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What is the evolution of the Ambassador position? | I do not know the exact answer but here is some information.
"...after 1000 A.D. secular trends began to undermine both the decentralization of feudalism and the universalization of Christianity. Commerical activity expanded into larger geographic areas, as merchants traded along increasingy safer transportation routes. All forms of communication improved. New technology, such as water mills and windmills, not only made daily life easier but also provided the first eelementary infrastructure to support agrarian economies. Municipalities,like the reinvigorated city-states of northern Italy-Genoa, Venice, Milan, Florence-established trading relationships, meeting at key locations, arranging for the shipment of commercial materials, and even agreeing to follow certain diplomatic practices to facilitate commercial activities. these diplomatic practices-establishing embassies with permanent staff, sending special consuls to handle commerical disputes and sending diplomatic messages through specially protected channels-were the immediate precursors of contemporary diplomatic practice."
Essentials of International Relations - Karen Mingst (p23)
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"He began his term as ambassador by arranging the donation of an elaborate organ-clock commissioned by the queen Elizabeth I and built by organ-maker Thomas Dallam. The gift was intended to outshine overtures being made to the Sultan by Germany, France and other European nations in pursuit of trading rights in Otto... |
why is it that soccer players seem to get injured so often and for such long durations yet "rougher" sports like rugby seem to have less injuries? | Soccer injuries are mostly related to the immense strain of running around for 90 minutes. In soccer you only get to substitute players three times (one player at a time), which means that at least eight players will be on field for the full duration of the game.
This is why lesions in soccer are mostly in leg ligaments etc. It's not necessarily the physical violence, but the strain those muscles are put under for the whole duration of the game. This is also why players throw themselves to the ground so often - if you trip even the slightest bit, you should drop and roll immediatly, or risk breaking a tendon or worse from dropping your tired feet wrongly.
Sometimes players are so strained they pull a muscle just by running forward with the ball.
That being said, people get injured in rugby all the time, I don't think it's any less than in soccer.
Edit: Of course every time a soccer player drops to the ground, he'll try and score a foul for his team, which is why most people get mad at the payers for falling. But they do it for safety reasons.
Edit 2: Getting constantly kicked, pushed and stomped in the legs doesn't help either.
Edit 3: People pointed out that you can sub all three players at once, which is true. So to explain myself better I meant you can pull three substitutions, and each "substitution" is one player per another player. If you substitute two players at the same time, that counts as two substitutions, and you can only do one more in the game. That's what I meant - sorry for the confusion.
Edit 4: Two major points people have been arguing:
- I was trying to explain why people get injured so much in soccer, since that's the OP's main question. I don't know whether that happens more often than in rugby like the OP suggests, I always assumed rugby players have it worse but I really don't have the numbers. Really I don't care about comparisons, I think they are both great sports played by athletes at the peak of their physical performance.
- I explained myself poorly when I said that players fall often to not get hurt. It's of course more complicated than that: players are instructed to fall for safety reasons at the slightest twist, at a sharp pain, etc. Of course, it's really difficult to tell the difference between falling for safety or a straight-out dive, and that leads to players trying to cheat and score a foul. This happens, though, because there's a legitimate reason for players to fall in the first place - that's what I meant!
Also I've been calling it soccer because of the OP but I'm portuguese so I call it football like all the cool kids :) | [
"The high levels of injuries that take place during games of football are so much that not only during a players' career are they susceptible to injuries, but the effects afterwards are detrimental to their health. One example of a current player (as of 2005) that has suffered a large share of injuries is Essendon ... |
Independent land ownership in High Middle Ages | I can answer for Sweden, Finland (then part of Sweden), Denmark and Norway. I don't know if you consider them western European, but they can serve as a reference.
Country|Crown|Peasants|Nobility|Church
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--
Sweden|6%|52%|21%|21%
Denmark|10%|15%|38%|37%
Norway|7%|37%|15%|41%
Finland|4,5%|90%|3%|2,5%
These numbers are for about 1400-1500. About 62% of the Swedish population lived on free-held land.
As you can see, it varies quite a lot. Norway had a law that allowed you to squat on peasant land and if no-one claimed it in six generations (from 1247 reduced to 60 years or three generations), it became yours. This meant that when the plague killed 50-75% of the Norwegian population, the tenants of the nobility simply moved to vacated free land and claimed it, forcing the nobility to tend their own land and revert to free farmers.
In Denmark, the early development of a strong central administration and the heavy requirements of the *ledung* meant that many free farmers prefered to be under the local nobleman than under the crown - during the time of of Christopher II (1319-1332) and the following interregnum (1332-1340) royal power more or less vanished in Denmark and the nobility claimed more power, claiming any land under their power as their own and reducing their peasants to a status more like continental serfs.
Sources: Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, Circa 800-1500 by Birgit Sawyer.
The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Issue 1, edited by Knut Helle.
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"In early times following the Norman Conquest of 1066 and the establishment of feudalism, land was usually transferred by subinfeudation, rarely by alienation (i.e. sale), which latter in the case of tenants-in-chief required royal licence, and the holder of an estate at any particular time, in order to gain secure... |
why are we still using gas powered vehicles | Cause they're awesome.
In order to do work, you need energy. Energy isn't a *thing,* but rather a property of matter. Some matter has lots of energy stored in it, other matter has only a little … some matter actually has none at all, and can't be used by itself to do work.
When you're talking about *carrying energy around with you,* you need to consider two types of energy *density.* There's mass density — how much useful energy is there in a pound of stuff — and there's volumetric density — how much useful energy is there in a cubic foot of that stuff.
When you consider both metrics together, gasoline is at the very tippy top of the chart. Like *way* up there at the top of the chart, way higher than everything else. The next thing up the chart is freakin' *uranium,* and we all know how tricky it is to get the energy out of *that.*
The race is very much on to find a better way to carry energy around than gasoline. But between mass density, volumetric density and what it takes to get that energy out and turn it into work, it's a *hard problem* to solve. Nothing else really even comes close. | [
"In a natural gas powered vehicle, energy is released by combustion of essentially methane gas () fuel with oxygen () from the air to carbon dioxide () and water vapor () in an internal combustion engine. Methane is the cleanest burning hydrocarbon and many contaminants present in natural gas are removed at source.... |
Why does the speed and wavelength of a wave decrease when it enters a region of higher refractive index? | Well this isn't exactly what you want to know (which I'll get to in a sec), but the answer is that by definition an area higher refractive index is an area where light moves slower.
As to what causes that slowing effect, the oscillating electric field of the light wave causes the electrons in the material it's passing through to oscillate as well. These then emit their own electromagnetic wave with a phase delay from the original wave. The light wave travelling through the medium ends up as the superposition of all these different waves. For most common materials, the superposition ends up having a reduced speed compared to the original. | [
"Because these effects are related to a spatial variation in the phase speed, and because the phase speed also changes with the ambient current – due to the Doppler shift – the same effects of refraction and altering wave height also occur due to current variations. In the case of meeting an adverse current the wav... |
how can countries that are geographically close and have the same language family , develop vastly different languages? | Mass transportation and communication are relatively new inventions. For most of history, people lived and died without travelling more than 10 miles form their homes.
