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What population density could t-rex realistically have had?
[Here's a paper from a time this was previously asked](_URL_1_). Short answer seems to be that they don't know. There are a number of factors (prey density, metabolism, hunting strategy) that are all pretty speculative, making it difficult to get something approaching a real answer. There's even [some evidence](_URL_0_) of social behaviors - pack hunting remains a possibility. Hard to be very sure of specific animal behaviors from ~~150~~ 66 million years ago.
[ "Remains of tortoises at this site and a dig at Die Kelders, have been used to assess a correlation between tortoise size and human population, with a decrease in tortoise sizes as the human population grows.\n", "An estimate of 36.5 million by Burton was based on extrapolating up from a density of 2.5 animals/ha...
why do some people cry during sex? is it biological or psychological? both? are there performance or dysfunction related to crying during intercourse?
I can only speak for myself, but if I cry during sex, it's because the sex is so overwhelming, both physically and emotionally, that I need a quick, accessible outlet for it. You'd think that an orgasm would be a good outlet, given the circumstance, but that just makes it more overwhelming, and more tearful. For me, I believe it's psychological. Tears are a quick and easy outlet for *any* strong emotion I have. Rage and bliss are the two big ones. There is a huge difference between crying during sex because you don't want to be having it and crying during sex because you don't want to ever NOT be having it.
[ "In nearly all cultures, crying is associated with tears trickling down the cheeks and accompanied by characteristic sobbing sounds. Emotional triggers are most often sadness and grief but crying can also be triggered by anger, happiness, fear, laughter or humor, frustration, remorse, or other strong, intense emoti...
who owns the united states federal reserve? if it is the government, explain why we need to pay interest on the created money?
The Federal Reserve doesn't really have an owner. The leadership is appointed by the government, but the government doesn't claim any ownership rights over the organization or its stuff. Why do we do it this way? Well, the Federal Reserve sets what's known as monetary policy (roughly, the policies regarding how many dollars are around), and it's very important that monetary policy be *stable*. If politicians could just print off a bunch of money to pay for things, it would be hard to trust US currency, because you'd never know when it would be devalued by a new wave of printing. The Federal Reserve makes it clear when and why they will print money, so this doesn't happen, letting US dollars be one of the most commonly used currencies in the world.
[ "According to the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, \"It is not 'owned' by anyone and is 'not a private, profit-making institution'. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.\" The U.S. Government does not own shares in the Federal Reserve ...
why fight to have student loans forgiven?
For what it's worth, I agree with you, but I'll try to explain the mentality behind it - today's 20-somethings were brought up their whole lives believing that college was the ticket to a bright future. You did decently in high school, went to a respectable college, and got a suitable white collar job that put you squarely in the middle class. Forget for a moment that this mythos isn't and never has been entirely true - an English degree didn't directly lead to a job any more in 1985 than it did in 2005 - but this belief in the merits and inevitability of college has been pounded into everyone's heads over the last 20 years, leading to skyrocketing enrollment rates. ...but also skyrocketing costs. Since the 1980's, college costs have risen 2-3x the pace of inflation, leaving the '00s graduates with a lot more debt burden than previous generations. At the same time, because of the recession, opportunities are much scarcer for college grads at any point in many decades. Yes, it's still more likely you'll be employed if you have a college education than if you don't, but it's also much more likely you'll be underemployed, running a register at Banana Republic instead of working in the field of your degree (that $10/hr doesn't help much when you have 6 figures worth of student loans.) So in summary: recent grads have had the desirability of a college education driven into their heads since elementary school. They followed that advice and went to college, taking on more debt than ever before, only to graduate and find that the jobs weren't there. You mention that it's not like they were tricked, but a lot of them feel like they were. I definitely don't think loan forgiveness is the solution, but I can't blame them for being frustrated.
[ "BULLET::::- The federal government should enact partial or total loan forgiveness for students who have taken out student loans. One advocate for college loan forgiveness has argued that \"Since forgiveness does not require the printing of new dollars (i.e., \"too much money chasing too few goods\"), it is not inf...
why does it feel good to sleep in the fetal position decade after being in the womb?
It's a psychological thing; regression. The fetal position inside your mothers womb is a safe, warm time in your life so subconsciously you go back (regress) to that time of safety and so on. Source: 1 intro class of Psych last semester.
[ "It has been argued that co-sleeping evolved over five million years, that it alters the infant's sleep experience and the number of maternal inspections of the infant, and that it provides a beginning point for considering possibly unconventional ways of helping reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SID...
[Physics] Why can I hit a tennis ball pretty far with minimal effort, but I have to work a lot harder to throw it the same?
2 things going on here. 1. Leverage. The longer the moment arm you use (tennis bat) the more force you can exert on the ball. Ball goes further. 2. Tension. Tension of the strings in the bat make for a small ammount of elasticity which work for you, in terms of transfering forces to the ball more directly. Ball goes further.
[ "A difficult shot in tennis is the return of an attempted lob over the backhand side of a player. When the contact point is higher than the reach of a two-handed backhand, most players will try to execute a high slice (under the ball or sideways). Fewer players attempt the backhand sky-hook or smash. Rarely, a play...
feeling weak while having a cold. what causes that?
Your body is spending so much energy on fighting the cold that it doesn't spare energy for much else. A proper immune response requires a bit of energy, and fighting infection becomes job 1 (aside from breathing, heart function, etc.). Your immune system is activating chemical and cellular systems that are normally dormant. Additionally, a raised temperature means that some regular enzymes may not work as well. Enzymes are picky about temperature. Changing from your body's normal temperature (usually 36.5–37.5 °C or 97.7–99.5 °F) can cause some enzymes to become less active, erratic, or even dysfunctional-- leading to a general feeling of lethargy.
[ "One explanation for the effect is a cold-induced malfunction of the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates body temperature. Another explanation is that the muscles contracting peripheral blood vessels become exhausted (known as a loss of vasomotor tone) and relax, leading to a sudden surge of blood (a...
what causes photos of screens to look so bad?
It's called the moire effect. Cameras have pixels, and those pixels are arranged in symmetric rectangular grids. Displays have pixels, also arranged in symmetric grids. When those grids perfectly align, the image is fine. However, if the grid is off a little then camera pixel A sees display pixel A and a little bit of pixel B. Then camera pixel B sees display pixel B and a little more of pixel C. This small disturbance produces waves of uneven intensity in the image. Since the automatic gain control in the camera looks at the whole image, it can't eliminate the intensity waves. The result is dark bands across the camera image.
[ "The image may seem garbled, poorly saturated, of poor contrast, blurry or too faint outside the stated viewing angle range, the exact mode of \"failure\" depends on the display type in question. For example, some projection screens reflect more light perpendicular to the screen and less light to the sides, making ...
how does the conservation of mass and energy, and the expansion of the universe correlate/allow for the other?
You can have nothing. That's what a vacuum is, the absence of something. While space is not a perfect vacuum, it's pretty close. So as space expands, you get a bigger vacuum.
[ "The critical density of the universe is dependent upon the rate at which the universe is still expanding. The universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, but was originally thought to be slowing down. Furthermore, the rate at which this is changing gives the overall mass density of the universe which is denoted ...
Are there any examples of a unit or part of an army effectively going rogue and that started doing their own thing?
There are many, many examples of this in Roman civilisation alone. Not to put too fine a point on it, but are you aware of Julius Caesar and [crossing the Rubicon](_URL_0_)?
[ "In a multi-part story titled \"The Marauders\", Rogue encounters a group of deserters from both Nort and Southern sides, who operate as scavengers from a hidden base and attack both Nort and Southers in order to obtain food, ammunition and supplies. Unknown to Rogue, the commander of The Marauders is the Traitor G...
Rangers in history
Well, the archetypal form of those sorts of characters certainly existed. Tolkein, as a professor of English, was very aware of his influences and what he was drawing on. The later horde of fantasy authors ripping him off? Probably less so. One of the earliest expressions of what this sort of archetype was the Yeoman introduced in the prologue of Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales*. He is the only attendant accompanying the Knight and Squire on pilgrimage, presumably as their bodyguard since he is well-armed and they are not mentioned to be bearing weapons. Just as the Knight and Squire are idealized representations of their "types" ( the Knight is a bold crusader and paragon of chivalry, the Squire is a fresh-faced youth jousting for the hand of a lady), the Yeoman is an idealized image of what yeomen could be. He's very well-armed, carrying his longbow, a sword, a dagger, and a buckler. He has "a cropped head had he and a sun-browned face," from working outdoors and in the forests. The Yeoman's job, in peacetime, was to administer the forests on his lord's lands. This included apprehending poachers, stopping illegal logging or grazing, and watching over the deer population. Chaucer himself was once appointed as a forester, although his position was more administrative than the Yeoman's. It's never mentioned explicitly, but it's very possible that the Yeoman accompanied the Knight on crusade or in some other war. Standard English armies of the day were made up of large archer formations protected by men-at-arms. If the Yeoman did go to war with the Knight, it's possible that he would be a captain or other officer of the archers in the Knight's retinue. From his weapons and other equipment he's carrying (peacock-fletched arrows, a "gay bracer," and a silver medal of St. Christopher), it's clear that the Yeoman is economically well-off and thus the sort of person who might raise a company of archers for service in war. The Yeoman is not mentioned to be mounted, but he could certainly afford a horse if he wanted one. Mounted archers were employed by the English for rapid movement on campaign, raiding, and scouting, although for pitched battles, they would dismount and fight on foot. So how does that connect to the ranger archetype of modern fantasy fiction? Well, the "ranger" concept is essentially a blending of the roles of a yeoman archer. The peacetime duties of a forester and the wartime duties of an archer are blended into one role. Faramir's rangers^1 are actually a semi-accurate depiction of how yeoman archers fought. In the fight where they are introduced, they seem to have a force of archers deployed behind a screen of infantry. Their strategic purpose, disrupting enemy movement through Ithilien, is somewhat similar to the chevauchées of the Hundred Years War. A real chevauchée would often be focused on looting undefended villages rather than getting into larger fights, but sometimes the English launched large-scale raids for the purpose of forcing the French to come out and face them in pitched battles, which is a little closer to what Faramir seems to be doing. Lacking access to Gondorian accounts of their campaigns in Ithilien, it's hard to say how exactly Faramir was going about it. The only observers are Frodo and Sam, neither of whom had a keen eye for military details. The rangers of the *Ranger's Apprentice* series are a little more fantastical, since they seem to most closely resemble a 14th century CIA than any medieval archers. Fun for telling a YA fantasy story, but not really anything historical. To sum up, the ranger archetype in fantasy fiction is an amalgamation of several different roles a yeoman might perform. Men with experience in foresting were considered to be the best source of archer recruits for a campaign, but they wouldn't be sneaking around on the battlefield wearing some kind of medieval camouflage. In a pitched battle, they'd be fighting in formation with the rest of their company. On campaign, they might be called on for raiding and scouting duties, but that wasn't a role exclusive to men with forestry experience. So the ranger archetype has roots in literary traditions and memories of medieval English archers, but isn't really reflective of their historical reality. EDIT (footnote) 1: That is, Faramir's rangers as they are depicted in the book *The Two Towers*. They're pretty much all Robin Hood in the movie.
[ "Under Church served the father and grandfather of two famous rangers of the eighteenth century: John Lovewell and John Gorham, respectively. Rogers' Rangers was established in 1751 by Major Robert Rogers, who organized nine Ranger companies in the American colonies. These early American light infantry units organi...
When an animal is born with two fully functioning heads, how do their brains deliberate and balance control over the body?
Tried a quick google for some research but couldn’t find any. I assume it’s different from person to person. It would all depend on how their brains were connected to each other and the rest of the body I would assume
[ "The function of the brain is to provide coherent control over the actions of an animal. A centralized brain allows groups of muscles to be co-activated in complex patterns; it also allows stimuli impinging on one part of the body to evoke responses in other parts, and it can prevent different parts of the body fro...
cocaine
Cocaine basically causes loads of a chemical called dopamine to be produced and this chemical is normal produced in small amounts that then produces a signal that is turned into an action the amount of dopamine affects how big the signal is. This over production of dopamine means BIG signals are constantly being made and the nervous system goes into over drive and you feel high.
[ "Cocaine is an SNDRI. Cocaine is made from the leaves of the coca shrub, which grows in the mountain regions of South American countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. In Europe, North America, and some parts of Asia, the most common form of cocaine is a white crystalline powder. Cocaine is a stimulant but is...
why is it that mac operating systems rarely need to be updated yet windows seemingly needs to be updated every few days?
