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how do one-time pads work? | Two people get together and exchange some random data. Say we got together and
generated some random numbers, like 16 3 23 8 8 21 0 2, which is the pad.
I want to send "aardvark", so I advance all the letters by those amounts, and it becomes "qdoldvrm". I send this string to you, and you subtract all those amounts (wrapping round at the end of the alphabet) and you get "aardvark".
Even if someone else were to try every possible pad, they would actually end up "decoding" every possible 8-letter word. There would be no clue which was the correct one.
This only works if the one-time pad is truly random, in other words unpredictable. It also only works if we agree on the pad in person. If the pad is transmitted over a network, there's a chance someone could intercept the pad, in which case it's useless.
These restrictions make it much less useful than the asymmetric encryption which is generally used in internet communications.
edit: Another restriction is that the pad you generate must be as long as the data you send. If you reuse any part of the pad, it's possible for someone to break the encryption. So one time pads will run out, and then you have to meet up again to generate a new one. | [
"One-time pads are \"information-theoretically secure\" in that the encrypted message (i.e., the ciphertext) provides no information about the original message to a cryptanalyst (except the maximum possible length of the message). This is a very strong notion of security first developed during WWII by Claude Shanno... |
How many animals are required to re-establish a viable population? | The answer to this will vary depending on the population, but a general rule of thumb in conservation biology is called the 50/500 rule.
50 members are needed in a population to prevent significant fitness loss due to inbreeding. However, this number is only useful in the short term and is not evolutionary viable, the population will not have a high enough mutation rate to combat diversity lost to genetic drift. In the long term, this lack of diversity may not allow the population to adapt.
For a population to succeed in the long term it needs around 500 individuals. This brings the mutation rate up and drops the rate of genetic drift enough that the population is more likely to increase or maintain diversity rather than decrease.
Source: _URL_0_ | [
"The reintroduction process also depends on the availability of breeding sources, which are captive populations that are permitted to breed in a safe environment, and the number of animals that can be periodically removed from these sources for reintroduction. Because poor sex ratios and low proportions of breeding... |
how does sunlight remove stains from clothes? | It doesn't. Sunlight has the ability to bleach things by breaking down their chemical properties via radiation. This is why many plastics will yellow if left outside. But it does not have the ability to actually remove stains from clothing. Some kinds of stains will have the stain break down chemically faster than the other pigments of the cloth but this is not universal for all stains, and even when it does work it is not highly effective. | [
"Stains sometimes occur. Some women prefer darker colored fabrics which do not show stains as much as light colored fabrics do. Causes of staining do not include allowing the blood to dry, but using hot water when washing the pad will, as hot water sets protein stains (blood). Often, soaking pads for at least 4-6 h... |
Why have coups become so much less common in South America? | This is both a difficult and simple question to answer.
In short, democracies. As a general pattern, as states become democratic, their risk of suffering a military coup decreases.
[As a note, I am taking much of this answer from a broader (and unpublished) paper I have written about the causes of coups, but I can help answer any follow up, or explanatory questions.]
However, we also run into the difficulty of proving a negative. While we can say that there have been fewer coups in Latin America, we don't, (and in many ways cannot) know why these coups didn't happen. Were there coups that were planned and failed? How many military officers wanted to commit coups but couldn't muster the support, logistics, or were headed off by civilian institutions? All of these questions, plus a tendency for military officers to remain tight-lipped regarding their involvement in coups or coup plots make this a difficult question to answer.
So what do we know? Or what can we surmise?
Well, while not strictly history, political science has done a lot of work surrounding the causes and motivations of coups in general, with varied results, and that is what I am going to focus on for much of this answer.
This begins with Samuel Huntington and his book *The Soldier and the State*. While Huntington is not strictly interested in Latin America, he is worth mentioning because he begins this discussion. Simply put, Huntington's thesis is that professional militaries do not coup. Therefore any coups are undertaken by unprofessional militaries and Huntington spends the rest of this book detailing how to develop a professional military. This argument is a bit tautological, and hasn't really stood the test of time well.
More modern scholars essentially agree that a military coup is the most extreme way for the military to participate in politics. This means that the military may engage in other, safer, political behavior like lobbying. Another scholar, Samuel Finer, categorized these as Influence, Blackmail, Displacement and Supplantation. The last two generally involve coups or regime change. Displacement occurs when the military replaces a sitting government with another, but not necessarily military, government. Supplantation is when the military replaces a civilian government with itself, establishing a military dictatorship.
Finer sets up the motivations of coup-plotters in a way that frames the issue for later scholars. He views military intervention as the confluence of disposition or motivation and opportunity. There are several elements that motivate or dispose the military to intervene in politics. The first of these is the motivation of manifest destiny. This motivation leads the military to intervene in politics if they are dissatisfied with the direction that society or the economy is going. The military may view itself as the protector of the national identity, and if the military views society as moving away from this identity they may act to protect it. This is distinct from the second motivation, the motivation of national interest, which is directed at the existing government, which may be violating the established constitution or acting in a way that is harmful to society. The third motivation is the motivation of corporate self-interest where the military acts to preserve its status and privileges. The final motivation is the individual self-interest, where the threat of cutting military pay or bonuses for individual military officers may provoke military interventions. This is paired with an opportunity to intervene, where the civilian government in increasingly dependent on the military, ceding power to them, which then puts the military into a position where if it chooses to intervene in politics is can do so (Finer 2002, 23-60).
However, one of the difficulties with this is that it gives all of the agency to the military. It is the military that decides to intervene, or not to intervene, and the civilian government doesn't really have any options.
It is out of this problem that some scholars have developed a concept called "Coup-Proofing," attempting to analyze how states can prevent military coups. Much of this literature is descriptive, focusing on what authoritarian states can do to keep their militaries in check. This involves things like creating separate military organizations like revolutionary guards to counterbalance the advantages that the military has in deploying violence. It can also include things like intelligence gathering to see what military officers might be thinking about a coup, and stopping them. While this understanding might be relevant in places with more authoritarian tendencies, like Venezuela, for much of Latin America, the emergence of weak democratic states means that attempting to establish these coup-proofing measures may undermine the democracy itself, and defeat the point.
Aaron Belkin and Evan Schofer aim to reformulate the entire debate regarding coups, arguing that these earlier authors are actually studying the proximate and triggering effects of coups and that coup risk can be traced to longer-term trends that are tied to larger institutional structure (Belkin & Schofer 2003). The “conceptualize coup risk as a function of deep structural attributes of government, society, political culture and state-society relations,” instead of the immediate crises that cause a coup in the short term (Belkin & Schofer 2003). This means that coups are not the result of the sort of proximate causes like personal grievances of high ranking officer or economic crisis. These proximate causes act as triggers that will cause a country with a high existing coup risk to experience a coup. This is based on the empirical fact that many countries have dissatisfied military officers or economic crises that do not lead to coups. They point to larger issues like “the strength of civil society, the legitimacy of the regime, and the impact of recent coups,” to assess coup risk (Belkin & Schofer 2003). This is an advantage for our discussion of Latin America, because we can see that the overall development of Latin America in the last (lets say) half-century or so, has trended towards a more stable system and the establishment of things that Belkin and Schofer identify as reducing coup risk.
Overall, there is much debate regarding the specific causes of military coups. This is resulting from a number of factors. First, military officers have disincentives to discuss their reasoning for deciding to launch a coup. The fear of reprisals means that they often disguise their true motives with an appeal to democratic governance or the backwards-looking idea that the previous regime was unfathomably harmful and the military had no choice but to intervene. In addition to this, coups are contextual events, occurring within a larger structural and social context that makes it difficult to disaggregate any individual action from the larger context faces a host of difficulties in the best of circumstances, when the subject is attempting to be forthright about their motivations. Attempts to understand the individual actions of military officers tends to resort to models that are based on rational choice models or game theory which require a large number of assumptions about human nature and individual rationality that are mostly spurious.
Sources and Further Readings:
Albrecht, H. “The Myth of Coup-Proofing: Risk and Instances of Military Coups D’etat in the Middle East and North Africa, 1950-2013.” Armed Forces & Society 41, no. 4 (October 1, 2015): 659–87. _URL_1_.
Belkin, A., and E. Schofer. “Toward a Structural Understanding of Coup Risk.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 47, no. 5 (October 1, 2003): 594–620. _URL_0_.
Bou Nassif, Hicham. “Coups and Nascent Democracies: The Military and Egypt’s Failed Consolidation.” Democratization, March 2, 2016, 1–21. _URL_2_.
Desch, Michael C. Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Finer, Samuel. The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics. New Brunswick, N.J: Routledge, 2002.
Huntington, Samuel P. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Revised edition. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1981.
Luttwak, Edward N. Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, Revised Edition. 2 edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016.
Nordlinger, Eric A. Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall College Div, 1976.
Quinlivan, James T. “Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East.” International Security 24, no. 2 (1999): 131–65.
Singh, Naunihal. Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups. Reprint edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. | [
"The increased incidence of military coups d'état since World War II, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, brought about a growing interest in academic and journalistic circles in studying the nature of such coups. Political upheaval in Africa led to military take-overs in Dahomey, Togo, Congo, and Uganda, to menti... |
Was the U.S. Civil War considered to be major world news at the time? How likely would it have been for an average European citizen to be aware of what was happening in the U.S.? | Heya! You might be interested in some of the threads in our [American Civil War, European Perspectives](_URL_0_) FAQ Section, especially:
* [What was the opinion of the people and workers of Northern England towards the Union or Confederate causes during the American Civil War, and the Cotton Famine that resulted from it?](_URL_1_) answered by /u/agentdcf and /u/Borimi
* [How did Europeans nations reaction the U.S. Civil War?](_URL_2_) by /u/the_alaskan
Hope these are helpful! | [
"In November 1914, three months after the beginning of the war, the \"New Statesmen\" published a lengthy anti-war supplement by Shaw, \"Common Sense About The War\", a scathing dissection of its causes, which castigated all nations involved but particularly savaged the British. It sold a phenomenal 75,000 copies b... |
How did Greece annexed Aegean Islands if Turks gave it to the Italians only to be returned after the Balkan War? | Italy seized the Dodecanese, including the larger island of Rhodes, during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12. The Treaty of Ouchy, which ended that war, called for Italy to return the islands, but was vague enough that Italy held onto the islands.
After World War I, the Treaty of Sevres between the Ottomans and the victorious Entente powers called for Italy to return the Dodecanese to Greece (except for Rhodes). In return, the Italians inserted a clause in the treaty which gave them a sphere of influence in southwestern Turkey covering a quarter of Anatolia.
The Turkish War of Independence which followed ended in the defeat of Greece and smaller contingents from the other Entente powers. When Italy lost its sphere of influence in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne between the Entente and the new Republic of Turkey, it held onto the Dodecanese. (Turkey renounced its claim on the islands in the same treaty.)
The new Fascist government of Mussolini tightened its grip on Rhodes, intending to make it the center of a new Italianization campaign should it ever conquer Greece and regain a foothold in Turkey. It spent a lot of money trying to modernize its Aegean colony, banned Orthodox services, and switched the schools from Greek to Italian. The inhabitants of the islands, who were overwhelmingly Greek even after 30 years of Italian colonization efforts, were understandably happy when the islands were annexed to Greece in 1947. | [
"In 1864 the island was ceded to Greece with the rest of the Ionian Islands as part of Diapontia islands, but not occupied, coming under de facto Ottoman control. It was not until the First Balkan War in 1912 that Greece landed soldiers on the island and formally claimed it. After the end of the Second Balkan War i... |
why does your house get colder when it's cold outside? is it problem insulation or air flow? | tl;dr because houses in North America are built like shit.
Houses here are built with wood framing for the exterior walls and thin sheeting over that, usually. Fibreglass or rock wool goes into the void spaces between the studs, however, the studs usually still contact the interior wall face and conduct heat surprisingly well.
A side effect of this is that homes are also not very airtight, which lets cold air get in fairly easily.
In summer, on the other hand, you can bankrupt yourself paying for the ac, and you'll just be wasting that energy.
There are things you can do, however. If you build with Insulated Concrete Forms or ICFs up to the roof, you can have very thick and very well insulated dense walls. Not only does the insulation keep cold out and heat in, the extra thermal mass of the concrete greatly slows down the rate at which the wall transfers heat. Choose a light-coloured exterior. Triple-pane windows facing south, while expensive, also insulate well, because the thermal gradient gets broken up. What does that mean for your ac bill? What ac bill? Your house stays cool by itself and won't need one. | [
"In recent years its age has made it a difficult building to keep warm in the wintertime. Even with the windows closed, City Hall has been drafty. The city installed Cellular Shades, and later window insulating panels, to keep it warm.\n",
"Evaporative coolers tend to feel as if they are not working during times ... |
Best way to become acquainted with all major trends in modern historiography | All major trends?
I would systematically read all the book reviews in a top history journal, say, the *American Historical Review*. A good review will comment on the book's place in the stream of historiography on its topic, and hopefully at its larger placement within current trends. Not all reviews are this good, but they'll build up over time.
This method has the advantage of being dynamic--you're not frozen in a certain year's perspective, or limited to a specific selection by a single editor. It's not as tidy or straightforward, but all in all you'll probably learn more from reading applied historiographical method than just "this is what the method is"--think, for example, how useful it is to see examples of little-m marxist historiography in order to understand how it's different from big-M Marxist, from social history from below, and from economic history. | [
"20th-century historiography in major countries is characterized by a move to universities and academic research centers. Popular history continued to be written by self-educated amateurs, but scholarly history increasingly became the province of PhD's trained in research seminars at a university. The training emph... |
Could a natural nuclear fission detonation ever occur? | Not quite, but close.
For a detonation to occur, you need a nuclear bomb, which is a very complex and precise machine. This is probably too complex to be assembled by random natural processes. The closest which happens naturally is when Uranium ore deposits form, and then reach a supercritical concentration of fissile isotopes, which is rare. Then, you get a runaway fission reaction. It doesn't go "Boom", but it releases a lot of heat and radiation, as well as daughter isotopes.
The best known examples occur in [Oklo](_URL_0_), in Gabon.
It has been discussed in previous posts:
_URL_1_
_URL_2_
_URL_4_
_URL_3_
##UPDATE:
We're getting a lot of posts in the thread along the lines of "How is it possible that the formation of a nuclear bomb by natural processes is impossible when the formation by natural processes of complex intellects such as our own has occurred?"
This is a false equivalency. In simplest possible terms: both examples are not under the action of the same processes. The concentration or fissile material in ore deposits is under control of the laws of inorganic chemistry, while our own existence is the product of organic & inorganic chemistry, plus Evolution by natural selection. Different processes obtain different results; and different degrees of complexity ensue.