Add in a geographical feature, like a big river or a mountain range, and they might as well be thousands of miles apart. | [
"When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Through sustained language contact over long periods, linguistic traits diffuse between languages, and languages belonging to different families may converge to become more similar. In areas where many... |
Equipment differences in the Korean War? | I think it would help if you specified which U.N. country as there were several involved with a great variety of equipment. | [
"Uniforms and equipment, along with videos and other artifacts, bring the often-ignored Korean War into focus. Captured Soviet weapons, models of aircraft and warships and even a chunk of the Inchon seawall are on display.\n",
"Despite the expenses and regardless of who paid them, it must also be said that the Ko... |
Are there more neurons in the CNS or the PNS? | There are a few millions of peripheral neurons, about 100 billion in the cns. | [
"A unipolar neuron is a type of neuron in which only one protoplasmic process (neurite) extends from the cell body. Most neurons are multipolar, generating several dendrites and an axon and there are also many bipolar neurons. Unipolar neurons that begin as bipolar neurons during development are known as pseudounip... |
Did the Germans/ Prussians have a plan for a single front war with the Russians? | The period you are referring to is one of massive technological advances as well as a rapid evolution of army doctrines, so it's hard to answer this in a broad stroke.
I can tell you that in the case of the early 20th century they did consider attacking Russia first (or only if that was ever possible). But what the high command realised is that a Schlieffen Plan style massive invasion would not be possible because the railway infrastructure in Eastern Prussia was not well enough developed. This was certainly also true for any fast advances into Russian territory.
Interestingly enough, the Germans were also really scared of Russia building a dense railway network because they knew what that means militarily. And Max Hastings argued that this was the reason they wanted war with Russia sooner than later.
Sources: Official German History of World War I and Max Hastings' Catastrophe | [
"The German Schlieffen Plan proposed to defeat France swiftly while the Russians were mobilizing. Then Germany's armies would shift by train to the Eastern Front. Therefore, East Prussia was garrisoned by a single army, the Eighth, commanded by Gen. Maximilian von Prittwitz und Gaffron, which was to hold back the R... |
why do some people consider obama a communist/socialist/hitler, and what exact powers does he have? | They call him a socialist because he's further involving the government in private industries. They call him "Hitler" because they greatly dislike him. | [
"Alkhateeb, in response to the usage of his image, said, \"To accuse [Obama] of being a socialist is really ... immature. First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?\" He also stated \"socialism is an idea thats time has come and passed. It’s basically like calling someone a loyalist to the British crown\".\n... |
Was the Marquis de Sade renown in his lifetime? What led to his detention at the Bastille until shortly before it was liberated? Was the presence of a figure of his rank there in itself extraordinary, and who did the jailing (I assume this predates any sort of modern policing)? | I can answer some of this. The long and short of it is that he was ill-renowned in his life enough to invoke comment from both King Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte.
Please note that much of this answer comes from [my book](_URL_0_)
Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, known as the Marquis de Sade, was born in 1740, to the Comte (Count) de Sade, who was a lord in Provence. The de Sade family line went back centuries; one of his ancestors was Laura de Noves, who Petrarch wrote his love poems to, thus kickstarting Renaissance poetry and inspiring Boccaccio—things come full circle. Additionally, he was the only child in a large household, so he was absolutely fawned over. According to John Phillips, he was more or less raised by his father and his uncle, Abbé Jacques François de Sade, both of whom were well-known libertines. By the time of de Sade's birth, 'libertine,' had come to mean that a person had an excessive and unfettered sex life, was frequently atheist, and attacked social and religious morals. As Phillips notes, the two men that raised Donatien were extreme libertines:
> [T]he lustful Abbé enjoyed liaisons with a number of society women and even visited some of the more notorious Parisian bordellos, while the bisexual Count was on one occasion arrested for accosting a young man in the Tuileries Gardens. At the same time, both were highly cultured men. Sade's father was a close friend of Voltaire's and himself wrote verses, while Donatien's uncle in particular had a fine and extensive library which, alongside the classic authors, included all the major works of contemporary Enlightenment philosophy as well as a fair sample of erotic writings.
Indeed, as a result of their education and care, de Sade would achieve the heights of both libertinism and cultural refinement.
Like Rochester, de Sade enlisted in the military after his education, to fight in the Seven Years' War, and he apparently distinguished himself over the course of the next few years as a great fighter against the British and a heroic figure under fire. Immediately after the war, however, he turned to more enjoyable pursuits like visiting plays and operas, seducing actresses, and running up incredible debts. Like Rochester, he was forced to marry a woman from a rich family who wanted to marry into the nobility; she was Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil. De Sade and Renée-Pélagie would have two sons and a daughter, and the de Sade family line survives to this day; the current descendant has done much to redeem his infamous name.
However, very shortly after the wedding, de Sade was arrested and thrown into jail for the first of many times. The reason, as it turned out, was that he had hired a prostitute named Jeanne Testard for a night of debauchery, but had shocked her sensibilities when he talked about, among other things, "masturbating into chalices and thrusting communion hosts into women's vaginas, and had then frightened her with whips and other weapons into committing a number of similar sacrilegious acts," with the exception of anal sex, as it was punishable by death in Paris. He was imprisoned for a few months before being released, but the lesson did not stick, and a few years later he found himself in jail again for kidnapping a 36-year-old beggar named Rose Keller. According to trial transcripts, de Sade had spent the night subjecting her to whippings and pouring hot wax on her body before she jumped out a second story window and escaped to the police. He was commanded to leave Paris and never return, and he did not return. . . for several years.
The Marquis seemingly could not keep out of trouble. The next scandal that he landed himself in occurred after he and his valet travelled to Marseilles to borrow money, which he promptly spent in hiring four prostitutes for a night of debauchery. In addition to “acts of flagellation and sodomy,” he also gave the women an ‘aphrodisiac’ which was intended “to cause flatulence, the effects of which Sade found particularly arousing. One of the girls became ill and complained to the authorities that Sade had tried to poison her.” A warrant was soon issued for his arrest, but when the police arrived, they had already fled, “accompanied this time by the ravishing Anne-Prospère.” Despite his wife’s efforts to bribe the prostitutes to drop the charges, de Sade and his valet, Latour, were convicted and sentenced to death in absentia.
The 'ravishing Anne-Prospère' that Phillips mentions was, in fact, his wife's sister. De Sade was undeniably attracted to her, as she "represented to de Sade all the taboos that his fictional characters would take such pleasure in breaking; virginity, incest and religion." These were the biggest taboos that were assaulted in his works as manifestations of religious and social control, which de Sade loathed. Unfortunately for de Sade, Anne-Prospère's understandably upset mother succeeded in obtaining a lettre de cachet (which permitted arrest without a trial) against her son-in-law. After a series of cat-and-mouse escapes, Donatien was eventually thrown in the Bastille for 13 years, from 1777 to 1784.
