question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
|---|---|---|
how are bills able to be changed last minute with other members of congress seemingly being out of the loop? | It doesn't happen with most bills.
When it does tend to happen is when there is a particularly complicated bill that has to be passed immediately (e.g. a bill that keeps the government funding from shutting down, or deal with some national emergency). In those situations, the bill can be dozens or hundreds of pages long, and contains very technical language. Because of the sensitivity of time, the members of Congress put their trust in a smaller number of people (usually the chairman and a few other members of the subject matter committee) to make sure that all the details are correct. Sometimes, this smaller number of specialists will add things to the bill that are unexpected or that other members don't have time to learn about and fully understand. Because the bill is very long and complicated and must be passed quickly, the members decide it's better just to vote "yes" to solve the big emergency, even though there is a risk of them inadvertently agreeing to something the didn't intend. On very rare occasions, the added provision is intentionally written in a confusing way so that it won't be easy to discover until later. Sometimes a last-minute provision is quietly added in order to get additional votes needed to pass the bill. | [
"This bill has not become law. Sessions of Congress last two years, at the end of which all proposed bills and resolutions that have not been passed are removed. Members may and often do reintroduce bills that did not come up for debate.\n",
"Sessions of Congress last two years and any bills proposed in that sess... |
At what point does matter (mass/size) follow quantum physics as opposed to standard physics? | At every point. QM is the correct theory. "Standard Physics" is the short-wavelength approximation to QM. Which method you use depends on how accurate you need to be in your prediction. | [
"In the context of relativity, mass is not an additive quantity, in the sense that one can not add the rest masses of particles in a system to get the total rest mass of the system. Thus, in relativity usually a more general view is that it is not the sum of rest masses, but the energy–momentum tensor that quantifi... |
what does it mean that there is a 2,500 square-mile cloud of methane over the southwest? | Methane is much more efficient at trapping radiation than CO2 - about 20 times more so. As far as greenhouse gases go, it's (one of) the killer(s).
Edit: some reading -
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
Edit 2: The stuff in parentheses. | [
"The Four Corners Methane Hot Spot (also called the San Juan Basin methane leak or New Mexico methane source or various related permutations) refers to a clustering of large methane sources near San Juan Basin, near Four Corners, New Mexico, United States. It is perhaps the largest source of methane release in the ... |
why is 100 degrees celsius the "boiling point", when water can boil below 100 degrees? | Water without impurities boils at 100degrees c at sea level | [
"This boiling–point difference of 16.1 millikelvins between the Celsius scale's original definition and the current one (based on absolute zero and the triple point) has little practical meaning in real life because water's boiling point is highly sensitive to variations in barometric pressure. For example, an alti... |
How strong were relations between the USA and Liberia over time politically, economically, and culturally? | This question has been up for a while without a single response. I am not a historian, but I will try to provide good sources from what I've searched up.
Early advocates for resettlement included [Paul Cuffee](_URL_1_), a Quaker abolitionist of mixed descent. The American Colonization Society would eventually found Liberia in 1822 as a possible solution to the trouble faced by freedmen who remained in the U.S. It's worth noting however that some abolitionists were dubious of ACS's intents: was it well meant for freedmen, or was Liberia just a way of getting them out of the US? It was accused of being a "slaveholder's scheme" (among other things, its president Henry Clay in the 1840's was a slaveholder.) See also the arguments of [William Llyod Garrison](_URL_2_).
The society, funded by membership costs and donations, began to lose money by the 1840's. Liberia declared independence as a nation in 1847 and by the end of the civil war, ACS could no longer afford to send over a lot of freedmen.
From then on, the US government would help the Amero-Liberians with rebellions by the local population in 1821, 1843, 1876, 1910, and 1915. (Note that to this day, only a small minority of Liberians are descended from American freedmen).
President Taft would recall the US's fatherly relationship with Liberia in his [1909 First Annual Message to Congress](_URL_3_)
> "It will be remembered that the interest of the United States in the Republic of Liberia springs from the historical fact of the foundation of the Republic by the colonization of American citizens of the African race. In an early treaty with Liberia there is a provision under which the United States may be called upon for advice or assistance. Pursuant to this provision and in the spirit of the moral relationship of the United States to Liberia, that Republic last year asked this Government to lend assistance in the solution of certain of their national problems, and hence the Commission was sent.."
Hundreds of millions of dollars were also spent in aid to Liberia during the Cold War, keeping Liberia somewhat firmly in the US's bloc/influence.
[This](_URL_0_), along with various wikipedia pages, is my source. I hope this was helpful/conforms to the mods' expectations. | [
"The United States had a long history of intervening in Liberia's internal affairs, repeatedly sending naval vessels to help suppress insurrections by indigenous tribes before and after independence (in 1821, 1843, 1876, 1910, and 1915). The United States had lost interest in Liberia after 1876, and the country bec... |
why do seniors/children pay less for movie tickets when they still take the same amount of space ? | Its a way to get them into the thester. If no seniors are willing to spend $10 to go to the thester, then profit is $0. If lowering the price will cause at least a few seniors to come, then profit is made. | [
"Tickets for all movie showings feature assigned seating. Upon purchasing a ticket, customers are allowed to select their preferred seat and see which seats have already been reserved. The only restriction is the inability to select a seat if it creates a single seat space between an already reserved seat. This is ... |
why is lumber sold based the size it was before it went into the planer? | Just a side note to your comment, but a quarter pound hamburger is the amount of hamburger that was put on the grill. The patty you end up eating won’t weigh 4 oz anymore. So your example actually is closer to the same than an opposite. | [
"\"Finished lumber\" is supplied in standard sizes, mostly for the construction industry – primarily softwood, from coniferous species, including pine, fir and spruce (collectively spruce-pine-fir), cedar, and hemlock, but also some hardwood, for high-grade flooring. It is more commonly made from softwood than hard... |
What happens to the kinetic energy of a moving radioactive particle when it decays? | Energy and momentum are conserved for any decay, in any frame of reference. If you carefully keep track of the energies and momenta of all particles in a decay where the parent particle is moving, you'll find that they are both conserved. | [
"In the decay, an electron and an antineutrino are ejected at great speed from the tritium nucleus, changing one of the neutrons into a proton with the release of 18,600 electronvolts (eV) of energy. The neutrino escapes the system; the electron is generally captured within a short distance, but far enough away fro... |
Did Confederate symbols disappear after the Civil War? Did people still display the Confederate flag after the war? If, not when did it come back in fashion? | Hi there -- this is a question that's come up here a few times before. Not to discourage new answers, but you may be interested in these previous links on the topic:
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
_URL_2_
| [
"The battle flag was never adopted by the Confederate Congress, never flew over any state capitols during the Confederacy, and was never officially used by Confederate veterans' groups. The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK and used by S... |
why do products with double the amount/content don't nearly cost double the price? | Smaller products have more packaging costs, more transaction overhead & more customer service issues. When you make something, you just want to focus on making that thing so you sell it off in big lots so you don't need to worry about running stores & dealing with customers. | [
"The regulating price of a given type of product is a sort of modal average price level, above or below which people would be much less likely to trade the product. If the price is too high, buyers cannot afford to buy it, or try to get cheaper alternatives. If the price is too low, sellers cannot cover their costs... |
what causes the menstruation cycle to be regular? | [Additional info](_URL_0_)
The menstrual cycle is caused by hormones that fluctuate in level throughout the cycle. A hormone called follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) is released by the pituitary gland, which causes an egg cell to develop. The little pod of cells it is inside is called the follicle. The follicle grows as the egg develops, and as it grows it secretes more and more estrogen until ovulation (caused by an increase in FSH and another hormone called lutenizing hormone). Then the follicle develops in to another structure called a corpus luteum, which secretes progesterone. Progesterone and estrogen cause the endometrium to thicken.
Eventually, if no baby appears, the corpus luteum will break down, causing estrogen and progesterone levels to drop. Low estrogen levels cause the endometrium to shed. Low estrogen levels also trigger the release of FSH, so here we are at the beginning again. | [
"The menstrual cycle is the regular natural change that occurs in the female reproductive system (specifically the uterus and ovaries) that makes pregnancy possible. The cycle is required for the production of oocytes, and for the preparation of the uterus for pregnancy. The menstrual cycle occurs due to the rise a... |
i can always find a deal on most electronics if i look hard enough. why do the prices of certain products never seem to vary more than a few bucks? | Apple will only supply to retailers if the retailer agrees to very strict conditions. Those conditions include that the retailer only sells Apple products at pre-agreed prices. Which is why you will never be able to find a deal on a new iPhone or iPad. | [
"If the customers do not find value and integrity in the products they are buying they will be quick to leave for the next lowest price. Selling on pure price turns the product into a commodity. Commoditization does more harm than good for the brand or company selling. A commodity is something for which there is de... |
What causes different materials to expand or contract at different rates? | Intermolecular bonding energy. Heat is atomic kinetic energy, right? Well, if a material is bonded to itself really strongly (tungsten), it will take a lot of energy (heat) to force them to spread out. If they are weak (plastic), they will spread out a lot further with application of the same amount of energy. | [
"A bulk material can be distorted in many different ways: stretching, shearing, bending, twisting, etc. Each kind of distortion contributes to the elastic energy of a deformed material. In orthogonal coordinates, the elastic energy per unit volume due to strain is thus a sum of contributions:\n",
"Material will e... |
the concept of a t-test in statistics | A t-test is used to compare two sets of data gathered independently of each other to see how similar they are. In my job (biochemistry) it's sometimes used during method validation to test how well a particular test will give a 100% result when conducted multiple times.
The difference between one-tailed and two-tailed depends on your data set. Essentially it refers to the shape of a bell curve where you would expect your data points to lie, the tails are the ends of the bell curve at the extreme high and low values. If you're testing data which may vary in two directions, say between 95-105% of a theoretical mean then you should use s two-tailed test as the data may lie in either end of your bell curve, under either tail. If your data is zero-bounded, (cut off at zero) or otherwise can only vary in one direction, then you should use a one-tailed test, as you effectively only have half a bell curve and only one tail.
Whether you should use it depends on the variability of your data. As with all statistical tests it is not perfect, perfectly good and precise data sets may fail a t-test where more variable data would pass. Because the test involves dividing a calculated value by the standard deviation, the more variable your results are the more likely they are to be considered similar.
| [
"A \"t\"-test is most commonly applied when the test statistic would follow a normal distribution if the value of a scaling term in the test statistic were known. When the scaling term is unknown and is replaced by an estimate based on the data, the test statistics (under certain conditions) follow a Student's \"t\... |
when is the veil of beyond which the historian can't look, the age that that must be left to the archaeologists? | An archaeologist works in the field, studying primarily by excavating remains and recovering objects from the place of history. Historians typically write and study about the subject, but don't necessarily have to be archaeologists. There isn't any sort of time divider, though. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Centuries of Darkness: A Challenge to the Conventional Chronology of Old World Archaeology\", with P.J. James (ed), I.J. Thorpe, N. Kokkinos and J.A. Frankish. London: Jonathan Cape, 1991,\n",
"BULLET::::- \"Centuries of Darkness: A Challenge to the Conventional Chronology of Old World Archaeology\... |
where there is a uterus or another female organ in a woman's body, what is in that exact spot in a man's body? | No, the woman's bladder is just smaller when empty and is located more forward in the body, creating a space behind it, where the womb is located.
An important thing about the womb is that, when the woman is not pregnant, it's pretty small organ. It only gets huge and cumbersome when there's a huge, cumbersome baby in it.
I hope that answers your question. | [
"The sexes are determined externally by the number of openings in the groin area: the female has three – the forward one is the urinary opening (in the urinary papilla or projection), the second is the vagina, and the third is the anus at the tail. The male has two openings – the combined urinary/reproductive openi... |
how can a distance be infinitely smaller | Between the numbers 1 and 2, there is 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. But between 1.1 and 1.2 there is 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, etc. And between 1.11 and 1.12 there is 1.121, 1.122, 1.123, etc. So there can always be more numbers in between two other numbers. It is infinite, you can keep going smaller and smaller.