OS X does need to be updated~~graded~~ fairly often. The thing is, Apple makes it a fairly seamless process. Rarely does an update require a restart, for instance, while Windows updates tend to be very intrusive. If you select autoupdate for both systems, you rarely notice an OS X update, while Windows will kick you in the face and force you to submission every time it wants to apply an update. That, and the fact that, for many different reasons, OS X tends to be a more stable environment than Windows.
[ "Windows 10 contains major changes to Windows Update Agent operations; it no longer allows the manual, selective installation of updates. All updates, regardless of type (this includes hardware drivers), are downloaded and installed automatically, and users are only given the option to choose whether their system w...
Why are batteries arrays made with cylindrical batteries rather than square prisms so they can pack even better?
First of all, some packs are made with prismatic cells. The pros and cons of cylindrical vs prismatic cells themselves are more important than packing efficiency. Notably, cylindrical manufacturing is more mature, and cylindrical cells tend to be better (in energy density and cost per kWh) at lower capacities, which most packaged battery packs are. Here's an in-depth article on the cylindrical vs prismatic question: _URL_0_
[ "Correctly made rectangular or square lens hoods are generally more efficient than cylindrical or conical ones because those shapes closely resemble the shape of the photograph. However, rectangular or square lens hoods should not be used with zoom lenses whose front elements rotate as the focal length is changed, ...
Were more artillery shells fired in WWII or WWI per capita?
per capita what? Per artilleryman? Per frontline infantryman? Per European population?
[ "The total production of 75 mm shells during World War I exceeded 200 million rounds, mostly by private industry. In order to increase shell production from 20,000 rounds per day to 100,000 in 1915, the government turned to civilian contractors, and, as a result, shell quality deteriorated. This led to an epidemic ...
what causes naturally "good" or "bad" memory retention in a person and why is there a difference?
Since you're talking about memory retention, I'm going to skip over short-term memory, which naturally decays. To start, the idea of having a *perfect* memory is a bit of a lie. It's totally normal to not remember every little detail. Memory itself is also a bit of a lie: your brain fills in the gaps if it needs to, distorts facts or details along the way, and flat-out jettisons some information. The experience of memory is quite subjective. Someone who believes that they remember things easily, whether that's true or not (since memory is also a bit of a lie), will claim to have a great memory. Someone who is caught up in the normal blank spaces might think that they have a terrible memory, even when there are probably in the normal range. It's normal to remember some things very well, and other things not so well. In reality, most people are more or less on the same playing field. A lot of memory retention simply comes down to observations and engagement. If you aren't actively engaged in observing things around you, you aren't going to retain those things. If you're sitting in the car, staring at your phone, you aren't going to remember the scenery passing by because you aren't really even looking at it. If you look out the window and really focus on what you see, you'll remember much more of the trip. This is partially why most people remember things more easily when they write information by hand: you are engaged with the information more deeply, so it's easier to recall. There are a million little memory tricks and "hacks" out there, and most revolve around making information more meaningful (mnemonics, repetition, connecting details, etc.). It's normal to forget where you put your keys (once in a while). It's not normal to forget what keys do. Problems with memory retention and recall can happen when connections in the brain start to break down, when neurotransmitters aren't quite right, when a physical traumatic injury damages the brain, etc. Here are some examples: - Mental illnesses like depression and anxiety disorders, and psychotic disorders. - Drug and alcohol use. - Poor sleep. - Little or no physical activity. - Some vitamin deficiencies. - Brain injuries. - Some medications, especially things like benzodiazapines. - Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease. - Other physical illnesses. - Aging.
[ "The lack of remembered detail especially affects positive memories; generally people remember positive events with more detail than negative events, but the reverse is seen in those with depression. Negative memories will seem more complex and the time of occurrence will be more easily remembered than positive and...
Why do we have primary colours?
> Why can it be split up into distinct colours in a prism? When light crosses a material boundary it is deflected (refracted) by a certain angle depending on its frequency. So different frequencies will be refracted in different angles. > What makes these frequencies special over any of the other ones? There's nothing special about the frequencies. What's special about the *colors* (frequency mixture) is that they consist of only one frequency—namely the one refracted to that particular angle. > Why are blue, red and green special in the rainbow? They aren't. It's our eyes that make them special. We have three different kinds of color sensors in our eyes, and they respond differently to different frequencies. One kind responds most to blue light, another to red, and so on. > Why only 3? (I know you can make all the colours from them, but I don't understand why). Because that's how human vision works (see previous answer). Each color we see depends on the response from the three kinds of sensors. There's nothing particularly special about the number three. > Is it possible to combine IR or UV with each other, or light, to get light? No, light of different frequencies won't interfere with each other. This is due to the linearity of the wave model, or as physicists like to call it: the principle of “superposition.” > Why do we have distinct primary colours? I'm not sure I understand. They can't be the same because you lose a dimension of the color space. > Is it possible to pick 3 different colours as a base for the rest? So long as they're linearly independent. E.g. you couldn't choose something like dark red, red and light red. You would only ever be able to make different shades of red.
[ "First, \"color\" refers to the human brain's subjective interpretation of combinations of a narrow band of wavelengths of light. For this reason, the definition of \"color\" is not based on a strict set of physical phenomena. Therefore, even basic concepts like \"primary colors\" are not clearly defined. For examp...
Back in the days when people believed witchcraft was a real thing and prosecuted people for being witches, how could they on one hand believe in malevolent magic and yet believe they could arrest, imprison and execute a "witch" and the witch would not escape/take revenge with their magic?
The answer lies in our conception of magic. To most people in the modern world the first image that comes to mind is Harry Potter making things fly around the room, shooting big, violent spells everywhere. Historically, this is not how witches were seen. Magic was almost always related to a relationship with the Devil, which made it inherently evil. The witches gained their power by worshipping Satan. By doing his bidding on Earth, he in turn granted them with extraordinary powers. Their resulting magic was much more subtle. Most reports from Europe and the Americas allege that a certain person cast some magic upon a cow and killed it or caused some crops to fail. Magic was used to harm others, but not in the direct way that we often see in popular culture. Take the Salem Witch Trials, perhaps the most famous example in American history. When a few girls started acting in a strange manner, screaming and writhing to draw attention, it was assumed that people had cast spells upon them to make them suffer. The results of this case aren't really important for your question, but this would be an example of a way that people believed magic took a direct and tangible effect. Arresting and executing the witches was simply reasserting God's will on Earth. The witches were under guard and were never expected to bust out riding a broom while breathing fire. The most they could do was, in a rather lengthy time, slowly poison one's soul or cause incremental physical ailments. So, since most of the time charges instead focused on abstract allegations of sabotage and rarely human violence, they were not too worried. Most mass-hysteria episodes coincided with difficult times economically, politically, or environmentally, but it was always easier to say, "My cow died and I hate that girl. She's a witch!" The girl could take revenge, but it'd be rather difficult for her to find the time to slowly implement her incremental magic if she's constantly under surveillance and then burned to death. Edit: Sorry for the lack of sources and formatting, I'm a little bit new here. * Dr. Brian Pavlac's book *Witch Hunts in the Western World: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials* is a good overview of the topic. If you want a quick version, his website lays it out pretty well with a few FAQs. For example, regarding their conception of magic he writes, "Usually the danger was seen in an organized conspiracy led by the Devil. Or the concern was witches causing harm (maleficia) through spells: raising storms, killing people or livestock, and/or causing bad luck." As people became more and more hysterical, the government almost always stepped in to counteract the Devil's influence, so it was very much an institutionalized phenomenon. He also briefly comments on why outbreaks occurred in some places more than others. He writes, "Historians are still trying to explain the reasons for this great variety in witch hunting. Important factors could have been: the power of the central government; the independence of local authorities; tensions created by war, failing economies, or famine; and uncertainties about religious conformity." For more info on the Salem witch trials... * The rather famous Cotton Mather left a firsthand account of the trials. He describes how New England culture understood magic and its effects throughout. For example, he wrote the following of the first case that triggered the trials. > It was not long before one of her Sisters, an two of her Brothers, were seized, in.Order one after another with Affects' like those that molested her. Within a fe weeks, they were all four tortured every where in a manners very grievous, that it would have broke an heart of stone t have seen their Agonies. Skilful Physicians were consulted for their Help, and particularly our worthy and prudent Friend Dr. Thomas Oakes,' who found himself so affronted by the Dist'empers of the children, that he concluded nothing but an hellish Witchcraft could be the Original of these Maladies. As you can see they didn't believe witchcraft worked anything like we do today. Because of this their fear of a witch locked up in a jail cell was naturally much different than our's would be. There are many more books on the Salem Witch Trials, and it really is fascinating to look at why the entire thing happened. * I'd recommend *The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege* by Maryilynne K. Roach. It's essentially a timeline of the whole thing with the historical context. It's kind of long, but very informative, and not overly academic. * For a more scholarly take try *Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England* by John Demos.
[ "Most scholars agree that the witch trials were the result of isolated incidents of hysteria in remote peasant communities. While many of the accused confessed to various acts of magic and Satanism, all did so under threat of torture, and historians agree that there is no evidence any of the victims of the trials w...
how do they decide, during sports broadcasts that vary in length, which ads to play?
They buy ads based on when they show in the game, not for a specific time. So I may set up a deal with them for an ad at the end of the first and third quarters, plus a commercial for halftime.
[ "A number of segments appear before the game or in between innings. In addition to entertaining the audience, these exist because UK broadcasting standards effectively prevent Five from running commercials every time the US broadcasters do so.\n", "The numbers can show who is listening to a particular station, th...
Did medieval knights lift?
I highly recommend [this thread](_URL_1_) by /u/knight117 and [this one](_URL_0_) by /u/kardlonoc which both deal with the question you ask. & #x200B; The TL;DR is "sort of". They trained but primarily in a more functional sense. Weapons practice, horsemanship, hunting, exercises in armor etc are all demanding activites. Added to this there seems to have been a relatively widespread focus on more general fitness among knights-to-be which involved things like lifting or throwing rocks, wrestling, climbing, jumping and running.
[ "In contrast to modern cranes, medieval cranes and hoists – much like their counterparts in Greece and Rome – were primarily capable of a vertical lift, and not used to move loads for a considerable distance horizontally as well. Accordingly, lifting work was organized at the workplace in a different way than today...
what mass an object should have so objects start orbiting it?
Any object that has mass has a gravitational field. You have a gravitational field. A feather has a gravitational field. Those fields are, however, extremely weak. You could in theory, have an object orbiting around you, but in order to do this you'd have to be very far from any larger gravitational fields (such as that of Earth) that would disrupt it. The radius within which an object can orbit a body that is itself orbiting a larger body is called the [Hill sphere](_URL_0_). It depends on both the mass of the two bodies and the distance between them. For example, Earth has a Hill radius of about 1.5 million km. Objects within that radius can form a stable orbit around the Earth. Outside that radius, the orbit would quickly destabilize and the object would end up orbiting the Sun instead. If the Hill sphere is smaller than the size of the object (as is the case for most spacecraft in Earth orbit), then that object cannot have a satellite - the gravitational field is dominated by the mass of the heavier body. The other constraint is the shape of the object - a spherical bodies of constant density have a gravitational field that turns out to be equivalent to a point mass. All orbits around such a body are stable. If the object is irregularly shaped, or it's mass is not distributed evenly, then orbits may not be stable, and the satellite may end up crashing into the body.
[ "While the \"weight\" of an object varies in proportion to the strength of the gravitational field, its \"mass\" is constant, as long as no energy or matter is added to the object. For example, although a satellite in orbit (essentially a free-fall) is \"weightless\", it still retains its mass and inertia. Accordin...
why are all cells considered to be living structures?
The cells have all the traits we associate with living things. They eat food, they procreate etc. The cells in the human body isn't all that different from the cells of single cell organisms.
[ "Cellular components are the complex biomolecules and structures of which cells, and thus living organisms, are composed. Cells are the structural and functional units of life. The smallest organisms are single cells, while the largest organisms are assemblages of trillions of cells. DNA is found in nearly all livi...
what happens to people in colorado who were already convicted of marijuana - related offenses?
You serve the remainder of your sentence. The change in law does not make something retroactively legal.