It is impossible to deny the effects which that imprisonment had on the Marquis, indeed, if it were not for his access to pen and paper during his long periods of imprisonment, it is unlikely that he would have become a major writer in his lifetime. It seems like he turned all of his sexual energy and enthusiasm towards writing; by the end of his first period of imprisonment in 1788, he was able to list eight novels and short story volumes, two volumes of essays, twenty plays, and sixteen novellas. Of course, only a few of these survived the storming of the Bastille that kicked off the French Revolution—something, by the way, which the Marquis de Sade had a hand in instigating:
> In the months and weeks immediately preceding the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, crowds of increasingly restive Parisians were in the habit of gathering underneath its walls. Sade quickly saw that the present unrest offered his best chance of freedom in 13 years and, improvising a megaphone from a long metal funnel that he used to empty his slops into the moat, he bellowed to the throngs below that the guards were about to cut the prisoners' throats. This provocative act immediately got Sade moved to the lunatic asylum at Charenton, a few miles south of Paris, where he could do no more harm. Ten days after the funnel incident, however, the citizens of Paris took his advice and invaded the fortress, murdering the governor.
When he was released from prison, he managed to find work for a time with the Revolutionary government in several official positions, despite being an aristocrat. He eventually fell out of favor when he spoke against the death penalty and was imprisoned again for another year, barely managing to escape from being guillotined due to a clerical error. His name appeared on a list of men to be executed one day, but when he was called, he didn't say 'here!' (ici!), and was marked down as having disappeared. He also wrote his three most famous obscene works during this period: Philosophy in the Bedroom, Justine, and Juliette. Like Cleland, he was totally bankrupt, and had been forced to sell his castle in Lacoste just to support himself; he hoped that the obscene novels would sell enough to support him, and perhaps they did for a time, as Justine became a bestseller.
Justine unfortunately came to the attention of Napoleon's secret police and then Napoleon himself. In 1801, after several years of freedom, Sade was arrested yet again on the orders of Napoleon, who found Juliette the “abominable” work of a “depraved imagination,” and soon ended up in Charenton, an insane asylum—he would spend his days in in Charenton until his death in 1814. | [
"One of his famous patients at the Charenton was Donatien Alphonse François de Sade (1740–1814), better known as Marquis de Sade, who spent the last eleven years of his life incarcerated at the asylum. Royer-Collard protested against de Sade's imprisonment at the Charenton, believing him to be sane, and asked that ... |
Any examples of a foreign, or domestic power succeeding and dismantling an insurgency permanently? | There are plenty. I've written about this plenty of times before, but one case I want to refer you to in particular is the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) which is usually seen as the textbook example of a successful counterinsurgency in modern warfare.
[
I have written this post](_URL_0_) in which I compare the US in Vietnam to the British in Malaya, which might be of some interest to you. | [
"Essentially, then, only one viable option remains. The key to a successful counter-insurgency is the winning-over of the occupied territory's population. If that can be achieved, then the rebellion will be deprived of its supplies, shelter, and, more importantly, its moral legitimacy. Unless the hearts and minds o... |
did every culture have a breakfast/lunch/dinner before the world was connected? | Anthropologists have found that breakfast is a universal common denominator. You literally *HAVE* to have a first meal of the day. Almost as common is the *last* meal of the day. Sometimes this coincides with breakfast, but more often than not, multiple meals are eaten each day. | [
"Meals have become ingrained in each society as being natural and logical. What one society eats may seem extraordinary to another. The same is true of what was eaten long ago in history as food tastes, menu items and meal periods have changed greatly over time. During the Middle Ages the main meal of the day, then... |
When did seeking mental health services become stigmatized? | I believe for this type of question to be both valid and thoroughly answered, evidence of it ever not being stigmatized is neccessary OP. Or perhaps narrowing it down to a specific culture. | [
"From the 1960s and 1970s, the process of de-institutionalization meant that many more individuals with mental health problems were able to live in their communities rather than being confined to mental institutions. Medication and psychotherapy were the two major treatment approaches, with little attention given t... |
Can you infer cultural traits from history? | Culture plays a definitive role in any society and by extension has a great deal of influence over the direction a group of people go in. However, it would not be appropriate to claim that a group of people are "naturally" prone to anything. Culture is not a static facet of human relations, it is under continual negotiation and revision as members of a particular culture face new circumstances. Cultures often appeal towards a sense of continuity and tradition in the face of change as a means of ensuring the perpetuation of certain social structures or maintaining the internal cohesion of a society and so we often are given the impression that certain cultural attitudes are both universal and ancient. In actuality however these cultural features usually undergo changes as well, often in a way that escapes the immediate notice of people living within a society.
Historians frequently work to understand the history of a group of people by interpreting elements of their culture and conversely many historians also make assertions about cultural trends in a society based on their past. These conclusions are, however, both subjective and rooted in the cultural outlooks of historians too and as such our field works (albeit unevenly) to continuously review the underlying interpretative framework contained in histories. The important point to take away from this is that how we define particular cultural features and use them in historical narratives is culturally founded too. One could easily hold a different cultural view of what it means to be subordinated and forward an interpretation of Russian history that treats Russians as liberty seeking and other cultures - like Americans - as intrinsically inclined to supplicating to a ruling class. | [
"sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, to denote a hypothetical 'unit' of culture, in their controversial attempt to analyse cultural evolution by using techniques borrowed from population genetics, and to infer a theory of evolution of the human mind. It effectively means much the same as the older term \"cultural trait\" ... |
why are newspapers so big? wouldn't halving the size and doubling the pages be approximately the same cost? | I don't know why they're still large, but a bit of the historical reason for their size can be found in the Wikipedia page for '[Broadsheet](_URL_0_).'
*Historically, broadsheets developed after the British in 1712 placed a tax on newspapers based on the number of their pages. Larger formats, however, had long been signs of status in printed objects, and still are in many places, and outside Britain the broadsheet developed for other reasons, including style and authority, unrelated to the British tax structure.*
*The original purpose of the broadsheet, or broadside, was for the purpose of posting royal proclamations, acts, and official notices. Eventually the people began using the broadsheet as a source for political activism by reprinting speeches, ballads or narrative songs originally performed by bards. With the early mechanization of the 19th century came an increase in production of printed materials including the broadside as well as the competing penny dreadful. In this period newspapers all over Europe began to print their issues on broadsheets. However, in the United Kingdom, the main competition for the broadside was the gradual reduction of the newspaper tax, beginning in the 1830s, and eventually its dismissal in 1855.[4]*
*With the increased production of newspapers and literacy, the demand for visual reporting and journalists led to the blending of broadsides and newspapers, creating the modern broadsheet newspaper.* | [
"Well-known newspapers include \"The Wall Street Journal\", \"The New York Times\", and \"USA Today\". Although the cost of publishing has increased over the years, the price of newspapers has generally remained low, forcing newspapers to rely more on advertising revenue and on articles provided by a major wire ser... |
what makes jazz music sound 'jazzy'? | Interesting question! There are a few different answers to this.