So between any two points, there are infinite distances. | [
"The dimensions (e.g., length) of an object as measured by one observer may be smaller than the results of measurements of the same object made by another observer (e.g., the ladder paradox involves a long ladder traveling near the speed of light and being contained within a smaller garage).\n",
"This also implie... |
when people make supercuts, where do they get all the footage, and how do they find all the clips? | There are places on the internet where you can easily and quickly acquire just about every episode of these shows... For free. After that it's just up to you to piece it together. | [
"A supercut is a technique or genre of video editing with historical roots in film and television and related to vidding. It is generally a speedy compilation or montage using seconds of video clips that feature the same type of action, scene, word, phrase, object, gesture, cliché or trope from pre-existing visual ... |
In which direction is spacetime "curved"? | The classic example that you refer to does frequently seem to lead to exactly the confusion you mention. It's frustrating because it easy to understand, and is 'morally' correct, although of course it's really just a cartoon and isn't meant to be an accurate description of what curvature is.
The difficulty is that the curvature that is important for general relativity is more general than our intuitive notion of curvature. At the end of the day, the answer to the question "which direction is spacetime curved" is "in no direction". Spacetime does not need a direction to curve into in order to be curved. Human intuition is built upon euclidean space, because that's what's important for human day-to-day life, and euclidean space is totally flat. When we think about curvature we usually think about lower-dimensional spaces, such as 2d surfaces or 1d lines, that are "embedded" in 3d space. Taking the example of the cereal bowl: the surface of the cereal bowl is two-dimensional, but the surface "lives" in 3d space, and it has to bend into the third dimension in order to manifest its curvature. Now, in a mathematical sense, it's possible to have curved spaces that *aren't* embedded in higher-dimensional spaces. In fact, you can often embed the same 2d space into three dimensions in more than one way, and I've been told that there are even some 2d spaces that *cannot* be embedded in three dimensions (I'm not an expert of differential geometry though so I'm not familiar with the details).
As an example, consider a cone shaped birthday hat that you can make out of paper, [like this](_URL_0_). The cone shape is a 2d surface that is embedded in 3d space, and it's clearly curved. However, assuming you've made a birthday hat like this before, you should be familiar with the fact that you can make one by starting with a flat wedge-shaped piece of paper [like this](_URL_1_). The way you do so is by cutting out the wedge shape and gluing the straight edges together. Now, suppose instead of gluing the edges together I just told you that the flat wedge shape was a 2d "world" and that when inhabitants of this world crossed the straight edge, they were instantly teleported to the other side. From the perspective of the inhabitants of the world, they appear to be living in a world with curvature, because there is clearly some funny stuff going on near the tip of the cone: if you travel in a straight line on the cones surface such that your path going near the tip, you will end up zipping around the tip and your path will end up crossing itself (a very strange thing for a straight line to do). This is actually a fun exercise to do with a paper cone, it can be instructive to draw the straight line on the cone when it's taped/glued together, and then unfold it again to see what is looks like on the flat piece of paper. The take away message here is that it's perfectly mathematically consistent to describe a world that is curved without explicitly embedding it in a higher-dimensional word, and that the nature of curvature is related to the way that different parts of space are connected together.
In general relativity, spacetime just *has* curvature, like the unfolded cone. It's not necessary for you to imagine it embedded in a higher-dimensional space. It has curvature because straight lines do weird things that we don't expect them to do, like fold back in on themselves, and these sort of behaviours of straight lines is what *defines* the curvature. | [
"If Einstein showed that space-time was curved, Nottale shows that it is not only curved, but also fractal. Nottale has proven a key theorem which shows that a space which is continuous and non-differentiable is necessarily fractal. It means that such a space depends on scale.\n",
"Curved space often refers to a ... |
anarchy vs libertarian | A libertarian philosophy is laissez-faire (minimal interference from the government) advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens.
An anarchist philosophy is based on the absence of government, and we are self-governed.
So one has a government that works minimally, and the other has no government. | [
"Libertarianism (from , meaning \"freedom\") is a collection of political philosophies and movements that uphold liberty as a core principle. Libertarians seek to maximize political freedom and autonomy, emphasizing freedom of choice, voluntary association and individual judgment. Libertarians share a skepticism of... |
Stereotypically, we see Ancient Greeks as toga-wearing. How did they dress for winter? | Just for clarification, the Greeks did not wear togas, rather himations, chitons, and peplos. Togas were an Etruscan-influenced Roman style, and differed from the green garb both in fastening, drape, and style.
The met has a nice overview of Greek attire here, which includes an overview of how the components were layered for comfort as well.
_URL_0_
| [
"Clothing reformers later in the 19th century CE admired ancient Greek dress because they thought it represented timeless beauty, the opposite of complicated and rapidly changing fashions of their time, as well as the more practical reasoning that Grecian-style dresses required far less cloth than those of the Roco... |
what happens to an eyeball after it's removed from a body and loses its moisture? | Well, it would definitely depend upon the environment around the eyeball, but since you're particularly curious about it being dried out; in an arid environment (say under a heat lamp or something) yeah, it would turn into basically an eyeball raisin. But under most conditions, it'd basically just eventually rot, turning into a dark goo as it decomposes, like the rest (mostly) of the organs. | [
"Dry eye occurs when either the eye does not produce enough tears or when the tears evaporate too quickly. This can result from contact lens use, meibomian gland dysfunction, allergies, pregnancy, Sjögren's syndrome, vitamin A deficiency, LASIK surgery, and certain medications such as antihistamines, some blood pre... |
What color would Radon glow when excited? | Based on [this](_URL_0_) emission spectrum, it appears that radon would fluoresce with a deep bluish-violet color. Obviously it's intense radioactivity prevents this experiment from being easily accomplished. | [
"Radium bromide is a luminous chemical that causes the air surrounding it, even when encased in a tube, to glow a brilliant green and demonstrate all bands of the nitrogen spectrum. It is possible that the effect of the alpha radiation on the nitrogen in the air causes this luminescence. Radium bromide is highly re... |
History of Satanism?
| Modern day Satanism isn't much a religion at all, it is more a philosophy, the same way some Buddhists treat Buddhism as a philosophy (though not all.) Modern Satanism relies heavily on the counter-culture as a means of establishing its philosophy. Modern Satanism emphasizes the self, and most of the sins are sins that other people commit to the self, or you. This empowers the Satanist, they are the ones saying people are sinning, they are the ones in control of their lives. Because of this, most of the sins relate to wronging the Satanist in some way, the one that comes to mind for me is that stupidity is the number one sin in Satanism. The philosophy is a little narcissistic, but the empowerment is appealing to a certain branch of people, almost all of them counter-culture. Note that modern Satanism has absolutely nothing to do with Lucifer or Abrahamic evil for that matter. The name is another way of sticking it to popular religions, and again, being counter-culture. Modern Satanists do not cast spells (though some do rituals, although these are much less exciting than they sound, they're mostly exercises in thought) and they do not hope to raise demons and take over the world.
edit: why is lotictrance less upvoted than me? I was wrong on a couple counts and he seems to have firsthand experience, his account is much better | [
"Schreck's \"Flowers From Hell: A Satanic Reader\" was released in 2001. The book detailed the history of the use of Satan as a symbol, archetype, and deity in fiction throughout history, from ancient to modern times, and through several different cultures.\n",
"Satan in Goray (1955) is a novel by Isaac Bashevis ... |
"complexes" in terms of psychology | The psych meaning of complex is a bit different than the dictionary. In the field, complex refers to a group of attitudes, forms, or personality traits that define whatever word is placed in front of it. Example: "superiority complex" refers to the traits in a given person that makes them feel superior to others. | [
"The term \"complex\" (; also \"emotionally charged complexes\" or \"feeling-toned complex of ideas\"), was coined by Carl Jung when he was still a close associate of Sigmund Freud. Complexes were so central to Jung's ideas that he originally called his body of theories \"Complex psychology\". Historically the term... |
why are there not many artistic depictions of heaven within christian religious art traditionally? | perhaps depicting perfection was thought impossible and hence avoided. My theory, though, is that they thought it offensive to draw holy things back then | [
"In the context of Christianity, heaven is sometimes symbolically depicted as populated by angels playing harps, giving the instrument associations of the sacred and heavenly. In the Bible, Genesis 4:21 says that Jubal, the first musician and son of Lamech, was 'the father of all who play' the harp and flute.\n",
... |
What is the difference between 208/220/240/277v in a 3 phase system and how is each voltage achieved? | You are, I believe, talking about a power supply setup used in North America, known as [high-leg delta](_URL_0_).
In this setup, voltage between any two phases is 240V.
The neutral is connected to midpoint between two phases, which results in neutral-to-phase voltage of 120V for those two phases, and 208V phase-to-neutral for the third phase.
This is common for US residential power.
For commercial power, the setup is simple three-phase power, with each phase 277V above neutral, which gives 480V phase-to-phase. | [
"In electrical engineering, three-phase electric power systems have at least three conductors carrying alternating current voltages that are offset in time by one-third of the period. A three-phase system may be arranged in delta (∆) or star (Y) (also denoted as wye in some areas). A wye system allows the use of tw... |
why is dietary fibre important? | There’s also new evidence that the “good” bacteria in our colon take nutrition from dietary fiber. So even if humans can’t digest it, our gut bacteria can. Having a healthy microbiome is essential to preventing diabetes, heart disease and all sorts of other inflammatory disorders. So, eat your fruits and veggies. | [
"Many molecules that are considered to be \"dietary fiber\" are so because humans lack the necessary enzymes to split the glycosidic bond and they reach the large intestine. Many foods contain varying types of dietary fibers, all of which contribute to health in different ways.\n",
"Dietary fiber is a carbohydrat... |
why is it that modern body armor, like the kind used by the military and police, is very rarely of high enough strength to stop rounds from rifle caliber weapons? especially in a military context, aren't rifle caliber weapons exceedingly common? | When I was deployed we had armor with plates. They were rated to stop a round from an AK-47. But like with many things. The more times it gets hit the more it loses its structural integrity. Think of a brick wall and a sledgehammer. Sure, the brick wall maybe able to stop a few hits, but eventually the force is going to weaken it to the point of failure. You also have to consider mobility as well. The armor can’t be so thick and heavy that the person wearing can’t move either. It’s a balance that has to be reached. Too much weight and the soldiers may as well just make a Fox hole and fight from a secure position. | [
"The proliferation of high-quality body armor has begun to make guns that fire pistol ammunition (such as Heckler & Koch's earlier MP5 submachine gun and USP pistol) ineffective. In response to this trend, Heckler & Koch designed the MP7 (along with the cancelled UCP pistol, which uses the same ammunition) to penet... |
what made the beatles so revolutionary for the music industry? and why are they regarded as one of the most influential bands of all time? | Oh, my. A number of things.
1 The Beatles wrote their own songs. Before, most Pop acts were given songs to sing by their producers. After The Beatles, it was more expected that a band would create its own music. I may be wrong, but I understand that the current model has drifted back to a "You write, I perform" model.
2 The Beatles had two exceptionally talented and one very talented songwriter in the band. This meant that every album had unusually high quality songs in every slot. The norm before The Beatles was that a hit single was followed by an album that contained that hit single plus a whole lot of garbage quickly thrown together.
3 Many of the hooks, tricks, teasers you hear in pop music today were invented by The Beatles in the studio - because they couldn't play live concerts anymore. They couldn't even hear themselves, much less have their audience hear them.
4 The Beatles made it possible to incorporate other musical techniques into pop, ranging from string quartets to Indian sitars to pure noise like guitar solos played backwards.
5 And, alas, drugs. You can hear the change in music when they started smoking weed, and again later when they started dropping acid. I'll leave everone here to imagine the impact on society from that.
A better place to ask this question, with much more knowledgeable people than me, is /r/beatles. | [
"The Beatles often incorporated classical elements, older pop forms and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways and later experimented with several musical styles ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. Their records inspired the new psychedelic and progressive styles,... |
charter schools, good/bad side to them | They're basically publicly funded private schools. They can be selective in who they admit as a student, often offer better facilities and better trained faculty, and in many cases are "specialized" schools that are geared towards students that may be interested in medicine, science, math, the arts etc... and educate them thusly.
