who then proclaimed his kingdom to be Christian. It certainly took several generations for Christianity to become truly established in the whole society, with many people - especially i... |
what is the difference between a bitmap and a vector image? | Think of a bitmap image as a painting. It's a specific size, it has been created and each brush stroke is where it should be. If we were to take an image of that painting and stretch it out, it would start to look bad because it wasn't meant to be that size.
Think of a vector as the painter who knows exactly how to make the painting. He knows the shape of the objects in his painting, the technique used to paint it. If you ask him to paint a small version of the image, he can do it. If you ask him to paint a much larger version, he would be able to do that as well without any distortions. | [
"An X–Y plotter is a plotter that operates in two axes of motion (\"X\" and \"Y\") in order to draw continuous vector graphics. The term was used to differentiate it from standard plotters which had control only of the \"y\" axis, the \"x\" axis being continuously fed to provide a plot of some variable with time. P... |
if they use the same caliber and are similar in function, why is the ar 15 not used by soldiers? what is its catch? | The core difference is in function.
Specifically, the M16 and M4 are capable of automatic and/or burst fire, which means multiple shots fired, ejected, and chambered with one pull of the trigger.
The AR-15 that is commonly available to the public is not capable of automatic or burst fire. | [
"The caliber for the OHWS was quickly decided not to be the NATO standard 9 mm due to lack of stopping power. The FBI had selected the 10 mm auto to replace their 9 mm pistols, but it was too powerful, few manufacturers produced it, and the round caused short weapon service life. The .45 ACP caliber was chosen and ... |
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