The most obvious is instrumentation. Most rock music uses electric guitars and bass guitars, often with some kind of distortion or other effect on the sound. In general, jazz will use acoustic piano, upright bass, and clean guitars (more modern groups may use synthesizers and electric instruments, but they aren’t typically associated with the classic jazz sound). Additionally, a jazz drummer may use a metal brush on the snare drum instead of a stick, producing a very distinct sound.
Another thing is harmony. With some exceptions, most chords in rock and pop music consist of two, three, or four unique notes. In jazz, it’s almost rare to play a chord with less than five. This gives jazz a more “complex” sound than many other forms of music.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the swing rhythm. In most rock and pop music, you will have four beats in a measure. You can pretty easily count “one, two, three, four.” Because they divide the measure into four parts, we call each beat a quarter note. Now try saying “and” between each beat, dividing each quarter note into two parts, like “one and two and three and four and.” Because we’re dividing each quarter note into two parts, these are called eighth notes. Most likely, if you’re counting along to a rock song, the time between each eighth note is the same. However, jazz will often give these divisions unequal lengths, resulting in a kinda bouncy feel called “swing.” This isn’t unique to jazz, and not all jazz music uses it, but it’s certainly associated with the jazz genre.
Hope that helps! | [
"Jazz music incorporates a wide variety of ornaments including many of the classical ones mentioned above as well as a number of their own. Most of these ornaments are added either by performers during their solo extemporizations or as written ornaments. While these ornaments have universal names, their realization... |
why do some optical illusions show on camera while others do not? | Well, there are illusions that occur entirely in the eye, like the grey dot illusion.
Heat haze however isn't so much an illusion as the hot air moving and so distorting the light, so it can be captured by a camera.
Some illusions only occur on cameras due to frame rates - for example fast rotating objects like helicopter rotors can appear to be moving very slowly or even backwards. | [
"Optical illusions (also called visual illusions) are characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a percept that differs from the object being imaged. Optical illusions can be the result of a variety of phenomen... |
How do geologists track the Earth's magnetic field? | We track magnetic field movements by having satellites in orbit that detect the magnetic field strength at various locations. They only detect one component of the magnetic field though and at that radial distance. From this we then use models to construct the rest down to the core mantle boundary.
We do not know if this occurs on other planets as for Earth. For the Earth we have very accurate observations of the magnetic field. In fact up to the maximum resolution we can ever actually achieve. However other planets we do not have enough resolution to resolve the smaller scaled features. | [
"Earth's magnetic field is used by geologists to determine subterranean rock structures. For the most part, these geodetic surveyors are searching for oil, gas or mineral deposits. They can accomplish this only when Earth's field is quiet, so that true magnetic signatures can be detected. Other geophysicists prefer... |
how exactly does physical exercise make our immune system stronger? | Basically, stronger is stronger. No one part of the body improves without dragging the rest along with it. Run alot and your legs get stronger, but so does your heart, lungs, and blood vessels. Also your holding your arms up while you run so they are getting stronger, too. The reverse is also true. Gain fifty pounds of lard. Your knees are carrying more weight, heart is being strained, etc. | [
"Physical activity boosts the immune system. This is dependent on the concentration of endogenous factors (such as sex hormones, metabolic hormones and growth hormones), body temperature, blood flow, hydration status and body position. Physical activity has shown to increase the levels of natural killer (NK) cells,... |
Was the 1951 invasion of Tibet purely ideologically motivated? | The history of Tibet in the 20th century is very politicized, so I believe that it's best to focus on the primary sources for a more objective understanding of the history of Tibetan independence and China's motivations for controlling Tibet.
The Qing dynasty exerted influence over Tibet through ambans representing the Emperor in Beijing. The power of the ambans varied throughout the duration of the Qing, but had declined significantly by the end of the 19th century. In 1909, the Qing sought to reassert its control over Tibet by sending in Chinese troops. The 13th Dalai Lama fled to exile in India as the advancing Qing army entered Tibet. The Qing wanted to depose the 13th Dalai Lama, but realized that searching for a replacement would be difficult. Instead, they offered to return the Dalai Lama to Tibet as a subordinate figurehead with no political power.
But all of this became irrelevant with the Xinhai Revolution and the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911. The newly declared Republic of China (ROC), having overthrown their Manchu overlords, worked to re-envision China from an empire to a modern nation-state. One of core principles of the new Republic was to conceptualize the former empire as a multiethnic Chinese nation composed of "five races": Han, Manchu, Mongol, Muslim, and Tibetan. In Chinese, this multiethnic nation is known as *zhonghua minzhu*. An early flag of the ROC represents each of these "races" with different colored stripes (the black stripe symbolizes the Tibetans). This idea of a united and harmonious multiethnic Chinese nation would be the primary motivating factor for future interventions in Tibet. As the last Emperor of China abdicated, he declared:
> Let Yuan Shikai organize with full powers a provisional republican government, and confer with the Republican army as to methods of union, thus assuring peace to the people and tranquility to the Empire, and forming one Great Republic of China by the union as heretofore of the five peoples, namely, Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans, and Tibetans, together with their territory in its integrity.
Yuan Shikai, the Provisional President of the ROC, wanted to integrate Tibet into the Republic as one of five races "united in one family". He sent the following letter to the 13th Dalai Lama, who was still in exile:
> Now that the Republic has been firmly established and the Five Races deeply united into one family, the Dalai Lama is naturally moved with a feeling of deep attachment to the mother country. Under the circumstances, his former errors should be overlooked, and his Title of Loyal and Submissive Vice-Regent, Great, Good, and Self-Existent Buddha is hereby restored to him, in the hope that he may prove a support to the Yellow Church and a help to the Republic.
The Dalai Lama responded by saying that he had no interest in returning to his role solely as a religious leader, and intended to obtain both political and spiritual authority over Tibet. When the Dalai Lama returned to Tibet, he issued a proclamation that essentially, but not formally, declared that Tibet was now independent from China.
> On my arrival in India, I dispatched several telegrams to the Emperor; but his reply to my demands was delayed by corrupt officials at Peking. Meanwhile, the Manchu empire collapsed. The Tibetans were encouraged to expel the Chinese from central Tibet. I, too, returned safely to my rightful and sacred country, and I am now in the course of driving out the remnants of Chinese troops from DoKham in Eastern Tibet. Now, the Chinese intention of colonizing Tibet under the patron-priest relationship has faded like a rainbow in the sky.
Qing soldiers were expelled from Tibet. By 1913, the breakaway regions of Mongolia and Tibet mutually recognized their independence from China:
> Mongolia and Tibet, having freed themselves from the dynasty of the Manchus and separated from China, have formed their own independent States, and, having in view that both States from time immemorial have professed one and the same religion, with a view to strengthening their historic and mutual friendship.
The ROC leadership did not recognize the independence of Tibet. The Republic was founded as a union of different races under a single nation. Letting Tibet go was tantamount to the disintegration of the Chinese nation. When the People's Republic of China (PRC) replaced the ROC in Mainland China (the ROC retreated to Taiwan), the PRC inherited the ROC's notion of a united Chinese nation, but recast the narrative into a Marxist framework.