These schools' greatest advantage arise when they are situated in an inner city where they are an alternative to the (usually) poor standard public schools which lack funding, are short on talented teachers, and are full of students disinterested in their studies. Charter schools seek to solve that problem by offering an alternative to the students.
Now, that might all seem fine and good but if you read my first sentence in the post again, you'll see that these schools are *publicly funded*. This means that the people who live in the school district of the charter school will have their taxes partially go to that school, whether or not their children go there. It also diverts the district's money away from going to the standard public school system and therefore, away from the students who go to the public schools and possibly can not attend a charter school for various reasons. These charter schools also attract a lot of federal government funding that could be going to the public schools. Because of all this, lots of people view charter schools as stealing money away from the public school system, money that could be going to improve the schools, hire more and better teachers, and get the students more engaged in their studies.
TL:DR:
GOOD: In most situations, they offer a better alternative to the dilapidated inner city public schools that the student would be forced to attend without the charter school. They are also free for the student because they are publicly funded
BAD: Because they are publicly funded, the argument can and has been made that they are stealing money away from the standard public schools, keeping the students that attend them at an extreme disadvantage.
Edit: added a word | [
"Charter schools have been depicted as a controversial solution to alleviate educational inequality in the United States. In an effort to combat the impacts of living in a low-income school district, charter schools have emerged as a means of reorganizing funding to better assist low-income students and their commu... |
how do some citrus food products contain 0% dv of vitamin c, when they contain 'orange puree' and 'lemon juice concentrate'? | The same reason that it's possible for a banana peel to have 0% banana in it anymore. Those fruits are usually vehicles for vitamin c but it's processing removes it. Taste, texture and color don't equal the presence of nutrients | [
"As with other citrus fruits, orange pulp is an excellent source of vitamin C, providing 64% of the Daily Value in a 100 g serving (right table). Numerous other essential nutrients are present in low amounts (right table).\n",
"Chivita 100% is a natural source of vitamins and minerals. The juice comes in 6 varian... |
how can it be some people die after 1 shot but others, like emmett dalton gets shot 23 times in the late 19th century without great medical care and live? | There are youtube videos on the effects of handguns. Generally handguns are less powerful than rifles.
Yes there are specific deadly areas. Being shot in the heart, head or a major artery is generally fatal.
The existence of guardian angels is not proven and is suspect. Do not rely on one.
Buckshot is smaller than most bullets. If you are counting each buckshot as being shot the number of wounds can go up. Shotguns have shorter ranges than most other firearms so anything which reduced the severity, such as firing through a wall, would reduce the lethality.
It is not lucky to be shot 23 times.
Do not count on any one gunshot killing anyone. Always double tap.
Do not expect to survive even one gunshot. Hollywood movies are not good examples of real life. | [
"Grat and Bob Dalton, Dick Broadwell and Bill Power were all killed. Emmett Dalton received 23 gunshot wounds and survived (he was shot through the right arm, below the shoulder, through the left – right, in some accounts – hip and groin, and received 18-23 buckshot in his back). He was given a life sentence in the... |
how do big companies hire lawyers to avoid lawsuits? | Basically, the more money you have to defend yourself, the higher probability you'll get away with things (i.e. OJ Simpson). So, let's say you're a petroleum company and you have a spill. Now, you try to blame that on a third party who put the rig together but people still sue you directly of course. You know that if you lose, it might mean billions of dollars in damages so what you do is get a large law firm to defend you in court and then you spend hundreds of millions on that defense. You work as hard as possible to keep the suit going for as long as possible hoping that the plaintiffs will give up from lack of progress of simply run out of money. Or, you hope that after 10 years of litigation with no end in site, the plaintiff will decide to settle for a lot less than what you think the court would order.
Yeah it's a total douchebag move but that's what corporations do. | [
"The role of a corporate lawyer is to ensure the legality of commercial transactions, advising corporations on their legal rights and duties, including the duties and responsibilities of corporate officers. In order to do this, they must have knowledge of aspects of contract law, tax law, accounting, securities law... |
What role did the potato play in Enligthenment ideology in Europe? | Maybe not specifically related to your question, but I can give a bit of background on the introduction of the potato in french cuisine.
The main figure in this is Antione Augustin Parmentier, who you will see on his wiki page that even though he was an acknowledged pharmacist, he is most famous for 'potato'.
During his imprisonment by the Prussians, he discovered by force that potato was not merely useful as food for livestock and sought it his life's mission to introduce it in french cuisine.
After his return to France, he won the "gagnant-maitrise" examination in 1766 and this allowed him perform research on a small vegetable garden, allowing him to cultivate the plant further.
6 years later he became Master pharmacist and chief pharmacist of the invalides and aphotecary-major of the French armed forces. A position that was specifically created for the first time for him. He was asked to investigate problems of wheat-rot in the bread industry and made famous publications on preparation of bread as well as opening a school for bakery.
Finally in 1787 he obtained his chance to continue working on the potato after Louis XVI granted him a plot of land of approximately 4 km to allow cultivation research. Through some publicity stunts like allowing poor people to steal the potato plants and offering lavish banquettes for VIPs like Benjamin Franklin, he wanted to make the potato the new popular and robust stock food of France.
After the revolution broke out, Parmentier lost everything and felt threatened by the new regime, but likely the circumstances of the revolution was one of the reasons why the potato was accepted as food for the masses. He had published a number of books on potato cultivation around 1789, which was followed up by Madame Merigot's 'La Cuisinere Republicaine', which was the first potato cookbook, conveniently promoting the potato amongst common (republican) folks.
The final push may as well have been the the seige of the government in 1795. Pushed for a need to have a robust food grown reliably in different areas for a large amount of people, the potato was cultivated in large amounts to combat famine. Eventually Parmentier fell in favour with Napoleon.
It's not hard to imagine that with these circumstances the average person in France at that time might have felt very inclined to use the potato every day.
Parmentier continued his research in both gastronomy and pharmacy and was awarded many awards, but a lot of French people know his name nowadays thanks to the dish 'Hachis Parmentier', a kind of shepherd's pie with potato. (very tasty, would recommend)
I obtained a lot of information from this page: _URL_0_
| [
"In Europe, the potato was not immediately well received. Reader discusses how it was accused of causing leprosy or other ailments and then how cultural groups’ perception of the potato flipped and it became something entirely healthful. The potato also is at the center of demographic and cultural change and this i... |
how does a star trek styled economy work "where all of humanity is equal and can spend their time creating art, exploring, researching, reading, gardening and raising their family" ? | This type of world is referred to as post-scarcity. We pay money for things because of scarcity. The crappy jobs are all automated, and the necessities for life are available with little to no effort. For example, you eat without needing a chef, a farmer, a truck driver (to transport), or any other third party to provide it to you. | [
"Although they lead a comfortable life within the Culture, many of its citizens feel a need to be useful and to belong to a society that does not merely exist for their own sake but that also helps improve the lot of sentient beings throughout the galaxy. For that reason the Culture carries out \"good works\", cove... |
why looking at gruesome pictures of people/animals gross us so much? | Empathy. When you see an image of something you consider to have human emotions in pain, your brain actually simulates that pain in order to determine how you should feel about it. This simulation of pain is the root of all of our morality and feelings that other humans are worthwhile, because it allows us to understand what it might be like to be them. | [
"In the movie \"Animals are Beautiful People\", an entire section was dedicated to showing many different animals including monkeys, elephants, hogs, giraffes, and ostriches, eating over-ripe marula tree fruit causing them to sway and lose their footing in a manner similar to human drunkenness. Birds may become int... |
Is it possible to 'reverse engineer' a secret food ingredient? | Yes, and it has been done. For example, the [Merory formulation](_URL_1_) is said to be very close to the actual composition of Coca Cola- for which there have been [a number of reconstructions.](_URL_3_)
Poundstone discusses the formulation for KFC in his [Big Secrets](_URL_4_) book, and I think it's his [Bigger Secrets](_URL_0_) that discusses Coke's formulation.
Due to some "capture" of an employee early in the history of the respective companies, Pepsi almost certainly knows the precise formulation for Coke. Otherwise, it is possible to chemically and microscopically reverse-engineer the formulation of many food products. For example, the "secret recipe" for KFC can be examined by microscope and Fourier-transform infrared microscopy to determine the composition of individual particles. (The guys at [McCrone](_URL_5_) are said to be some of the best when it comes to microscopy; old man McCrone used to have its microscopists study samples from anything from elephant dung to beach sand in order to broaden their knowledge base.)
Chemical analysis using chromatography can help determine unknowns (using mass spec) and deformulate products so knockoffs can be produced in order to determine similarities to existing products.
Also note that many companies have labs to determine if knockoff products violate any patents. My understanding is that [Procter and Gamble](_URL_2_) has a vast analytical lab to do just that. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal a few years back noting the major ink producers for bubblejet printers did the same thing. | [
"A secret ingredient is a component of a product that is closely guarded from public disclosure for competitive advantage. Sometimes the ingredient makes a noticeable difference in the way a product performs, looks or tastes; other times it is used for advertising puffery. Companies can go to elaborate lengths to m... |
why you can still whisper if you have lost your voice but if you try to talk nothing come out? | Talking uses vibrations of your vocal cords.
Whispering uses the same jaw, lip, and tongue movements to create speech, but only pushing air through open vocal cords. No vibrations = no voice. | [
"\"We are so accustomed to silence, but silence doesn’t mean surrender. We can’t stop shouting simply because our voices are low; we can’t do nothing simply because our power is weak. It’s okay to be chided, it’s okay to be misunderstood, it’s okay to be overlooked. But it’s just I no longer want to keep silent.\"\... |
Is there a physical limit on a car's 0-60 time? | Read up on [top fuel dragsters](_URL_0_). They're as fast as we can do right now with a tire-driven car, accelerating from 0-100mph in around 0.7s. We could do better if there weren't such stringent rules in place regarding engine design.
We can also do better with jet- or rocket-powered vehicles because they don't depend on putting power to the ground through the tires. | [
"After accumulating, for example, 60 hours of driving and on-duty time within a period of 7 days, a driver's daily driving limit may be reduced (60 / 7 = 8.57 driving hours per day). The driver of a passenger-carrying vehicle may not use the 34-hour restart provision.\n",
"The time scale is typically given by the... |
how do the foam cutouts in a recording studio mute out sound? | They don't mute the sound they absorb it. Picture this: throw a golf ball as hard as you can into a tiny room with concrete walls, floor, and ceiling. What did that golf ball do? Now cover the walls, floor, and ceiling with thick feather pillows and throw that golf ball. The golf ball represents the sound travel. | [
"Acoustic foam is a lightweight material made from polyurethane foam either polyether or polyester, and also extruded melamine foam. It is usually cut into tiles - often with pyramid or wedge shapes - which are suited to placing on the walls of a recording studio or a similar type of environment to act as a sound a... |
how does the un work? | All the countries that are members of the United Nations send representatives to the council, and they have meetings, discussions, and hopefully agreements over all the subjects that are important to people all over the planet.
"The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization tasked with maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international co-operation, and being a centre for harmonizing the actions of nation." | [
"The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; , AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), the only one in which all member nations have equal representation, and the main deliberative, policy-making, and representative organ of the UN. Its powers are to oversee the budget of the UN, app... |
what’s the difference between a mountain’s height and its prominence? how are each measured? | Height usually refers to the height of the mountain above sea level; basically, what is the difference in height between the peak of the mountain and the average sea level below.
& #x200B;
Prominence refers to how much the peak of a mountain stands out from the surrounding landscape. Technically speaking, it's the difference in height between the peak of the mountain and the lowest contour line you can draw around it without including any other peaks. | [
"This list contains most of the highest mountains in the country. It is limited to mountain peaks with, if known, an elevation of at least above sea level, and may include those considered as hills. The distinction between a hill and a mountain in terms of elevation is unclear and largely subjective, but a hill is ... |
why do digital clocks slowly become inaccurate? (follow-up: but something like a car turn signal always blinks at the same frequency?) | Consumer digital clocks use crystal oscillators (like quartz) to keep time. When you pass an electric current through a crystal, it vibrates at a specific frequency. Crystal oscillators are accurate enough for consumer use but they're not *that* accurate. Things like mechanical stress or mechanical shock, temperature changes, and minor fluctuations in the applied voltage can cause the frequency of the oscillations to change, and this makes the clock lose accuracy.