[ "In April 2019, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot announced that individuals caught possessing misdemeanor amounts of cannabis would no longer be prosecuted for first-time offenses. Individuals who commit subsequent offenses would be offered diversionary courses to avoid a criminal conviction.\n", "In ...
this siphon water experiment
So you understand that it's a siphon. You could siphon between the two glasses if there was just a single tube. The bottle doesn't actually change anything - it could just as easily be a rubber hose connecting the two straws. When the water drops out of the bottle, it creates a vacuum, sucking water into the bottle from the upper glass. The only reason you start with water in the bottle is because you need to have the siphon primed (full of water) in order to get it going.
[ "BULLET::::- David James, a 28-year old graduate student in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, demonstrated his discovery of a solution made by combining one part polyethylene oxide to 199 parts of water that could cause water to flow upward, in what he described as a \"tubel...
what is the definition of life?
All known life has a few things in common, organisms (things that are alive) have these in common: they're composed of a cell or cells, undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, grow, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. There are a few things that seem to do a few but not all of these processes, like viruses, which is why they're classified as nonlife or as some kind of intermediate gray area between life and nonlife. We don't necessarily "know" nonlife mutated into life sometime in the past, but we view it as the most likely scenario because we do know that the Earth once had no life, and now, today, it does have life, and also because we know the processes it would have to undergo are theoretically possible.
[ "Although there is no universal agreement on the definition of life, scientists generally accept that the biological manifestation of life is characterized by organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli and reproduction. Life may also be said to be simply the characteristic state of organisms....
category theory.
First, let's start with a couple of examples of what math subjects are like. In Real Analysis, we start with some set of Real numbers and first we learn some stuff about them. After we know some of their properties, we then look at functions from real numbers to other real numbers, and we begin to ask questions about these functions. For example, are these functions continuous? Differentiable? Do two functions, *f* and *g*, behave nicely under operations like pointwise addition (*f*+*g*), pointwise multiplication(*fg*) and composition (*f*(*g*(x))). Basically, the study of functions on real numbers. In Calculus, we begin with a bunch of (usually continuous, but they need not be) functions and learn a bit about them. Then we look at these two operators d/dx and ∫*f*dx that send differentiable functions to continuous functions and vice versa. (Someone could probably point out some technicalities in that Riemann integrals can operate on piecewise continuous functions and Lebesgue integrals can even work on functions with up to a countably infinite number of discontinuities, but they would be a nerd for pointing out such petty details) Then we begin to ask questions about whether multiple derivatives make sense, whether these processes are invertible, and how the set of functions changes on each apllication(ie the set of continuous functions is larger than the set of differentiable functions, which is smaller than the set of twice differentiable functions) and so on. Basically, the study of derivatives and integrals on functions. In linear algebra, we begin by looking at some things called vectors that live in a vector field. After learning some of the ways they interact with each other through addition and scalar multiplication, we then ask questions about linear operators that relate some vectors to other vectors so that these structures are preserved. For example, are these operators bounded? Compact? How do they behave under composition? Basically, the study of linear operators on vectors Now, if we ignore the jargon terms then all the above paragraphs are essentially the same. Category theory then is basically doing this same process abstractly on potentially unknown objects. That is, it is the study of morphisms(a fancy word for functions) acting on objects(which live in some category, hence the name). The goal, in some sense, is to work out the least number of properties we need to know about the category to know something about the morphisms. In turn, we might then be able to sum up many branches of math at once, and say that since both the real numbers and vectors have property A, the morphisms on these categories, functions and linear operators must have property B, and this might save us work if a new branch of math was to open up. More mathematically, it also helps highlight the similarities and differences between various branches of math, and show us deep symmetries that we didn't notice before.
[ "\"Category theory\" is a branch of mathematics that seeks to generalize all of mathematics in terms of categories, independent of what their objects and arrows represent. Virtually every branch of modern mathematics can be described in terms of categories, and doing so often reveals deep insights and similarities ...
what is/are the difference/s between the arabic, turkish and persian people?
Turks came from the Central Asian steppe as nomadic horsemen in late 1st/early 2nd millennium, taking over what had been the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman, Empire completely by the 15th century. The first Turks were Seljuk Turks; later came the Ottomans who created an empire that ruled much of the Middle East until WW1. They spread into South-Eastern Europe also. The Ottomans and Seljuks were Muslim; earlier Turks had been pagan or Christian even. They have their own Turkish language. Turkic peoples still live in Central Asia, notably in Turkmenistan. Azeris are also Turkic culturally, speaking a Turkic language, albeit including an admixture of Persian and Caucasian elements in their ethnic make-up. The Arabs came from Arabia, where they existed as tribes that were not unified to spread their influence until the arrival of Islam with Muhammad in the 8th century. Arab armies then spread as far as Central Asia, conquering and converting all in their path very rapidly. This empire was later fragmented and lost; however they remained a largely Muslim people. Prior to Islam they were pagans, Christians or Jews. Like Jews they are a Semitic race and consider themselves children of Abraham. The Romans had extensive dealings with them as did the Persians and everybody since. They currently occupy Arabia and large swathes of Asia Minor outside Iran and Turkey as well as North Africa. They have their own Arabic language. The Persians's recorded history goes back much further than either the Turks or the Arabs. They are an Indo-Aryan race that originates in what is now Iran and their culture dates back to early-Classical times, when they are famous for fighting with the Greeks. At times the dominant group, and hence the name of their empire, has been the Persians, Medes or Parthians, although all groups are now merged into the Iranian people. Other Persian empires have been named after the ruling family, as per the Ottoman/Seljuk Turkish Empires, including the Sassanid and Achaemenid Empires (which were many centuries apart.) the Persians were mainly Zoroastrian until they converted to Islam. As Muslims they are mainly Shia. They too have their own Persian language. The Kurds are a Persian people, although culturally distinct from modern Persian Iranians. There are many cultural similarities between all three cultures due to the shifting boundaries of their Empires over thousands of years and shared Muslim faith. I could go on and on, but hopefully this gives you some insight and a fairly simple précis to aid further research of your own. It's a fascinating region and set of cultures! Edit: added that Seljuk Turks were also Muslim for clarity... Turkish people were originally pagan pre-Muslim era and some Turks living in Anatolia under Byzantine rule were Christian; however, both the Seljuks and Ottomans were definitely Muslims (although this did not prevent the Seljuks from enjoying very good relations and close alliances with the Christian Byzantines at various points, in between the times they fought...) Also added a little information about other Turkic peoples, although having done so I notice that /u/HannasAnarion has done so in greater detail below rendering my edit somewhat superfluous :)
[ "Most of the original Persian words are still widely used in modern Turkish. In fact, there are over 1,500 Persian words in Turkish. However, for many of the Persian words (unlike Arabic words), there is no TDK-prescribed equivalent. TDK did not put as much effort into replacing Persian words as it did for Arabic w...
Would we really have made more scientific progress today if it where not for the decline of the roman empire and the dark ages?
For one, the Roman Empire was actually not a very innovative entity. There are a few pieces of advanced technology like concrete which would not be re-discovered until after the renaissance but for the most part the Empire was simply good at achieving the economy of scale through mass deployment of capital to accomplish public works projects (i.e roads, Coliseum) using existing technology. Second of all the Medieval era had a -higher- rate of technological advancements than the Roman period. The medieval period saw significant advances in agricultural techniques (i.e the two fields/three fields system), equipment (i.e the heavy plow, better shipping) and machinery (i.e the windmill and the mechanical clock). While they "looked" less impressive than the Coliseum those are in fact more important in enhancing productivity and building up the basis for industrialization (i.e the first mechanical looms in the 18th century). The other big thing is that people have a tendency to emphasis hardware (i.e steam engines, concrete) but it was really "software" (i.e commercial institutions which allows capital to be routed towards industrialization) which was probably the more important factor in industrialization. Last of all it should noted that the eastern half of the Empire (Byzantium) actually did survive for another 1000 years and did not industrialize. The idea that Rome was a lost technological paradise when compare to the Medieval era doesn't hold water upon closer examination.
[ "In summary, Rome contributed numerous advances in technology to the Ancient World. However, it is also viewed that \"the ancient world under the domination of Rome [in fact] reached a kind of climax in the technological field [as] many technologies had advanced as far as possible with the equipment then available\...
why are black holes not infinitely bright?
If the photon is permanently caught, it cannot make it to your eye.
[ "Black holes are difficult to find because they do not let out any light. They can be found when black holes suck in other stars. When black holes suck in other stars, the black hole lets out X-rays, which can be seen by telescopes.\n", "A black star with a radius slightly greater than the predicted event horizon...
How much does drinking a cold drink really affect your body temperature?
I'm an anesthesiologist. We monitor body temperature during surgery because anesthesia inhibits your ability to autoregulate temperature. Essentially you are turned into a poikilotherm like a snake, and lose heat to the cold operating room. An inability to contract your muscles prevents you from generating heat. We have a rule of thumb that 1 liter of room temperature intravenous fluids will reduce a patient's body temperature by 0.25 degrees Celsius. We used forced air warming blankets and heated IV fluids to maintain a normal body temperature, which helps the body to metabolize medications predictably and the blood to clot properly. After reading comments I want to add that the reason I brought up anesthesia here is that only when you remove the body's ability to generate heat can you actually measure a reduction in temperature, unless you infuse the fluid very quickly. When we drink cold fluids, the body generates heat to correct the drop in temperature before an appreciable difference can be measured. Furthermore, there are some interesting studies out there on this. Many involve rapidly administering cold IV fluids in attempt to show that hypothermia is protective against neurologic injury in situations such as cardiac arrest. Here is one study: Ann Emerg Med. 2008 Feb;51(2):153-9. Epub 2007 Nov 28. They infuse cold and room temperature fluids rapidly in non anesthetized patients and measure a temperature change before compensatory mechanisms (shivering) can restore the body to normal temp. This is better than my rule of thumb as it uses weight-based dosing for IV fluids. Interesting, 30ml/kg of room temp fluid reduced the body core temp by 0.5 Celsius degrees. That would be 3 liters of fluid for a 100kg (220lb) person. Cold fluid reduced the body temp by a full degree Celsius.
[ "Temperature is increased after eating or drinking anything with calories. Caloric restriction, as for a weight-loss diet, decreases overall body temperature. Drinking alcohol decreases the amount of daily change, slightly lowering daytime temperatures and noticeably raising nighttime temperatures.\n", "For peopl...
Is it possible to develop astigmatism over time?
My optometrist has informed me that in more serious cases of myopia, astigmatism usually develops. I myself are about -10 and -11 for myopia, and has astigmatism (although I forgot the axes figures). The cause of either disease has never been made clear to me, and I'd be interested to hear from a professional the reasons for it.
[ "Herschel correctly considered astigmatism to be due to irregularity of the cornea and theorised that vision could be improved by the application of some animal jelly contained in a capsule of glass against the cornea. His views were published in an article entitled Light in 1828 and the \"Encyclopædia Metropolitan...
Can you recommend resources that can be used to teach the Enlightenment to high school students?
It depends on how far you wish to go with the ideas. The ideas of Francis Bacon certainly weren't new to Europe, and he really didn't have any breakthrough with science. He didn't make calculus or describe the motions of the stars. Roger Bacon said everything he did many years before; and even he was influenced by Middle Eastern scientists. Though Diderot was of importance, he is greatly overshadowed by Rousseau and Montesquieu. Locke v Hegel is incomplete, as Hobbes was greatly against everything Locke stood for, and that's not even mentioning Hume. Russell's "History of Western Philosophy" is a great text on Western Philosophy, and there's quite a few sections on Enlightenment era philosophy in it that are in detail without being boring. Drawing on that should help quite a bit
[ "In \"Radical Enlightenment\", Jonathan Israel presents a history of the European Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries considering philosophical, political, and geographical complexity. The large-scale thesis of the work concerns the scope of the Enlightenment. The most traditional way of looki...
When hate crime laws are passed do they actually reduce the occurrence of that type of crime, or have virtually zero effect on the suspect's motivation to commit the crime?
I think it just affects the punishment mostly, which in turn would affect the occurrences. It's not only to deter hate crimes, but that a hate crime is punished differently and perceived differently. They've found that hate crimes, or biased crimes, affect the community a lot more that non-binary crimes because they are motivated by different emotions. Hate crime laws protect minorities in that they KNOW that the bias was acknowledged and punished. It's essentially a specific case of assault/homicide/murder based on motivation. Example: an assault is usually categorized as a misdemeanor. In Alabama, a misdemeanor assault can be punished up to one year in jail along with fines etc. But if that misdemeanor assault charge was found to be a hate crime (motivated by race, religion, etc). There is a MINIMUM of 3 months in jail. In Georgia, a felony assault charge is 1-20 years in jail. But a felony hate crime must be punished more severely that an assault of the same level, and the person HAS to serve at least 90% of their time before being released.