With the exception of Mongolia, the international community did not recognize Tibet's independence. Britain was reluctant to recognize an independent Tibet, anticipating that it would destabilize their relationships with Russia and China. The British feared that the Tibetans would ally with the Russians. But for the next four decades, Tibet was *de facto* independent from China.
The excerpts of primary sources come from Melvyn Goldstein's *A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951*, Sam Van Shaik's *Tibet: A History*, and other secondary sources. | [
"In 1950, the People's Liberation Army of the People's Republic of China invaded Tibet, after taking over the rest of China from the Republic of China during the five years of civil war. In 1951, the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, a treaty signed by representatives of the Dalai Lama... |
does dyslexia only effect reading and writing, or visual input in general? either way, how? | For me it does different things. It's not just reading or writing, because I find it difficult to read I require a good memory when things are explained. Because of this I can imagine and almost design something in my head with a CAD like 360° view. Not sure if everyone is the same
Here's the different types
"Primary dyslexia: This is the most common type of dyslexia, and is a dysfunction of, rather than damage to, the left side of the brain (cerebral cortex) and does not change with age. There is variability in the severity of the disability for Individuals with this type of dyslexia, and most who receive an appropriate educational intervention will be academically successful throughout their lives. Unfortunately there are others who continue to struggle significantly with reading, writing and spelling throughout their adult lives. Primary dyslexia is passed in family lines through genes (hereditary) or through new genetic mutations and it is found more often in boys than in girls.
Secondary or developmental dyslexia: This type of dyslexia is caused by problems with brain development during the early stages of fetal development. Developmental dyslexia diminishes as the child matures. It is also more common in boys.
Trauma dyslexia: This type of dyslexia usually occurs after some form of brain trauma or injury to the area of the brain that controls reading and writing. It is rarely seen in today's school-age population."
_URL_0_
From what I understand its still an on going study but some research shows that it's to do with the different matters that the brain is made up of. That people with dyslexia often have a different make up to nondyslexic people.
This website explains more
_URL_1_
Sorry for the long post (mainly copy and paste)
I love being dyslexic, I think I see the world differently. I would never change it | [
"The phonological-processing hypothesis attempts to explain why dyslexia occurs in a wide variety of languages. Furthermore, the relationship between phonological capacity and reading appears to be influenced by orthography.\n",
"The causes of dyslexia are not agreed upon, although the consensus of neuroscientist... |
why are other primates considered as non-human, and not as an indigenous tribe of humanity? | Some people have defined a *species* as a a group of organisms that naturally breed with each other and produce viable offspring^1. A viable offspring means that it can reproduce; i.e. have kids of its own, and its kids can have kids, and so on. Humans naturally breed with each other, even across races. However, this does not work between humans and other species of primates. A human sperm almost never fertilizes a egg of another primate, or vice versa. Even if it does fertilize it, the resultant offspring often dies early, or in the exceptional case that it survives, it is usually unable to have kids of its own (e.g. Lion-Tiger hybrids, known as ligers or tigons, are infertile; so are mules, which are horse-donkey hybrids). Some primates also have different number of chromosomes (groups of genes) in their cells, so any potential offspring with humans would also exhibit far worse symptoms than Down's syndrome (which is caused by one extra chromosome).
As an aside, dogs, if left in the wild, frequently breed with wolves and beget totally healthy wolf-dog hybrids; as such dogs and wolves are the same species -- *Canis lupus* (note that dogs are a subspecies of that: *Canis lupus familiaris*.
Note^1: Obviously this definition does not work for organisms that reproduce by, say, binary fission. For that, species are determined by genetic similarity and other stuff.
--------------------------
Anyway, most laws refer to humans only as the scientific species for human, *Homo sapiens*, which according to the above definition, does not include other primates.
Whether or not other primates deserve rights and privileges of humans is beyond the scope of this comment. | [
"Human beings are recognized as persons and protected in law by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by all governments to varying degrees. Non-human primates are not classified as persons in most jurisdictions, which largely means their individual interests have no formal recognition or pro... |
what are these terms as simple as possible, and how do they interact? -computer -server -database -network -router -modem -wifi -packets | * **computer** - a box that follows a plan...can be a **client**, **server**, **database**, or other roles
* **client** - a computer a person sits at, that makes **request**
* **request** - a message send from a **client** to a **server** asking for something, like a web page
* **network** - two or more **computers** that can talk to each other
* **packets** - data, like **requests** and **responses**, travelling between **computers** on a **network**
* **router** - a device that makes sure **packets** as sent to the right **computer** on the right **network**
* **modem** - gateway between one type of **network** (your home network) and another (telephone line, cable)...often also a **router**
* **WiFi** - a type of **network** that works with radio signals instead of wires
* **server** - computer that receives **requests** from a **client** and builds **responses**
* **database** - a computer with a large amount of information on it that the **server** references to build **responses**
* **response** - a message, like a completed webpage, a **server** creates and sends to a **client** over a **network** | [
"The main purpose of a router is to connect multiple networks and forward packets destined either for its own networks or other networks. A router is considered a layer-3 device because its primary forwarding decision is based on the information in the layer-3 IP packet, specifically the destination IP address. Whe... |
how do large area wlan networks work? | exactly like you suggested.
There are a lot of Access Points (not routers) that broadcast the same network (ESSID), with the same security settings.
Every Access Point has a unique ID (BSSID), which a client also sees.
So your PC or phone or whatever notices that the same network is broadcasts by different devices. It then choses the one with the best signal. Your phone constantly checks whether it sees a different access point with a better signal. It then switches the acces points it connects to without you noticing. | [
"A wide area network (WAN) is a telecommunications network that extends over a large geographical area for the primary purpose of computer networking. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits.\n",
"The network, which began construction in 2001, consists of two components: a ... |
When and how did the US dollar become the gold standard (so to speak) of international currency? Was there a previous national currency that was the recognized standard? How has the presence of an alternate, universally accepted currency affected national sovereignty in other countries? | Lets tackle the "how" first. One of the major structural changes of modern markets is the deterritorialization of money and the configuration of a global currency space. In the past, we had neatly confined maps of divided territorial currencies and those were only traded with outside parties in a very limited fashion. While not 100% accurate, you can view Currencies before the Second World War as insular, strictly controlled systems. Starting after the war however, these controlling barriers were slowly fading.
Today usage of international currencies is no longer confined to the territory of the nation state it originates from. This was mainly caused by the intense growth of capital mobility in the last years, which coincides with the increased maturity of the Internet-Communication-Technology-Revolution, the increased volume of international trade, and the promotion of international free trade standards and practices. This deterritorilization of money is one the most noticeable effects of globalization. Today, at least one third of the world's money supply is now located outside its country of issue and global foreign-exchange markets have seen a massive surge in volume. Just to give you a small idea about the scale we are talking about here, from 1989 to 1998, the average daily turnover in according to the bank of international settlements in global exchange markets has increased from 590 billion USD to 1,5 trillion USD. This process has of course been going on for a long time and can not be accurately pin-point to a single starting date. But it has definitely been driven by intense market rivalry and free financial trade. As you point out yourself, some currencies come to prevail over others and are in higher demand on the global market than others. So lets take a look at what attributes are important to an currencies success.