That being said, the current discussion is about natural fission and whether it may or not achieve detonation by its own means. Any posts about the brain/bomb equivalency will be ruled off-topic and removed. | [
"Spontaneous fission gives much the same result as induced nuclear fission. However, like other forms of radioactive decay, it occurs due to quantum tunneling, without the atom having been struck by a neutron or other particle as in induced nuclear fission. Spontaneous fissions release neutrons as all fissions do, ... |
why do airplains not have enough parashoots for everyone in case of total failure and crash to avoid loss of life? | This is a repost of a question asked earlier today, but summarizing.
Most incidents involving fatalities are close to takeoff or landing, in which case parachutes would be useless.
Accidents involving high altitudes would involve jumping from a fast moving plane at high altitude. It's likely that passengers would pass out either before jumping or mid-jump and not survive.
The weight penalty of a hundred parachutes is huge, and would dramatically increase ticket prices. | [
"First an airworthiness issue arises from an uncontrolled crash which is defined as a condition resulting from one or a combination of failure conditions that prevents the flight control system from maintaining the aircraft controllable and maneuverable until the impact on the ground AEP-4671 page A-5. To be certif... |
What is the oldest example of someone saying "These darn kids are screwing everything up." | Ancient Romans, particularly in the centuries bookending the year 0, really, *really* loved to say this kind of thing. This was especially true of men like Cicero and Cato, who were champions of the traditions of "old Rome" and the values supposedly espoused by their forebears.
Cicero's famous speeches against [Catiline](_URL_0_) contain many references to the good-ol' days, most famously his "O tempora, O mores" section, in which he decries the decline of the Senate for even allowing a piece of scum such as Catiline to even come inside -- implying that *these times* and *these customs* (i.e., those contemporary to Cicero) are a far cry from the proper times and customs of the days of his fathers (Cicero, of course, was a [novus homo](_URL_3_), making this statement somewhat ironic).
Romans complained about many contemporary innovations and cultural shifts, however. A fad for blonde hair (brought on by the capture and transportation of blonde Gauls and Germans to Rome) led to crazy trends in hair dying and wig making which [annoyed Juvenal](_URL_1_), and pleased Ovid. Clothing styles, sexual profligacy, political intrigues, class of entertainment, you name it -- someone in the Roman aristocracy was pissed off by it.
Opposing these trends was a powerful reverence for tradition and ancestry. Cicero, like many Romans, held in particular high regard -- as an exemplar for all times -- the legendary military genius P. Cornelius Scipio (later known as Africanus). Cicero wrote a beautiful discourse on a fantastic "dream" of Scipio, in which the general was privy to vast, universal understanding, but remained humble. Seneca wrote a beautiful paean to Scipio, in which he essentially says "most people today are worthless compared to Scipio," called ["On Scipio's Villa"](_URL_4_).
From the above, you can see that Romans valued several virtues above all others, especially humility and the willingness to "get one's hands dirty." Romans did not like hoity-toityness, despite their reputation for decadence, and, much like the modern-day West, wealthy people did a lot to seem "down to earth," etc., and criticized their younger peers as being flighty, snobby, profligate, and shallow.
Of course, there was a countervailing point of view, as well. A huge Roman folk hero was the farmer-turned-soldier [Horatius Cocles](_URL_2_), who embodied every excellent Roman male virtue: down-home-values (he was a farmer), who only fought when necessary (he was called into action to defend his city), who was incredibly heroic (he single-handedly held a bridge against an entire army), and was tremendously humble (although he was offered dictatorship of the city after his heroism, he instantly declined and returned to obscurity in his farm). But, while his story had been venerated in Rome for years, many later scholars and writers, such as Livy and Florus, poke fun at those who believed it at face value and at the story itself as being silly and antiquated.
So, much like us today, the Romans had their "get off my lawn types," but they also had those who were more amenable to change. | [
"This phrase presents the supposed reaction of a stereotypical elderly middle-class homeowner confronting boisterous children entering or crossing his or her property. Today, the phrase has been expanded to mock any sort of trivial or petty complaint, particularly those of older people regarding the young.\n",
"T... |
how can companies sue people for bad reviews as "liable and slander"? | They probably can't... but they might be able too.
There is a fairly nuanced (detailed) view of what is and is not slander. A product review is something that should probably be immune... but given what I've seen on the internet it may not be so simple. If people are spamming the review boards alleging things about their product that is categorically not true or personally attacking the company... they might be able to get a libel/slander accusation to stick. | [
"At first glance, this may appear to be similar to defamation (libel and slander), but the basis for the harm is different, and the remedy is different in two respects. First, unlike libel and slander, no showing of actual harm or damage to the plaintiff is usually required in false light cases, and the court will ... |
how does a v configuration of an engine make it better than a normal engine? | It's mainly about saving space. 8 in a line is long and thin. Two rows of 4 is only about as long as a 4 cylinder engine but twice as wide. | [
"Some manufacturers (originally Lancia, and more recently Volkswagen with the VR6 engine) have attempted to combine advantages of the straight and V configurations by producing a narrow-angle V; this is more compact than either configuration, but is less smooth (without balancing) than either.\n",
"Various cylind... |
what is particle physics? | Particle physics is the branch of physics that investigates the smallest components of matter and energy.
Every piece of matter in the universe is made up of atoms. Inside those atoms are electrons, protons and neutrons. Inside of the protons and neutrons are various kinds of quarks.
Particle physicists explore the nature and interactions of those particles. | [
"Particle physics (also known as high energy physics) is a branch of physics that studies the nature of the particles that constitute matter and radiation. Although the word \"particle\" can refer to various types of very small objects (e.g. protons, gas particles, or even household dust), usually investigates the ... |
Does drinking carbonation affect your oxygen intake? | Short answer:
Carbonated drinks have no significant effect upon your blood oxygen levels. The level of sodium in these drinks is not enough to be a significant health concern compared to other dietary sources of sodium (salty foods).
Long answer:
All water that you drink has carbon dioxide dissolved into it from the atmosphere, the only difference between soda water and regular water is that carbon dioxide is forced into it under high pressure.
The amount of carbon dioxide dissolved into a drink is negligible compared to the amount of carbon dioxide that your body produces just keeping you alive. Your body is extremely good at managing the levels of carbon dioxide in your blood. Not only that, but carbonated water goes into your stomach, not into your lungs. Most of the carbon dioxide just bubbles out of the drink in your stomach and you burp it out -- this gas never makes it into your bloodstream. A fraction of the carbon dioxide will cross from your stomach contents into your blood, but as I said, is insignificant compared to how much carbon dioxide your body naturally produces.
While it is true that increased carbon dioxide levels do reduce the blood's ability to hold oxygen, your blood is well designed to deal with carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon dioxide from a drink is, once again, FAR too small to have a noticeable effect.
Another point, the main process of creating "soda" water does not add sodium to it. Instead, carbon dioxide is forced into the water under high pressure -- you can hear the escape of the high pressure gas when you open the bottle. Carbon dioxide then spontaneously combines with water to form carbonic acid, this acidity is what gives the drink its flavour. "Soda water" was so called because it contained some sodium to add further flavour and control the acidity of the drink, but nowadays most drinks described as soda water don't actually have any added sodium. Wikipedia explains this quite well, _URL_0_ .
Too much sodium is not very good for you, but you would have to drink a very large amount of soda water for a long time for this really to be problematic.
For anyone interested, technical explanation for decreased ability of blood to hold oxygen with increased CO2 concentration: increased carbon dioxide in blood - > increased carbonic acid concentration - > lowered pH - > decreased haemoglobin O2 affinity due to the Bohr Effect.
| [
"Carbonation adds a festive flair to drinks. It also increases the absorption of the alcohol into the blood stream due to increased pressure in the stomach, potentially resulting in faster intoxication.\n",
"Excessive ethanol consumption may increase the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which results ... |
why do thermostats have a heat and cool setting? shouldn’t 70 degrees on heat feel the same as 70 on cool? 70 degrees is 70 degrees. | One is where the heater should turn on. One is where the AC cooling should turn on. There should be a several degree space between them, the zone of comfortable temperatures. | [
"Thermoelectric coolers operate by the Peltier effect (which also goes by the more general name thermoelectric effect). The device has two sides, and when a DC electric current flows through the device, it brings heat from one side to the other, so that one side gets cooler while the other gets hotter. The \"hot\" ... |
How would a state undo extreme currency hyperinflation? | This American Life had a story on exactly that topic.
[**The Lie That Saved Brazil**](_URL_0_)
> A trip to a country where the fiction that is money completely fell apart. And in this same country, through a truly incredible piece of policy making, the government tricked a 150,000,000 people into believing their money had value again. Chana Joffe-Walt reports.
To summarize, Brazil created a second, virtual currency that existed side-by-side with the existing currency. The new currency was constantly adjusted relative to the troubled currency so that the virtual currency's value remained stable. Prices and wages were listed in the virtual currency, so that people became accustomed to its value.
Once people started thinking in the virtual currency, the failing currency was removed from circulation and a new currency, equal in value to the virtual currency, was introduced. | [
"Hyperinflation is ended by drastic remedies, such as imposing the shock therapy of slashing government expenditures or altering the currency basis. One form this may take is dollarization, the use of a foreign currency (not necessarily the U.S. dollar) as a national unit of currency. An example was dollarization i... |
how does wind get such speed as 300kph? | It always comes down to density, really. All (or almost all) wind comes from less dense air going up and more dense air going down. The bigger the difference in density, more air is moving, or the longer the distance that dense air falls/light air rises, the stronger the winds. The simplest example is a microburst. In a microburst, a column of cold air plummets from the sky due to its higher density, As it falls, it picks up speed, and when it hits the ground it is going fast enough to knock down trees. Hurricanes are just complicated systems of air getting spun due to Coriolis forces and such, but ultimately the input energy comes from the same source. | [
"Historically, wind speeds have been reported with a variety of averaging times (such as fastest mile, 3-second gust, 1-minute and mean hourly) which designers may have to take into account. To convert wind speeds from one averaging time to another, the Durst Curve was developed which defines the relation between p... |
Do accreting binary stars have a habitable zone? | Let's see here. First, if you have a binary with a white dwarf/neutron star with a main sequence/giant star companion, the light from the WD/NS is going to be negligible. They are very faint compared to normal stars, and giants especially. So your habitable zone will depend only on the giant. However, the two stars will have relatively equal masses, which means the motion of the giant star could be rather large as it orbits.
If the giant star has a luminosity 10x that of the sun, the habitable zone will be moved out by ~sqrt(10)~3. So the habitable zone would be from maybe 2.7AU to 4.5AU. This is certainly feasible and would be a stable orbit for a planet. The question is just a matter of what is the orbital period of the binary star, and thus how much does the insolation from the giant star change depending on where it is in its own orbit. But the binary orbit could certainly be short enough ( < 50 days or so should do it) to ensure that the planet would be in the habitable zone its entire orbit.
Edit: Just realized that if this is an actively accreting system, then *of course* the binary orbital period is short, so the habitable zone won't shift too much, and you could definitely have stable habitable zone planets.
| [
"The habitable zone around a star is the region where the temperature is just right to allow liquid water to exist on a planet; that is, not too close to the star for the water to evaporate and not too far away from the star for the water to freeze. The heat produced by stars varies depending on the size and age of... |
why do companies care about their employee diversity? | There's a phenomenon called groupthink; where if a company would hire people with same views and stuff - they could not progress fast; and innovation would die, because they would all think the same thing with no one daring to contradict. Sometimes, some healthy conflict in brainstorming sessions would generate great ideas.
Apple is losing the touch, because everyone in the company just follows the roadmap that Steve Jobs or whoever brings upon and loses sight of the actual reality of the market; and no one is daring enough to come up with brilliant ideas that would be the next big thing, like the iPod or iPhone.
Thus, they could lose innovative ideas or some important aspects when discussing. | [
"Many major corporations recognize the need for diversity in hiring to compete successfully in a global economy. The challenge is to avoid recruiting staff who are \"in the likeness of existing employees\" but also to retain a more diverse workforce and work with inclusion strategies to include them in the organisa... |
is there any unclaimed land in the united states? | A vast amount of land is owned by the federal government, including most of the land in the middle of desolate forests.
_URL_0_
So yeah, all the land is owned by someone, probably the federal government for most land that you wouldn't think is owned by someone. | [
"The land is named by Captain Altamont, an American explorer, who is first to set foot on the land. In the novel as published, it is unclear whether New America is meant to be a territorial claim for the United States. As William Butcher points out, this would not be surprising, since Verne wrote about the US acqui... |
How does headache evolve? | [Here's a list of common headache etiologies, courtesy of Harrison's. ](_URL_0_)
More info from Harrison's:
> Pain usually occurs when peripheral nociceptors are stimulated in response to tissue injury, visceral distension, or other factors. In such situations, pain perception is a normal physiologic response mediated by a healthy nervous system. Pain can also result when pain-producing pathways of the peripheral or central nervous system (CNS) are damaged or activated inappropriately. **Headache may originate from either or both mechanisms.** **Relatively few cranial structures are pain-producing**; these include the scalp, middle meningeal artery, dural sinuses, falx cerebri, and proximal segments of the large pial arteries. The ventricular ependyma, choroid plexus, pial veins, and much of the brain parenchyma are not pain-producing.
> The key structures involved in primary headache appear to be
>
> * the large intracranial vessels and dura mater and the peripheral terminals of the **trigeminal nerve** that innervate these structures
> * the caudal portion of the **trigeminal nucleus**, which extends into the dorsal horns of the upper cervical spinal cord and receives input from the first and second cervical nerve roots (the trigeminocervical complex)
> * rostral pain-processing regions, such as the ventroposteromedial **thalamus and the cortex**
> * the **pain-modulatory systems** in the brain that modulate input from trigeminal nociceptors at all levels of the pain-processing pathways
On migraine headaches:
> Migraine, the second most common cause of headache, afflicts approximately 15% of women and 6% of men over a one year period. It is usually an episodic headache associated with certain features such as sensitivity to light, sound, or movement; nausea and vomiting often accompany the headache. The brain of the migraineur is particularly sensitive to environmental and sensory stimuli; migraine-prone patients do not habituate easily to sensory stimuli. The sensory sensitivity that is characteristic of migraine is probably due to **dysfunction of monoaminergic sensory control systems located in the brainstem and thalamus**.
On tension-type headaches:
> **The pathophysiology of TTH is incompletely understood.** It seems likely that TTH is due to a primary disorder of CNS pain modulation alone, unlike migraine, which involves a more generalized disturbance of sensory modulation.
On cluster headaches:
> The **trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias** (TACs) describe a grouping of primary headaches including cluster headache, paroxysmal hemicrania, and SUNCT (short-lasting unilateral neuralgiform headache attacks with conjunctival injection and tearing)/SUNA (short-lasting unilateral neuralgiform headache attacks with cranial autonomic symptoms). TACs are characterized by relatively short-lasting attacks of head pain associated with cranial autonomic symptoms, such as lacrimation, conjunctival injection, or nasal congestion.