[ "Hate crime laws (also known as \"bias crimes laws\") protect against crimes motivated by feelings of enmity against a protected class. Until 2009, a 1969 federal law defined hate crimes committed on the basis of a person's race, color, religion, or nation origin when engaging in a federally protected activity. In ...
I'm a young Macedonian man in the Hellenic period. Why would I follow Alexander the Great to the edge of the known world knowing that death was certain? What was life like for me during Alexander's conquests?
This is a great question and a fascinating one. It's always difficult to tell what the average person's life was like in antiquity. If you ever study Alexander's life in depth, you'll run into many unanswered questions and conflicting accounts. If a figure as famous as Alexander remains mired in ambiguity, imagine how tough it is to pinpoint the life of this "average man". First, it's reasonable to conclude that the average soldier didn't know they were going to the edge of the known world. The most they knew was that, after the Greeks were suppressed, they were headed for Asia Minor. Alexander probably didn't even know he was going to end up in India. It's also important to note that these weren't people randomly joining up. Alexander's father, Phillip II, handed him "the most perfectly organized, trained, and equipped army of ancient times", according to JFC Fuller (maybe hyperbole/exaggeration but it illustrates the point well.) Second, death was not "certain" any more than death is "certain" in any military campaign. Why does anyone do anything? Because it's a job; because there's treasure abroad; because there's honor in battle; because your culture and society expects you to fight; because you've been raised as a warrior since birth; because they were conscripted during the campaign; because they fought as allies for political reasons or as mercenaries for monetary gain. There's thousands of reasons why someone would fight. With the dearth of primary sources (e.g. "Dear diary, I am joining Alexander's army because XYZ") it's difficult to pinpoint what the average soldier lived like, much less what ambiguous concepts and paradigms drove them to pick up a spear and go kill people in Asia Minor. The primary sources we do have are often Alexander's top lieutenants talking about the man himself, troop movements in the aggregate, grand strategy, and so on. When they do address the troops, it's usually as brief as "the troops were happy because we won" or "the troops were pissed for lots of reasons. Then Alexander gave a great speech that everyone loved." Your third question is a little easier. We know a fair amount about what life was like. For instance, Alexander had this group of elite soldiers called the Heitairoi, or the "Companion Cavalry". We know that they loved to do two things: Drink and hunt. Alexander himself got some pretty serious alcohol poisoning during a big party with the Hetairoi a few weeks before he died. It's hard to tell from the sources, but they certainly seem related. Wikipedia is a pretty good source on the Hetairoi. This article seems moderately well sourced and accurate: _URL_0_ We know plenty aout the more technical details; equipment, logistics, and so on. The average soldier's load, for instance, was thirty pounds. Most were on foot, but the wealthier soldiers were on horseback. Most of the gear was carried by troops, rather than servants or pack animals, which meant the army was mobile and flexible (but that also means the every individual dude was humping his own gear for thousands of miles on foot). There are lots of sources about this and they're easy to find; some of my info comes from here: _URL_2_ Many of these young soldiers found wives in Asia Minor, following the "conquering" of the Persian Empire. Some accounts suggest Alexander encouraged this. Peter Sommer's writings are highly interesting. He's not really a historian, but he replicated Alexander's journey on foot. There's a documentary on YouTube where he makes a bunch of observations about what it must've been like. You can read more here: _URL_1_ Ultimately, the best place to look to is the sources. The original accounts of Alexander's lieutenants have been lost, but we have five main surviving accounts based on those lost accounts: Arrian, Curtius, and Diodorus Siculus (also Justin and Plutarch but those wouldn't help answer your question at all). These are fairly cheap. They are also probably available on google scholar, perseus or some other database.
[ "On June 10, 323 BCE Alexander the Great died leaving behind a huge empire streching from Greece and Macedon in Europe to the Indus valley in India. His death left the Macedonians in a very difficult position. The ruthlessness of Philip and Alexander toward possible rivals had left the Empire without a clear and co...
how is my brain able to go into this zoned-out "auto-pilot" state while i'm driving, yet i get to my destination safety with no real recollection of the trip?
Psychologist here. This happens for essentially the same reason that you Can "zone out" while you're walking around, not stumbling or colliding with things. These tasks are called "steriotypic repetitious movements" and they are actually controlled by a different part of the brain after you've fully learned the skill! When you start to learn any skill, like riding a bike, your cortex is the part of the brain doing the work of figuring out how to coordinate your muscles appropriately. Its complicated at first, and it involves your full attention, just like when you learned to walk. However, over time your cortex figures out exactly which muscles need to coordinate in exactly the right way, and it basically "saves" that motion in memory. When you go to do that action again after its already been learned (or saved) a cool thing happens, the cortex isn't nearly as involved anymore, now it's more subcortical (aka below the cortex, so deeper in the brain) regions that control the movement. The result? Now you perform an action while your cortex is free to think (or not think and "zone out") and forget you're actually doing anything complicated at all. EDIT. Thanks for the Gold :)
[ "Self-driving cars are already exploring the difficulties of determining the intentions of pedestrians, bicyclists, and animals, and models of behavior must be programmed into driving algorithms. Human road users also have the challenge of determining the intentions of autonomous vehicles, where there is no driver ...
why isn't herbalife illegal company
Because it actually offers real products for sale whereas, pyramid schemes do not according to the US FTC (Federal Trade Commission). Therefore, it is categorized in the MLM (multi-level marketing) organizational category, which is a legal business and not a pyramid which is illegal. Also, MLMs make money by enrolling people into their organization + selling products to those people rather than a pyramid which just makes money from enrolling people (no product to sell). The fact that MLMs are legal though baffles me as they just take advantage of lesser people by selling them false hopes and setting them up to fail and burn bridges in their personal lives.
[ "The lawsuit alleged that Herbalife deceived consumers into believing they could earn substantial income from the business opportunity or big money from the retail sale of the company's products. In addition, the complaint charged that one of the fundamental principles of Herbalife's business model—incentivizing di...
How does the temperature of colder planets core relate to warmer planets core closer to closer to the sun?
The temperature of the core of a planet will depend on several factors: leftover heat from formation of the planet, heat generated through mechanisms like friction and radioactive decay, mass of the planet, ratio of mass to surface area, etc. So I don't fully understand what you're trying to ask, but mercury is small and has relatively little geological activity. Any heat from formation would have already been dissipated. It's estimated core temp is only around 4000 °F. Venus, the second and hottest planet, should have a much warmer core, around 10,000 °F. Jupiter, the largest planet, probably has the hottest core. It emits more heat than it absorbs from the sun, and it's core temp is estimated around 50,000 °F. I don't know if that answers your question, but hopefully it illustrates that distance from the sun is not the primary factor that determines the core temperature.
[ "Even when taking surface heating from the star into account, many transiting hot Jupiters have a larger radius than expected. This could be caused by the interaction between atmospheric winds and the planet's magnetosphere creating an electric current through the planet that heats it up, causing it to expand. The ...
the difference between the german chancellor and the president of germany
The President is the head of state; the chancellor is the head of the government. The head of state refers to a largely ceremonial role -- that's the person who meets other countries' diplomats and royalty, attends non-policy-related diplomatic events, and ceremonially enacts laws by signing them (without the power to veto). The head of the government is the chancellor. They have real power to enact policy, propose laws, and control the bureaucracy and administrative state. In the US, these are unified (the President does both roles), but most countries have separated them. In England the Queen is the head of state while the Prime Minister is the head of the government; same in Japan. In Russia they have a President and a Prime Minister, with the President as head of state.
[ "The Chancellor of Germany or ' (official German title which means \"Federal Chancellor\") is the title for the head of government in Germany. ' is the exclusively feminine form. In German politics, the ' position is equivalent to that of a prime minister and is elected by the ' (\"Federal Diet\", the directly elec...
why can't we live just off of sunlight energy?
Biologically? Even plants can't live off sunlight alone, and they sit around all day. They still need essential nutrients and water from the soil, despite the fact that they don't move. Cold-blooded animals (like reptiles) move little and do get some energy from UV light. That's why you might see lizards sitting under a big blue lightbulb in pet stores. However they still need extra sustenance to thrive and grow. Warm-blooded animals like us humans use a lot of energy. We're constantly heating our bodies, and we move around all the time. We simply need more energy than can be collected from sunlight alone.
[ "The sun is the primary source of energy for living organisms. Some living organisms like plants need sunlight directly while other organisms like humans can acquire energy from the sun indirectly. There is however evidence that some bacteria can thrive in harsh environments like Antarctica as evidence by the blue-...
What are the factors affecting pressure in a pipe?
So is this like a high school (college) project? Flow rate you can easily measure using a bucket and a stop watch; just wait a certain amount of time (60 seconds or whatever), then weigh the water that you've collected (or determine its volume). Pressure, the two gauges will probably be fine. Maybe you could put them onto the straight piece of pipe so that you could try the experiment with different elbow pieces (45 degree, 90 degree, 180 degree). _URL_2_ _URL_0_ _URL_3_ _URL_1_
[ "In the pressure system, the air in the tube and the pneumatic are normally at atmospheric pressure. Depressing a key increases the pressure in the tube, inflating the pneumatic, which opens the pipe's valve.\n", "On the characteristic curve at the flow rates below ṁS provides lower pressure as seen in the fig. a...
the way i understand aging, is that cells make a slightly less perfect copy of its predecessor each time until its eventually “no good” and we just fall apart and die, if we could find a way to make cells reproduce or clone perfectly, would we be able to live forever?
That's just part of it. Aging is a complicated process with several factors at play. The ends of each chromsome, called telomeres, gets degraded progressively each time the cell divides. Eventually the degradation gets to the actual sequence you care about and the cell is no longer viable. This is a very basic biological clock for the life of a cell. But aging affects the whole organism. Cells get damaged due to all sorts of reasons, like UV from sunlight and oxidative stress from metabolism alone. And when damaged a cell often commits suicide. We don't have an infinite reservoir of cells, some specialized cells have only a limited number of stem cells. And when the we run out, renewal runs out. Besides that, you have many many processes that affect us gradually at the big picture level. Like nephrons (filtering units in the kidney) get less and less over a life time. These are relatively big structures made of many many cells so if they're gone they're really gone. Then you have things like atherosclerosis, plaques accumulating in your vessels, hardening them and narrowing them. You get strokes and ischemia and die from heart or brain issues. Or you may get proteins aggregating just due to random chance of misfolding, this happens in the brain and almost everywhere else. And we're horribly bad at dealing with aggregates so they end up killing cells and you eventually. Then you got random mutations that are bound to once hit critical genes that then cause cancer. I barely even scratched the surface here, fixing a cell by allowing it to renew its telomeres has been investigated before. But the risk of cancer is too high. And even if it wasn't, we got a million other things that are bound to go south over a lifetime. We're simply not built to forever, if you want to be immortal you have to change your body altogether.
[ "Permanent cells are cells that are incapable of regeneration. These cells are considered to be terminally differentiated and non proliferative in postnatal life. This includes brain cells, neurons, heart cells, skeletal muscle cells, and red blood cells. Although these cells are considered permanent in that they n...
What impact does a tsunami have on ships at sea?
they wouldnt even notice it (they'd notice it, but not as a threat). a tsunami does not really "present" itself as a wave until the water depth is about < 1.3x the height of the wave itself. the drag on the bottom of the ocean slows the flow and the top moves ahead and creates the circulation we see. When you look at a regular ocean, it looks pretty calm, but when it gets to shore, things become more violent.
[ "A tsunami is an unusual form of wave caused by an infrequent powerful event such as an underwater earthquake or landslide, a meteorite impact, a volcanic eruption or a collapse of land into the sea. These events can temporarily lift or lower the surface of the sea in the affected area, usually by a few feet. The p...
is there a radio frequency camera?
Yes, a radiotelescope is such a device.
[ "A number of passive millimeter-wave cameras for concealed weapons detection operate at 94 GHz. A frequency around 77 GHz is used for automotive cruise control radar. The atmospheric radio window at 94 GHz is used for imaging millimeter-wave radar applications in astronomy, defense, and security applications. \n", ...