The first and in my personal opinion most important attribute is the markets confidence in a moneys future value backed by political and economic stability in its country of origin. A singular currency becomes more attractive the more you can forecast its purchasing power in the future. Valuable benchmarks might be a long history of low inflation and the lack of great political upheavals. The market has to view the currency as a legitimate currency that will not lose its value in the future.
In addition to that, a currency has to be convenient to exchange and have low transfer costs. To achieve this, the currency has to be traded on an open market, with low transaction costs that is not discriminating against foreign individuals or institutions. The barrier of entry has to be low and there need to by the necessary legal frameworks in place to facilitate a healthy market.
Third you want a broad transactional network. The more other stakeholders are accepting and using a foreign currency, the more attractive it becomes. A large national economy is one of the most prominent kick-starter for such a development, but the true kicker is a leading economy that imports and exports huge volumes of products globally, as well as a political regime that supports the international use of its currency.
Together these three attributes determine which currency or currencies any stakeholder will want to acquire, both as a medium of exchange and to store his generated value. This is important, because the deterritorialization of money means that currency stand in direct competition to another. Being traded on global markets means that, just like you can expect from the product trade, a natural market hierarchy will occur, with some dominating market leaders and a lot of currencies that are unable to compete. The dollar is without any doubt the current king of global currencies. And the reasons for it success may now be rather obvious. The US Economy has been the leading national and international economy of the 20th century. The political climate has been stable and they did not have to suffer through a massive war on their on territory. The US has also spearheaded the international dogma of free trade and supported the creation of international markets. To further support this, the US has provided other states with massive infusions of USD and the USD has for a long time been one the most stable currencies of the world, backed by a massive economy that is expected to grow further and has been a leader in technology advancements for decades. The USD has never been devalued and inflation rates have consistently been low. This creates a self-reinforcing system. Because the USD is one of the most used currencies in the world, with 40%-60% of its total volume circulating in foreign countries and enjoys a great deal of legitimacy, there is a great incentive for stakeholders to use the USD as a stable currency.
When the USD became the "global currency" is not easy to identify. Before the USD, the Pound Sterling was without any doubt the reigning currency, since Britain not only ruled over a vast colonial empire, supported by a massive economy, but was also the leading banker of the world with over 4 Billion Pound foreign investments at the brink of WW1. Many economic historians agree that following the turmoil of WW1 and the Great Depression, the downfall of the Pound Sterling and its perceived legitimacy allowed the USD to take over the role as leading currency.
I will get back to your on the question about the impact of the deterritorialization of currencies on the sovereignty of other states later or tomorrow since I have to make dinner now and it is not a short or easy question to answer.
Sources:
Eichgreen, Barry, Arnaud, Mehl, Chitu, Livia, How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present, Future, 2017.
Kenen, Peter, The role of the dollar as an international currency, 1983.
Ganziro, Taranza, Vambery, Robert, et al, The Exorbitant Burden: The Impact of the U.S. Dollar's Reserve and Global Currency Status on the U.S. Twin-Deficits, 2016.
Cohen, J. Benjamin, The Future of Global Currency: The Euro versus the dollar, 2012.
Edited for formatting and to fix my mediocre english.
| [
"In the period following the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, exchange rates around the world were pegged to the United States dollar, which could be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold. This reinforced the dominance of the US dollar as a global currency.\n",
"The gold standard was temporarily abandoned during ... |
Constantine's conversion to Christianity has been described as a "quasi-conversion"...Why? | I don't think there's any particularly strong evidence supporting the view that it was a 'quasi-conversion'. I outlined the circumstances for his conversion [here](_URL_0_). I didn't really take a stance on this issue in that answer, but currently I definitely lean towards the view that it was a genuine conversion. We can for instance trace how the public image of his beliefs changed over time and his later actions can only be seen as evidence for his strong belief in Christianity. There were no doubt many 'cynical' factors for his conversion, but that did not mean that the conversion itself was not genuine. | [
"Although Christian tradition argues that Constantine chose the \"labarum\" because he had a vision that led him to convert to Christianity, Constantine's conversion is disputed by some historians, who see Constantine's motive for choosing the \"labarum\" as political, with him deliberately making his banner one wh... |
What caused McCarthyism die out in the late 1950s? | And as a followup question, how were outspoken opponents of McCarthyism seen/treated by other members of society? | [
"McCarthyism declined in late 1954 after television journalist Edward R. Murrow and others publicly chastised McCarthy. The controversies over the Bill of Rights that were generated by the Cold War ushered in a new era in American Civil liberties. In 1954, in \"Brown v. Board of Education\", the Supreme Court unani... |
When did the scientific method become a philosophy distinct from natural philosophy? | While I cannot speak for all of natural philosophy, hopefully this gives some insight into when chemistry became a science.
Before the turn of the 18th century (particularly 1699), the shift to distinguish what some call chymistry into the two categories of alchemy and chemistry began. Around 1600, all chymistry was the use of chemical techniques, such as distillation and laboratory practices, for a variety of chemical and alchemical practices. The main shift was in what type of practices these techniques were used for. The big shift was the decline of chrysopoeia, or the art of the philosopher’s stone. By 1720, alchemists had been increasingly portrayed as fraudulent, and in particular, the search for the philosopher’s stone was seen as a fraudulent search. After Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691) began the serious field of chemistry, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, one of the most prestigious institutes in the period, allowed five spots of 30 to be chemists. However, many government officials who funded the academy did not want chrysopoeia to be mentioned, as it would make the academy seem shady.
Overall, the big shift from the melded natural philosophy to the distinct fields of chemistry and the methods we know today is less a difference in style, and more a difference in intention. Chemistry uses many of the same methods as alchemy, but for different reasons. While chymists also wrote detailed journals, with careful laboratory techniques, we would not call them scientists because their results were not based on science. It was only around 1700, when Enlightenment scholars attempted to separate chemistry and alchemy, that the results were untied from the mystical.
Source: The Secrets of Alchemy; Lawrence M. Principe
| [
"From the ancient world, starting with Aristotle, to the 19th century, \"natural philosophy\" was the common term for the practice of studying nature. It was in the 19th century that the concept of \"science\" received its modern shape with new titles emerging such as \"biology\" and \"biologist\", \"physics\" and ... |
why do some animals like hummingbird want to have such high metabolism? | Hummingbirds have to have a super high metabolism because they beat their wings so fast, and they have to beat their wings so fast because they have to hover to get the nectar inside flowers that bloom on stems that won't support their weight. And they evolved to get that nectar because it existed and was an underused source of calories.