**My TL;DR (keep in mind this will be grossly oversimplified, since the scope of the question is huge):**
Headaches can come from many sources. The brain itself can't sense pain, but many other structures inside your skull can. Headaches are commonly associated with disorders of the trigeminal nerve (cranial nerve V), which is responsible for most of the sensory innervation of the face. They can also be associated with higher-order pain processing or modulating centers in the brain. Migraine headaches are caused by neurotransmitter dysregulation in the brain. The cause for tension headaches is still unclear. Cluster headaches are caused by disorders of the trigeminal nerve, and are often associated with other autonomic signs (eg tearing up).
edit: also, there's lots of information in the [many previous posts](_URL_1_) on this topic. | [
"Hypnic headaches are benign primary headaches that affect the elderly, with the average age of onset being 63 ± 11 years. They are moderate, throbbing, bilateral or unilateral headaches that wake the sufferer from sleep once or multiple times a night. They typically begin a few hours after sleep begins and can las... |
supposedly paper made a few centuries ago had better quality than paper nowadays, is this true, and why? | Wood pulp paper is what we are familiar with today. It is made in a similar way today as it was many years ago. However, today, it is made by machines. Before, it was made by hand. Making extremely thin paper is possible with a machine because you can precisely set up the exact dimensions of paper to create. Because making paper by hand is much less precise, paper-makers would rather make slightly thicker paper to avoid problems, than make paper that is too thin.
Now, that's all talking about modern wood pulp paper. Before modern papermaking, paper was made in different ways around the world, and out of many different materials - like Papyrus, Hemp, and Parchment (animal skin). Note that animal skin parchment is not the same kind of parchment you buy at the store for using to cook. Anyway, papers made from materials like Papyrus or Parchment were thicker and more durable than modern paper, in part because they were made by hand and in part because they were made of better materials (in terms of durability).
You must also consider the way people used paper before modern paper processing was invented. Prior to the invention of the printing press, manuscripts had to be written by hand in ink. If you're constantly writing in ink, you want strong paper for two reasons. First, you must be able to erase and re-write on the paper. The way you erase ink from paper is by scratching the ink off the paper with a knife. Therefore, the paper has to be relatively high quality and thick to withstand this "abuse". Second, the paper must last a long time, because getting someone (a scribe) to hand-write you a document was expensive and they would put many hours into it, so you (and the scribe) would definitely want it to last. | [
"Paper was one of the greatest discoveries of ancient China. Beginning in the 3rd century BC paper was made in all sizes with various materials. Silk was no exception, and silk workers had been making paper since the 2nd century BC. Silk, bamboo, linen, wheat and rice straw were all used, and paper made with silk b... |
Has science now come to the certainty of 100% that an asteroid or meteor colliding with Earth was the cause of the dinosaur extinction? | It's a little more complicated than that. All dinosaur species didn't -go- extinct, as their decendants are still with us today, and many others went extinct long before the Chicxulub impact. But it is widely agreed that the mass extinction at the end of the cretaceous period was caused by the change in climate triggered by a massive asteroid impact on the coast of the gulf of Mexico.
There's no such thing as 100% certainty in science, but we're as certain as the K-Pg impact as we are of anything. It left a layer of material in the geological record, we know where the impact was, we've identified the crater and determined the approximate size of the impactor, we know what the environmental effects were, we know the non-avian dinosaur species went extinct at the time. It's pretty settled. | [
"Previously, in a 1953 publication, geologists Allan O. Kelly and Frank Dachille analyzed global geological evidence suggesting that one or more giant asteroids impacted the Earth, causing an angular shift in its axis, global floods, fire, atmospheric occlusion, and the extinction of the dinosaurs. There were other... |
How does light actually interact with molecules? | It's a bit hard to answer without knowing what exactly you mean by "on a chemical level", but let me try.
From a physics standpoint, a molecule is a bunch of positive point-like charges (the atomic nuclei) and a number of negatively charged point particles (the atomic electrons) interacting with each other. As you know, what forms is a stationary system - a molecule.
This system will have a ground state, i.e. the overall energy stored in the system is lowest, and a huge number of excited states. To reach these excited states, you have to supply energy, this is exactly what a photon is: A bit of electromagnetic energy. That's in principle all you need to know to model the system from a physics standpoint. There is no "mechanism" to it.
As to "what the photon interacts with", for electronic transitions that's mostly electric dipoles, formed by two charges placed apart. Mathematically and practically, such a sub-system is very similar to a radio antenna, it has a resonance at which it absorbs energy from the electromagnetic field. In many cases, especially when dealing with transitions in the visible and nearby ranges, it is sufficient to assume everything interacts as a dipole.
I'm not sure if my explanations help. You might want to look into a textbook on atomic and molecular physics, but don't be disappointed that almost everything can only be calculated by employing a huge number of approximations. | [
"When light encounters a material, it can interact with it in several different ways. These interactions depend on the wavelength of the light and the nature of the material. Photons interact with an object by some combination of reflection, absorption and transmission.\n",
"As light interacts with the molecule b... |
Will/has the flag on the moon get/gotten bleached white from UV exposure? | Yes, the flags that were put on the moon are now white.
[Source](_URL_0_) | [
"Since the nylon flag was purchased from a government catalog, it was not designed to handle the harsh conditions of space. Some experts theorize that the colors of some flags may have turned white due to sunlight and space radiation. It was also theorized that the fabric might have disintegrated entirely. A review... |
Does the spin of the earth have any significant effect on the time it takes to complete a trans-pacific flight vs a trans-atlantic flight? | Nope, the plane is in the rotating reference frame.
But, it actually does because the coriolis force contributes to atmospheric winds, among them the jet stream which runs in one direction only and aircraft can take advantage of! | [
"The resultant motion of the Earth's axis is called general precession and the equinox points in the ecliptic move westward along the ecliptic at the rate of about 50.3 seconds of arc per year as a result. In 25,772 years the points are once again at the same point in the sky where observations began.\n",
"Follow... |
What color were earth's sky and oceans prior to the Great Oxygenation Event? | [Perhaps Orange](_URL_0_)
> Earth’s atmosphere is thought to have originally been methane-rich, which would have given the sky an orange cast. | [
"Solid oxygen forms at normal atmospheric pressure at a temperature below 54.36 K (−218.79 °C, −361.82 °F). Solid oxygen O, like liquid oxygen, is a clear substance with a light sky-blue color caused by absorption in the red part of the visible light spectrum.\n",
"There was no free oxygen in earth's atmosphere u... |
Since Hawking Radiation increases as the mass of a black hole decreases, can't micro black holes be used as perfect mass-to-energy converters? | Interesting thoughts. However, have you considered what the size of your black hole would have to be? For a black hole of that mass you'll have a schwarzchild radius of roughly 10^-19 m.
That is you'd have to pack 600 000 tons worth of matter into a volume 10^27 or so times smaller than a hydrogen atom.
Sure you might get a lot of energy out once you've created it, but first you'd have to be able to make this thing. On top of that, you'd have to do it in such a way that doesn't cost you all that energy to begin with. | [
"Hawking radiation reduces the mass and rotation energy of black holes and is therefore also known as black hole evaporation. Because of this, black holes that do not gain mass through other means are expected to shrink and ultimately vanish. Micro black holes are predicted to be larger emitters of radiation than l... |
Why are the Yugoslav partisans considered the most effective resistance movement in WW2? | Do you ask why were they so effective or why are they "considered the most effective" the latter part being somewhat subjective?
Well their importance and effectiveness is probably due to the size and nature of the resistance movement. It was not small scattered resistance groups that do sabotage like (at least I imagine it so) e.g. French resistance, but something that is very close to being an actual army. An army that fought large battles since at least 1942-43 and made Axis powers leave a large military presence in the Balkans
One of the main battles, the battle of Sutjeska in 1943, had 22000 partisan soldiers against 120 000 Axis soldiers (from different countries, i think only 2-3 German divisions). Well, to have ~100 000 soldiers, weapons and machinery in Yugoslavia and not on e.g. Eastern front was not a small thing. The Axis won this battle, but failed in their main objective to annihilate the partisan movement, and 2/3 of them punched through from encirclement and retreated , which is why the partisans consider it a "victory"
Why were they so effective?
Mountainous and forest terrain very much suitable for guerrilla tactics was a great factor, and the fact that the Germans did not have direct interest in the region, so they did not invest as much determination nor means to crush the early resistance as they did in e.g Poland
The (communist) leadership of the partisan movement showed actual competence, will to really fight and to promote multi-ethnicism and national tolerance ("brotherhood and unity") which resulted in morale being very high and high degree of support in certain areas.
While excessive violence by local fascists (but also nationalist resistance movements alike) caused a lot of population to abandon their homes and join a side, a lot of them saw partisan movement as the best alternative.
Towards the end of war because they were actually fighting the Axis, Allies gave them official recognition, and declined their previous support for nationalist resistance movement (for collaborating with nazis rather than fighting them) after which even more people joined the partisans
| [
"Two resistance movements soon emerged in occupied Yugoslavia, the almost exclusively ethnic Serb and monarchist Chetniks, led by Draža Mihailović, and the multi-ethnic and communist-led Partisans, under Josip Broz Tito. The approaches of the two resistance movements differed in important respects from the beginnin... |
Why were noblewomen inclined to become nuns? | There were a number of reasons for women becoming nuns, either as young women or later in life (or, as in the case you mentioned of Marie Countess of Boulogne, both).
*Later life*
Some women felt a genuine calling. Maud de Ufford, the widow of first William de Burgh earl of Ulster, then of Ralph de Ufford, justiciar of Ireland, entered religious life after the her second husband’s death. She claimed to have had a calling for some time, explaining in a petition to the pope that she had in childhood intended to become a nun. The implication is that her family’s plans for her marriage got in the way of this calling. In Maud’s case, the fact that her marriages had been fraught with drama – the death of each of her husbands saw her fleeing Ireland for her family in England, both times with a young child in tow – could well have been incentive to enter the relative stability of religious life.
This brings us to the major reasons that women entered religious communities later in life, particularly after a husband’s death. First, the medieval church really liked the idea of the ‘chaste widow’. Women’s sexuality was seen as a problem in general in the Middle Ages, but widows were particularly problematic, because they’d already experienced the pleasures of the flesh but were expected to remain chaste after a husband’s death – how could they possibly be trusted to do this? Joining a religious community was a fantastic way to keep tabs on a widow’s sexuality (though there were other ways, including remarriage or vows of chastity). There was even opportunity for extra heavenly reward: the *Myrour to Lewde Men* taught that a woman who kept a chaste widowhood would have her heavenly reward sixty-fold.
At the same time, widowhood made women vulnerable. Widows were (often for the first time in their lives) able to control their own financial and legal destinies, and many aristocratic widows were quite wealthy. This also made women vulnerable (as in the case of Maud de Ufford, above) and many women chose the cloister in order to achieve a degree of safety. As before, however, this wasn’t the only – or even the best – way of achieving this. Many widows chose remarriage or simply chose to remain single in the face of whatever threats they experienced.
And then, some women were pushed to enter religious life, though they didn’t always take religious vows. There is debate over whether Elizabeth Woodville, then the dowager queen of England, retired to Bermondsey Abbey after the accession of Henry VII out of her own volition or because the king pushed her to.
*As girls*
It was more common for women to become nuns from a young age. The fact that girls often officially entered religious life (even if they didn’t take religious vows for several years) at the age of 12 – the canonical age at which a girl could marry – indicates that marriage vs. religious life was very much an 'either-or' proposition, at least at this age. Again, there were a couple reasons behind this. First of all, as before, we shouldn’t discount the idea that some families had a genuine desire to give a child to the church. That daughter could serve as a symbol of her family’s piety and pray for their spiritual well-being.
Women from the top of the social ladder could become abbesses at powerful convents and exercise a good deal of power themselves. For example, the list of abbesses at Barking Abbey, one of the most prestigious convents in medieval England, boasts women from the most influential families in the country. To have one’s daughter or sister rise to a position of influence in a powerful religious house was no bad thing for the medieval noble in secular society.
I think that the most important factor, though, was money. Marriages were expensive for the families of both parties and it could be cheaper to donate a daughter to a nunnery (or, indeed, a son to a monastery) than to arrange a marriage for her. A similar thing happened with boys. It was very common for younger sons to either join the church or simply not marry, which was cheaper for a number of reasons. The result was a number of girls being sent to a nunnery. If you look at large families (in England, the Nevilles, Percys, or Beauchamps are an excellent place to start) in the Middle Ages, it’s really common to see at least one younger child sent off to join the church.
As you say, there were surely men of slightly lower class whom these women could have been married, rather than being packed off to a convent. Kimberly Schutt has looked at this in the early modern to modern periods, concluding that women who married ‘below’ themselves experienced some very nasty social consequences that men who married ‘down’ did not. This would naturally have varied according to circumstance and personal inclination, but it could well have been seen as better that a woman enter religious life than marry too far below her station.
I hope this helps to answer your question, though I didn't reference any of the specific examples you asked about. Please do follow up!
FOOTNOTES
Rowena E. Archer, 'Rich Old Ladies: The Problem of Late Medieval Dowagers', in *Property and Politics: Essays in Late Medieval English History*, ed. by Tony Pollard
Cordelia Beattie, *Medieval Single Women: The Politics of Social Classification in Late Medieval England*
*Calendar of Papal Petitions*
Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner, eds., *Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe*
Robert R. Edwards and Vickie Ziegler, eds., *Matrons and Marginal Women in Medieval Society*
Jack Goody, *The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe*
Barbara Hanawalt, 'Remarriage as an Option for Urban and Rural Widows in Late Medieval England', in *Wife and Widow in Medieval England*
S. H. Rigby, *English Society in the Late Middle Ages: Class, Status and Gender*
Kimberly Schutt, *Women, Rank and Marriage in the British Aristocracy: 1485-2000: An Open Elite?*
Fiona Harris Stoertz, ‘Young Women in France and England, 1050-1300,’ *Journal of Women’s History*
| [
"Because of her high status, several nobles who had decided their daughters would become nuns, entrusted them to Mary's custody. In this the royal family had probably given an example. Mary's half-sister, Eleanor of England (born 4 May 1306), her father's daughter by his second wife, Margaret of France, died in 131... |
what is the difference between a suit and a tuxedo? | There are lots of kinds of suits. One type of suit is called a Tuxedo.
The Tuxedo is characterized by colored or black flat lapels that don't connect, bow ties, a waistcoat/low cut vest, trousers with a stripe down the side that match the lapels, diagonal buttons and a handkerchief in the pocket.
The Tuxedo is the traditional clothing for a man at a 'black tie' event or for people who work at places that host such events, like hotels. Other types of suits are suited for other purposes.