Can microbes ever become UV Resistant? Why or why not?
It’s very possible over time the microbes in question will evolve to be more UV-resilient by upregulating enzymes associated with repairing UV-induced damage (for example, base excision repair). But there’s a limit to even the most efficient repair mechanisms. UV intensity will eventually overwhelm the defenses. So, at least imo, no. More resilient but never entirely resistant.
[ "There is evidence that some bacterial lifeforms are able to overcome perchlorates and even live off them. However, the added effect of the high levels of UV reaching the surface of Mars breaks the molecular bonds, creating even more dangerous chemicals which in lab tests on Earth were shown to be more lethal to ba...
why college football schools needs that large stadiums (90k+ attendance)?
The supply (90,000+ capacity stadia) exists because the demand exists. Some universities lose money on their football programs, but the big name ones--Alabama, Florida, Southern Cal, Ohio State, Michigan, LSU, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma--make tons of money. Tickets sell out years in advance, for $100 per ticket in some cases. They also make tons on media deals. Most D1 colleges also have huge student bodies--30,000 or more--which means they need to give a big section to the students at a discounted rate. So they need an extra 60,000 seats to sell to alumni and the general public to make their money. Your average college football stadium is pretty old, too. The stadium at my alma mater was built in the 1920s and has been expanded since then. They're nowhere near as nice as what you'd find for an NFL or MLB team, pretty much just concrete, stairs, and some walkways with concession stands. They're almost all outdoors--I can't think of a major blueblood or semi-blueblood team that has an indoors one, in fact. So upkeep is loads cheaper than an indoor one with HVAC systems and all that jazz.
[ "Although the college game has a much larger margin for talent than its pro counterpart, the sheer number of fans following major colleges provides a financial equalizer for the game, with Division I programs — the highest level — playing in huge stadiums, six of which have seating capacity exceeding 100,000 people...
why do sound deviations from “normal sounds” like those used in horror movies and games cause a fear response in us?
Another factor not mentioned in the comments is that some music is different and dissonant on purpose, not fitting into the rhythm or the harmony of the normal music, making you feel a sense of unease. They feel different and wrong, like it doesn't belong there. This appears in classical music as well, but it's usually used as a passage, with complementary notes played straight after. Meanwhile, using such notes gets you ready for complementary notes that are not going to come, if that makes any sense. It's the heart and soul of horror: suspense. It the same as when in a horror movie a protag explores a dark and creepy place and you expect a jumpscare and never get one, anticipating it more and more.
[ "Anempathetic sound in a film is the opposite of empathetic sound: it consists of music or sound effects that exhibit an indifference to the current tone, emotion, or plot-point of the film. This type of sound can thereby enhance a sense of tragic apathy and insignificance, as when a radio continues to play a happy...
the psychological reason people can still not believe an argument when presented with evidence.
It's because they believe in something else more than the validity of the argument. The argument might have flaws, after all. Let's say you think wine causes lung cancer and they think cigarettes do. If they are 99.99% sure that cigarettes cause cancer and your argument that it's caused by wine has only a 95% chance of being valid, they should rightfully (given their beliefs) ignore it. And in this case, they ARE right! Since people can have irrational beliefs that they are near-certain of, no amount of argument can change those beliefs - they always think it's more likely that the argument is wrong rather than their belief.
[ "3. Judgments can be true or not true. Psychologists argue that judgments are true because they become \"evidently\" true to us. This evidence, a psychological process that \"guarantees\" truth, is indeed a psychological process. Husserl responds by saying that truth itself, as well as logical laws, always remain v...
why is seafood much more fragrant/smelly than land based animals?
Trimethylamine oxide. It's odorless, but after you kill the fish bacteria break it down into ammonia.
[ "\"Odorigui\" refers to the consumption of live seafood while it is still moving, or the consumption of moving animal parts. Animals usually consumed in odorigui style include octopus, squids, ice gobies, and other similar animals. Consumption of live seafood without remarkable movements, such as sea urchins, is us...
why does faraway smoke look like it's staying still?
The same reason airplanes look very slow. A plane flying 400 mph looks like its crawling along because its so far away. Smoke rising a mile away is only going, I dunno, ten miles per hour, so it looks completely still because of the same principle.
[ "Backwoods Smokes were advertised heavily throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with virtually no changes being made to their target group during this time. An example advertisement from 1983 shows a man climbing the side of a snowy mountain, with the phrase \"If you ever wanted to climb Mt. Rainier, you're a natural Bac...
What are the earliest accounts of 'roleplaying'? I assume children always played pretend but what did adults have any kind of pseudo-D & D in the past? When did these hobbies start to become 'a thing', basically?
Having asked my colleagues at #Twitterstorians, they suggested the following piece, which should answer your question. _URL_0_
[ "\"Dungeons & Dragons\" was the first modern role-playing game and it established many of the conventions that have dominated the genre. Particularly notable are the use of dice as a game mechanic, character record sheets, use of numerical attributes and gamemaster-centered group dynamics. Within months of \"Dungeo...
how do it departments handle frequent cyber attacks?
Almost any publically accessible IP address is constantly bombarded by various attacks and scans. At home your router most likely protects you from a direct assault on your home computers by forbidding direct connections unless you've explicitly set up your router to allow it. Same is true in the corporate world. Depending on your organization's IT department, budget and policies they may have one more of the following * Firewalling routers that block desirable internet traffic. * Application level proxies, that check internet traffic, inspect it for undesirable content and relay it on to the actual application. * regular updating of software and applications and virus scanning * various intrusion detection systems that monitor what applications are running on various servers, a fingerprint of various files on the servers and what type of network traffic patterns those servers typically have. * Maybe even a honey pot system which can mimic vulnerable targets that appear to be easy targets. Once an attack on a honeypot is detected, steps can be implemented to block them.
[ "The department is also working extensively in the areas of cyber security and homeland defense. Reliable and secure voice and data communications are important in mission success and in providing assurances to the public. Electromagnetic wave analysis regarding fallout may become necessary after a physical attack....
Does special relativity apply to circular velocity?
I misread your question, there is not a time dilation effect between the Earth's pole and equator. While pure circular motion should induce such dilation, the special relativistic and general relativistic contributions cancel out because the Earth buldges from centrifugal effects. Here's a more detailed overview I found from searching around: _URL_0_ ------- Below is a discussion between the differences of say circular motion in special relativity and circular motion from gravity: Yes. The math is more complicated as there is an acceleration involved. Now since we're considering orbital motion due to gravity, there is general relativistic effects as well which come with even more complicated math. So even in situations without significant gravity, like a clock in a centrifuge, special relativity will affect clocks and distances. Most famously we have Ehrenfest paradox which shows that spinning objects cannot be rigid: _URL_1_
[ "Many of the concepts of special relativity are illustrated through the biquaternion structures laid out. The subspace corresponds to Minkowski space, with the four coordinates giving the time and space locations of events in a resting frame of reference. Any hyperbolic versor corresponds to a velocity in direction...
shouldnt we burn a lot of calories when eating ice cream because our body works to raise the temperature of the ice cream?
We do burn calories when eating cold food - it takes energy to keep the body warm, and to counteract the effects of cold food - but it doesn't take that to heat up a few scoops of ice cream, especially compared to the calories you take in by eating it. For one thing, ice cream really isn't that cold - a freezer is typically between -10 and -20 C, a fridge between 0 and 10 degrees. So compared to something out of the fridge, you don't net more than 30 degrees, and probably less, since it's warming up from the air. It will also largely melt in your mouth, which has a lot more exposure to the outside air, and it's not only your metabolism warming it back up. Second, a single food calorie - kilocalories - is enough to raise 1 kg of water by 1 degree. Presumably, you're not eating a 1kg of ice cream at a time (if so, mazel), but let's say you've got a hearty serving of 100g. Each Calorie raises that by 10 degrees, and you're only going up 50 degrees or so. So, that's no more than six calories, tops: which you'd replenish with a gram and a half of sugar.
[ "Asides from risk of illness, eating too much ice cream can lead to high blood cholesterol levels, due to its high milkfat content of at least 10%, which in turn can increase ones risk for heart disease or stroke.\n", "An ice cream maker has to simultaneously freeze the mixture while churning it so as to aerate t...
the moral and ethical implications of genetically modifying people
I could be all nerdy and shit and direct you to Gundam Seed, but that would waste too much of your time. Imagine this: Your friend James is perfect in every sense. He won the genetic lottery - Blue eyes, blond hair, 6'4, face to die for, amazingly healthy, and has a 12" dick just to top it off. Not to mention, he has Einstein's IQ. James becomes an astro scientist and builds spaceships with lasers, forcefields and warp drives on them before anyone else does. Also, he cures cancer. Go figure. One day, some sleazy two bit journalist makes an amazing discovery; James was genetically modified at birth. All undesirable traits and genetics were removed so he could become the perfect human being. Suddenly, James's achievements are meaningless to the general population. He still produces amazing works and breakthroughs, but he is no longer one of us. He's something else. Religious people will try to kill him. He is not a product of God. He is Satan incarnate brought forth by evil scientists to disrespect God. Athiests will be jealous. Why weren't they lucky enough to be genetically modified at birth? Why couldn't they be born for greatness? Just living and dying. It's bullshit! Why should he get to be so great? Your average person won't entirely understand the issue, but get that genetically modifying anything is bad (Vegans), people aren't experiments (Right's activists), Male Privilege can now be sold in a test-tube (Feminism), We need more people like this to go fight our wars (Military). Whatever the reason, or what kind of person you are, everyone is unified in the same idea: This person should not exist. Everyone begins to hate James. He couldn't have done any of this if he wasn't grown in a lab. He's an adbomination. He must be destroyed! KILL HIM! You, finally find out James is genetically modified to be great. You form your own decisions on the matter. One things lead to another, James is killed by extremists. Everyone like James is killed. The people like James try to fight back. > In the end, no one wants to admit being born inferior to anyone else, but we can come up with a billion reasons as to why we're all "equal". When we start genetically modifying humans, we are no longer equal to each other. Equality is the social contracts that we all sign to live in peace with one another. When we start making **better** humans, that inferiority and jealousy takes over. What's the point of your own sad, pathetic existence when James over there was literally born to be better than you, and always will be, and will enjoy the success that comes easily to him, that you will NEVER obtain no matter how hard you try. That's why. Maybe when humans are actually capable of accepting one another, we can move on as a species. Right now, it'd just end as a blood bath.
[ "Genetic modification in humans is a contested issue due to the variety of social and ethical issues it raises. One such controversy is the ability to modify the genes of future offspring to decrease the likelihood for certain diseases or modify the expression of chosen traits. In a recent case, an American teenage...
why are untruthful political ads still protected under the first amendment while ads that lie about consumer products are not?
Most political ads are misleading, not fraudulent. They are careful not to say things which are demonstratively and objectively untrue.
[ "Justice Stewart wrote a concurrence explaining how the holding of this did not limit the states’ ability to restrict deceptive or false advertising. He cited various libel cases to demonstrate that while the press cannot be harshly restricted for fear that journalists may occasionally get their facts wrong, an adv...
in the wolf of wall street, what did they do involving the steve madden stock that was illegal and how did it make them so much money?
It was a "pump and dump" scheme. Buy up a company that is doing terribly, talk it up like it is doing wonderfully along with faking your income reports, then sell off some shares while everyone thinks it is hot stuff. Then vanish with your gains before people discover it was all smoke and mirrors.
[ "During this period, Madden turned down the opportunity to buy an \"unlimited\" number of options for EA stock in its initial public offering, a decision he later called \"the dumbest thing I ever did in my life\".\n", "Data found stored on Hu’s personal laptop allegedly contained confidential business informatio...
why are some colour combinations painful to look at when placed alongside each other (eg. red and green?)
_URL_0_ This kicks me right in the eye-nuts.
[ "Matching colors or (in British English) colours usually refers to complementary colors, pairs or triplets of colors that harmonize well together. It is an effect of human trichromacy, the use of three color receptors in the human eye, and varies somewhat in other animals. Its effects are studied as a part of color...
how does a knife work on a molecular level?
It doesn't. Knives work on the micrometer level, either tearing out tiny chunks of the material, like a saw, or forcing themselves into, and then forcing open, gaps in it, like a wedge. Those chunks that are torn out, or those gaps that are opened, are the size of hundreds of millions of molecules, which get on with their molecular lives, so to speak, without any real relation to the bigger picture, with its knives and tomatoes.