We could ask what would happen if hummingbirds didn't have such an extreme metabolism, and the answer is, they couldn't hover, so they couldn't eat as much nectar, so they'd be completely different birds. | [
"Hummingbirds have the greatest mass-specific metabolic rate of any homeothermic animal. To conserve energy when food is scarce, and nightly when not foraging, they can go into torpor, a state similar to hibernation, slowing metabolic rate to 1/15th of its normal rate.\n",
"The unique shoulder structure of hummin... |
how does the nba salary cap work? | Simple answer. Each team is allotted 107 million dollars to fill 13 roster spots. This, in theory, encourages parity and avoids the pitfalls the MLB has with teams like the Yankees and dodgers, who can simply buy whatever players they want due to lucrative local media deals in big markets and ubiquitous fan bases. Further, there are maximum contract amounts they can pay to a given player, a player can only make a certain percentage of the cap. With a lot of exceptions and incentives. Contracts are commodities that balance out the values of the players talent. Chris Paul is better than Patrick Beverley, but he makes 42 million a year against the cap, and Beverly makes 10. The clippers have much more flexibility than the rockets due to better value at point guard.
That’s a shitty explanation. There’s also the luxury tax given to teams that decide to pay more than the cap. Contract, dead money, sign and trade, expiring contracts, rookie deals. Mid level exception. All things to research if you want to know the minutiae
One notable fact is that a player who has been with a team a long time can sign a 5 year deal worth roughly 225 million dollars. Whereas another team could only pay that player 170 over 4 years. This comes into play because players in the last years of there deals are usually diminished by the time they hit the 3rd contract, lasting to their mid 30s. All nba contracts are fully guaranteed
It’s a fuckload of money. | [
"The NBA salary cap is the limit to the total amount of money that National Basketball Association teams are allowed to pay their players. Like many professional sports leagues, the NBA has a salary cap to control costs and benefit parity, defined by the league's collective bargaining agreement (CBA). This limit is... |
Neuroscientists of reddit, is there evidence that our mind is something more than just our brains? | Our mind is what our brains do, not what our brains are.
In other words, mind is a process. The question is a little like asking "is there evidence that walking is something more than just our body?" | [
"One of the main ethical controversies regarding neuroprivacy is related to the issue of free will, and the mind-body problem. A possible concern is the unknown extent to which neurodata can predict actions and thoughts - it is not currently known if the physical activity of the brain is conclusively or solely resp... |
What does it mean that a photon has an oscillating magnetic field perpendicular to an oscillating electric field? | > I’m speaking particularly about the common representation of a photon as two in-phase sine waves at right angles to each other.
That's a classical electromagnetic wave which is not the same as a photon which is the quantum of the electromagnetic field.
( _URL_3_ )
> **What** exactly is oscillating? A couple places said it was the magnitude of each respective field, which I think refers to the strength and length(?) of the field lines “generated” by the field.
It's the magnitude / strength of the electric **E** and magnetic field **B**. It's not the length of field lines but if anything the density of field lines.
But you can also visualize it a bit by noting that a charge q would feel a Lorentz force **F** = q(**E** + **v** x **B**) in an electromagnetic field.
> But what shape do the field lines take?
The field lines of an electromagnetic wave are closed loops.
Here's an illustration of that
Edit: the link doesn't actually work and I'm not allowed to use a link shortener. The image I attempted to post is Figure 16.9 in [this link [_URL_2_]](_URL_0_) (right at the bottom of the page)
A similar image (animated version) is on [wikipedia](_URL_1_)
The blue dots and crosses are magnetic field lines pointing into and out of the screen. They are the intersection of closed magnetic field lines with the screen.
> Is it the kind of pattern you would see with, say, iron fillings and a bar magnet?
That would be a static magnetic field which is something else.
> Additionally, the fields are projected in the 3rd dimension right? How can they be rotated at 90% then? Or is it something to do with quantum numbers?
Not entirely sure what that means. The electric field is a vector field which means that in every point in space **x** and at every time t it has a vector value **E**(t, **x**), ie a magnitude *and* a direction. The magnetic field in t and **x** has a direction perpendicular to that.
> When the magnitudes of both waves reaches 0, do the fields diminish to nothing or just stop influencing anything around them?
They will then just be zero in one point (and a moment in time), but not everywhere. It's like a node in a water wave. At that point a charge would feel no force.
> If someone put a magnet near a stream of radio wave with a noticeably long wavelength, could the exertion of forces on the magnet be detected?
Not sure. You'd overlay a static field onto the oscillating field of the wave. The two would just add up. | [
"The optical field is a term used in physics and vector calculus to designate the electric field shown as E in the electromagnetic wave equation which can be derived from Maxwell's Equations. In electromagnetic theory, the electromagnetic wave propagates such that both the magnetic field oscillation, and the electr... |
PHYSICS : Has time distortion actually been proven experimentally or is it just a theoretical concept? | Do you mean time dilation and length contraction according to special relativity?
Yes, these are observed experimentally.
A nice experiment that demonstrates time dilation is detecting cosmic-ray muons near sea level.
These are particles that are generated in collisions between cosmic rays and the upper atmosphere. They have a mean lifetime of 2.2 microseconds and travel near the speed of light.
Without time dilation, they would only travel around 660 metres. However, we can detect them on the ground, tens of kilometres below where they were created, because time passes slower in their reference frame. | [
"Rate–distortion theory is a major branch of information theory which provides the theoretical foundations for lossy data compression; it addresses the problem of determining the minimal number of bits per symbol, as measured by the rate \"R\", that should be communicated over a channel, so that the source (input s... |
sex ed not being taught in some schools while it is taught in others | Angry conservative parents complain to the school board that sex Ed programs give kids ideas and instructions on how to have sex and "get into trouble."
These parents usually think they're best qualified to teach their kids about sex, but often find the topic too difficult to bring up, or try to push abstinence-only, or give misinformation because they themselves were taught falsehoods about sex in their puritanical upbringing. Hence all the issues of kids not knowing how to use condoms and getting pregnant/STIs at a young age. | [
"Sometimes formal sex education is taught as a full course as part of the curriculum in junior high school or high school. Other times it is only one unit within a more broad biology, health, home economics, or physical education class. Some schools offer no sex education, since it remains a controversial issue in ... |
Why did Maximilien Robespierre suggest the self-denying ordinance? | he was trying to cut off every member of the previous legistlation council from joining the new one. unfortunately the next council was even more incompetent in the long run. | [
"The petitioners made their way into the hall and sat down besides the Montagnards. Robespierre ascended the tribune and supported the suppression of the commissions. When Vergniaud called upon him to conclude, Robespierre turned towards him and said: \"Yes, I will conclude, but it will be against you! Against you,... |
why do some forms of pain, like stretching a sore back or picking a scab, feel so incredibly satisfying ("hurts so good")? | I don't think there's a simple, single explanation to all of the situations you're asking about, but in regards to stretching a sore muscle, your movement pushes your body to the pain threshold, which draws your attention to it, and then you release. The pain dissipates so quickly, the relief hits you like the most sublime freight train. | [
"In terms of the expression used for development, the discomfort caused may be beneficial in some instances while detrimental in others. Detrimental pain can include joint pain. Beneficial pain usually refers to that resulting from tearing microscopic muscle fibers, which will be rebuilt more densely, making a bigg... |
I want to read a bit more about medieval Eastern European histories. What are some of the best books that would give me a general overview of the region and cultures and general history etc? | Malcolm Barber's *The Two Cities: Medieval Europe* is fairly good.