Car turn signals are not time keeping devices. They're not fixed to any specific interval of time and will not accurately keep any interval of time. They're just electromechanical devices. They're rhythmic enough that you don't notice fluctuations, but they're also only on intermittently and for short periods of time. | [
"Synchronous motor clocks are rugged because they do not have a delicate pendulum or balance wheel. However, a temporary power outage will stop the clock, which will show the wrong time when power is restored. Some synchronous clocks have an indicator which shows if it has stopped and restarted.\n",
"Because digi... |
why can't you use your phone when it's out of juice and you just plugged it in? | The battery charge system won't let the phone power up until there is a small reserve of charge on the battery. If you have a tiny charge on the battery, just enough to boot the phone, the phone will boot and the CPU/Display/Everything will start using more juice. This increase will cause the battery voltage to drop. Enough of a drop to crash everything and halt the processor. And then once the processor halts, the battery levels rise and the system can try to boot again, resulting in another low-power crash.
So the charging system won't let the phone boot until there's enough reserve for the system to come all the way up and stay running without getting stuck in a reboot loop.
| [
"Juice jacking is not possible if a device is charged via the AC adapter shipped with the device, a battery backup device, or by utilizing a USB cable that has its data cables removed. A tool originally called the USB Condom (now renamed to SyncStop) has been released with the sole purpose of disallowing data conne... |
Napoleon's Marriage Ambitions | By 1809, it was clear to Napoleon that he had a problem: he had no direct heir. Rumors of his death in Spain in 1808 encouraged an embryonic conspiracy in circles around Fouche and Talleyrand, and the hard-fought 1809 campaign actually gave Napoleon his only serious wound in a lifetime of soldiering. The 1808 conspiracy, and it was more of speculation of what to do *if* Napoleon died, underscored the depth of the Napoleonic succession ended with him. Napoleon's illegitimate children pointed out that his wife Josephine was barren and Napoleon lacked a clear issue. Neither his siblings, nor their children, possessed the pedigree or talents to equal their more illustrious brother. Therefore, Napoleon not only needed, in his words, "a womb," but also a woman whose family pedigree would be equivalent to Napoleon's station. Intermarriage would allegedly set the Bonaparte dynasty on firmer ground if and when Napoleon passed on. Two factions in Napoleon's court emerged, one favoring a marriage alliance with Austria, and another with Russia.
Napoleon favored a match with the Romanovs, with the Tsar's sisters Grand Duchess Anna or Ekaterina Pavlovna being the two candidates. The Tsar's mother, the Empress Dowager Mariia Federovna, was dead-set against any French match for his progeny. Mariia Federovna was at the center of anti-French circles in the imperial court and the idea of marrying a parvenu like Napoleon was deeply shocking. Alexander I was likewise nonplussed by French overtures, but dragged his feet claiming that Anna, the favored sister, was too young and Napoleon should wait.
In the meantime, Austrian envoys were more active in soliciting French interest in a Habsburg marriage. Napoleon correctly realized that Alexander I's hesitation likely meant a refusal, so he withdrew his offer to Russia in 1810 and accepted Austria's proposed match with Marie-Louise. This was a *faux pas* for Napoleon as it suggested that he was playing a double-game with Russia, playing Russia and Austria against each other.
But as far as "jilted hope", the causes of Franco-Russian enmity ran far deeper than Napoleon's need of a womb. Russia was an ally of France after Tilsit, but the alliance was seldom put into practice. The Russian alliance did little to prevent the 1809 war and Russian evasions of the Continental System underscored that the alliance was almost non-functional. The inability of Napoleon to make a Romanov match only served to remind the Emperor that Russia was not a firm ally. Alexander I toyed with various plans to break the alliance in 1810/11 and invade Central Europe, but was dissuaded by the strength of the French presence in Germany. Issues like the creation of the Duchy of Warsaw, the rendering of much of Germany into French client states were sources of persistent tension in Franco-Russian relations. The failed marriage suit did not help matters, but the Franco-Russian relationship had soured well before Napoleon divorced Josephine. | [
"Upon Louis's return to France, he was involved in Napoleon's plot to overthrow the Directory. After becoming the First Consul, Napoleon arranged for a marriage between Louis and Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter of Empress Josephine, and hence Napoleon's stepdaughter. Hortense, who was opposed to the marriage ... |
Can a baby inside the womb have an allergic reaction? If so how would it be treated? | Not really, because fetuses don't really have the B-cell diversity an infant has. They have some, but they are a yolk-sac derived alternative that is unique to mature B-cells. I also feel like they won't have many, if any, resident, mature mast cells throughout their body yet, which is necessary for the massive degranulation of histamine needed for allergy. And failing all of that, there will be very few foreign epitopes that make it to the fetus through the placenta. But if it does happen, I'm sure antihistamines can permeate the placenta. Though, diagnosing it would be problematic. | [
"Side effects include diarrhea, rash, itchiness, headache, and hair loss. Rarely a severe allergic reaction or rash such as toxic epidermal necrolysis, may occur. It is not generally recommended in people with a sulfonamide allergy or significant liver or kidney disease. It is unclear if use during pregnancy is saf... |
how do terrestrial ant colonies survive torrential downpours without flooding in and drowning them? | Water does flood in. However, ants usually dig colonies at least a foot deep. That creates a lot of surface area relative to the tiny entrance hole, so the dirt absorbs the rain quickly. Ants also build chambers at the top of upward sloping tunnels, so water can't flow in.
As a last-ditch effort, some species will form living rafts that can float on top of floodwaters. | [
"In the Brazilian rain forest, sudden rainfall can trigger flooding at a moment's notice. Given that flooding can potentially destroy a colony and drown the insects, fire ants have developed a unique adaptation to this situation. While individual fire ants are hydrophobic and flounder at the waters surface, large g... |
what is the difference between adrenaline and noradrenaline? | Two different neurotransmitters which signal in different way. Noradrenaline doesn’t have a direct action on the heart. Instead it increases vascular tone. Also, adrenaline has a methyl group on it! | [
"Primarily referred to in the United States as epinephrine and norepinephrine, adrenaline and noradrenaline are catecholamines, water-soluble compounds that have a structure made of a catechol group and an amine group. The adrenal glands are responsible for most of the adrenaline that circulates in the body, but on... |
How well can a chemist predict the properties of a chemical before it is synthesized? | Chemical is very vague. You could be talking about things as simple as an element or as complicated as a protein.
The truth is, chemists simply don't have the ability to determine the properties of *any and all* chemicals before actually seeing them work. Breaking this into different categories--atoms are very simple. If we know the atomic number, we know where it falls in the periodic table, and from there can determine its reactivity (I'm not accounting for instability due to too large of nuclei).
For more complicated compounds we can determine its reactivity by the presence of various functional groups. E.g. we know that alkenes will reduce in the presence of hot hydrogen gas and a palladium catalyst. In fact, determining chemical reactivity from various functional groups is much of the program of undergraduate chemistry. We can determine from the presence and relative locations of certain functional groups on various compounds whether they'll react in a certain way. As an example, you could determine whether a certain compound acts on a specific postsynaptic receptor in a region of the brain, inhibiting or exciting a specific mental activity. This does have its limitations, since for sometimes unknown reasons certain compounds just don't behave like we expect them to.
We can be more analytical in this approach by using the quantitative rigor of quantum mechanics. Here, however, we run into a problem with the fact that, for the majority of different potential energies (in this case, the various positions of the nuclei of a chemical), the Schrodinger equation is simply unsolvable, and so we resort to approximation methods like the variational, WKB, and Hartree Fock approximations, which often gets you very nearly the correct answers for quantities such as the energies of the various electrons given a particular array of atomic nuclei.
Even these approximation methods have their limitations. This is what makes designing proteins such a challenge--these compounds are simply too large to know much about using quantum mechanics. Fortunately we can determine much about these molecules using the functional group method you'd learn about in a typical biochemistry class, but even this leaves out a lot of the detail we'd like to know. E.g. if we could design a protein, how would it function? Solving this problem would be a colossal step forward in biomedical engineering.
Edit: Tl;dr
If the chemical's simple enough, we can do the math or use the periodic table. If it's complicated, we notice patterns among compound structures and use this to determine reactivity. This latter part is extremely limited in its predictive capabilities and, on occasion, just wrong. | [
"An element-reaction-product table is used to find coefficients while balancing an equation representing a chemical reaction. Coefficients represent moles of a substance so that the number of atoms produced is equal to the number of atoms being reacted with. This is the common setup:\n",
"Once the chemical reacti... |
how does an excess of democracy in a society lead to civil war or dictatorship? | It doesn't. Democracy just means people getting to vote on the rules they live by. What would an excess of that look like? Wars and dictators are caused by a *lack* of democracy. | [
"They also note that several studies support a variant of the democratic peace theory, which argues that more democracy causes a general decrease in systematic violence, at least for the most democratic nations. However, intermediately democratic nations do have a higher tendency for conflicts such as civil war tha... |
what are the usa's immigration policies goals? | To simplify it, the US is wanting to implement a system that can "weed out" the people that have connections to bad people or bad organizations that might not be so friendly to people in America.
Essentially, the US wants to prevent a "Trojan Horse" immigration, where people come in under false pretenses, say "Oh yeah we're friendly" and then run amok.
I have not specifically listened to the podcast you mentioned, OP, but I'm guessing that the subject of discussion for assimilation is Sharia Law, which Muslims claim to be the absolute supreme law of the land, which all people should live under. If you dig into what Sharia law is, it's very violent and oppressive towards women, and intolerant of gays, which are values that the US doesn't agree with.
By looking to only let in people that are willing to assimilate, the US is wanting to only let in those who are willing to live by our laws, rules, and regulations, as in the US, the Constitution is the absolute supreme law of the land, and has specific rules in place that say not to favor one religion over another.
TL:DR, To make more of a melting pot, than a "tossed salad" with a few rotten vegetables. | [
"The framework of U.S. immigration law has largely remained the same since 1965. The U.S. economy needs both high-skilled and low-skilled immigrant workers to remain competitive and to have enough workers who continue to pay into Social Security and Medicare as the U.S. population grows older. Nonetheless, there ar... |
Did Pharaoh Akhenaten renounce godhood in his pursuit of a monotheistic Egypt? | It is not necessarily clear for many reasons. First of all there is the extent to which each pharaoh was seen as divine versus there being a divine spirit of royal authority which each ruler had as an attribute. I find the argument for the latter to be very convincing since in the New Kingdom the pharaoh was only deified by being directly identified as Osiris after they were dead.
When Akhenaten made Aten the sole god, the unprecedented step he made was not just supressing the cults of other gods, even in private. Furthermore, Akhenaten and his wide Nefertiti seem to have been the only ones allowed to directly worship the Aten. Others had to direct their prayers through the royal family. Whether this goes so far as to constitute worship of the pharaoh is unclear, but unlikely. The revolutionary idea was that the pharaoh was the sole conduit to the divine. However there was a relief carved showing Akhenaten performing a traditional religious festival, however where usually images of the gods would be in the picture there are lots of little Akhenatens watching the ritual instead. Maybe a statement about the pharaoh's divinity but maybe just one artistic innovation among the many many that the period is known for. So it really is not terribly clear.
Lastly, about the idea of "converting the kingdom". It is not even clear whether Akhenaten's religious revolution was monotheistic at all. Aten was an already existing god who had probably merged with Horus and Ra by the late 18th dynasty and even during Akenaten's reign there are inscriptions referring to Aten and using the names of other traditional gods (specifically Ra and Horus). The real theological revolution was in the depiction of Aten not as a personified, humanoid form, but as just an image of the sun emitting rays of light, each of which ends in a little hand reaching down.
So there are lots of reasons why this question is not clear-cut at all in terms of an answer.