[ "The basic method involves repeatedly striking the spine of the knife to force the middle of the blade into the wood. The tip is then struck, to continue forcing the blade deeper, until a split is achieved.\n", "Sharpening these implements can be expressed as the creation of two intersecting planes which produce ...
How did "...berg" and "...stein" become Jewish last name suffixes? It seems like they should be universal names for Eastern Europeans.
I think you're falling victim to a bit of a logical fallacy here. The "-berg" and "-stein" names have become stereotypically Jewish in the Anglophone world because many Jews have them, but by no means were these names exclusive to Jews in Europe. Fair warning, I'm not Jewish myself, but: Jews did not really even have traditional surnames in Europe (again, we're discussing Ashkenazi Jews here, which is only one branch) until around the 19th Century. This started under Emperor Joseph II of Austria-Hungary, who issued something called [The Edict of Tolerance](_URL_0_) in 1782. This recognized, to some extent, religious freedom for Jews, but five years later, the Emperor also [compelled them to adopt German surnames](_URL_1_). Prussia did the same thing not long after. Then, when Napoleon took over most of Europe, he also compelled Jews in various regions to adopt surnames. The reason many of these surnames have suffixes like -berg, and -stein isn't totally clear. Some may be because Jews adopted the surnames of the local lord of their region, many of whom had names ending like this. Others may be because Jews often were given toponymic names, because this was the most obvious option. Jewish names like Deutsch and Frank, for example, are general toponyms, but you might also get more specific like von Mises or Krakauer. Sephardic names, also, are almost entirely locality based: Silva, Navarro, etc. Since -berg often ended places that were near or associated with mountains, this is a possible origin of the commonality with Jewish names. It's also possible that since Jews were picking these out, that some of them were artificially created and just based on town or locality names, like Rosenberg or Birnbaum. Some Jews paid lots of money to have nice names, which is why you have a lot of association with gold and silver and diamonds and such. Others got new names when they immigrated from Europe to America or elsewhere and were compelled to give names at the immigration office -- this would explain names like Greenberg, an amalgamation of English and German. Also, like anyone else, Jews sometimes took or were given names associated with their professions. So names like "stein" or "Steiner" being associated with Jews might have been because they were jewelers or stonecutters. This is also why names like Kaufmann and Marchant are popular with Jews, along with Schumacher, Gerber, Spielmann, etc. Even names like Banks. None of which, I might add, are considered at all exclusive to Jews. Anyway, I'm digressing. The simple answer to your question is that those types of endings are just stereotypically associated with Jews in the Anglophone world, probably due to so many Jews with names of that nature being prominent in show business (among other areas). But those names are also common to many non-Jewish Europeans: Stefan Edberg is not Jewish, for example, nor was [Baron vom Stein](_URL_2_), for another.
[ "Until the early 19th century, the names of most Central European Jews consisted of a Hebrew first name, a German second name, the patronymic \"ben ... \" (son of ...) and, if an upper one, the class - HaCohen (or \"Katz\") or HaLevy. The German name was chosen to fit the Hebrew one: thus \"Zvi\" or \"Naftali\" wen...
traditionally, why do conservatives support israel while liberals do not support israel?
Both parties in the US support israel. At this moment, however, we've got political gamesmanship. The GOP invited a foreign leader to speak to Congress in an unprecedented move, because they want to undermine the POTUS and Sec. of State's negotiating power so that they have an election item to sqwauk about. Similarly, the POTUS administration when it heard the foreign leader was coming and had set up the appointment to speak, decided to snub him because it was the other party doing the inviting. Both Liberals and Conservatives have supported israel and the middle east peace process, back to Jimmy Carter.
[ "He has argued that voters in the American Jewish community do not necessarily embrace candidates based on their support for the state of Israel as much as they passionately oppose candidates based on their identification with Christianity, especially the Christian Right. Medved also states that the Orthodox commun...
flat personal tax/consumption tax.
A flat tax is inherently regressive, and puts more of a burden on the people who can least afford it. A consumption tax is even worse, because the people who can most afford to be taxed also spend the lowest percentage of their income on essentials. A progressive income tax solves these problems, but is complex to implement. Thus, we have a progressive, but complex, tax system.
[ "A direct, personal consumption tax may take the form of an expenditure tax, that is, an income tax that deducts savings and investments, such as the Hall–Rabushka flat tax. A direct consumption tax may be called an expenditure tax, a cash-flow tax, or a consumed-income tax and can be flat or progressive. Expenditu...
why is audio/voice quality so bad between crucial communication lines (soldiers/police/pilots etc.)
Main reason is bandwidth - I'm not talking about the amount of data you use a month, but the range of frequencies a radio signal takes up. Soldiers, police, pilots, truckers, taxi drivers, firefighters, and lots of other businesses and professionals all want their own radio frequencies so they can communicate. As a rule of thumb, the more bandwidth, the better the sound quality. But the more bandwidth, the fewer frequencies can be assigned to different groups within a given range of frequencies. So if the government let people have super high quality radio signals, they wouldn't be able to assign them to everyone that needed it. Instead, just enough bandwidth so they get usable quality. As the technology improves to get better sounding audio in a narrower bandwidth, regulatory bodies would rather that they fit more "acceptable" quality channels in a frequency range, rather than letting people have great quality channels at the expense of others who need a new channel.
[ "Combatants in every branch of the United States’ military are at risk for auditory impairments from steady state or impulse noises. While applying double hearing protection helps prevent auditory damage, it may compromise effectiveness by isolating the user from his or her environment. With hearing protection on, ...
what is a high functioning alcoholic and what is the problem with that?
(1) They are doing a lot of damage to their liver and physical health in general - which is entirely their choice and right. (2) They may have underlying psychological issues which they are very good at masking, but may turn out to be a problem in the long-term (e.g. PTSD) (3) They may not be a High Functioning Alcoholic forever. They could get better, they could get much, much worse. Addressing the problem while they are still high-functioning is a much better option than crashing and burning. (I don't necessarily think that all heavy drinkers are high-functioning alcoholics, or that high-functioning alcoholics are in desperate need of treatment, just presenting some counter-arguments).
[ "Alcoholics can typically be divided into two categories, uncomplicated and complicated. Uncomplicated alcoholics do not have nutritional deficiency states or liver disease, but have a reduction in overall brain volume due to white matter cerebral atrophy. The severity of atrophy sustained from alcohol consumption ...
what causes that feeling a split second before your realize you're about to have a very big accident?
Its your fight or flight response. When you sense that you are in danger, your body releases a bunch of chemicals that prepare you to either fight the threat or run away from it. Your get more alert, stronger, faster and more coordinated to facilitate either action.
[ "Hedeman lasted four seconds. Looking back at the ride, Hedeman feels he was \"overconfident and underprepared\". \"When I nodded for him, the first jump felt fine,\" he said. \"Then, all of a sudden, whack! When I hit the ground, I felt numb.\" What Hedeman could not see was how his face really looked; how much bl...
why is air less dense at higher altitudes?
Imagine you stacked 100 cardboard boxes on top of each other. The one on the bottom would be crushed due to the weight of the other boxes on top of it. It being compressed would cause it to become denser than the other boxes above it. Replace the cardboard boxes with air and magnify the effect. That is why the air is less dense at higher altitudes.
[ "At high altitude, atmospheric pressure is lower than that at sea level. This is due to two competing physical effects: gravity, which causes the air to be as close as possible to the ground; and the heat content of the air, which causes the molecules to bounce off each other and expand.\n", "Although the shortag...
Why does North Korea have such few allies?
North and South Korea both claim to be the one true Korea with the other one being an illegitimate government. Historically, both sides have legitimate claims with Pyongyang and Kaeseong both being major capital cities of former dynasties during Korea's 5000 year history. After the Korean War, both sides attempted to claim legitimacy on the international stage through diplomacy. They would sign deals with other nations usually with the caveat that those nations not recognize the other Korea. Naturally, the Cold War participants and their allies aligned with the respective Korea's with the Third World being the toss-up countries. South Korea had much more recognition during the 50's and 60's due to the fact that the UN backed the South during the Korean War. In the early 1970's, North and South Korea began to talk and with that came more recognition for the North. By 1991, both Koreas wanted into the UN and were only allowed in on the condition that both of them were allowed in as separate, recognized countries. As to why they have so few *allies*, that has to do with the collapse of communism. North Korea has mutual defense treaties with China and Russia. Previously, the Russia deal was with the USSR. At the DMZ, the northern neutral observers were from Poland and Czechoslovakia, two (now three) countries that have been part of NATO for the past 15-20 years. With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, Soviet allies fell away leaving only Russia and China. Why don't they get more allies? Who would want to be their ally? In the 1980's, the North attempted to assassinate the South's president in Rangoon, killing multiple people in the attempt, they blew up a Korean Air flight, and they kidnapped Japanese and South Korean civilians. In the 90's, they pulled out of the Non-Proliferation treaty and began pursuing nuclear weapons. You can look at what they've done in the last 20 years (VX nerve agent assassination in a major international airport?!?!) and draw your own conclusions as to why no one is rushing to jump on the North Korean bandwagon these days.
[ "For much of its history, North Korean politics have been dominated by its adversarial relationship with South Korea. During the Cold War, North Korea aligned with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. The North Korean government invested heavily in its military, hoping to develop the capability to r...
Can there be an object of sufficient mass that light would orbit the object due to gravitional lensing?
Yes. If an object with mass M has a radius less than 3GM/c^(2), [light can circle entirely around the object](_URL_0_). The density required for this is pretty extreme; it's limited mostly to black holes.
[ "The possibility of gravitational lensing was suggested in 1924 and clarified by Albert Einstein in 1936. In 1937, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky (1898 - 1974), working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, realized that galaxies and galaxy clusters far out in space may be sufficiently compact and massive t...
Why do European monarchs almost always have adjectives applied to their names? (i.e. Louis "the Pious" of France)
For both Louis the Pious and his son Charles the Bald, these were both names by which they were known during their lifetimes. As for Charles' opinions on his nickname, we've no record of how he felt about it, but he might well have like it and found it funny, since it's possible that it was ironic, and that he was in fact an unusually hairy man - given that we know the name was used during his lifetime and any contemporary depiction of him has a full head of hair. As for the why, I'm not sure I can answer that one. It does help to distinguish between kings with the same name who ruled around the same time (like all the later Louis' in French history), but given that Louis the Pious was also Louis I, that doesn't really hold up. I've never read an explanation of it, to be honest - sorry!
[ "With the House of Bonaparte and the Bourbon Restoration, additional \"Kings of the French\" and \"Emperors of the French\" ruled in 19th century France, between 1814 and 1870. All rulers to have held the title \"King of the Franks\", \"King of France\", \"King of the French\" or \"Emperor of the French\" are liste...
why does american culture put so much emphasis on "moving out of the house" and being independent from one's family, when other cultures (e.g. asian and spanish) live with their extended family under the same roof throughout their lifetimes?
Rugged Individualism. It's the concept Americans have hard wired in our brains. The mark of being an adult is going out on your own and providing for yourself. It's a sense of pride and accomplishment to leave the safety of your parents house and pave your own road to success. This mindset has its advantages, as well as some disadvantages. Moving out is an extension of the mentioned "rugged individualism" but there are several faucets to this concept. _URL_0_
[ "“It’s important to embrace your culture today because there are so many different ethnicities in America. At the end of the day, you are you. You’ve got to stay true to yourself, and you can’t change yourself in order to fit in or to make someone else feel comfortable.” \n", "Because of the United States' contin...
how comic distribution works?
Most American comics are produced on a monthly basis, about 22 pages per month. These comics are published by a publisher (DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Etc.) and then distributed by a company called Diamond, who pretty much have a monopoly on comic distribution. These individual issues are pretty much only sold in comic book stores, though, some book stores carry some. Months later, these comics may be recollected into "trade paperbacks" which will have 4-12 issues all together. Even more issues might also be recollected into even bigger collections- the biggest I've ever heard of in a single volume is The Invisibles Omnibus, which is 59 issues in a single book. Back issues you generally have to hunt down in comic book stores or at comic conventions. Rarity is sort of pointless to track, but in short, certain first-editions of first-issues become popular collectors items. Finding non-first-editions of these first issues is pretty easy, but they aren't considered rare or valuable.
[ "American comic books can be sold through the direct market. Formats include single issues, trade paperback, and graphic novels. Graphic novels may also be known as \"prestige format\" comics for single issues. Issues may be published as one shots or periodically.\n", "Print syndication distributes news articles,...
what causes the urge to move around after hurting yourself?