So, in short, asking what the difference is between a Tuxedo and a Suit is alike asking the difference between cargo pants and pants. A Tuxedo is a suit, and what differences it has with other suits depends on the suit. | [
"The word \"suit\" derives from the French \"suite\", meaning \"following\", from some Late Latin derivative form of the Latin verb \"sequor\" = \"I follow\", because the component garments (jacket and trousers and waistcoat) follow each other and have the same cloth and colour and are worn together.\n",
"\"Tuxed... |
if a child was raised in a home where a different accent was spoken around it everyday (7 different accents, same days every week), when it was at the age of holding a conversation what accent would it have? | They would say some words in one accent and then other words in other accents. If the person who spoke in an Irish accent mostly talked about food with them, then food vocabulary would be spoken in an Irish accent. It's also quite possible that the child would speak with each person with the accent of the adult.
| [
"Children are able to take on accents relatively quickly. Children of immigrant families, for example, generally have a more native-like pronunciation than their parents, but both children and parents may have a noticeable non-native accent. Accents seem to remain relatively malleable until a person's early twentie... |
- how do counterfeit pens work? | currency paper is a mixture of cotton and linen with no cellulose. The iodine in the pen reacts with the starch (cellulose) in lower quality counterfeit bills paper causing a dark stain to form. Genuine bills fail to react and the iodine evaporates after a short time. | [
"Such pens are most effective against counterfeit notes printed on a standard printer or photocopier paper. The chemical properties of US banknotes prior to 1960 are such that marking pens do not work. One example of this complication taking place happened in 2016, in which a 13 year-old student was arrested by pol... |
Does evolution possess the ability to create a life-form that doesn't die due to aging ? | Meet the ["immortal jellyfish"](_URL_0_).
| [
"The biological immortality was a result of their evolution as the 'top monster on a planet full of monsters', where strong natural selection pressure and a strong background radiation (causing mutations) prevented the biological immortality from stifling the evolution of the species. Though they do not die from ol... |
how do/can/why do smaller carriers (metro pcs, cricket etc.) offer unlimited 4g data for $50 while at & t/sprint charge upwards of $100? | Bigger companies have better network coverage. | [
"The service offers several data transmission speed tiers for subscribers. Originally, peak speeds topped out at 30 Mbit/s. Until 2014, upload speeds were slower than download speeds for any given plan, but Verizon decided to increase the upload speed to match the download speed of each tier. As of 2017, upload and... |
why is affirmative action rase-based on not class-based for colleges? | Student Aid is made available on the basis of income level. | [
"Proponents of affirmative action argue that by nature the system is not only race based, but also class and gender based. To eliminate two of its key components would undermine the purpose of the entire system. The African American Policy Forum believes that the class based argument is based on the idea that non-p... |
What writing materials tend to be best and worst preserved over time? | It depends less on the material and more on the conditions that preserve them. Inorganic matter, like stone and clay, are not prone to rot or mould, and even erosion from the elements takes time.
Organic matter can be observed in a variety of situations, but the key is a lack of bacteria that will prevent decomposition. This can mean hot and dry, cold and dry, cold and wet...
The Dead Sea Scrolls are parchment and papyrus, and survived inside jars - they weren't airtight, but in their location they were very dry, which prevented mould or rot forming moisture, and protected from wind or animals. The Vindolanda tablets, by contrast, survived because they were waterlogged. Made of very thin wooden tablets, they were made to folded in half after being written on. Their environment, while sodden, was anaerobic, which prevented the presence of the bacteria that would have started decomposition.
In Herculaneum (Pompeii’s equally unfortunate neighbour), the Villa of the Papyri shows us that destruction isn’t naturally the end; the papyrus scrolls were carbonised at high temperature very quickly. Bizarrely, this means they survive in a extremely fragile yet potentially readable form. Which leads me to the means by which they can be read...
Just because something looks like the writing has been lost doesn’t mean that it’s gone forever; the Vindolanda tablets had to be photographed in infra-red for the writing to show up perfectly; this is common technique for discovering more about a document in another way it might survive: palimpsest.
Many vellum and early parchment is an surprisingly durable material, a layer of writing can be scraped off and the piece re-used (this is because historically parchment is not made from paper, but animal skin). The resulting document is called a palimpsest. The most famous example I can think of is the Archimedes Palimpsest, where the original text was 10th century, a text on Archimedes, which was then re-used in the 13th century with a Christian text. There are numerous examples of texts surviving this way, often medieval and religious in nature. The original text can be read using spectrum photography and x-rays.
Parchment and vellum, made form animal skin, need dry conditions to survive. They are vunerable to moisture, and can degrade under these conditions - this is because they are made from animal skin which isn't tanned, only limed. They were exensive to produce, hence their repeated re-use over time and their protection throughout time as high value objects. Paper, papyrus and wood tablets need anaerobic conditions, which can be wet or dry. | [
"Paper made from wood pulp is not necessarily less durable than a rag paper. The aging behavior of a paper is determined by its manufacture, not the original source of the fibers. Furthermore, tests sponsored by the Library of Congress prove that all paper is at risk of acid decay, because cellulose itself produces... |
how does the body know what to take in and put out? | It isn't a question of "knowing", the body simply does what the chemistry dictates. Think about a set of interlocking gears, how do they "know" to turn in sync? They don't of course, they don't have any way to do otherwise. This is basically how the body works, just with chemicals rather than gears. | [
"The substance that has been taken may often be determined by asking the person. However, if they will not, or cannot, due to an altered level of consciousness, provide this information, a search of the home or questioning of friends and family may be helpful.\n",
"Apheresis (ἀφαίρεσις (\"aphairesis\", \"a taking... |
After discovering the "New World", did anyone predict (wrongly) there was a 2nd massive continent between the Americas and Asia? | There certainly was a strong belief in a large undiscovered land mass in the unexplored portion of the globe around this time, but it was thought to lie further to the south.
I covered the basics of what was believed about this mysterious continent, which appeared on charts of globes for centuries, in my book *Batavia's Graveyard* (2001):
> ‘Terra Australis Incognita’, they called it: ‘the unknown South-Land’. Even in 1629, its very existence was based more on supposition than on fact. Early geographers, such as the Græco-Egyptian Ptolemy, writing in 140AD, had imagined a world divided into four gigantic continents. Europe, and what was known of Africa and Asia, was believed to occupy the north-east portion of the globe. This massive land mass seemed to require a counter-balance. From the earliest days, therefore, world maps showed a giant continent south of the equator, girdling the earth and in many cases joining South America and Africa to China.
>
> As the Portuguese and Spaniards pressed southwards in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it gradually became apparent that the South-Land could not be as big as it had been supposed. Ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn without sighting it, and sailed north-west across the Pacific and east through the Indian Ocean without finding any trace of the mysterious continent. By the time the VOC was founded, almost the only place left to look was the great blank that still lay south of the Indies and west of the Americas.
>
> Contemporary globes and maps continued to indicate the presence of Terra Australis in this area. Over the years, elements of fantasy had crept into descriptions of the South-Land, and in the sixteenth century faulty interpretation of the works of Marco Polo led to the addition of three non-existent provinces to maps of the southern continent. The most important of the three was Beach, which appeared on many charts with the alluring label *provincia aurifera*, ‘gold-bearing land’; sailors often referred to the whole South-Land by this name. The other imaginary provinces were Maletur (*scatens aromatibus*, a region overflowing with spices) and Lucach, which was said as late as 1601 to have received an embassy from Java. The existence of these provinces was an article of faith for most Europeans; in 1545 the Spaniards had actually appointed a governor of Beach – a certain Pedro Sancho de la Hoz, who was one of the conquistadors of Chile. Even the more pragmatic Dutch did not entirely disbelieve, for their ships had occasionally stumbled unexpectedly across a coast that they believed must be part of Terra Australis.
>
> In the first years of the VOC, the Company’s sailors had largely kept to the sea lanes established by the Portuguese. From the Cape of Good Hope, these ran north along the African coast to Madagascar, and thence north east across the Indian Ocean to the Indies. There were, however, significant problems with this route. The heat was frequently unbearable, the Portuguese unfriendly, and there were numerous shoals and shallows to negotiate along the way. Furthermore, once north of the Cape, contrary winds and currents made the voyage extremely slow; journeys of up to 16 months were not uncommon. There were also frequent hurricanes, which caused the loss of many ships. The Dutch persisted with the Portuguese route, unsatisfactory as it clearly was, only because they knew of no alternative.
>
> Then, in 1610, a senior VOC official named Henrik Brouwer discovered an alternate passage far to the south of the established sea lanes. Heading south rather than north from the Cape of Good Hope until he reached the northern limits of the Roaring Forties, he found a belt of strong, consistent westerlies that hurried his ships towards the Indies. When Brouwer estimated that he had reached the longitude of the Sunda Strait, which divides Java and Sumatra, he had his ships turn north and reached the port of Bantam only five months and 24 days after leaving the United Provinces. He had cut about 2,000 miles from the journey, outflanked the Portuguese, more than halved the time taken to complete the outward voyage, and arrived in Java with a healthy crew to boot.
>
> The VOC's directors were suitably impressed. Faster voyages meant increased profits, and from 1616 all Dutch ships were enjoined to follow the ‘fairway’ Brouwer had discovered. So long as the VOC’s skippers kept an accurate reckoning of their position, it was undoubtedly a far superior route. But the strong winds and fast currents of the Southern Ocean made it all to easy for to under-estimate how far east a ship had sailed. When this occurred, the vessel would miss the turn to the north and find herself sailing dangerously close to the barren coast of Western Australia.
>
> There were several near-disasters. In 1616 the Dutch East Indiaman *Eendracht* unexpectedly encountered the South-Land after an unusually fast passage from the Cape, and sailed north along the coast for a few hundred miles. The charts her officers drew were incorporated into the VOC’s rutters, which henceforth indicated the existence of a small portion of the Australian littoral, called Eendrachtsland; but it was by no means certain at the time whether this new coast was the South-Land or some smaller island. In any case, communication with Europe was so slow that news of the discovery took a long time to reach the ears of many skippers and when, two years later, another ship – the *Zeewolf* – chanced upon what was almost certainly the North West Cape, her skipper was considerably alarmed ‘as we have never heard of this discovery, and the chart shows nothing but open ocean at this place.’
**Sources**
De Jode’s atlas, *Speculum Orbis Terrae*, notes: ‘This region is even today almost unknown, because after the first and second voyages all have avoided sailing thither, so that it is doubtful until even today whether it is a continent or an island. The sailors call this region New Guinea, because its coasts, state and condition are similar in many respects to the African Guinea... After this region the huge Australian land follows which – as soon as it is once known – will represent a fifth continent, so vast and immense is it deemed...’ See also Günter Schilder, *Australia Unveiled: the Share of Dutch Navigators in* *the Discovery of Australia* (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1976) pp.268-9; Miriam Estensen, *Discovery: the Quest for the Great South Land* (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998) pp.5-9. The name ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ appears on Henricus Hondius’s famous world map of 1630 (ibid pp.320-1). Abraham Ortelius’s *Types Orbis Terrarum* (ca.1600) gives ‘Terra Australia Nondum Cognita’ (ibid pp.266-7), and there were several other variants. | [
"The map's cartographer, Matteo Ricci, gave a brief description of the discovery of the Americas. \"In olden days, nobody had ever known that there were such places as North and South America or Magellanica (using a name that early mapmakers gave to a supposed continent including Australia, Antarctica, and Tierra d... |
Can someone help me find the spectra of the TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets? | The data you are looking for is from Hubble. Hubble data can be found [here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_2_). You can always find information about astronomical objects in the big databases, like [Simbad](_URL_1_).
Also, you can always ask authors of studies if they can give you data or if they can tell you, where you can find the data. | [
"TRAPPIST-1f, also designated as 2MASS J23062928-0502285 f, is an exoplanet, likely rocky but under a massive water-steam gaseous envelope at very high pressure and temperature, orbiting within the habitable zone around the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 39 light-years (12 parsecs) away from Earth in the constella... |
why is it that when you uninstall something on your computer, there are still folders related to what you uninstalled left behind with nothing in them ? | On Windows, you can't immediately delete a file that is being accessed by some application or service. Consequently, you can't remove the directory that contains this file, even if you don't need it anymore.
Now, you can tell Windows to delay the file's removal until it's closed (no longer accessed). That's why the file will be gone eventually. However, there's no way to tell Windows to delay the directory's removal until it's empty. Hence, occasional leftover empty directories. | [
"A cluttered email inbox arises when a user does not have a system for archiving some messages and deleting others that are no longer wanted. Electronic documents can become clutter if a user does not delete extraneous files, or if the files are poorly organized (e.g. inconsistent folder structure, empty folders). ... |
Do proteins start to fold as they are being built by the ribosome? | Short answer is yes, as protein chains emerge from the ribosome they begin to fold. However there is a great deal of complexity in folding after emerging from the ribosomes. Some chains are sequestered by chaperones to prevent them folding incorrectly as they emerge, this greatly extends the folding time for such proteins. Most proteins fold within microseconds and as short as the nano second scale but some proteins are known to take up to minutes and there are some invitro examples which can take hours.
> Is the protein folding much slower than the actual "linking" up of the amino acids
Typically no, although it very much depends on the size and complexity of the protein. Translation (the linking up but) is considered to be a function of the rate of tRNA diffusion. For a given codon if the charged tRNA is in excess then translation will not be diffusion limited, however if the tRNA is rare then this can cause folding to stall. One wrinkle in translation is that the tRNAs compete to bind in the ribsome whether or not they are the correct codon match so there is a degree of lag as the ribosome "waits" at each codon until the correct charged tRNA enters and matches the current codon.
> If so, will the protein will fold into the same shape whether it was build up slowly or not?
This remains an open question and was a question we were actively working on in the protein folding group I worked in (until 6 months ago). Basically it is believed that this idea ought be true but so far there is no convincing evidence for it being true.
Edit:what I should actually say is that there is no convincing evidence that translation rate effects the final fold of a protein
> does this mean that a particular chain of amino acids, in some environment has a single(or a small number?) of stable, "folded" states that it will tends towards?
This however is known to be the case for most (all?) proteins which do not need a chaperonin to fold. Given the same physio-chemical environment a protein chain will typically collapse to the same fold (or small subset thereof) | [
"The ribosome is known to actively participate in the protein folding. The structures obtained in this way are usually identical to the ones obtained during protein chemical refolding, however, the pathways leading to the final product may be different. In some cases, the ribosome is crucial in obtaining the functi... |
how do they simulate the smoking of crystal meth in shows such as "breaking bad"? | Its just rock candy that they dont inhale. | [
"In 2012, \"Crystal Blue Persuasion\" was used in the eighth episode of the fifth season of \"Breaking Bad\", \"Gliding Over All\", during a montage depicting the process involved to bring main character Walter White's methamphetamine operation and its signature blue crystal meth to an international level. This mon... |
from where do you measure height of moutains and depth of seas? | Mean sea level is an average level of the surface of one or more of Earth's oceans from which heights such as elevations may be measured.