EDIT: Oops, made a silly mistake. Akhenaten is the person, Akhetaten is the city. | [
"Akhnaten left the ancient capital of Luxor to build a religious utopia in the desert to break from the past and honour his new monotheistic god. The great temple at Amarna opened up to the sun but only the Pharaoh and his family were allowed in. Akhnaton came to believe that he was the son of god and should be wor... |
Can Tsar Nicholas II's personality be blamed for the decline and fall of the Romanov dynasty? | Part of it according to Robert Massie's book Nicholas and Alexandra has to do with the fact that his father Alexander III died at a relatively young age and was not really preparing his son for the responsibilities. He had the tutoring, but didn't get the sit-ins and was basically allowed to enjoy life. This caused his father to believe he was immature and not ready for a position to make decisions....a viscous circle.
However, Russian society was in turmoil for years before Nicholas II came to power. Most believed a showdown was coming, a competent ruler may have been able to minimize it, Nicholas II was too raw to handle it and too easily influenced by advisers. | [
"When Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, George's first cousin, was overthrown in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the British government offered political asylum to the Tsar and his family, but worsening conditions for the British people, and fears that revolution might come to the British Isles, led George to think that ... |
What are the problems surrounding human cryogenises (with prospect of later resuscitation), and does anybody in the field have any insight on the steps being taken to improve the process? | I do not work in this field, but...
Freezing water produces ice crystals. Ice crystals within cells destroy them, breaking apart organelles, expanding to break the membrane, causing solutes to precipitate and so on. To deal with this for electron microscopy, people flash freeze samples, freeze cells with things that are extremely cold, so cold that the water forms [amorphous ice](_URL_0_) (very cold, very fast temperature drop).
Unfortunately, if samples are more than a few microns thick, dipping them in liquid nitrogen or liquid propane or slamming them into a copper block cooled by liquid helium doesn't cool them fast enough to prevent ice crystal formation. Given that we can't really run a person through a microtome first, this is a problem. Hence the need for cryoprotectants to either reduce ice crystals, or protect the cells from the effects of said ice crystals.
Figure out a method to either very rapidly freeze people, to prevent crystal formation, or a cryoprotectant that would kill a person and would prevent cell death upon freezing of a large sample, and you'd be a lot further along. | [
"The effect of cryopreservation on epigenetic marks in tissues is a new area of study. The primary focus of this research is on oocytes and sperm for the purpose of assisted reproductive technology, however it can be useful in forensics for the preservation of evidence. Methylation can be analyzed in fresh tissue t... |
What affects whether rain comes down hard or soft? | The atmosphere everywhere (even outside the cloud) contains lots and lots and lots of water. And under a stable combination of temperature, pressure, and humidity, all that moisture is perfectly happy to exist in a completely gaseous state. But as differing air masses start to collide, the local atmospheric conditions can fall outside the range where water can exist in a completely gaseous state. That is known as the dew point.
A cloud is where two differing atmospheric conditions have met, and the resulting condensed water droplets simply do not have sufficient weight to overcome the updraft speed of the air around it. If the air masses mix slowly, the rate of condensation will occur slowly and over a longer period of time. The resulting clouds may simply "evaporate" as the local conditions stabilize, or the condensing water may slowly precipitate over the ground (soft rain), or the precipitation may never reach the ground at all. These gentler atmospheric changes tend to play out over longer periods of time because the air masses are moving more slowly so it takes longer for the differences to mix and settle down into a new steady state.
If two air masses have widely varying conditions (think warm moist air over the ocean meeting dryer hotter conditions over the land) and they meet more abruptly (higher wind speeds), this causes a more-violent disturbance; the moisture from the air will condense more quickly, the rain falls faster and harder, and the whole thing ends (relatively speaking) more quickly. | [
"In some areas of the world (e.g. the mid-western USA), rainfall intensity is the primary determinant of erosivity, with higher intensity rainfall generally resulting in more soil erosion by water. The size and velocity of rain drops is also an important factor. Larger and higher-velocity rain drops have greater ki... |
Do identical twins have a higher chance of having identical twins? | Fraternal (non-identical) twins occur when, during ovulation in a female, two or more separate eggs are released, and more than one egg becomes fertilized. Since they have different DNA, the twins are not identical. There is a gene that increases the likelihood of having fraternal twins. Women with this gene are more likely to exhibit hyper ovulation (the tendency to release more than one egg during ovulation). This gene can be passed to children of either gender, but only expresses itself as hyper ovulation in females (obviously). Therefore, female fraternal twins are more likely to have fraternal twins themselves. Male fraternal twins are not any more likely to have fraternal twins, but it is possible for them to receive the gene and pass it on to their children. If any of those children were female, they would have a higher chance of having fraternal twins.
Identical twins occur when a zygote splits, and the two resulting cells become separated, resulting in two children with identical DNA. Identical twins have not been scientifically shown to give birth to identical twins at higher rates than normal, and no gene has been linked to a higher likelihood of having identical twins. | [
"Twins differ very little from non-twin siblings. Measured studies on the personality and intelligence of twins suggest that they have scores on these traits very similar to those of non-twins (for instance Deary et al. 2006).\n",
"Because identical twins are genetically virtually identical, it follows that a gen... |
why are humans attracted to bright and shiney things? | Most mammals are.
I once read it's because pure, clean water is naturally reflective, so that way we are more attracted to the shiny clean water than to the murky one. | [
"Human preferences toward things in nature, while refined through experience and culture, are hypothetically the product of biological evolution. For example, adult mammals (especially humans) are generally attracted to baby mammal faces and find them appealing across species. The large eyes and small features of a... |
How effective of a fuel source was Whale Oil? | "Whale oil", or the triglyceride derived from adipose tissues "blubbler" of whales, usually contains a large amount of unsaturated fatty acids which burns poorly and produces a lot of soot; poor grades of oil derived from whale guts also had a awful smell, making them a poor choice for indoor use. While it was had been used as lamp oil in the 18th and 19th century, it was quickly phased out for illumination when kerosene became widely available which is both cleaning burning and capale of giving a much brighter flame with a throium dioxide mantle.
The industrial use of whale oil for making soap, candles, shoe polish and paint persisted for much longer because of a price advantage compared to other feedstocks and it was still a common ingredient for margarine making until the 1950s when vegetable oils became cheap enough thanks to the advances in modern agriculture.
A speical category of whale oil is "sperm oil" derived from sperm whales. It is a viscous wax ester stable in a wide range of temperatue and pressure, hence it remained a very important lubricant for all sorts of machinery until the 1960s when the population of sperm whales collapsed.
Source: Whale Oil: An Economic Analysis by Karl Brandt | [
"James S. Robbins has argued that the advent of petroleum-refined kerosene saved some species of great whales from extinction by providing an inexpensive substitute for whale oil, thus eliminating the economic imperative for open-boat whaling.\n",
"As the price of whale oil escalated, scientists tried to create a... |
if colors are defined by wavelengths of light, how do they combine to form new colors? | Colours are not _purely_ defined by wavelengths of light. In fact, colours are entirely the result of _perception_.
That means there are some monochromatic colours - light of one wavelength that makes you see a particular colour - and there's polychromatic colour - light with different wavelengths that make you see a colour.
To understand this, let's figure out how we perceive colour. We have 3 types of cells in our eyes that each detect different wavelengths of light in a different manner (i.e., have different absorption spectra). One particular wavelength may excite only one type of cell (S cells); another wavelength may excite two others (M and L cells). Most of the time a single wavelength end up exciting all three types at different amounts.
Because this is how our eyes perceive colours, we can get the same colour if we just _reproduce the excitations_. That means if I have a monochromatic colour that excites 2 types of cells, you can use two different wavelengths together to excite those 2 types separately to produce the same results. | [
"Colors that can be produced by visible light of a narrow band of wavelengths (monochromatic light) are called pure spectral colors. The various color ranges indicated in the illustration are an approximation: The spectrum is continuous, with no clear boundaries between one color and the next.\n",
"The color circ... |
If you were drafted into WWII or Vietnam, did the armed forces take into account your desires or skill set when deciding where to place you, or was it completely by chance? | [This response I wrote on the USMC mobilization might be of interest for you.](_URL_0_) | [
"During the Vietnam War the Administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson decided upon a draft to enhance active duty troop strength rather than calling on large numbers of the National Guard and Reserves. As a result, membership in a reserve component, including the Army National Guard, became a way to avoid comba... |
if someone used a flashlight in a closed container traveling close to the speed of light, would the waves of light leaving the flashlight, be traveling faster than the speed of light? | No.
A common misconception is that you just add velocities to get a resultant velocity, which is why you think that your scenario would unfold this way.
[The actual way to add velocities](_URL_1_) will give you, more or less, the same velocity you would get just by adding them in an every day scenario (e.g, rowing a boat at 5mph on a current of 3mph would get you moving at 8 mph), but the distinction is important at relativistic speeds and keeps things like what you proposed from happening. The formula for doing so is in the section of the wikipedia article I linked.
People are telling you "the speed of light is constant," and they're correct, but this is (partially) why the speed of light is constant.
[Psuedoboss11 gives a simple explanation](_URL_0_) below me as to why this formula is correct.
| [
"According to simple emission theory, light thrown off by an object should move at a speed of formula_1 with respect to the emitting object. If there are no complicating dragging effects, the light would then be expected to move at this same speed until it eventually reached an observer. For an object moving direct... |
what is the differences between a bill getting pulled in congress versus it going to a vote and failing? | In other words, what future consequences does pulling a bill have, rather than if it had failed to get a majority of votes. | [
"If a majority of the members who are present and voting in each house vote against a bill, it fails passage. If the majority vote in favor of the bill, its approval is recorded as passing. If amendments are adopted, the bill is sent to the Enrolling and Engrossing Department of that house for engrossment. Engrossm... |
During the oxidation of a metal tool, what makes certain areas rust faster than others? | Areas with a rough surface finish will rust more quickly than those with a smooth finish. A scratch or pit can cause localized corrosion due to certain products being unable to escape the area like they could on a smooth surface. | [
"The rusting of iron is an electrochemical process that begins with the transfer of electrons from iron to oxygen. The iron is the reducing agent (gives up electrons) while the oxygen is the oxidising agent (gains electrons). The rate of corrosion is affected by water and accelerated by electrolytes, as illustrated... |
The first bicycles seem to have been eccentricities to be enjoyed by the rich. When was their potential for cheap, reliable transportation recognised, and when and how did they proliferate among the general population? | Bicycles really started to become popular during the athletics boom of the late nineteenth century.
Throughout the Industrial Revolution, the middle classes (and to some extent the working classes as well) tended to acquire more and more machine-made goods and participate in more activities that didn't focus on producing things for the home. This ties in with what I've written [in an earlier answer](_URL_0_) about the rise and fall of virtuous domesticity - *things* could be conveniently purchased rather than made, even if they were not always very high-quality. The high regard people of the period paid to those claiming to be at the forefront of science also lead to a continuing fascination with health and medicine - think of patent snake oil salesmen and Dr. Jaeger's claims of the benefits of wearing wool next to the skin - which meant that a lot of the non-productive activities revolved around getting fresh air and exercise in newfangled ways very deliberately to improve one's bodily systems.
Bicycling was one of these activities. Mass production and new metalworking techniques meant that by the 1860s, people could make cycling machines much more complex than the original velocipedes that ran by being pushed along the ground, and relatively affordable to the middle classes (though working-class cyclists needed to buy secondhand or on a rent-to-own model). Through the 1870s and 1880s, individual inventors made tweaks and adjustments that increased bicycles' efficiency and popularity, which came around to make bicycles more popular, which spurred more innovations - and eventually the "safety bicycle" form with equally-sized, relatively small wheels became the norm. This is also the time when women began to ride, as the machine was by that point something that could be managed decorously in a skirt, prompting Susan B. Anthony's famous observation that it was the instrument that advanced women's freedom. (For more on bicycling dress, you can check out [this other answer of mine](_URL_1_).) The 1890s are considered a golden age of bicycling, and by 1900 there were essentially no more improvements to be made; by the 1930s, bikes were affordable to pretty much everyone in the West. | [
"buggies for local travel expanded, along with stage lines and railroads for longer trips. In cities and towns, horse-drawn railed vehicles gave carriage to poor workers and the lower middle class. The upper middle class used buggies, as did farmers, while the rich had the more elegant 4-wheel carriages for local u... |
are you a criminal if you deliberately choose not to prevent someone from committing suicide? | I'd say it depends on whether the country you are in has a [good samaritan law.](_URL_0_) | [
"Again, if suicide is not illegal, then no one can stop another person from killing themselves. Binding noted that in reality, the majority of people who prevent a suicide attempt are not usually prosecuted and that most people who are prevented from killing themselves do not make a second attempt. He was of the op... |
why do we "shush" people to try to quiet them? | The "S" sound is very high frequency, so is easier to place in three dimensional space. The purpose of "Shush" is to draw attention to your face, so that you can convey to the noisy person your displeasure in their conduct (via the means of a stern gaze).