You gotta run the pain off. For real, in the wild, if you get hurt, there's probably someone or something that hurt you and your body wants to get away from them asap so you don't sustain any more injuries.
[ "Many people who self-harm state that it allows them to \"go away\" or dissociate, separating the mind from feelings that are causing anguish. This may be achieved by tricking the mind into believing that the present suffering being felt is caused by the self-harm instead of the issues they were facing previously: ...
When the mars rover went to mars were they able to remove all bacteria and small life from it? If not could any of the bacteria be able to live in the harsh conditions of mars? And how do they obtain soil samples looking for bacteria if it could possibly be from the rover itself?
Anything that is sent to Mars is thoroughly inspected, cleaned, and sanitized {[_URL_1_](https://_URL_1_/msl/mission/technology/insituexploration/planetaryprotection/)}. There are some microorganisms that can still survive a trip to Mars, such as a well-known [Tardigrade (Wiki)](_URL_0_). That's the main reason rovers avoid parts of the planet that contain water or ice - they can still carry Earth's life and contaminate it {[_URL_4_](_URL_2_)}. So far all life-detecting tests done by rovers are interpreted as negative. If we find a sign of life on Mars, we will make sure it's not brought by us from Earth. **Edit: Answering a few questions that keep repeating.** > *Why do we refrain from contaminating Mars? Wouldn't that be an interesting experiment?* It would be, but before we do that, we want to make sure there is no native life on Mars that we might accidentally destroy (as we often do). If we find micro-organisms there, it would be nice to study them without our own organisms getting in the way wherever we go. > *Wouldn't a manned mission contaminate Mars?* It will. Before we can send humans to Mars we will have to modify the rules of the Outer Space Treaty. Hopefully we can find life there before we send humans. If not, hopefully the first humans will find life. If we don't, it's pretty clear there is no life there. But we will not be colonizing and terraforming Mars until this question is answered. > *Shouldn't we search for life in water-rich zones, instead of the opposite?* Yeah, ideally we should, but because our rovers are not 100% clean, letting invasive life forms flourish in Mars's potentially already living waters, before we have a chance to at least send a few of them back to us, is just not worth it. On top of that, we don't need to check water contents to determine if Mars has life - the atmosphere and soil can give us enough clues to answer that. > *Don't we have the technology to sterilize things to 100%? Or are we that neglectful?* We do have the technology, and we can use it with ease. The problem is that if you want to sterilize a circuit board, you end up frying it. One proposed idea is to build a rover on Mars with 3D printers, and sterilize all the necessary materials separately.
[ "Towards the end of July 2005, it was reported by the \"Sunday Times\" that the rovers may have carried the bacteria \"Bacillus safensis\" to Mars. According to one NASA microbiologist, this bacteria could survive both the trip and conditions on Mars. A book containing this claim, \"Out of Eden\" by Alan Burdick, i...
how is it the island of java can support it's 140+ million people in area the size of north carolina?
by depending on trade for food and other resources, and coping up with less personal space. there's still some farms and forests, but yeah its hard to get away from other people. the total north carolina population is about 10 million? heck, Jakarta (the largest city in Java) alone has 20 million people... source: i live there.
[ "With a combined population of 145 million in the 2015 census (including Madura's 3.7 million), which is estimated for 2014 at 143.1 million (including 3.7 million for Madura), Java is the most populous island in the world and is home to 57% of Indonesia's population. At over 1,100 people per km² in 2014, it is als...
Treatment of French colonies
Hey there, AskHistorians allows homework questions, but other people can't do the work for you - for the way HW questions are treated on here see [the rules](_URL_0_) and [this roundtable discussion](_URL_1_). To boil it down, you have to show that you've done some work yourself and specify the question - where do you hit the wall when using your sources? Are you looking for better ones/ones specific to a certain angle? Is there one part of your research of which you'd like to know more about? Say what you know, try to narrow down your inquiry and someone knowledgeable might help you with that. Good luck!
[ "A hallmark of the French colonial project from the late 19th century to the post-World War Two era was the civilising mission (\"mission civilisatrice\"). The principle was that it was France's duty to bring civilisation to benighted peoples. As such, colonial officials undertook a policy of Franco-Europeanisation...
why is chemotherapy used the way it is?
Chemo attempts to stop cells from dividing. Ideally the cells that stop dividing are targeted (hence the plethora of drugs for various cancers; different drugs = different targets) but because the chemistry is nowhere near an exact science, lots of other fast-dividing cells get hit too (hair, muscles, skin, white/red blood cells, etc). The logic is that the cancer itself is a mutant, and won't survive more than 'a little while' without constantly dividing and replicating, so if you can specifically poison the body, stop cellular division for a while, and otherwise keep the person alive, the cancer will die off while (most of) the rest of the person stays alive. Think of it like having a castle full of people, and there was one group of particularly troublesome monks inside you wanted to kill off. The monks only ate apples, but your intel was shitty and you knew only that the monks ate sweet foods. You siege the castle and prevent anything sweet from getting in, sugar, fruits, plants...anything that contained or could become sugar. Many people develop scurvy and other malnutrition related problems and die off, but the monks all die too. You celebrate that the monks are dead, and get on living with whatever is left alive in the castle as the population slowly recovers. The monks are cancer, the people are the healthy cells in the body, and everything else is the process of treating and living with the aftermath of cancer.
[ "Chemotherapy is a treatment that uses chemicals to interfere with the cancer cells ability to grow and reproduce. Chemotherapy can be used alone or in combination with other therapies. Chemotherapy can be given either as a pill to swallow orally, an injection into the fat or muscle, through an IV directly into the...
Where does the church's money come from?
This goes well within the 20 year rule, you may want to ask this on a religious oriented sub, such as /r/Catholicism or /r/Christianity. As an aside, the church can have jobs outside just being a priest. I know my local pastor is also a successful doctor, and a local brotherhood prints and publishes books, though they still use lots of donations.
[ "Meanwhile, the church moved the majority of its income-generating assets (which in the past included a great deal of land, but today mostly take the form of financial stocks and bonds) out of the hands of individual clergy and bishops to the care of a body called the Church Commissioners, which uses these funds to...
what causes the cloud rings to form around and above a nuclear or thermonuclear bomb?
The immense force of the blast creates a wave of high pressure in the air, traveling outwards from the centre. Following this high pressure is an area of extreme low pressure, this low pressure causes a drastic temperature drop. Dropping temperature results in water in the air condensing, causing the ring of "cloud" that you see.
[ "Mushroom clouds are formed by many sorts of large explosions under earth's gravity, but they are best known for their appearance after nuclear detonations. Without gravity, the explosive's by-product gases would remain spherical. Nuclear weapons are usually detonated above the ground (not upon impact, because some...
How did "x" become the conventional, go-to variable?
> You'll find details on this point (and precise references) in Cajori's History mathematical notations, 340. He credits Descartes in his La Géometrie for the introduction of x, y and z (and more generally, usefully and interestingly, for the use of the first letters of the alphabet for known quantities and the last letters for the unknown quantities) He notes that Descartes used the notation considerably earlier: the book was published in 1637, yet in 1629 he was already using x as an unknown (although in the same place y is a known quantity...); also, he used the notation in manuscripts dated earlier than the book by years. _URL_3_ The book _URL_2_ Also check out _URL_4_ Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols Particularly _URL_0_ Earliest Uses of Symbols for Variables And _URL_1_ Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics Sorry if answer is brief/badly formatted, I'm on my phone.
[ "In mathematics, \"x\" is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The modern tradition of using \"x\" to represent an unknown was introduced by René Descartes in \"La Géométrie\" (1637). As a result of its use in algebra, X is often used to represent unknowns in other circumstances (...
Question about tooth decay and evolution.
Yes, we got cavities. Go google image some pics of old skulls.
[ "Tooth decay can be managed by modifying behavior and controlling its causative factors, i.e. reducing the intake frequency of fermentable carbohydrates from food. This will reduce the chance of the dental biofilm developing into cariogenic biofilm. The bacteria in cariogenic biofilm produce organic acids when carb...
(Math) Do we know everything there is to know about math? Or are there new discoveries being made in mathematics?
No, we don't know everything there is to know. One good way of getting a quick view of recent advancements in mathematics is to read the list of winners of the [Fields Medal](_URL_1_) and the [Abel Prize](_URL_4_), paying attention to the citations. In general, though, recent advancements in mathematics are very difficult to understand for the layman, and I can't possibly hope to go into every one of them for you (for lack of both time and knowledge). Some very famous recent proofs of statements that are not so difficult to understand (although the proofs certainly are) were those of [Fermat's last theorem](_URL_3_), the [Poincaré conjecture](_URL_0_) and recent work on the [Twin prime conjecture](_URL_2_).
[ "Mathematics and the Search for Knowledge is a book by Morris Kline on the developing mathematics ideas, which are partially overlap with his previous book \"\", as a source of human knowledge about the physical world, starting from astronomical theories of Ancient Greek to the modern theories.\n", "What is mathe...
Does every neuron contain every neurotransmitter?
I can answer the following question: "Does every neuron have the genetic capability to *create* every neurotransmitter?" **Yes** (short answer). The two main excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters are glutamate and GABA, which are both derived from Amino acids. In fact, almost all neurotransmitters are either derivatives of amino acids, chains of amino acids, or products created by biological enzymes (which are, themselves, created from long chains of amino acids). Cells use DNA as a template for *which* amino acids they produce, in *what quantity* those AA's are produced, and in *what order* those AA's are combined. But that does't mean that every neuron *does* contain every neurotransmitter. Neurons are effected in myriad ways by the outside environment, and these environmental interactions influence which genes are expressed by which cells. This mechanism is what allows different cells of the developing body to specialize—into skin cells, neurons, etc. Different neurons have different ways of expressing genes, so they act differently. Therefore, I'm pretty sure that different neurons (and especially different neuron *types*) have different concentrations of neurotransmitters. It all depends on gene expression. That was the short answer. The long answer involves a more precise definition of what a "neurotransmitter" is, as opposed to a neuromodulator. But short answer, **no**.
[ "There are literally hundreds of different types of synapses. In fact, there are over a hundred known neurotransmitters, and many of them have multiple types of receptors. Many synapses use more than one neurotransmitter—a common arrangement is for a synapse to use one fast-acting small-molecule neurotransmitter su...
Would a plant/crop grow faster if it had artificial sunlight and perfect conditions all the time?
It is not so much 'growing faster' but 'just growing with minimum light'. A(not very satisfactory) explanation is [airmass](_URL_0_), if a plant grows during spring in the Nordic countries with (due to airmass) only 15% of available light, then on the same area in Southern countries you have enough sunlight for 6-7 stacked layers. Indoors means better control over humidity/pest-control, day/night-percentage, change between the blue and red percentages to favour leaf or flower growth, and probably temperature changes at the end of the growth cycle to modify sugar content.
[ "Plants can grow as much as 50 percent faster in concentrations of 1,000 ppm when compared with ambient conditions, though this assumes no change in climate and no limitation on other nutrients. Elevated levels cause increased growth reflected in the harvestable yield of crops, with wheat, rice and soybean all show...
what does hormones actually do to our brains, how it makes us think, and if we extract all the hormone and hormone producing glands will the person be dead or lose his ability to think and feel?
Hormones is a functional name for dozens of chemicals that serve as messengers between organs, and mediate physiological processes. They basically change what cells/tissues/organs do by changing the chemical environment in which said cells are. If you removed all glands, yes a person would die, probably in a diabetic coma from lack of insuline.
[ "Hormones work at very small doses (part per billion ranges). Endocrine disruption can thereby also occur from low-dose exposure to exogenous hormones or hormonally active chemicals such as bisphenol A. These chemical can bind to receptors for other hormonally mediated processes. Furthermore, since endogenous hormo...
could an organism living in the ocean at a pressure of 5 tons/in^2 survive a hit from a sledge hammer?
You have to remember that organisms living at the bottom of the ocean are filled with water. They aren't resisting 5 tons of pressure like a submarine would. The water inside their bodies is at the same pressure as the water outside their body. So, they don't feel the pressure at all.
[ "Because pressure in the ocean increases by about 1 atmosphere for every 10 meters of depth, the amount of pressure experienced by many marine organisms is extreme. Until recent years, the scientific community lacked detailed information about the effects of pressure on most deep sea organisms because the specimens...
how do united states defence contractors make money when they are not needed?