- Wikipedia | [
"It's distributional range extends from the Red Sea to Tonga, then from Japan to the Great Barrier Reef. It can be found in Brackish water and Salt water, with a depth range of 1 – 70 metres (3 ft - 229 ft), although it is usually seen at depths of 1 – 30 metres (3 ft - 98 ft).\n",
"United States Virgin Islands, ... |
how do babies know to drink/eat | Sucking and swallowing is a natural instinct a baby is born with. During development the brain just automatically produces that instinct.
In babies that are born extremely premature, the brain doesn't have time to develop and mature enough to produce that instinct and they have to be taught how to suck, swallow, and breathe all at the same time.
As they get older, the brain matures even more, and their jaw muscles become stronger, and that allows them to start chewing. | [
"Providing an infant with table foods initiates the development of strong oral motor control for chewing and swallowing, including tongue lateralization and eventual bolus formation. When an infant mouths a food texture, the tongue lateralization reflex forces them to move their tongue to the side to lick and taste... |
Vegetarians claim that it takes 1300 gallons of water to produce a piece of meat that is put in just one hamburger. Can anybody explain? | If you [enter "1300 gallons" into Google](_URL_1_), the fourth result is [a Wall Street Journal article](_URL_0_) that explains exactly what it means. | [
"In an interview published in 2006, Park was quoted as saying that, over the previous 13 years, he had consumed 4,380 turkeys (one a day), 87,600 mince pies (20 a day), 2,190 pints of gravy (half a pint a day), 26,280 roast potatoes (six a day), 30,660 stuffing balls, 219,000 mushy peas, 4,380 bottles of champagne,... |
how did ronda rousey go from a role model to a national joke just by losing one fight? | First, there was a *lot* of hype about her, especially compared to fighters in other weight classes and male fighters. At one point a national publication named her the best pound for pound fighter, male or female. I'm all for equality, but the notion she wouldn't be destroyed by the 100th best male fighter in her weight class is ridiculous.
Second, she went Hollywood. At lot of the reason she had so much hype was because she was attractive and played that up. That may have caused her to lose some focus, and almost certainly lose respect among her peers.
So she was overhyped, bought into the hype, then fell from grace. That's pretty much a tragic hero from Greek drama, a time-honored story everyone loves to hear. | [
"Tate declared that most of the media attention surrounding Rousey was due to Rousey being \"pretty.\" She also claimed that Rousey hadn't been truly tested in her career, stating, \"She's been carefully matched, she’s been pampered and she’s been protected. The truth is, going into this world title fight with me, ... |
How do we know what makes up the center of the world? | The primary way that the different layers of the earth were discovered was through seismology. An earthquake creates a wave that begins near the Earth's surface and propagates outwards in all directions, all the way across the planet if it's strong enough. With sensitive detectors you can feel earthquakes from all over the planet. These waves don't just go out in a uniform circle though, at the interface between two layers the wave is refracted and reflected, like light hitting water. By carefully studying how seismic waves travel through the planet's interior, we can infer the density and thickness of the layers.
As for the actual composition of the layers this can be more difficult, the density can be relatively straightforward but then you still need to know exactly what materials are down there. Once we know the temperatures and pressures to expect at different layers we can perform experiments on materials to see how they behave under those conditions and determine what makes up each layer. The mantle also comes out of the surface every once in a while as lava, so that helps. The core is the least well understood simply because it's so far down there, but the idea that we have an iron core is supported by the presence of a magnetic field, meaning there's gotta be something conductive moving around down there. | [
"BULLET::::- Durham, Jimmie. (1998) \"The Centre of the World is Several Places (Parts I & II).\" Interview by Beverly Koski and Richard William Hill (Berlin, February 1998). \"FUSE Magazine\" vol. 21, nos. 3 & 4, 1998. pp. 24–33 & 46-53, respectively.\n",
"Knowledge of the location of Earth has been shaped by 40... |
How do our brains mark "the place where X happened" on our interior maps? Do positive and negative experiences store differently, or is it the strength of the emotion that counts most? | While not a complete answer, here are a couple of points that may help:
- The hippocampus location stamps memories. That is, it stores spatial information (like where you are in the spatial map) along with other relevant information.
- The amygdala (limbic system) has a memory enhancement effect that enhances LTP (long term potentiation) of the memory and a region called the basolateral nuclear complex within the amygdala strengthens encoding. So, a hyperemotional event may strengthen the memory storage (like what we see in patients with PTSD). A traumatic event (associated with a negative emotion) would likely be encoded and stored *better*. It makes sense in terms of evolution. We'd benefit from remembering the location of traumatic events.
Hope this helps. | [
"Psychologists have used methods such as factor analysis to attempt to map emotion-related responses onto a more limited number of dimensions. Such methods attempt to boil emotions down to underlying dimensions that capture the similarities and differences between experiences. Often, the first two dimensions uncove... |
why is the iran deal good? how do we know that iran isn't tricking us and iran will blow up the whole world with their atomic weapons? | The whole point of the deal is that yesterday we couldn't watch them and they very well *could* have just tricked us and made nukes, but tomorrow we can watch them.
It's not like the deal is to smile and say "Okay Iran we'll stop paying attention now". The deal is that we're allowed to watch them now. Our ability to prevent Iranian nukes is enhanced, not reduced, by the deal. | [
"Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the Iran nuclear deal a \"historic mistake\", told President Barack Obama that Israel was under increased threat because of the deal and said in a statement, “In the coming decade, the deal will reward Iran, the terrorist regime in Tehran, with hundreds of billions of dollars. This c... |
How much continent-wide dispersal of information was there among pre-contact native americans? | Bummer that you got no answer, this is a really interesting question.
If you wanted to make it a research project, then the accounts of travelers like Lewis and Clark might be a good place to start. You'd have to comb through them looking for moments like what you reproduced above, where they actually noted this kind of geographical knowledge.
Another potential place for sources would be the anthropological literature. American anthropologists got into native Americans in a big way in the later nineteenth century, and there's a lot of old ethnographic information out there. These kinds of sources would take a bit more work to get information out of, because, obviously, by that point they're well past the "pre-contact" stage. However, anthropologists would probably have recorded a lot of their stories, including origin-of-the-world stories. Nothing will be obvious in these stories; there won't be any "We know there are these big things called cities far to the south." But, it could be revealing if groups from the interior, for example, explained the origin of the world in such a way that indicated they knew their landmass was surrounded by water. You'd be surprised at what some careful reading on a topic like that can uncover. | [
"There remain uncertainties regarding the precise dating of individual sites and regarding conclusions drawn from population genetics studies of contemporary Native Americans. It is also an open question whether this post-LGM migration represented the first peopling of the Americas, or whether there had been an ear... |
Did Latin Romans ever think that they were the superior race? | Sort of, but not in the same way that modern white supremacists think of 'superior race.'
Romans, like Greeks, divided the world into civilized peoples and barbarians. Civilization was related to one's birth into a kin-group (the Roman words for 'people,' natio and gens, both refer etymologically to someone's birth: think 'natal' and 'generate'), but it was also about education and behavior. A civilized person spoke a certain way, used certain kinds of gestures, and knew certain kinds of knowledge. These values were rooted in Greek traditions, reinterpreted within the Roman empire. Barbarians, on the other hand, talked funny, dressed funny, ate funny foods, and had weird local customs. The lines between civilization and barbarians were often blurred, and barbarians could enter the empire and, if they behaved properly, pass as Romans pretty effectively and even become a Roman citizen (though, like first generation immigrants in the US in the 20th century, this passing could always be challenged, and we have many examples of barbarians who weren't able to shake their outsider status). On the flip side, Romans, especially members of the military, were often accused of having become barbarians by members of the educated, wealthy, civilian class, because military dress and manners blended extensively with the dress and customs of people living on the frontiers, and military men didn't fit in well with civilian culture.
The difference between Roman (or Greek) and barbarian was very imagined in very hierarchical terms. Romans were 'real' men, and barbarians were somewhere between humans and animals. Barbarians could be noble savages when it served a Roman author's rhetorical needs, and they could just as easily be wild beasts; but they were never considered equals (the exception often being Persia, which Romans had to grudgingly admit to be something of a political equal, and hence something more than the typical barbarians).
So in these terms, the Romans definitely considered themselves to be the superior people. But unlike modern racism (which defines race in terms of skin color, skull shape, and outdated theories of human evolution), Roman superiority was rooted in membership in an imagined kin-group, education, manners, language, and citizenship. You didn't have to look Greek or Italian to pass as civilized; but if you talked with a funny accent, and had parents from Germania, people might start to question whether you really belonged.
(And note the implication of that last point: with civilization being tied to accent and education, a lot of poor Romans - who were citizens after the mid 3rd century - were technically insiders in the empire and not barbarians, but still couldn't rise very far because they lacked the skills of a civilized person; racial/ethnic discrimination and social class always go hand in hand.) | [
"Aristotle thought that men were naturally superior to women and Greeks naturally superior to other races; Victorians thought white men had to shoulder the burden of being superior to savages; and Nazis thought Aryans were a master race. We have come to reject these and many other supposedly natural hierarchies; th... |
Was the confederacy and its soldiers viewed as a separate country during the Civil War, or were they still viewed as United States citizens by the government? Did the citizens of the North view them differently? | They were not, as doing so would have legitimized their claim. /u/khosikulu gives a good post on why no outside government recognized the CSA [here](_URL_1_).
> In effect, any nation recognizing the Confederacy as a separate nation would be making war against the Union. (Secretary of State) Seward made this quite clear ... [b]ut recognizing the Confederacy during the conflict would give the stamp of approval to the breakup of the United States.
In short, if the US had recognized the CSA as a separate country, then the civil war would have been viewed as an invasion of a neighbouring country instead of an internal rebellion.
I actually first came across this [here](_URL_0_), discussing American "wars".
| [
"served in both the Union and Confederate military during the American Civil War. Many of the tribes viewed the Confederacy as the better choice due to its opposition to a central federal system which lacked a respect for the sovereignty of Indian nations. In addition, some Native American tribes, such as the Creek... |
What were German strategies like in the Eastern Front during Operation Barbarossa? | I think it might help to generate better answers if you left a comment with specific questions. I think you are asking what the plans were at a lower level than "invade Russia".
I know there was an Army Group North that went after Leningrad, Army Group Center went after Moscow, and Army Group South was sent to take the oil fields around the Caucasus. I would like to know what the tactical-level plans were for each group. | [
"Operation \"Barbarossa\", the German invasion plan, called for the capture of Moscow within four months. On 22 June 1941, Axis forces invaded the Soviet Union, destroyed most of the Soviet Air Force on the ground, and advanced deep into Soviet territory using \"blitzkrieg\" tactics to destroy entire Soviet armies.... |
why, as you get older do muscles get "wear & tear" whereas you can workout at the gym and get "wear & repair" | Wear & tear applies to joints and ligaments. With muscle, the phrase "use it or lose it" is more suitable. | [
"Wear and tear theories of aging suggest that as an individual ages, body parts such as cells and organs wear out from continued use. Wearing of the body can be attributable to internal or external causes that eventually lead to an accumulation of insults which surpasses the capacity for repair. Due to these intern... |
Why are cables connecting towers in a suspension bridge in the form of a parabola? Is this better from a structural standpoint or is it purely aesthetic? | I very much doubt that this is actually a parabola. I suspect it is a [catenary](_URL_0_), otherwise known as a hyperbolic cosine. It turns out that a chain being hung by its endpoints naturally assumes a hyperbolic cosine shape, which looks like a parabola but is not one.
Edit: [I'm wrong](_URL_0_#Suspension_bridge_curve). The version of the answer that doesn't involve math is that the parabolic curve happens to be the most stable for a suspension bridge. | [
"In the cable-stayed bridge, the towers are the primary load-bearing structures that transmit the bridge loads to the ground. A cantilever approach is often used to support the bridge deck near the towers, but lengths further from them are supported by cables running directly to the towers. This has the disadvantag... |
Why are bubbles white? | Light gets refracted every time it passes through the surface of a bubble. When there is just one large bubble, it just gets refracted on the way in and the way out, but it is still coherent enough to form an image (though usually warped).
When there are lots of small bubbles together, the light is refracted many times and in different ways, which makes it so it can't form an image and gets all jumbled together. And they are white because the light going into them that is getting jumbled up is composed of all colors. | [
"Adding coloured dye to bubble mixtures fails to produce coloured bubbles, because the dye attaches to the water molecules as opposed to the surfactant. Therefore, a colourless bubble forms with the dye falling to a point at the base. Dye chemist Dr. Ram Sabnis has developed a lactone dye that sticks to the surfact... |
How do Olympiads keep breaking world records? Won't there come a point where they can be broken no longer? | Of course there *is* a limit, but the limit can be pushed further and further with the proper technology, diet and training. Maybe someone discovers a new technique for sprinting, or a better way to propel yourself at the start of the race. Or a new method of acceleration? Or perhaps someone discovers a diet that gives the sprinter a slight advantage. And then there's the occasional genetically exceptional athlete.
It's pretty difficult to truly know when we've hit the limit. Athletes have been steadily improving over the last 100 years. If we're still pretty much in the same place in 30 years with regards to world records, there's a pretty good chance we're nearing our limits.
But who says we can't host transhumanist Olympics? | [
"From 1999 to 2012, the American Classic Arcade Museum hosted the Annual Classic Videogame and Pinball Tournament, where people came from all over the world to try to beat records on the arcade games housed in the museum. Referees from \"Guinness World Records\" were on hand to verify the record attempts. At the 10... |
how does pulling up the knob on a bathtub faucet make the water come out the shower head? | When you lift the lever ..inside the faucet is a flap. The flap.closes making the water move up the pipe. If you have a small stream and put your hand in front of it..the water goes where there isn't a hand . Same thought | [
"A computer simulation of a typical bathroom found that none of the above theories pan out in their analysis, but instead found that the spray from the shower-head drives a horizontal vortex. This vortex has a low-pressure zone in the centre, which sucks the curtain.\n",
"Up-N-Away was the name of a vertical-slid... |
In a zero G environment, would a rotating ring actually create artificial gravity? | Centrifugal gravity doesn't work quite like real gravity. Depending on which way you run around the ring, you feel heavier or lighter. If you jump straight 'up' you won't land quite where you started. Trying to throw things accurately would be difficult.
In your scenario where the ball is at rest and the ring is rotating around it, air drag will make it move and hit the floor. The air in contact with the wall, floor and ceiling will ensure that the air moves with the ring. | [
"BULLET::::- A Ringworld (or Niven Ring) is an artificial ring encircling a star, rotating faster than orbital velocity to create artificial gravity on its inner surface. A non-rotating variant is a transparent ring of breathable gas, creating a continuous microgravity environment around the star, as in the eponymo... |
Putting it in simple terms, how is this experiment demonstrating the "quantum teleportation of information"? | First of all, quantum teleportation demonstrates that quantum information physicists are really good at naming things in a way that gets the public interested :).
Let me try to explain the textbook quantum teleportation technique (the actual experiment probably differs from this). First, we come up with an entangled state which we know, say a pair of electrons with opposite spins, and give one to Alice and one to Bob. Neither Alice not bob can know whether it will be spin up or down when they measure the spin, and they both have a 1/2 chance of measuring up or down, but with 100% certainty they will always measure opposite values for the spin. This is already weird.