The need for a high frequency sound is so that you can do this without yourself creating much noise and becoming an offender, and subsequently shushed by someone else.
| [
"Compulsive talking can drive people away, which in turn can leave that person with no social support. Interrupting, another act that is associated with talkaholics, can signal to other people a lack of respect.\n",
"Shunning can be the act of social rejection, or emotional distance. In a religious context, shunn... |
Is it possible that the speed of light has been decreasing over time? The decrease of c within our margin of error (measurement precision) over the last 100 years? | Models in which the speed of light varies have been considered. Albrecht, Magueijo, and others, for example, have constructed cosmological models in which the sped of light was once much, much faster; see [this](_URL_0_) from Wikipedia, and [this](_URL_1_) from *Discover*. Magueijo has written a non-technical account of this work in his book *Faster Than the Speed of Light*. | [
"During the mid-19th century, measurements of aether wind effects of first order, i.e. effects proportional to \"v\"/\"c\" (\"v\" being Earth's velocity, \"c\" the speed of light) were thought to be possible, but no direct measurement of the speed of light was possible with the accuracy required. For instance, the ... |
What is the functional difference between an Induction phone charger and an Induction cooktop? | With phone chargers there is a digital control loop which also talks back to the charger and requests power. Wireless charging can go in both directions like with the Galaxy 10 it can charge other devices by sending power. Your regular cooking pan cannot transmit power to other devices since it's just a one way "stupid" transfer from the cooktop.
Induction cookers usually operate on a frequency of 24 kHz while Qi phone chargers start their connection on 140 kHz and can communicate and vary their frequency between 105 to 205 kHz depending on what best fits the phone and the charger.
Then of course in the phone there is a circuit which directs the power to the battery and charges it while in your cooking pan it's just a resistive load that converts the power to heat.
In terms of power it's not a huge difference between the technologies. The original specification of Qi chargers was for 5W of power transfer but since then they added a medium power specification 120 W for laptops and displays and a high power specification which works for up to 1kW of power. The Samsung Galaxy S10 will only accept a charge rate at a maximum of 15W if both the charger and the phone can handle it. Meanwhile a Induction cooktop will just blast everything with around 1.09kW of power if it's turned on. | [
"Induction cooking has good electrical coupling between the pan and the coil and is thus quite efficient, which means it puts less waste heat into the kitchen, can be quickly turned on and off, and has safety advantages compared to gas stoves. Cooktops are also usually easy to clean, because the cooktop itself does... |
why does the age of consent tend to increase in more modern societies and vice versa? | The age of consent is 15 in sweden and 18 in Somalia.
It is too simple to think of it as just being a factor of how modern a country is.
Views on sex in general, the rights of young people, the role of marriage in society, the influence of religion can all play a part, but the topic is pretty complex. | [
"Contemporary arguments for lowering the age of consent in the United Kingdom do not necessarily comprise values like individual freedom or children's rights. Specifically, they tend to focus on a pragmatic analysis of a new situation, including puberty at earlier ages, a higher proportion of young people sexually ... |
how do you teach a deafblind person to a good level of education? (think helen keller level of education) | I'd recommend reading about Helen Keller. Basically it involves lots of patience and repetition. In a way, it's like listening to someone speak a language until you start to pick up on what they're saying. In the case of Helen Keller, she learned through letters being drawn on her palm. It took a long time, but eventually she realized that the letters drawn on her hand were a way of naming objects.
A deaf blind person may not understand the letters in any way more than "squiggly line, angled line" etc, but it's enough to understand what each letter represents, and this forms a way to communicate. | [
"In the United States, school-age children with a speech disorder are often placed in special education programs. Children who struggle to learn to talk often experience persistent communication difficulties in addition to academic struggles. More than 700,000 of the students served in the public schools’ special e... |
When and why did dancing stop being about set pieces and more about 'freestyling'? | Take my answer with a grain of salt - I've studied dance for the majority of my life but have only a few dedicated classes worth of dance history. Please correct any inaccuracies or over-generalizations.
Knowing codified/courtly dances was a signifier of high class, or royalty depending on the time period/place. In the time of Louis XIV, knowing these movements meant you had the class/money to attend proto-ballet schools. Of course, not all dancing took place in castles - this is just the best recorded information, and what I have knowledge of.
The waltz was actually fairly scandalous when it arose in the 17-1800s, as you actually held your partner close. The propriety of dance fairly closely matches attitudes toward sex in a particular culture/time period. For example, consider how ubiquitous sex is in current media, and how people dance when you visit a modern dance club.
In any male-female partnered dances, the male was (and continues to be in codified partner dance) the lead. It wasn't until the sixties, with women's rights and other progressive movements, that *not* holding onto your partner, and having each person be in control of their own movements became popular.
After that point, it would appear that dance fell out of favor as a foremost mode of courtship, so knowing those codified dances was no longer as important to many people. Revisiting that point about propriety - if you're at a public dance, you can be supervised. As young people could procure their own mode of transportation, and be together unsupervised, there was no need to go to a public place to be together. | [
"When the dance first appeared in the early 19th century, it was considered a scandalous dance, similar to how rock and roll was perceived in the 1950s. In the mid-19th century it was thought to be extremely immoral by respectable society. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the cancan was viewed as much more... |
Calculating ancestors paradox? | That is assuming all people have unique parentage. You are forgetting that family trees intertwine. 40 generations ago a family could have a second child. After 15 generations those distant cousin so are eligible to become your grandparent. Think on the European royalty only with more diversity. | [
"The grandfather paradox encompasses any change to the past, and it's presented in many variations. Physicist John Garrison et al. give a variation of the paradox of an electronic circuit which sends a signal through a time machine to shut itself off, and receives the signal before it sends it. An equivalent parado... |
what's the point of studying art? | There have been a lot of different art styles around the world throughout history. Studying art holistically can lead to a new understanding of art and can even result in insights into other areas of study like human cognition and psychology. | [
"In art, a study is a drawing, sketch or painting done in preparation for a finished piece, or as visual notes. Studies are often used to understand the problems involved in rendering subjects and to plan the elements to be used in finished works, such as light, color, form, perspective and composition. Studies can... |
why is email treated differently than snail mail when it comes to privacy? | Because there are specific laws written for how paper mail is to be handled, mainly because the post office is run by the government and it was already bound in part during it's creation by the constitution (4th Amendment, unless they have a good reason to look at your mail, the government can't).
Private corporations handle emails and they're not bound by the constitution, so you don't receive many protections dealing with them.
| [
"Email privacy is a broad topic dealing with issues of unauthorized access and inspection of electronic mail. This unauthorized access can happen while an email is in transit, as well as when it is stored on email servers or on a user computer. In countries with a constitutional guarantee of the secrecy of correspo... |
Total energy is finite, universe is expanding: does everything have decreasing energy over time? | [Q & A](_URL_0_) about energy from Department of Physics University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | [
"There is no clear way to define the total energy in the universe using the most widely accepted theory of gravity, general relativity. Therefore, it remains controversial whether the total energy is conserved in an expanding universe. For instance, each photon that travels through intergalactic space loses energy ... |
Why might UTIs (urinary tract infections) have a drastic affect on mental health? What is the link? | I must strongly disagree with most of the comments in this thread. Generally the idea that UTI can affect mentation and cause altered mental status comes from the geriatric literature, where infection is one of the many causes of AMS, delirium, or encephalopathy, three words which are synonyms and mean “disordered thinking, attention, cognition and level of consciousness.” The reason infection causes delirium is nuanced and incompletely understood but probably has to do with changes in inflammation and biochemical processes as well as pain, discomfort, fever, and other insults that cause enough distress that it affects the function of the brain in significant ways. People who are at risk for delirium are people who already have preexisting cognitive dysfunction (such as people with dementia, depression, or other psychoses).
All that said, in general UTI causes far far FAR less of the delirium than is attributed to it. Generally older patients come to this emergency department being altered and a urinalysis or culture shows evidence of bacteria, and the knee-jerk assumption is that it must be the cause of the delirium. This is erroneous because more than 50% of older adults are colonized with bacteria in their bladders, a condition called asymptomatic bacteriuria, which is not an infection and doesn’t cause delirium. This leads to over treatment with antibiotics and misdiagnosis of other causes of AMS that are potentially dangerous. Its basically an easy scapegoat for a really hard problem. When granddad is confused it’s real hard to say that this bacteria isn’t an infection (even though it usually isn’t). And even harder to say that we can’t figure out why he’s confused, and that it might last for a long time and might be his underlying disease getting worse. | [
"Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are often due to \"E. coli\" entering the urethra and colonizing. The host’s immune system will release protamines and other antimicrobials to combat the infection, but OmpT easily degrades the cationic protamine peptides, thus enhancing the risk of infection. There is a genetic lin... |
How did humans figure out that salt was good on food? Did they just grind up different rocks on their food until they found one that tasted good? | You may want to post this in /r/askanthropology since your question pertains to behaviors that date back to prehistory. | [
"Salt is essential to the health of humans and other animals, and it is one of the five basic taste sensations. Salt is used in many cuisines around the world, and it is often found in salt shakers on diners' eating tables for their personal use on food. Salt is also an ingredient in many manufactured foodstuffs. T... |
it is so easy to reconnect a torn wire, any person with some duct tape can do it. how come it’s so difficult and often impossible to fix/reconnect a torn nerve? | A nerve isn't a solid or stranded piece of metal with some insulation where simply twisting two broken ends together will do. | [
"A break in the wire is repaired by tying the ends together and trimming. When such a repair is made to an existing recording, a jump in the sound results during playback, but because of the high speed of the wire the loss of an inch due to tying and trimming is trivial and might pass unnoticed. Unfortunately, if t... |
What (if any) progress is being made on exploring if electrons and quarks have component parts or are truly elementary particles? | The progress is that any possible substructure is getting pushed to smaller and smaller lengthscales by experiments, from the Large Hadron Collider and others. For example, [this analysis](_URL_0_), which can probably (or has been?) improved upon with newer data. Another quantity of interest is the electron electric dipole moment, which has a Standard Model prediction that is so tiny, that if this is ever detected it is likely due to new beyond-Standard physics. This is mostly attempted with precision trapped-atom experiments rather than particle collisions, and recently it's been realized that Thorium Oxide is a good molecule to use for these searches, I believe because of the extremely strong internal electric fields. [This is a ~5 year old measurement that still may be the best](_URL_1_). | [
"The background to the discovery of the was both theoretical and experimental. In the 1960s, the first quark models of elementary particle physics were proposed, which said that protons, neutrons and all other baryons, and also all mesons, are made from three kinds of fractionally-charged particles, the \"quarks\",... |
Say we were able to create a hole through the centre of the earth. | [This video should have your answer](_URL_0_) | [
"BULLET::::- Although it is often suggested that Jules Verne used the idea of a partially hollow Earth in his 1864 novel, \"A Journey to the Centre of the Earth\", his characters actually descend only 87 miles beneath the surface where they find an underground sea occupying a cavern roughly the size of Europe. Ther... |
how much turbulence can a plane take before there is a critical failure somewhere | Airframe loading is generally measured in g's, 1.0g is the force exerted by gravity. The world's most popular commercial airline, the 737, has g limits of +2.5g and -1.0g. This figure is worst case, at full load with a belly full of passengers, cargo, and fuel.
To prove that figure, Boeing loads up the wings to 150% of that loading to show the plane can take it as part of airworthiness certification. Engineers call that extra capability the *margin of safety*. [Here is the 777 undergoing such a test](_URL_0_), **look** at how much the wings can flex without breaking.