Many still have personnel overseas re-building infrastructure, training foreign and US troops, and cleaning up everything afterwards. Weapons and equipment are still used and destroyed in training (things wear out or break), even in peace time. Some of them sell to foreign governments. A few do environmental cleanups, demolish unused military sites, and return polluted parcels of land to other uses. Most, if not all, are diversified enough that they still make money in seemingly unrelated things.
[ "Work on contracts approved and funded by the U.S. under the Foreign Assistance Act, which among other things provides for cash sale of military equipment, materials, and services to its allies, if the contract is performed outside of the United States;\n", "Some defense agencies are the responsibility of separat...
Is there a 4 dimensional analog to a sphere like a tesseract is for a cube?
Yes, the sphere *S*^(3), which is the *three-dimensional* sphere (embedded in Euclidean four-dimensional space), is the set of points (*x**_1_*, *x**_2_*, *x**_3_*, *x**_4_*) such that *x**_1_*^2 + *x**_2_*^2 + *x**_3_*^2 + *x**_4_*^2 = 1 Similarly for higher number of dimensions.
[ "A 3-sphere is a higher-dimensional analogue of a sphere. It consists of the set of points equidistant from a fixed central point in 4-dimensional Euclidean space. Just as an ordinary sphere (or 2-sphere) is a two-dimensional surface that forms the boundary of a ball in three dimensions, a 3-sphere is an object wit...
As an international programmer, how do you deal with using computer science in languages from different countries?
I am an American working for a Japanese astronomical observatory in Hawaii. All code is in English (mostly C, Python, Java, some C++ and some Objective C). Documentation around the code may be in english or japanese. Stand-alone documentation is often in japanese only (depending on the author).
[ "In recent years, computer-assisted language learning has been integrated into foreign language education and computer programs with varying levels of interactional relationship between computer and the language learner have been developed. Language learning aids such as foreign language writing aid and foreign lan...
What would a gas giant look like from within?
"About 500 kilometers over the dense cloud cover, we enter Jupiter’s troposphere, and keep diving. This “haze” area is filled with all kinds of odd compounds, most interestingly hydrazine and the increasingly important polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons created by UV-blasting of methane that circulates out too far from cloud-cover. Visibility drops off dramatically until we begin to descend into the clouds themselves — then it’s basically zero." From _URL_0_ Also, _URL_1_ If you're into this kind of stuff, you should read Sagan's *Cosmos*.
[ "Given the planet's high mass, it is most likely to be a gas giant with no solid surface. Since the planet has only been detected indirectly through observations of the star, properties such as its radius, composition, and temperature are unknown.\n", "The planet is a gas giant that is about in diameter. Like mos...
are the black panthers a racist hate group?
The Black Panthers started as a community activist group meant to protect the Black community. You gotta remember that during that time period, law enforcement's idea of "due process" in a lot of places consisted of rounding up the nearest black guy and beating him until he confessed to whatever you needed. So, the BP formed to protect the black community from abuse. This protection often included armed patrols in black communities that were needed to protect innocent black folk from police. In their early days, they did a lot of positive organizing, including many social programs such as community health clinics. Over time, the group became more radical, more isolated, and several leaders turned to criminal activities to fund their activities or just line their own pockets. So, it depends on what you're remembering. Most people who aren't black remember the crime, the corruption, and the violence. But many who are black remember that, at a time when law enforcement and many in the government were committed to victimizing the community, the Black Panthers were ready to stand up and fight back.
[ "The Black Panthers (, translit. \"HaPanterim HaShhorim\") were an Israeli protest movement of second-generation Jewish immigrants from North Africa and Middle Eastern countries. It was one of the first organizations in Israel with the mission of working for social justice for Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, drawing ins...
nominalism
4 upvotes and no comments, wtf?!?!?
[ "In the foundations of mathematics, nominalism has come to mean doing mathematics without assuming that sets in the mathematical sense exist. In practice, this means that quantified variables may range over universes of numbers, points, primitive ordered pairs, and other abstract ontological primitives, but not ove...
Is it correct (Scientifically) to refer to Humans as Omnivores?
We are omnivores by design, even if we arent all by habit. Same way that someone with backwards sleep habits would not put our status as diurnal as any different.
[ "The word \"omnivore\" derives from the Latin \"omnis\" (all), and \"vora\", from vorare, (to eat or devour), having been coined by the French and later adopted by the English in the 1800s. Traditionally the definition for omnivory was entirely behavioral by means of simply \"including both animal and vegetable tis...
What are these straight line formations in the middle of Australia and what caused them?
I believe the other answer is incorrect. The algorithm is getting it right. [Simpson Desert](_URL_0_), the location of the straight lines, has very long parallel sand dunes up to 200 km long. They're up to 30 m tall, so a detailed elevation map is likely to have captured them. The algorithm is showing where water would be flowing if there was any to speak of. It would flow through the valleys between the sand dunes.
[ "The circles are numbered in sequence 1 to 4, with number 1 being the most southerly of the group. Circle 1 is in diameter, with a surviving ditch up to wide and deep. It has several gaps, but the one to the north-north-east was a causewayed entrance feature. Circle 2 is in diameter, with a bank up to 6 m wide and ...
what exactly is a time share?
It's partial ownership in a property. In a simple example, you and 25 other people would get together to buy something very expensive, like a condo that would cost millions of dollars. Then you all agree to each spend two weeks per year in the condo. The problem with timeshares is they are almost always run by predatory management companies who have no interest but to squeeze as much money out of the tenants as possible. The industry is rife with scam artists.
[ "A time interval is the intervening time between two time points. The amount of intervening time is expressed by a duration (as described in the previous section). The two time points (start and end) are expressed by either a combined date and time representation or just a date representation.\n", "The 'half time...
If dreams are memory solidification processes; What are nightmares?
> From what I understand, dreams are the loose association process needed for short term memory from the day to turn into long term memory. This is not known to be true. Right now, we don't know what dreams are, nor what is the benefit in having them, if any. We know that there are a number of important cognitive and physiological processes going on in the brain during sleep, including * [consolidation of particular memories](_URL_1_) * [incorporation of new memories and ideas into a broader conceptual understanding](_URL_4_) * [processing of emotional experiences](_URL_0_) * [pruning of synapses](_URL_2_) * [restoration of neuronal ATP stores](_URL_3_) The best hypothesis we have at the moment is that dreams are probably just a conscious playback of the sleep-related tasks the brain is conducting. Dreams are particularly vivid and particularly common in REM sleep, during which time brain activity is quite similar to wakefulness. It has therefore been suggested that REM sleep (and potentially the associated dreams) may represent an offline simulation of a wake-like state, allowing the brain to possibly explore new scenarios or ideas. You should note the number of qualifiers I used in that sentence. It is easy to come up with plausible-sounding hypotheses on this topic, but extremely difficult to test any of them in any meaningful way. There is some experimental evidence that REM and NREM sleep may have different individual roles in the processing and consolidation of memories. However, that evidence is not yet strong, for the simple reason that it is difficult to experimentally manipulate the specific stages of sleep without having other effects. It is easy to perform experiments in which people either sleep, don't sleep at all, or don't sleep enough, and these consistently show that sleep has an important role in memory processing. But it is almost impossible to perform an experiment in which you selectively manipulate just the amount of REM or NREM sleep somebody gets, because these stages usually occur in stereotypical sequence. If you mess with one stage, you necessarily mess with the entire architecture of sleep, and then it is no longer clear what aspect of the experimental manipulation caused the effect. Most studies that have linked REM sleep or NREM sleep to specific types of memory processing in humans have therefore been correlational. By that I mean they study a group of participants, and find that say those with more REM sleep on the study night performed better the next day than those with less REM sleep on the study night. That does not prove a causal link. Moreover, NREM sleep and the slow waves that occur in the brain during NREM sleep have been found to play very important roles in memory processing and consolidation during sleep, despite the fact that dreams are most commonly associated with REM sleep. Dreams do occur in NREM sleep, but they are less common and typically less vivid. It is therefore a gross error to simply equate dreams to the memory consolidation processes that occur during sleep.
[ "From an evolutionary standpoint, dreams might simulate and rehearse threatening events, that were common in the organism's ancestral environment, hence increasing a persons ability to tackle everyday problems and challenges in the present. For this reason these threatening events may have been passed on in the for...
How often do electrons move energy levels?
This is actually quite complicated. In short, it depends on the specific atom and how its electronic structure is. It is not possible to further understand this from Bohr's model which just considers the different energy levels n=1,2,3... as you described it. To go into a little more detail: If you calculate the possible energy levels of electrons around an atomic nucleus using quantum mechanics, you end up with an incredibly high number. You can sort those levels using not only n, but also the three additional quantum numbers l, m and s. Each of these solutions is a possible wavefunction for an electron to have. The probability that an electron will "jump" from energy level x to level y depends on the overlap of these two wavefunctions. The greater the overlap, the more likely is the transition (absorption and emission have equal probabilities). There are many transitions that are not possible ("forbidden"), most often because there is a change in angular momentum greater than a single photon can carry or some other quantity is not preserved. The fancy term for these probabilities is Clebsch-Gordan coefficients, whether a transition is allowed is determined through so-called selection rules. It's maybe worth noting that it's impossible to calculate the transition probabilities exactly for atoms that are not hydrogen, for all other atoms we have to use numerical methods and approximations.
[ "The actual energy levels cannot be solved analytically for more than one electron (see \"n\"-body problem) because the electrons are not only affected by the nucleus but also interact with each other via the Coulomb Force.\n", "At the same time, there will be a process of atomic absorption which \"removes\" ener...
in the restaurant industry, why do prices increase from breakfast through lunch and into dinner?
I'm not sure about breakfast, but my first guess would be that most breakfast ingredients are cheaper. As for lunch to dinner, the basic answer is portion sizes. Even ordering the exact same entree, if you order from the lunch menu, your potion will be smaller than if you order during dinner hours. I've worked in kitchens/restaurants since I was 15, and this is what I've always found.
[ "Many industries change prices depending on the time of day, especially online retailers, whose customers usually shop the most in during weekly office hours between 9AM-5PM. Raising prices during the morning and afternoon and lowering prices during the evening is a common practice with dynamic pricing.\n", "In k...
how is exercise an anti-inflammatory?
Think of inflammation as coming in two different flavors. Acute inflammation is temporary and strong. It breaks down your body in a temporary way and when your body is done repairing itself, you just made it stronger and better than it was before. Chronic inflammation is a different beast. It's asymptomatic. You don't know you have it and you can't feel it. It's little but it sticks around and quietly, slowly just breaks down your body. Without it getting stronger at all. It happens so slowly your body doesn't really react. It makes it weaker over time and harms your body. They aren't 100% sure why, but exposing yourself to acute inflammation *consistently* over time, reduces your levels of chronic inflammation. There are a lot of theories for why that is, involving stress reduction and various hormone levels. But study after study shows that it is true.
[ "Developing research has demonstrated that many of the benefits of exercise are mediated through the role of skeletal muscle as an endocrine organ. That is, contracting muscles release multiple substances known as myokines, which promote the growth of new tissue, tissue repair, and various anti-inflammatory functio...
What is going on inside a battery to establish the potential difference that causes electric current to flow?
See [galvanic cells](_URL_1_). Basically, you have two [half cells](_URL_0_) that, when put together, undergoes a spontaneous reaction. Instead of letting that happen, you insert your load in between the electrodes such that in order for the spontaneous reaction to occur, the electrons must flow through the path that _you_ want, converting the chemical potential into useful work. It's similar to an internal combustion engine - you a combustion reaction that is spontaneous, and it will just go its merry way. Instead we have to put some sort of obstacle - a piston - such that the expansion of gases is harvested as useful work.
[ "A battery or galvanic cell in use has a cathode that is the positive terminal since that is where the current flows out of the device. This outward current is carried internally by positive ions moving from the electrolyte to the positive cathode (chemical energy is responsible for this \"uphill\" motion). It is c...
What causes the dark coloration around anuses? Poop? Friction? Is it just the same process that darkens genitals and nipples in puberty?
Similar threads - [1](_URL_0_), [2](_URL_1_)
[ "During the female sex flush, pinkish spots develop under the breasts, then spread to the breasts, torso, face, hands, soles of the feet, and possibly over the entire body. Vasocongestion is also responsible for the darkening of the clitoris and the walls of the vagina during sexual arousal. During the male sex flu...