Now for the fun part. Let's say Alice has some qubit (say another electron with an arbitrary superposition of spin up and spin down). Now, there's no way for Alice to find out the complete state of the qubit, because once she makes a single measurement, the qubit collapses and she can't measure any other properties to find the exact superposition it's in. However, by interacting the qubit with her entangled electron in a certain way, and by Bob interacting with his electron in a certain way based on how Alice measured her electron, *Bob can turn his entangled electron into Alice's qubit*.
This is incredible - it's impossible to fully determine the exact quantum state of the qubit, but you can completely send all of its information to a far away place by using an entangled pair. Of course, once Bob has the qubit, he also cannot make any measurements fully determining the state either.
NOTE: when I said Alice communicated results of measurements to Bob, it is done classically, at subluminal speeds. The qubit cannot be teleported faster than light. Also, Bob's electron becomes the qubit, there was no teleportation of matter in the Star Trek sense. | [
"A local explanation of quantum teleportation is put forward by David Deutsch and Patrick Hayden, with respect to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Their paper asserts that the two bits that Alice sends Bob contain \"locally inaccessible information\" resulting in the teleportation of the quantum... |
What would a human look like if it were conceived, gestated, and born in zero gravity? | Disclaimer: the following has a large amount of conjecture since this has not been observed yet.
[This paper suggests](_URL_3_):
> Absence of gravitational loading during the last trimester of gestation would cause hypotrophy of the spinal extensors and lower extremities muscles, reduction in the amount of myosin heavy chain type I in the extensor muscles of the trunk and legs, hypoplasy and osteopeny of the vertebras and lower extremities long bones, and hypotrophy of the left ventricle of the heart muscle.
Translation: smaller/weaker muscles and bones, as well as heart. This is all assuming that conception and implantation occurs, which may not be the case since spaceflight may have interesting effects on various endocrine functions (including reproductive function). [Other concerns include radiation, toxic chemicals, differences in breathing gases, and decompression.](_URL_0_)
Edit: [This (admittedly dated) paper](_URL_1_) notes that rat studies demonstrated healthy offspring, though they were notably smaller than controls. [Microgravity may also make pregnancy easier on the mother](_URL_2_), since the effect of weight is diminished and other effects on exercise tolerance and blood pressure regulation may reduce the burden of childbearing. | [
"In reality, Lawton had rescued the artificial human and was raising it as his own child in secret, thanks to some help from Dr. Bell. When \"Michi\" (\"his\" name) accidentally rendered its \"father\" unconscious and went out to play, he stopped a truck from running over a girl selling flowers. When the boy was mo... |
how a cpu working at 3.00 ghz and 40nm could potentially be less powerful than a cpu working at 2.50 ghz but 22 nm. | Gigahertz isn't everything. How efficient the CPU is at using cores matters, number of cores/threads, etc.
Intel CPUs (the 22nm one) have stronger single core performance than AMD equivalent CPUs. If the programs you compare (so most games) don't make use of extra cores the Intel CPUs generally come up trumps.
Secondly, lower nm is better, not the other way around. | [
"The processor has 10.4 million transistors, is manufactured by BAE Systems using either 250 or 150 nm process and has a die area of 130 mm². It operates at 110 to 200 MHz. The CPU itself can withstand 200,000 to 1,000,000 Rads and temperature ranges between −55 and 125 °C.\n",
"First figures indicate that at equ... |
How reliable are the various stories listed in _URL_0_? If it is unreliable, how can I refute their claims? | It's all complete bullshit, but I suppose you already knew that... It's just some fraud deriving wholly unjustified conclusions from some pictures or models that vaguely look like aircraft or even drawing the pictures themselves by reading Indian poetry.
All the information comes from three ridiculous books written by the same guy. In the only instance I saw of another historian being referenced (historian Evan Koshtka), a quick google search shows that he does not seem to exist except in recycled versions of that same sentence. | [
"The story must be documented by reliable sources: e.g., reputable newspaper articles, confirmed television reports, or responsible eyewitnesses. If a story is found to be untrue, it is disqualified, but particularly amusing ones are placed in the urban legend section of the archives. Despite this requirement, many... |
What is the history of private property? When and where did the idea emerge, and how has it evolved through history? | As you said it's a very broad question, but in terms of modern economics and society:
Adam Smith is perhaps one of the most well known capitalist economists, but he developed his theories from the ideas of the [physiocrats](_URL_0_), a group of French economists during the Enlightenment. They are often refered to as the "fathers of modern economics". Private property as a concept dates way further back, of course, but the Enlightenment was when it truly began to take off, politically, as something people really believed in as a fundamental right. | [
"The question of ownership reaches back to the ancient philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, who held different opinions on the subject. Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) thought private property created divisive inequalities, while Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) thought private property enabled people to receive the full ... |
why do phones measure power as ma and mah, while laptops use watts and wh? | Phones use a single 3.7 volt cell so Watt-Hours can be calculated by multiplying AH times 3.7 volts. Laptops use various numbers of cells, so WH gives a better predictor of performance.
Amp-Hours are used when comparing cells of the same voltage. | [
"It is most effective on laptop computers. Laptops are specifically designed to allow power use to be both monitored and controlled. In particular, many laptop computers can measure the rate of battery use (when not connected to mains power). PowerTOP uses this feature to estimate power usage in Watts and battery l... |
do your internal organs have colour while still inside you? | Whether or not light is present, they have properties that cause them to reflect certain wavelengths of light, so I think you could argue they still have a color. Neat question though. What is color? The reflected wavelengths or the properties that cause certain wavelengths to be reflected? | [
"Internal organs, or viscera, may also be preserved in the specimen as reddish areas. One is located in the thoracic cavity low in the ribcage, while the other is located in the upper portion of the abdominal cavity just behind the ribcage. The reddish areas were analysed with mass spectrometry and were shown to co... |
If everything in a black hole is compressed into a singularity, does all the mass just turn into one massive atom? | The singularity is not part of spacetime, so it doesn't make sense to say there is any mass there. So what happens to objects that cross the event horizon? We don't really know. The fact that GR predicts that all paths inside the event horizon move toward the singularity is a problem with the theory. The theory is not equipped at all to say what happens "after the singularity". Indeed, that's what makes it a singularity. | [
"In the frame of reference that is co-moving with the collapsing matter, general relativity models without quantum mechanics have all the matter ending up in an infinitely dense singularity at the center of the event horizon. (If one uses the UFT Einstein–Maxwell–Dirac system or its generalizations, then the singul... |
why does the sound of people whispering to each other sound more irritable to our ears, than people talking to each other at a normal tone, while we are trying to concentrate on some work? | Higher pitched sounds like whispers remain audible for longer distances.
If you're in a library and someone is whispering, you're more likely to have your brain's innate "someone is talking, listen!" sense repeatedly activated. | [
"Psychological noise results from preconceived notions we bring to conversations, such as racial stereotypes, reputations, biases, and assumptions. When we come into a conversation with ideas about what the other person is going to say and why, we can easily become blinded to their original message. Most of the tim... |
How far would two objects have to be apart for gravity and expansion of space to cancel each other out? | 30cm or so.
Calculation, using (kilograms, meters, seconds units): F = m*a = (G * m1 * m2)/r^2
Local acceleration of the universe's expansion, UE, is [7E-10 m/s^2](_URL_0_)
We can cancel all the m's because they equal 1.
So the equation to solve is UE = G / r^2.
G = 6.67E-11
So r = sqrt(G/UE) = sqrt(6.67E-11/7E-10) = sqrt(0.677/7) = 0.3m = 30cm
Frankly, this number seems quite small to me, but I have no accurate intuition about gravity between balls in deep space, so I'll take the calculation. | [
"The two-body problem is interesting in astronomy because pairs of astronomical objects are often moving rapidly in arbitrary directions (so their motions become interesting), widely separated from one another (so they won't collide) and even more widely separated from other objects (so outside influences will be s... |
How would you address a Roman aristocrat? | The famous line *"Ave, imperator, morituri te salutant"* ([Suet. Claud. 21,6](_URL_0_)) is a perfect example for the typical combination of salutation (ave or salve) in combination with the highest title of the addressed.
There's also some evidence on the use of *dominus* (sir/lord) in an episode about Augustus ([Suet. Aug. 53](_URL_1_)) who doesn't want to be addressed like this anymore, because it resembles the salutation of a god too much. | [
"\"Aristocrat\" and aristocracy, in modern usage, refer colloquially and broadly to persons who inherit elevated social status, whether due to membership in the (formerly) official nobility or the monied upper class.\n",
"BULLET::::- the constant feuds between aristocrats in archaic Greece, and their struggles to... |
Is there a historical reason why swing states exist in U.S. politics? | Swings states often don't have unpredictable voting patterns, they are simply more evenly divided. As a basic model, think of three states. A is 45% Democratic voters, 35% Republican voters, 20% swing voters. B is 45% Republican, 35% Democratic, 20% swing. C is 40% Democratic, 40% Republican, 20% swing. For the Republicans to win A, they need to convince a full 75% of the swing voters, while they only need to convince 25% of swing voters to take B, and 50% to take C.
Convincing 75% of the swing voters is very difficult, so A will almost always vote Democrat and B almost always Republican. Convincing 50% is much easier, so C will swing between the parties, even though it has the same proportion of swing voters and they vote exactly the same as in the other states. | [
"A consensus among political pundits developed throughout the primary election season regarding swing states. From the results of presidential elections from 2004 through to 2012, the Democratic and Republican parties would generally start with a safe electoral vote count of about 150 to 200. However, the margins r... |
Which denomination of Christianity was the first to actively preach anti-homosexuality or campaign against homosexuals? And when? | You would find a very useful starting point in Mark Jordan's *The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology* (1998) where he traces the first explicit and fixated attention on "sodomy" as meaning same-sex relations to the 11th-century writings of theologian Peter Damian. John Boswell's *Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality* (1980) is also very useful for tracing the Christian view of same-sex relations into the Middle Ages. (I'm avoiding "homosexuality" because they didn't have the concept: hence "sodomy.")
EDIT: One more thought: R.I. Moore's *The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250* (2nd ed. 2007) discusses how sodomy (and other forms of "social deviance") became a good way to smear ideological or political enemies. Heretics, especially, were accused of this, which was among the reasons to hunt them down. When the Knights Templar were abolished in 1312 (and a bunch of them burned at the stake in 1310), sodomy was one of the charges against them. | [
"This has precipitated crises in various Christian denominations, resulting from divergent construals of Christian ethical doctrines (see Homosexuality and Christianity), which in turn are associated with the interpretation of the Bible (exegesis and hermeneutics). Traditionally, Christian doctrine has categorized ... |
what influences the color of snot? | As far as I know is the bacteria-dead cells and how intense the cold is or flu. The stronger the infection..the greener the snot and thicker. | [
"Melanin (; from \"melas\", \"black, dark\") is a broad term for a group of natural pigments found in most organisms. Melanin is produced through a multistage chemical process known as melanogenesis, where the oxidation of the amino acid tyrosine is followed by polymerization. The melanin pigments are produced in a... |
the modern purpose of british royalty? | > I understand that they bring a lot of tourism, do a lot of work as international ambassadors and some even do a lot of good work for charitable organisations. Yet they do not govern and still cost the tax-payer millions of dollars
The profit they bring in from tourism outweighs their cost as a tax expenditure. Also, if we remove the Royal Family, the money spent on them doesn't suddenly just disappear, it instead goes to funding a president and then every so often we have to pay to run an election for president too. Plus, the Royal Family pay for a large portion of their own expenses.
> yet still achieve all of the benefits that I listed...
But there's also a huge drawback. The Monarch is one of, if not the, largest landowner in the country. But as the Monarch they're not allowed to use the lands, a deal struck with parliament centuries ago basically dictates that parliament will pay for reasonable personal expenditure, but gets to use the land of the monarch for their own purposes, at essentially no charge.
Remove the monarchy and then Elizabeth Windsor becomes the highest private landowner in the country, and the projects already built on her land she can charge through the nose for, or simply shut down.
Also, how would the Royal Family continue to act as ambassadors? After republicanism, they're just regular citizens. They have training, and experience in the field. But unless appointed to the position, they're just people.
Anyway, they don't even cost that much. They cost each person in the country 2p. People lose more than that when coins fall out their pocket. I currently have my lifetime supply of tax to the monarchy in my pocket. | [
"The Royal Institution was founded as the result of a proposal by the American-born Bavarian Count Rumford for the \"formation by Subscription, in the Metropolis of the British Empire, of a Public Institution for diffusing the Knowledge and facilitating the general Introduction of useful Mechanical Inventions and I... |
We often hear of "killing the messenger," but how dangerous was it, really, to be a messenger bearing bad news or unwelcome demands in Classical or Medieval Europe/Near East/North Africa? | That's an interesting and really broad question, so I'll just deal with the Roman period. There were numerous factors protecting the bearers of bad news in this period.
Messengers within Republican Rome itself to the Senate for instance could be anybody: they could be civilians carrying news from somewhere else. They may not have been citizens or even Latins so they did not necessarily have legal protection. For a start, the Romans, like everybody else were basically not in the habit of hurting or killing people who brought them news for the very practical reason that 'shooting the messenger' might mean you got no more (accurate) messages. Plutarch castigates Tigranes of Armenia for such a foolish act:
> "Since the first messenger who told Tigranes that Lucullus was coming had his head cut off for his pains, no one else would tell him anything, and so he sat in ignorance while the fires of war were already blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him and said that Lucullus would be a great general if he ventured to withstand Tigranes at Ephesus, and did not fly incontinently from Asia at the mere sight of so many myriads of men." (Plut. Luc. 25.1)
In the Imperial period, messengers within the Empire were usually soldiers, but they worked giving messages to Imperial authorities. As citizens they were both more and less vulnerable to being 'shot' as the messenger: they were subject to *disciplina militaris*, which denied many of the rights to safety and appeal of the civilian citizen, but on the other hand their being soldiers meant they could generally only be executed for a military reason, lest an official or officer upset the local soldiers, which could be very fatal for them. Mutiny was perhaps the Imperial soldier's most important protection from unreasonable violence from superiors. So 'shooting the messenger' was not a great option for soldiers either. I would not be surprised to find examples of certain Roman Emperors who are unpopular in the literature committing such an act (I can't think of any at the moment), but these would be looked upon with scorn by the writer and used as an example of that particular Emperor's bad character.