Combat aircraft like the F-16 and F-22 can withstand over 9.0gs of acceleration if they don't have things like external fuel tanks tugging on their wings. | [
"The Investigation Board appointed to determine the cause of the crash reported that the accident was most likely caused by a combination of factors. Evidence from a reconstructed flight showed that with an increase in speed for a few seconds, the rate of climb of the aircraft will decrease; with a lack of visual r... |
Is there any evidence of diseases that existed in the past, but aren't around today (eradicated naturally, not through vaccinations)? | I wish I could give you more details about this, but there are a few diseases that historians have no been able to identify. Some of these are because of vague symptoms in records, but some of these may truly be diseases that are no longer present in humans (and possibly not in animal reservoirs either). Some may also have been illness that was not caused by disease, either because it was a food-borne toxicity or because it was what we’d today call a [culture-bound syndrome](_URL_4_).
There are some diseases in historical records that do seem to be caused by bacteria or viruses and that seem to be no longer present in the contemporary world. The first that comes to my mind is [Sweating Sickness](_URL_1_) (also known as the English Sweat or just the Sweat) that affected Europe, especially England, between 1485 (or possibly 1483) and 1551 (with small possible outbreaks in Colchester in 1578–1579 and in Rottingen in 1802). It seems to have been contagious, fast acting, and deadly. There have been multiple explanations for it, but it seems like many people think it was an unknown kind of hantavirus (see [here](_URL_10_) for a recent scientific article, or [here](_URL_2_) for an older, shorter write up in *Discover Magazine*).
Hantaviruses spread to humans through through rodents (or possibly other insectivores, including bats), specifically when people inhale aerosolized rodent feces or urine. There is apparently one strain (and only one strain) of hantavirus that has recorded person to person transmission whereas it seems like Sweating Sickness may have been transmitted person-to-person (this is not definitive, and some argue against it based on the fact that the disease did not leave England much despite extensive trade). Sweating sickness doesn’t fit in with any of the other deadly disease outbreaks of the period and region, like the plague or typhus. Sweating Sickness was also interesting because it seems to have struck the rich more than the poor and health adults more than children or the elderly.
There was a clearly similar disease, known as the [Picardy Sweat](_URL_7_), which caused dozens of outbreaks, mostly in Picardy and the rest of Northern France, between 1718 and 1861 (or 1874, I’ve seen both dates). The diseases were similar, but not identical. The Picardy Sweat often included a rash, for example, was predominantly rural, and considerably less deadly. The Picardy Sweat may have been caused specifically by the Puumala hantavirus, an ancestor of Puumala, or a close relative of it, as Puumala still occurs in the same region today. A species of vole acts as a reservoir for the virus, and after springs heavy rains or flooding voles may be more likely to make their way into human dwellings, exposing humans to their infected excreta. Heavy rains also increase food, which increases population, which means there are more animals and they may be marking their territory more (with diseasing carrying urine). This seems to fit the pattern of Picardy Sweat quite well.
Two things to note: one, the medical article linked above identifies other outbreaks that may have been caused by hantaviruses, including “war nephritis” in the American Civil War and “trench nephritis” in WWI (as far as I can tell, they seem likely related but [neither has a definitive cause](_URL_5_)). A similar disease was reported in France and the Low Countries during World War II, as well. In trench nephritis, and possibly the others, the rodent vector may have been voles. The extreme conditions of war seems to expose more people to hantavirus. The disease seems to have first really shown up on Western radars when 3,000 UN troops were infected during the Korean War.
Two, an unknown hantavirus seems like the best bet as the best explanation for the English Sweat. However, hantaviruses are not the only candidate. Everything from food-borne illness like botulism or crop fungus, tick- or mosquito-borne viruses (the outbreak seem to come after heavy rains which boost insect populations), or rarer conditions like Rickettsial pox or anthrax have been suggested.
The English Sweat as hantavirus theory is that it comes from 1997. Why so recently? Hantavirus were a serious and sudden worry in America after [an initially mysterious outbreak in 1993](_URL_8_) (see also this good long form article from *Discover* magazine that year, “[Death at the Corners](_URL_3_)”, which covers how the outbreak was identified). See, hantaviruses don’t normally affect humans, but this time exposure to dry rodent feces or urine caused [hantavirus pulmonary syndrome](_URL_9_) (HPS) which is similar to the previously identified but much less deadly [Hantavirus hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome](_URL_6_) (HFRS). 1993 was the first time HPS had been identified, though later study uncovered some likely older examples in the American West. While the former seems endemic to the New World and the later seems endemic to the Old World, both seem to be immunopathologic, i.e. they cause the body’s immune system to short circuit which is the thing that actually does the damage, rather than the virus. That’s apparently why it often seems to affect the better off and those in middle-age—they have stronger immune systems.
If the English Sweat was caused by a hantavirus (and again, it is the best candidate but not the only candidate), it would particularly interesting for epidemiologists because in many ways, especially mortality and speed of infection after onset of symptoms, the Sweat more resembles the New World HPS than the Old World HFRS. It’s interesting that it took centuries to identify Hantavirus as a killer in the Americas, and that this was only identified by a cluster of cases in a short period of time. Since then, several other deadly Hantaviruses have been identified in North America (Bayou virus, Monongahela virus, New York virus, etc). All, again, seemingly transmitted through exposure to rodent excreta, which means that in today’s world clusters are rare. It’s generally a person here, or a person there. In the twenty years after the 1993 outbreak was identified, [only 624 people in the US have died from HPS from all hantaviruses](_URL_0_). Tens of thousands of people are affected by Hantaviruses every year, mainly in Asia (the disease was only isolated in the wake of the Korean War), but HFRS is less deadly than HPS. Did the virus that caused the English Sweat die out, or could it still exist in some rodent population that humans are simple only exposed to in certain, extreme conditions? | [
"Naturally, medical and veterinary sciences have attempted to exterminate parasites and pathogens living in humans and in domesticated animals. In the case of a few highly host-specific pathogens, this means the extinction of the entire pathogen species. Throughout human history, however, only one species, the smal... |
How did the original pharoahs, kings and emperors of ancient civilizations establish their power/become chosen for their role? | Each civilisation has different reasons for their particular monarch being on the throne. Since I only really know about them, I'll talk about the Spartans. This is coming from a Classics course, so I really hope someone more qualified could expand.
Unlike most other monarchies I can think of, the Spartans had two kings; each with identical privileges and power. But, by the 4th century BC they realised having identical roles was silly in terms of war- it's better to have one campaigning king and one stay at home.
The basis of their power isn't known, and like most things with ther Spartans we can only speculate as their record keeping was largely non-existant. It's probably the case that the dual monarchy came from a fusion of two towns or villages into the original city of Sparta. When they couldn't or wouldn't decide on one town having the monarch, they both nominated a king who would rule together: keeping an eye on the other, being the check and balance.
Once in power, the kingship would (usually) follow the male hereditary line. Rather than the eldest son becoming the heir apparent, the first born son during the kingship would becoming the heir. This wasn't always the case, as having such a confusing system would lead to userpers and claims of illegitimacy. But generally (or idealistically as some would claim) this was how the kingship was handed down. | [
"The rulers of these two dynasties saw themselves as the legitimate successors on the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt. They used traditional titles and displayed their royalty in building work, although that pales when compared to activity at the height of the New Kingdom. A remarkable achievement of these kings wa... |
why is heating for homes standard but cooling isn't? | That depends on the climate you live in.
Where I live both are standard on homes. In places where it never gets very hot then there's no point in installing an AC unit on a house, and the same goes for heating systems on homes in year-round not climates. | [
"For example, during cooling season, a programmable thermostat used in a home may be set to allow the temperature in the house to rise during the workday when no one will be at home. It may then be set to turn on the air conditioning before the arrival of occupants, allowing the house to be cool upon the arrival of... |
Was the existence of the 'underground railroad' common knowledge? Was there a difference in awareness of it between the north and the south? How did it work? | From the 1840s on, yes. While abolitionist white people had been helping black people escape the South for some time, the term "underground railroad" for this loose, informal network of people willing to help didn't exist until about that time. The main reason for that, of course, is that railroads were only being built for the first time in the late 1820s, so the name couldn't be lent to this other meaning before about then. The other reason is, the "Underground Railroad" is typically used to describe the network that helped people escape to Canada. Slavery was still officially legal in Ontario until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, and while there were people who escaped to Canada before that date to avoid the United States' Fugitive Slave Act, it only became widespread in 1834, when the act of British Parliament went into effect.
Anyway, the probably apocryphal origin story for the name was first published in London in 1860 in the book [*The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom*](_URL_9_) by William M. Mitchell, an abolitionist from North Carolina who spent time in London in 1859-60 on a lecture tour (hence the location where his book was published). According to this account, a black man swam from Kentucky to Ohio across the Ohio River with the white slaveholder in hot pursuit. By the time the slaveholder had reached the Ohio side, the man had disappeared into the nearest town. When asking around where the escaped man had gone, nobody knew, and the slaveholder complained that the abolitionists in the town "must have a railroad under the ground".
The same essential story was retold in another book also called [*The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom*](_URL_1_), though this one was published in 1898 and written by Wilbur H. Siebert. In this account, the actual man who did the escaping is named as Tice Davids, the event is said to have occurred in 1831, and it is related by a man named as Rush R. Sloane. Sloane lived in northern Ohio, in Sandusky, where Davids settled after making his escape. If true, Sloane presumably heard the story directly from Davids. The town Davids escaped to when swimming across the Ohio River is even named as Ripley, Ohio, which actually did have a known Underground Railroad depot there, the home of the rather famed abolitionist [John Rankin](_URL_7_). (He was one of the founding members of the American Anti-Slavery Society and had authored abolitionist works since the mid-1820s.) In this retelling, the slaveholder complains that Davids "must have gone off on an underground road". The abolitionists in the area, after relating the story, later changed it to a "railroad".
Siebert says that while it seems to be corroborated by the earlier Sloane story, the stories are probably only "traditions" and "they cannot be trusted in the details of time, place and occasion". While the story is possible, it could also be a deliberate narrative of somebody exalting their neighbor and a famed abolitionist to make for a good anecdote.
Either way, a figurative mention of such an escape route to Canada as a "railorad" first appeared in abolitionist newspaper *The Liberator* on [October 11, 1839](_URL_10_), though the article doesn't actually use the phrase "underground railroad":
> "Could a great republican railroad be constructed from Mason nd Dixon's to the Canada line, upon which fugitives from slavery might come pouring into this province, at the rate of five hundred per day, its entire length would have the smile of heaven by day, and freedom's great *polar lamp* to guide, and the northern lights to cheer the nightly train."
The actual first use of the phrase "Underground Railroad" is thought to have been printed in the Albany *Tocsin of Liberty* in late September 1842:
> "Tell the slaveholders that we passed twenty-six prime slaves to the land of freedom last week, and several more this week thus far. Don’t know what the end of the week will foot up. All went by the 'underground railroad'."
This is followed by messages from escaped people, to friends and family that had been left behind in the South from where the aforesaid 26 people had escaped from.
The article was reprinted in *The Vermont Telegraph* on [October 5, 1842](_URL_4_), and in *The Liberator* on [October 14, 1842](_URL_0_).
From then on, the phrase began appearing in both abolitionist press and then mainstream press with some regularity. As some examples, Vermont's *Green Mountain Freeman* starting using the phrase regularly [in 1844](_URL_11_), and *The Anti-Slavery Bugle* was doing the same [by 1846](_URL_5_). Down South, Virginia's *Alexandria Gazette* was writing articles about it [by 1849](_URL_2_), and a rural North Carolina newspaper was writing of the escape network [by 1850](_URL_3_). Up North in the non-abolition press, Indiana's *Richmond Palladium* was writing articles about it [by 1848](_URL_6_), and a rural Ohio newspaper was even making jokes using the phrase [by 1849](_URL_8_).
According to author David Blight in *Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory*, the phrase was well-understood no later than the mid-1840s, perhaps earlier. Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-seller and highly influential *Uncle Tom's Cabin* talked about people escaping on the "underground line" when published in 1852, so anybody who hadn't heard of it before that time, surely heard of it by then.