For the Romans, the reputation of their nation and the high status of their messengers might also protect them from harm. The story of Gaius Popilius Laenas single-handedly facing down Antiochus IV and his army in Egypt to prevent them from attacking the Ptolemies, a Roman ally, is instructive:
> "At the time when Antiochus approached Ptolemy and meant to occupy Pelusium, Caius Popilius Laenas, the Roman commander, on Antiochus greeting him from a distance and then holding out his hand, handed to the king, as he had it by him, the copy of the senatus-consultum, and told him to read it first, not thinking it proper, as it seems to me, to make the conventional sign of friendship before he knew if the intentions of him who was greeting him were friendly or hostile. But when the king, after reading it, said he would like to communicate with his friends about this intelligence, Popilius acted in a manner which was thought to be offensive and exceedingly arrogant. He was carrying a stick cut from a vine, and with this he drew a circle round Antiochus and told him he must remain inside this circle until he gave his decision about the contents of the letter. The king was astonished at this authoritative proceeding, but, after a few moments' hesitation, said he would do all that the Romans demanded. Upon this Popilius and his suite all grasped him by the hand and greeted him warmly. The letter ordered him to put an end at once to the war with Ptolemy. So, as a fixed number of days were allowed to him, he led his army back to Syria, deeply hurt and complaining indeed, but yielding to circumstances for the present." (Pol. 29.27)
Even so, note the suggestion that Laenas acted arrogantly. Even in the ancient world, where harsh and threatening "compellence diplomacy" was the norm, this was pretty wild conduct (Eckstein, 2006, 173). Even between intense enemies, diplomats (usually Senators) seem to have been able to expect safety. See Hannibal in Spain blowing off the diplomatic party from Rome at the outbreak of the Second Punic War while in the process of attacking a Roman ally:
> "In the mean time, an account was received, that ambassadors had arrived from Rome; on which Hannibal sent messengers to the sea-shore, to meet them, and to acquaint them, that it would not be safe for them to come to him, through the armed bands of so many savage nations; and, besides, that, in the present critical state of affairs, he had not leisure to listen to embassies. He saw clearly, that on being refused audience, they would proceed immediately to Carthage: he therefore despatched messengers and letters beforehand, to the leaders of the Barcine faction, charging them to prepare their friends to act with spirit, so that the other party should not be able to carry any point in favour of the Romans. Thus the embassy there proved equally vain and fruitless, excepting that the ambassadors were received and admitted to audience." (Livy 21.10).
Even while deliberately provoking Rome to war and fighting a siege, there is no suggestion that the diplomats sent to Hannibal would be threatened. On the subject of the Carthaginians however, they had a practice of crucifying unsuccessful generals, and the story goes that they tortured to death a captured Roman consul (Marcus Atilius Regulus) who broke an oath he had sworn to his captors. Even so, Rome still felt that it could send diplomats to their most aggressive general and expect safety. I would suggest that this meant it was the norm, no doubt through cultural values and norms rather than any rules or laws, there being no international legal system to enforce such a system even if it did exist.
At least in the early Republican period, there were more formalised forms of diplomacy such as the *fetials*, where a fetial priest would make his way to another Italian city, abuse the first enemy citizen he saw, and then make a song and dance in the enemy forum and demand reparations, which may or may not be actually achievable requests, and war would be declared in the aftermath if the demands weren't met. This was in order to establish divine approval for a war (Dawson, 1996, 124-5). Nowhere have I seen it suggested that the fetials would have been exposed to any danger. This is from an archaic period and I would not extrapolate this to later Rome or the Empire or Medieval Europe or anywhere else, but it is an example of how cultural norms (and religious deference) can render such 'messengers' quite safe even when carrying pretty unpleasant and aggressive tidings.
Using the logic I have already developed, as for messengers to somebody like Attila, I don't have the evidence to definitely answer that but I would suggest that only high ranking persons would be sent if any were sent at all. I am extrapolating this from Republican practice however. That said, if the Romans did not consider Attila to be a legitimate king, as he was a nomad, there was no reason the normal rules of war had to apply. It is my understanding that Roman *jus ad bellum* referred mainly to war between states, whereas war between Romans and any sort of rebels or traitors or some barbarian enemies, as Attila might be defined as, required no declaration of war, hence no delegation would need to be sent to Attila for the Romans to consider it a just war. Any messengers sent to Attila would have been in a diplomatic sense, and Attila for practical reasons could not harm such men: unless he wanted to just fight forever and never extract any official recognition or payment from the Empire, he would have had to accept diplomats and talk to them. If he hurt them they'd stop coming. Further, the purpose of war generally being to extract a formal surrender for the enemy along with concessions, diplomats and messengers of various shades were absolutely essential to achieve this. This had been the pattern of Hunnic warfare in the Eastern Empire in the early-to-mid 400s: invasion, extracting concessions, then leaving. Attila may have had grander plans, as evidenced by his attempt to marry Honoria, the sister of the Emperor. However this would make formal discourse and recognition more important to him, not less. Perhaps a true marauder with no imperial ambitions might be more violent towards foreign messengers (perhaps somebody like Tamerlane might be an instructive example?)*, but this was not a practical way of doing things.
As such, at least in the Roman period, I think messengers both within European states and to other powers were generally kept safe by a mixture of cultural and intercultural norms and practical considerations regarding the need for information and communication between warring powers. Exceptions to these norms perhaps only proved the rule, and would have been examples of outrageous (and probably impious) conduct in any case where it occurs in the literature, setting the perpetrator up for a fall later on. If anything, 'don't shoot the messenger' seems as if it would have been fairly practical advice in the Roman period.
*And look at where murdering a few Mongol traders got the Kwarazemian dynasty! The Mongols were no doubt another example (along with the Mid Republic-Mid Imperial Romans) of a race/army/state so feared that their representatives were often sacrosanct.
Sources:
Livy (trans. George Baker), Polybius (trans. W.R. Paton, Loeb Edition), Plutarch *Life of Lucullus* (trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Edition).
Dawson, Doyne. The Origins of Western Warfare: Militarism and Morality in the Ancient World. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996.
Eckstein, Arthur M. Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006.
| [
"Until the advent of modern telecommunication, messages were usually delivered by human envoys. For example, in war, a messenger would be sent from one camp to another. If the message was unfitting, the receiver might blame the messenger for such bad news and take their anger out on them.\n",
"On 22 September 201... |
What is likely to have been the first audible event in the universe, had someone been around to hear it? | Sound is actually the same as any other wave in the universe. The only thing that matters is it's frequency. Human ears have been tuned to react to the wave frequencies between 20 to 20,000 Hz (oscillations per second).
Seeing how you said "audible" in your question than that means you are actually asking "what was the first wave of matter with a frequency between 20 and 20,000 Hz?".
I'm guessing the big bang probably had lots of waves among that spectrum. | [
"no eye had seen before and no ear had heard of. Do you know how all this came about? It was the supplications during the dark nights of one who had lost himself in God which caused a revolution in the world, and showed such wonders as could never have been expected from that Unlettered and Helpless one [the Holy P... |
A "biohacker" with a PhD in biophysics says he's modified his DNA with CRISPR. What's the reality of this? | Editing DNA with CRISPR is absolutely possible. But it kinda depends on what he means by "modifying his DNA." Sure, you can change it in a test tube, or even in a living cell. But changing the DNA in every cell in the human body is still an impossibly tall order.
That day will come. But we're years, if not decades, away from it. | [
"As of March 2015, multiple groups had announced ongoing research with the intention of laying the foundations for applying CRISPR to human embryos for human germline engineering, including labs in the US, China, and the UK, as well as US biotechnology company OvaScience. Scientists, including a CRISPR co-discovere... |
how does depression in humans compare to depression in animals? | That is hard to answer because depression in people is diagnosed largely by how they subjectively feel and how they think, something animals can’t really tell us. | [
"Certain types of human depression are precipitated by stressful life events, and vulnerable individuals experiencing these stressors may develop clinical depression. Consequently, the majority of animal models of depression are based on the exposure to various types of acute or chronic stressors.\n",
"Models of ... |
why is there so much meat on chickens when all they do is stand around clucking all day? | Chickens today are bred to have larger breasts, AND they usually get pumped full of hormones to make them grow quickly. I live in an area with many commercial chicken farms, and they all can take a chick straight from the egg to full grown bird ready to eat in less than 2 months. HERE IS THE KICKER. All of my friends who own these operations WILL NOT let their families eat the birds that they sell.. Think about that. | [
"Keeping chickens as pets became increasingly popular in the 2000s among urban and suburban residents. Many people obtain chickens for their egg production but often, will also name them and treat them as any other pet. Chickens are just like any other pet in that they provide companionship and have individual pers... |
Why are the natives of New Zealand seemingly more integrated and less disenfranchised (comparatively) than those of Australia and the Americas? | I am not sure I would agree that Maoris are more integrated and less disenfranchised than indigenous groups of Australia and "the Americas." The Americas includes a lot of different independent countries, and each country has a different track record with regard to disenfranchisement and integration. As far as the Maoris go, New Zealand (or Aotearoa) developed similarly to other British colonies with regard to indigenous peoples. Initially, the Europeans traded with the Maoris, who owned all the land and were all of the people there. In the early 1800's, the Maori tribes were still battling each other over land disputes and supremacy. The Europeans introduced muskets through trade, and the battles between tribes became exponentially more lethal, taking a huge toll on the indigenous population. This resulted was that about half of the Maori population disappeared after 40 years of fighting (from 100,000 to 50,000 or so). In 1840, the British, fearing that the French would claim New Zealand in their colonial efforts in the South Pacific, sent the navy captain William Hobson with instructions to negotiate a treaty with the Maori chiefs that would make New Zealand subject to the crown. Most of the Maori chiefs signed off on the treaty, although some refused. The problem was that the treaty was written in both English and Maori, and the chiefs signed the Maori version. The translation into Maori was not accurate (there is a lot of debate about whether that was intentional or not), and Maori was not a written language anyways until the Europeans arrived. After signing the treaty of Watagi (pronounced Wahtahngee) in 1840, many British began arriving to settle. The Europeans introduced with them infectious diseases, such as small pox, whooping cough, and measles, for which the Maoris lacked acquired immunity. Their population again reduced drastically, from between 10 and 50% into the late 1800s. Meanwhile, the British continued to come and settle. Because the Maoris did not agree with the interpretation of the Treaty of Watagi regarding property rights, within 20 years the British were fighting various Maori tribes in the New Zealand wars (which began in 1860). While these wars did not lead to mass deaths, they did result in the Maoris losing most of their land. The Native Land Acts of 1862 was designed to give Maoris private property rights rather than collective ownership of tribal lands. It resulted in Maoris selling 95% of their land between 1840 and 1890 (with a fair amount of it simply taken as retaliation for the New Zealand Wars). By 1891, Maoris were just 10% of the population of New Zealand, and most of the land they owned was of poor quality. By 1896, there were 42,000 Maoris and more than 700,000 Europeans. While Maori populations have recovered and grown, they remain a relatively small minority in New Zealand. The Maoris do have some seats in congress reserved for them, but it is a relatively small amount. Virtually all of the political leaders and all prime ministers of New Zealand have been Europeans (although James Carroll, a Maori, served as acting prime minister twice). | [
"New Zealand is a country that is isolated from much of the rest of the world geographically, culturally, socially and gastronomically. New Zealanders are predominantly of European ancestry, although there exists a notable number of Asians, and Polynesians including indigenous Māori. It is perhaps not surprising th... |
When did the catholic church first start to punish heresy with death? | The short answer is never.
The long answer is that the Church in the medieval period did not carry out punishments on heretics, but that heretic who were to be punished were handed over to secular authorities (i.e. the local king/count/duke etc.) to be punished. But in the vast majority of cases, this was not a punishment for heresy, but for heretics who had relapsed, who had confessed and been forgiven for their erroneous beliefs, but who later reverted to heresy. The goal in every case of suspected heresy was to get the suspected heretic to renounce the heresy and return to the true faith, thereby saving their immortal soul - this was the standard practice of the Church's inquisition in the south of France in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Even the most famous burnings for heresy of the Middle Ages, that of Jacques de Molay and other Templar leaders in 1314, was not for their many alleged heresies, but for recanting their earlier confessions (Templar brothers who had confessed and repented were allowed to live out their days in other monasteries and religious houses, with heavy penance.)
In fact, the only direct case of burning for heresy *without* this process of confession and recanting that I know of is the so-called Orléans heresy. This was a small heretical movement which spread among learned circles of Churchmen in central France and was condemned by King Robert II of France at a council in Orléans in 1023 (although, like many medieval heresies, there was almost certainly a political element to these accusations too). It's important to note here that it's Robert, not the church itself, who decided to execute the heretics (between 10 and 14, according to various accounts). Even so, the hope was that the threat of execution would cause the heretics to recant, as the historian Ralph Glaber makes clear:
> When many had employed all their ingenuity in seeking to make them [the heretics] abandon their dangerous ideas and accept the true and universal faith, and they had altogether refused, they were told that if they would not rapidly return to a proper notion of the faith, on the king's orders and with the consent of the whole people they should be delivered over to the flames without delay. But they were confident in their evil madness [...]. The king and those with him saw that they could not be recalled from this folly; he ordered that a huge fire should be lit not far from the city; hoping that the sight of this would frighten them into giving up their malign belief.
(Rodulfus Glaber, *Histories*, Book III, chap. 31, trans. John France)
So execution for heresy was always a last resort, and for the best part of the middle ages was never actually for heresy itself, but for relapsed heretics, and was carried out by the secular government, not by the church itself.
[N.B. This answer is about central and later medieval heresy. The late antique and Early Christian heresies you mentioned in your OP (pelagianism and arianism) were not, AFAIK, punished by death, but I don't really know enough about them to comment.] | [
"Within five years of the official 'criminalization' of heresy by the emperor, the first Christian heretic, Priscillian, was executed in 385 by Roman officials. For some years after the Protestant Reformation, Protestant denominations were also known to execute those whom they considered heretics.\n",
"Within six... |
Want to know where my grandma was held during WWII | You should contact the [Bund der Vertriebenen](_URL_2_) or the [Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft](_URL_1_) ([German homepage](_URL_0_)). | [
"The names of the 53 people forced to leave their homes for internment camps during World War II are etched into the floor planks. The communal, military-style camps were ringed by barbed wire and guard towers. Mary Tanaka Abo, one of John Tanaka’s sisters, attended the dedication ceremony along with her extended f... |
why aren't more laws created or changed by grandfathering them in years or even decades from now? | Because a grandfathered in law can still be changed before it goes into effect. Sure, *now* it won't hit hard, but in 10 years when it's about to happen? People in Congress *then* are going to be de-elected if it actually goes into effect. So, they'll put it off, or scrap it.
Besides that, setting a policy to happen in 30 years is frankly stupid. No one has any idea what the state of the world will be in 30 years, and whether that'd be a sensible policy at all at that point. | [
"BULLET::::- Laws should be relatively stable and not changed too often, as with frequently changing laws it may be hard for people to keep themselves updated. People need to know what the law is both for short- and long-term planning.\n",
"Ideas about the nature of law in general were beginning to change. In 171... |
how do electricity companies increase the supply to deal with surges in demand like big sporting events on tv and where does the spare power get kept when it's not needed? | They monitor the demand, and they have rapid-response small generating plants (peaker plants) that they will turn on as needed.
_URL_0_
They work hard to notice patterns in demand so they can predict spikes. Like [tea time.](_URL_1_)
| [
"Shedding loads during peak demand is important because it reduces the need for new power plants. To respond to high peak demand, utilities build very capital-intensive power plants and lines. Peak demand happens just a few times a year, so those assets run at a mere fraction of their capacity. Electric users pay f... |
why is it seemingly easier to converse with someone face-to-face than it is with someone you can't physically see (for instance, over the phone)? | We are very visually oriented and facial recognition is important in bonding and socializing. We also tend to relate to things that look similar to us more easily and without something to look at and remind us of our similarities, socialization becomes more difficult. Besides that, phones slightly distort the sound compared to face-to-face conversing, so you feel even less bonded and less like socializing. Body language also contributes as it allows us to read between the lines, as it were. We can figure out where we stand socially with others by their mannerisms and movement. Without these cues, socialization is further impeded as you become less sure of yourself and your standing with the person. | [
"When two or more people engage in conversation, the person that converses is accustomed to being looked at. Therefore, making eye contact and mimicking the eye contact creates a mirrored effect to the other person to expect conversation and dialogue.\n",
"When two or more individuals talk, the person that talks ... |
why does strong encryption matter if passwords can be cracked easily through brute force anyway? | Encryption stores a password in a a secret code. So even if someone can hack a server to find your password, they wouldn’t be able to read it without knowing how to crack the secret code. This is added security. It would be like putting that crappy building lock in a very strong safe/box that can only be opened with a very complex, hidden key. It doesn’t necessarily matter if the password is poor if the security for that password is super strong. However, simple passwords are easier to guess at random. If you can guess a password, there is no need to even hack and translate the secret code. That’s why it’s still important to have a fairly-complicated password, AND use encryption | [
"The key length used in the encryption determines the practical feasibility of performing a brute force attack, with longer keys exponentially more difficult to crack than shorter ones. Brute force attacks can be made less effective by obfuscating the data to be encoded, something that makes it more difficult for a... |
If placed in a controlled environment, do trees that normally undergo seasonal leaf Abcission stop losing their leaves? | I'm not any kind of expert, but no one else has answered this; so I looked it up, and I'll try my best.
From what I'm reading, deciduous abscission results from a decrease in production of auxin in the leaves. This triggers a physical change in a dual layer of cells connecting the leaf to the tree, called (appropriately enough) the abscission layer. The cells of this layer change shape, eventually separating the leaf from the tree. The process also seals the stem.
The decrease in auxin is caused by environmental changes associated with the change of seasons. With that in mind, I would presume that deciduous trees kept in a controlled summer-like environment that never changes would not undergo abscission.
This would normally be bad for them, as abscission is an adaptation to winter weather, but in a controlled constant environment, they would not be threatened by that. (Also, a cold environment would just trigger it anyway.) However, it's thought that abscission serves some other purposes, too, such as reducing insect damage (by just discarding and regrowing damaged foliage). Abscission also helps control cavitation, but that's also a seasonal problem, and in a controlled environment would presumably be less of a problem. In sum, it sounds to me as if abscission would not be necessary in a controlled environment, and so would be less likely to occur.
| [
"In botany and horticulture, deciduous plants, including trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials, are those that lose all of their leaves for part of the year. This process is called abscission. In some cases leaf loss coincides with winter—namely in temperate or polar climates. In other parts of the world, includi... |
magnetotherapy | Short answer is it doesn't actually do anything.
It's a pseudoscience that people claim actually works. Their is no well done study that shows it as a viable means of treatment. The results aren't reproducible and nothing has passed peer reviewed. | [
"Magnetobiology is a subset of bioelectromagnetics. Bioelectromagnetism and biomagnetism are the study of the \"production\" of electromagnetic and magnetic fields by biological organisms. The \"sensing\" of magnetic fields by organisms is known as magnetoreception.\n",
"Magnetocardiography (MCG) is a technique t... |
What is the first reliable date in Chinese history? | Dates are notoriously difficult things to substantiate. Are you asking for a rough period? a year? a day?
Roughly - We know about Longshan and Erlitou cultures from the archeological record, but there is no evidence to suggest that either were the semi-legendary Xia Dynasty. Nothing about the Xia is especially datable. Erlitou seems like an excellent fit for the Xia, if the Xia ever existed at all. But we will probably never know. So for datable history, we really have to talk about the Shang. We have so much writing, in bronze inscription and in oracle bones, that we can safely date the Shang in general. But it sounds like you are looking for something more specific.
In that case I think we can start to trust the yearly dating given for at least the Warring States period. The shell of history writing existed from the Spring and Autumn Annals, and there were so many literate traditions that came from that time that we can trust the collected accounts of the Han.
How do we know these things? Writings might reference particular rulers, and the date of their rule (Wu's 14th year, etc etc) - when we put together all of these sources we can then line up the rulers with somewhat accurate reign dates. We stack these reign dates back to back starting with the last rulers before the Qin (when dates are extremely reliable) and working backwards, and we have a reliable dating system that stretches back until things get fuzzy in the spring and autumn/late Zhou period.
Exact day - either the Qin or the Han - it was absolutely vital to the legitimation of a new dynasty to establish a reliable and accurate calendar. The Qin and Han rulers were very careful about this process, and so dates are very reliable after 221. | [
"The earliest securely dated event in Chinese history is the start of the Gonghe Regency in 841 BC, early in the Zhou dynasty, a date first established by the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian. Attempts to establish earlier dates have been plagued by doubts about the origin and transmission of traditional texts and t... |
Did the Silk Road increase stability at all due to reliance on the wealth that it brought? | It's probably the other way around: stability held increase the viability of the Silk Road. The Silk Road ran through a few large, stable empires including Han China, Parthia, and Rome (along with various Indian kingdoms and empires, including the Maurya Empire for a little bit). The ability of these large empires to control their territory and maintain peace (e.g. Pax Romana) allowed trade to become more pervasive.
An interesting parallel can be drawn with the rise of trade between Europe and Asia during the 13th century. While there were many causes for this (including the rise of trade empires like Venice and Genoa, renewed relations between Christian and Muslim lands, etc), the stability brought by the emergence of the Mongol Empire helped allow trade and travel to become more common between East and West. Early accounts, like those of William of Rubruck, and later accounts, like those of Marco Polo and John Mandeville, illustrate the general typicality of the contact between East and West.
The emergence of the plague, dissolution of the Mongol Empire, and rise of more powerful and expansionary states in the Middle East (namely the Ottoman Empire) helped cut off Europe from the East, until the Age of Exploration. | [
"The Silk Road trade played a significant role in the development of the civilizations of China, Korea, Japan, the Indian subcontinent, Iran, Europe, the Horn of Africa and Arabia, opening long-distance political and economic relations between the civilizations. Though silk was the major trade item exported from Ch... |
when will we reach the point-of-no-return when it comes to climate change? how much time do we have left at current trends? | You have to define what you're returning from.
Earth will most certainly continue to spin and heat and cool regardless if any life is still alive on it.
If you're talking about a point where it is impossible to avoid the ecosystem failing and all life on Earth extinguishing... Then not for a very long time. Bacteria and cockroaches are super-hardy.
If you're talking about a point where it is impossible to avoid human extinction... Then it's still quite a while. We're pretty resourceful and there's hope we'll be able to live in sealed boxes the rest of our days and not need things like trees.
If you're talking about some arbitrary amount of disruption to the ecosystem that would have an effect on human activities.... then we're probably already there.
Even if the system has a HUGE amount of inertia and it's pushed WAY past our ability to correct it... we'll still be here tomorrow and the next decade and the next hundred years. But it might be hard to grow any crops in the great Amazon desert by that point.
You're asking for a sense of scale of the problem, and sadly I don't have a great sense of it myself. | [
"The report did not predict whether the 25-year cooling trend would continue. It stated (Forward, p. v) that, \"we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course [so] it does not seem possible to predict climate,\" and (p. 2) \"The climates of the earth have alwa... |
when we lose a game, why does our body feel a sense of failure even though it's not real? why does our body accept failure at all? what's the point of such a negative emotion? | We feel the defeat of failure for the same reason we feel success. Knowing that we failed can drive us to try harder next time in the same way that succeeding makes us want to do it again.
Sometimes, however, you don't know what you did wrong or how you could've done better, and all you feel is crushing defeat. when that happens, its the same reaction as when something in real life makes you sad, like breaking your phone. That's your body telling you that that thing is bad and should be avoided in the future. You'd be more careful with your second phone after you broke the first one, and you'd avoid a game that you've lost repeatedly (Think of a child who loses a game, then doesn't play anymore because 'the game is stupid'). | [
"The problem that may arise when a player loses their lives frequently is that it discourages the player from continuing the game fairly. If losing a life causes a loss of equipment, skills or points, a player may feel inclined to reset a game to its previous save point whenever they are losing a life.\n",
"The d... |
the difference between "purple" and "violet". | There are a couple of different ways we perceive colour. One is that light of a particular wavelength hits our eyes. These are the colours you see if white light goes through a prism, or the colours of a rainbow. Violet is the purple colour you see there, and it is defined as light of a certain wavelength.
However, our eyes also mix wavelengths of light together, meaning that we see a much wider range of colours than the 7 in the rainbow. In the case of purple in general, if red and blue light hits your eyes from the same source, your brain would see this as purple. The shade of purple would depend on the amount of blue and red light going into your eye. | [
"Violet refers to any colour perceptually evoked by light with a predominant wavelength of roughly 380–450 nm. Tones of violet tending towards the blue are called indigo. Purple colors are colors that are various blends of violet or blue light with red light.\n",
"In color theory, a \"purple\" is defined as any n... |
Psychologists: what is the research behind disciplining children physically? | Psychology graduate here (studying for GRE, hopefully heading to grad school soon), though DoorsofPerceptron makes a valid point (that the study in question is merely correlational), the bulk of research on the subject finds that corporal punishment is at best just as effective as other disciplinary methods and at worst psychologically harmful.
Think of it like this: you have two cars. One is in perfect repair and you (and a lot of mechanics who have studied it) can be reasonably sure that it will get you where you're going. The other has a few problems with it and those same mechanics say that it could definitely get you where you want to go, but it might break down and cause you inconvenience along the way, or it might explode, killing you ... which car would you chose? | [
"The psychiatric assessment of a child or adolescent starts with obtaining a psychiatric history by interviewing the young person and his/her parents or caregivers. The assessment includes a detailed exploration of the current concerns about the child's emotional or behavioral problems, the child's physical health ... |
Given the close-quarters combat and lack of armor typical in the 1700s & early 1800s warfare, were there any cases of modern Western armies reverting to bow & arrow (from musket)? | While more can always be said, you may be interested in [this subsection](_URL_0_) of our FAQ with answers from u/MI13 and u/Valkine | [
"Ironically, the stocks of muskets introduced during the European colonization of the Americas were repurposed as hand-to-hand war clubs by Native Americans and First Nations when fragile accessories were damaged or scarce ammunition exhausted. Techniques for gunstock hand weapons are being revived by martial arts ... |
Is all blood the same colour? | The molecular composition of blood is generally the same, resulting in most animals having the same color of blood. Famously, there are some creatures with green/blue blood (some reptiles) but warm blooded mammals share the same red hue. | [
"The color of human blood ranges from bright red when oxygenated to a darker red when deoxygenated. It owes its color to hemoglobin, to which oxygen binds. Deoxygenated blood is darker due to the difference in shape of the red blood cell when hemoglobin binds to it (oxygenated) verses does not bind to it (deoxygena... |
how come i can immediately identity a voice from afar as coming from a tv than an actual person? | There's two audio production concepts that are are in play here. First one is called "Frequency Response" and the other is "Dynamic Compression."
Frequency response can be hard to grasp but simple to explain. Lets say you took one of those cardboard tubes left over from wrapping paper and placed it infront of your mouth. If you spoke through it your voice will now sound boxy, The tube blocks most frequencies that lie within the ranges of treble and bass leaving only the mids, kinda similar sounding to lofi old time radio. This is known as changing the frequency response. Since tv's use speakers and electronics to reproduce sound this sound will feel less natural to your ears because all speakers have an inherent frequency response that is different than most natural sounds. Speakers tend to be treble heavy and lack bass.
Now the other side of the coin is Dynamic Compression. This is not to be confused with data compression where complex computer algorithms are used to make file sizes smaller (ie mp3 technology.) Dynamic compression is manipulation of volume to make the overall sound more consistent in volume. Basically this is achieved by turning down the volume every time a peak in sound goes louder than a certain threshold. The result is that all the quiet parts of the sound are closer in volume to the loud parts. This gives the sound the overall feeling that it is more energetic. The energicness and inherent loudness that stems from this is not naturally reproduced in nature very often so it is much more noticeable. Also almost every piece of audio that is run through a home theater or tv has some form of dynamic compression slapped onto it. It's especially noticeable when watching television because of strict FCC regulations that penalize stations that go over a certain volume. Commercials are excessively compressed in order to grab your attention that much more and are one reason why they feel so much louder than everything else. (ontop of also being averagely 7db louder than most tv shows.)
So yeah hope that helps | [
"An invisible male character named \"The Voice\" can speak at any time to the contestants through the speakers and give them instructions. This is the voice of the radio host Dominique Duforest. \"The Voice\" always starts its interventions with the sentence \"This is the Voice\" and ends with \"That is all … for n... |
I’m a Soldier in the US Army working on a project about the War of 1812 to brief to other Soldiers and I’m having some issues finding some information. | I'm afraid you are going to have difficulty getting such information, except for the 1812 discharge Certificates recommended by gps93. The Army simply did not begin collecting such data until much later than 1812. One source you may find useful, however, is the publication by Edward Cutbush on preserving the health of soldiers and sailors about your time period (1808). Although he was a Navy Surgeon, he provided a large section devoted to the Army and physical standards. He noted that "In raising an Army, attention is necessary to procure men who are free from disease and capable of undergoing the fatigues inseparable from a military life". He discussed the desired ages of soldiers, and the preferred sizes of soldiers for various categories of service-- this should give you a general feel for what sized soldiers were potentially available. This reference is: Cutbush, Edward: Observations on the Means of Preserving the Health of Soldiers and Sailors: and on the Duties of the Medical Departments of the Army and Navy: With Remarks On Hospitals and Their Internal Arrangements. Pub Fry and Cammerer, Philadelphia, 1808. Otherwise, it is very hard to generalize-- most soldiers in the War of 1812 were locally-procured militia, and all physical standards (including age and size) were widely variable. | [
"BULLET::::- Fredriksen, John C. \"The United States Army in the War of 1812: Concise Biographies of Commanders and Operational Histories of Regiments, with Bibliographies of Published and Primary Sources.\" Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2009. .\n",
"BULLET::::- Fredriksen, John C. \"The... |
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