And even before the phrase was invented, people across the country knew there were abolitionists who were clandestinely (and illegally) helping escaped enslaved people get to Canada or otherwise stay undercover from slaveholders trying to recapture them. But there just wasn't a commonly-accepted name for it yet until mid-1840s. | [
"To some the Underground Railroad is thought to be just that, a series of underground railroads that were built to hide and transport former slaves that were seeking to escape from the southern areas of the United States. In actuality it was a web of hidden, interconnected, man-made paths that were shrouded by fore... |
why is female toplessness considered nudity, when male toplessness is pretty much acceptable? | There is a documentary on reddit somewhere that shows a man undergoing a sex operation to become a woman. I think the video was hosted on youtube. The video shows the surgeon making the female breasts. At a apparently random point during the operation youtube censors the, now, female nipple. It's the same nipple! This makes no kind of sense. | [
"The word \"topless\" may carry sexual or exhibitionist connotations. Because of this, advocates of women's legal right to uncover their breasts wherever men may go bare-chested have adopted the alternative term \"topfree\", which is not perceived to have these connotations.\n",
"In Australia, indecent exposure l... |
Besides being the tallest mountain on earth, is Everest also the highest topological point? | If I understand what you're asking correctly, [Mauna Kea](_URL_0_) is actually the tallest mountain. Everest is the highest mountain (elevation above sea level), but Mauna Kea is the tallest (base to peak). | [
"The South Summit of Mount Everest in the Himalayas is the second-highest peak on Earth, and is a subsidiary peak to the primary peak of Mount Everest. Although its elevation above sea level of is higher than the second-highest mountain on Earth, K2 (whose summit is above sea level), it is only considered a separat... |
Is it possible to design a supersonic aircraft which doesn't produce sonic boom? | Not really no, if air is pushed to try to go faster than its speed of sound, then it will create a sonic boom and it's pretty much inevitable that a aircraft interacts with the atmosphere it is in accelerating some of the air to the speed of the vehicle (and slightly above since it must make way for the vehicle)this is also why the transonic regime exists because even a transonic vehicle will create supersonic airflow.
Perhaps if you could somehow deflect all of the air in the immediate path of your craft so that the pressure near your craft it's low enough that the speed of sound in your vehicles personal atmosphere is higher than its velocity. I'm Imagining something very similar to the way a spacetime needs to fold around a faster than light alcubierre drive, so too would the air pressure have to be distorted around the craft such that none of the air is accelerated to its supersonic speed. You would also have to manage the air behind you and it's cavitation such that the vacuum dissipates without imploding. | [
"The annoyance of a sonic boom can be avoided by waiting until the aircraft is at high altitude over water before reaching supersonic speeds; this was the technique used by Concorde. However, it precludes supersonic flight over populated areas. Supersonic aircraft have poor lift/drag ratios at subsonic speeds as co... |
if making images larger decreases quality, why doesn’t the same go for sound? | Increasing pixels is by definition increasing quality. Making an image larger by increasing the size of the pixels is what decreases the perceived quality.
And sound is nothing at all like an image, at least in terms of loudness. More decibels just means more amplitude (strength) on the wave. The rest of it stays the same. | [
"For this reason, home cinema enthusiasts who invest in larger, higher quality screens often complain about the amount of edge enhancement present in commercially produced DVD videos, claiming that such edge enhancement is optimized for playback on smaller, poorer quality television screens, but the loss of detail ... |
how does google buy and renew domains for their main site? | It looks like Google uses _URL_0_ as their domain registrar. MarkMonitor is a "brand protection" oriented domain registration service. And, I'm pretty sure, they write a check.
| [
"Some programmers who create scraper sites may purchase a recently expired domain name to reuse its SEO power in Google. Whole businesses focus on understanding all expired domains and utilising them for their historical ranking ability exist. Doing so will allow SEOs to utilize the already-established backlinks to... |
Why is our current understanding of gravity unable to explain the rotational speed of galaxies without adding unseen mass (via dark matter) to the equation? | An orbit is a balance between an object's inertia carrying it outward and gravity pulling it in. If an object is moving fast enough, its inertia will carry it outwards fast enough that the cumulative effect of its parent body's gravity will never be enough to pull it back in. This speed is the escape velocity, and it can be calculated based on the total mass of the system and the initial altitude of the orbiting object. Based on the apparent mass of other galaxies, the outer stars should be moving at escape velocity, but somehow they're remaining in orbit. | [
"Two major conundrums have arisen in astrophysics and cosmology in recent times, both dealing with the laws of gravity. The first was the realization that there aren't enough visible stars or gas inside galaxies to account for their high rate of rotation. The theory of dark matter was created to explain this phenom... |
google chrome is dropping support for webkit and adding support for blink. what does this mean and how will it affect me? | WebKit and Blink are rendering engines. They are responsible for interpreting the HTML code of a website (which describes its layout and content), and transforming it into the page you see in front of you.
Google have decided to "fork" WebKit (take the existing stuff, but branch off in a new direction) and have named their own version of it Blink.
This probably won't affect you in any way at all. You probably won't even notice the different. For web developers, there may be some minor changes in how the new engine interprets their code, but I doubt it'll be anything significant. | [
"Google originally used WebKit for its Chrome browser but eventually forked it to create the Blink engine. All Chromium-based browsers use Blink, as do applications built with CEF, Electron, or any other framework that embeds Chromium.\n",
"On April 3, 2013, Google announced that it would produce a fork of WebKit... |
Tuesday Trivia | Fascinating Family History | Traditionally, when a Jewish child is deathly ill, the family might change the child's name so that the Angel of Death will be confused and unable to find him.
My father's father's uncle's was sick on the crossing from Europe to America in the 1880s. So the family changed his name.
Bearing in mind that Russian Jews in the late 19th century had only recently been convinced to take up family names a generation or two earlier, no one has ever been able to adequately explain why, at the same time the child's given name was changed, the entire family's surname was *also* changed.
Instead of being Difficult-to-Pronounce-Russian-Name it is now Difficult-to-Pronounce-German-Name.
This has led some of us to speculate that perhaps the Angel of Death in question was not the traditional Angel of Death but, instead, someone to whom they owed money. | [
"The family's origins come from the early 20th century when they were considered stalwarts in industries like textiles, mining, printing, movie production, steel, equity markets, etc. An iconic figure in the family was Govindram Seksaria, who was formally called The Cotton King of the world. The New York Cotton Exc... |
how do songwriter and musicians ensure that their new creations are unique and not a ripoff? | If you write the lyrics they will likely be original - it's hard to "forget" that you heard a full poem somewhere before. Melodies are a bit harder. You're unlikely to reproduce one that's exactly the same, but it might be very similar to something you've heard before but aren't actively thinking about.
I don't know this for sure, but I assume nowadays a major label can just plug the song into a computer, analyze it, and compare it to other songs (similar to reverse image searching, but for audio).
Back in the day you just had to play the song for others and see if anyone else recognized it. Paul McCartney said he woke up one morning with the tune for Yesterday in his head, but thought it might have been accidentally copied from somewhere, so he played it for people in the music industry to make sure he didn't before he finished it. | [
"Roach told the Cairns Post performing the songs of \"Creation\" helps him remember the impact his music has had. “I think you realise (the songs) have actually grown through the years. I haven’t performed them for a little while, so they are quite fresh and new for me again. I think I interpret them in a different... |
How do blood/plasma recipients not get serious viral infections? | They can, and do.
During the eighties, there were scandals across US and Europe where blood recipients where given blood from HIV+ donors, contracting the disease and dying. This often happened to haemophiliacs as they need donations quite regularly, upping the chances of getting a contaminated one. The scandal was that the companies selling the blood should have tested, but didn't because it was too expensive.
But other diseases, too, can travel easily via blood donation. This is why blood donors' health is normally closely monitored - or it should be. Who knows in an age where only the quick dollar counts.
The donated blood, too, gets tested against various antibodies. Unfortunately that's not quite 100% proof either for various reasons - rare pathogens, new variants etc.
There are now two conditions under which you may receive blood: Plannable/selective and emergency.
In the first case, e.g. when the patient is due to undergo an operation where bloods or plasma are likely going to be used, most people will 'donate' their own blood beforehand, thus negating any infection risk save for accidentally being allocated someone else's blood or needing more than planned. This is the much preferred way because it is very safe for the donor/recipient and also cheaper for the hospital as this blood doesn't need to be rigorously tested.
In an emergency, the infection risk takes the backseat over more pressing needs: The patient needs bloods **right now** or else they die. Once the patient is in calmer waters, any infections such as influenza just have to be dealt with.
Haemophiliacs are still at risk. | [
"Hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and hepatitis D are transmitted when blood or mucous membranes are exposed to infected blood and body fluids, such as semen and vaginal secretions. Viral particles have also been found in saliva and breastmilk. However, kissing, sharing utensils, and breastfeeding do not lead to transmiss... |
Why is the moon completely gray? If it got ripped from earth by some collision, shouldn't it have more color to it? | It's not exactly the same color. Even with a light telescope you can see the grayish highlands and the darker "mares" or "seas". But yes, you're right that it looks sort of like different shades of gray.
The reason is that most of the rocks are that color. Much of the moon is covered with regolith, which is basically surface rocks that were crushed by impact events and form a sort of coarse dust. The rocks that were crushed were mostly volcanic rocks such as anorthosite, which is sort of graying to begin with, as you can see [here](_URL_1_). That's a color image, by the way, it just looks that light grayish color because that's the real color.
The mares are largely basalt, which is a darker shade of gray, as you can see [here](_URL_0_). These are the primary colors of the moon.
There are some colored rocks on the moon, such as olivine, but they are few on the surface and not commonly seen. So the overall look is sort of grayish, with lighter and darker shades of gray. | [
"The Sun looks the same from the Moon as it does from Earth's orbit, somewhat brighter than it does from the Earth's surface, and colored pure white, due to the lack of atmospheric scattering and absorption.\n",
"The Moon does not completely darken as it passes through the umbra because of the refraction of sunli... |
why is everyone mad at the us government over the nsa scandal, but not the companies like google and facebook, verizon, etc. for allowing the government to use their information? especially when companies such as these, especially google, usually promote internet freedom and privacy? | **It is absolutely also a problem** if Google or Facebook or any other corporation is intruding on our privacy. It just tends to be a lower-order problem compared to the government doing it because Google doesn't have nearly as many resources as the Federal government does, nor does Google's snooping have any implications with regards to the Judicial system. | [
"According to Sputnik News, the NSA spying scandal created a need for a cyberspace hidden from the prying eyes of \"American spooks\". However, anyone using US-based web services like Google, Facebook or Yahoo will still remain under surveillance of the NSA.\n",
"In 2014 the Director of GCHQ authored an article i... |
why do car windows get covered in ice and not the body panels? | I think that more of the reason is because metal is more conductive for heat meaning that it heats up much faster than if the same amount of sun energy is aimed at the windows. Much of the energy focused at the windows will pass through it without ever converting into heat where as most energy that hits the panels will hit and reflect back causing it to heat up. It is like using glass/mirrors to reflect laser energy. The high powered lasers will not lose much power jumping from mirror to mirror but they will be capable of popping a balloon on contact because it absorbs the energy rather than reflecting it. This is the same principle | [
"Competition cars may have lightweight windows, or the windows may be completely removed, as auto glass adds significant weight and detrimentally alters weight distribution. Plastic windows are much more vulnerable to scratches, which reduce service life.\n",
"Far enough below the freezing point, a thin layer of ... |
what are lasik and lasek surgeries? | They are subtly different surgeries to correct for irregular vision - the difference lies in the execution of the surgery and techniques used, but the overall goal to correct vision is the same. Some people that might not be good candidates for LASIK might inquire about LASEK though, because of the differences of the operations. | [
"LASEK and PRK are two different procedures. While both procedures interact with the epithelium atop the cornea, the PRK procedure removes this entirely, while LASEK brushes the material away for the procedure, before being placed back for healing after laser surgery. The procedure can be used to treat astigmatism,... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.