You might find it useful to the check out the [Europe/Middle Ages section of the book list](_URL_0_) as flaired users have added book recommendations to it for exactly that purpose. | [
"The Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL) is a repository of full text indexed documents in the fields of Humanities and Social Science publications from and about Central and Eastern Europe. The collections include native language sources from and about Central, East and Southeast Europe´s humanitie... |
why bills like sopa and acta keep coming back when they seem to get beat by a large margin every time they're voted upon. | Because there's very powerful moneyed interests which want them to pass, and they lose little by trying. It worked in the past on many occasions. | [
"Both majority and minority blocs in Congress have used the lack of quorum in defeating bills that they don't want to be passed without putting it to a vote. After an election during the lame-duck session, quorums are notoriously difficult to muster, more so in the House of Representatives as winning incumbents may... |
how do the self check out scanners at the library work? | **R**adio **F**requency **ID**entification (RFID) tags.
These are cheap microchips (often in sticker form) that can respond to a radio frequency signal requesting information. In most cases, the chips are powered by the wireless signal itself, so they don't need batteries (and thus can be made extremely tiny [paper-thin] and long-lasting). A typical (passive) RFID scan only works from a few inches though, so that's one of the reasons why the books/items have to be very close to the scanner.
Examples of other uses of RFID technology:
- Chips embedded in debit/credit cards for wireless 'tap and go' type payments
- Chips embedded in passports to provide enhanced security and identity information to border officials
- Chips embedded in consumer products that set off an alarm if not deactivated before crossing a barrier (note: there are other similar technologies that are not RFID based).
- Chips embedded in employee ID cards or hotel keycards for 'tap and enter' door access control systems
- Package and inventory tracking
etc. | [
"An alternative system (self-scanning) consists of a portable barcode scanner that is used by the customer to scan and bag items while shopping. When the customer has finished shopping, the scanner is brought to a checkout kiosk, where the information from the barcode scanner is downloaded to the kiosk, usually in ... |
Why did the soviets leave austria? | > This is a deeply complex topic, but one well addressed by /u/kieslowskifan in [their response](_URL_0_) to "Why did Austria not wind up behind the Iron Curtain?" in this subreddit. Several other responses they made in that thread give excellent coverage that should help answer your question.
To quote u/jeanpauljh when I asked a similar question a few months ago. | [
"After the war Austria was occupied by the allied armies, separated from Germany, and divided into four zones of occupation. The Soviets did not create a separate socialist government in their zone as they did in East Germany. Instead, Austria was required to sign the Austrian State Treaty of 1955 under which it pl... |
Is coffee a "natural antibiotic"? | Antioxidant, antibiotic, and antiseptic are all totally unique compounds.
Antioxidants are substances that inhibit a particular class of chemical reactions called 'oxidation reactions'. Recently there has been massive speculation that these effects could theoretically help prevent cancer and other diseases, but the data is far from all in and right now nothing can be said with any certainty other then they probably won't harm you in any way.
Antibiotics are substances that selectively kill bacteria while not harming mammalian cells (usually humans, but sometimes pets and livestock as well). To be an antibiotic it must be safe to be administered to a human (or other animal) at concentrations that either kill the bacteria or block their reproduction and growth. Examples include penicillin, ciprofloxacin, and many sulfa drugs
Antiseptics also kill bacteria, but typically are not safe for internal human use. Additionally they generally also kill viruses, fungi, and any animal cells they contact. Some can be safely applied to the skin, as they will not pass through it. Examples include bleach, and many simple alcohols such as ethyl alcohol and isopropyl alcohol.
(Ethyl alcohol is drinking alcohol, but the concentrations humans can safely consume are far under the levels needed to harm bacteria inside the body) | [
"The term \"pharmabiotics\" is used in various ways, to mean: pharmaceutical formulations (standardized manufacturing that can obtain regulatory approval as a drug) of probiotics, prebiotics, or synbiotics; probiotics that have been genetically engineered or otherwise optimized for best performance (shelf life, sur... |
Is possible to reduce all mathematical operations into sums? | The [hyperoperations](_URL_0_) can do this. At least so long as they are restricted to the integers. They are defined recursively, starting at the successor operation (*S*(*n*) = *n* + 1). In this sense, addition is not the most basic operation.
1. Successor.
2. Addition. *H**_1_*(*a*,*b*) = *a* + *b*
3. Multiplication. *H**_2_*(*a*,*b*) = *ab*
4. Exponentiation. *H**_3_*(*a*,*b*) = *a^b*
5. Tetration. *H**_4_*(*a*,*b*) = *a^a^a^…^a* (*b* times), sometimes written *^(b)a*.
Et cetera. I can see two problems with generalizing this.
* Inverse operations, such as subtraction and division. Arguably subtraction is a sum, but I don't see easily how to define division in this context.
* Non-integers. Hyperoperations are ill-defined as is for fractional *b*. Some additional work is done in each case where we want this to work. For multiplication, this means an interpretation as a scaling operator instead of repeated addition, and for exponentiation we go via the exponential function. There is no generally agreed-upon way to generalize tetration to real numbers. | [
"Accurate rounding of transcendental mathematical functions is difficult because the number of extra digits that need to be calculated to resolve whether to round up or down cannot be known in advance. This problem is known as \"the table-maker's dilemma\".\n",
"would lead to a nonlinear system of algebraic equat... |
is it just luck or some other reason why germs that spread easily aren't nearly as deadly as harder to contract germs (like aid's or rabies or the like). | > The Flu spreads like wildfire but generally isn't deadly,
The flu kills hundreds of thousands of people, every year, if it's a *good* year. It's still quite a dangerous disease.
However, to your point, a disease that is *too deadly* tends to limit itself. It burns out its infected population and loses its ability to spread. This, for instance, has potentially been one of the limiting factors in the spread of ebola. If it wipes out a village with terrifying speed, there's no one left to spread it to the next village.
Still, super viruses have happened in the past. The flu has been one of them, the 1918 pandemic killed somewhere between 50 to 100 million people. The bubonic plague killed somewhere between 25 and 60 % of Europe. Smallpox may have killed 1/3rd of Japan, and devastated the Native Americans.
But we're not all identical. It'd be hard for a disease to kill everyone, and killing everyone is not very efficient for a disease anyway, that potentially wipes out its 'food' as it were. So there's not necessarily a huge selective pressure for 'murder your host,' since a long term infection is quite successful for reproduction. | [
"Another capability of concern is engineering existing pathogens to be more dangerous. This includes altering the targeted host or tissue, as well as enhancing their replication, virulence, transmissibility, stability, or ability to produce toxins, reactivate from a dormant state, evade natural or vaccine-induced i... |
why ads like mcdonald's aren't considered misleading advertising, despite the fact that the product showed isn't even something like the offered product? | The product shown is the optimal, best case scenario version of the food they make. All of the food you see in a McDonald’s commercial is actual McDonald’s food cooked in an actual McDonald’s Kitchen. The ad agency just makes a lot (like hundreds) of versions until they get the best one and then instead of putting it under a heat lamp or leaving it in a box for however many minutes, they surround it with food that is not being advertised that can be as fake as they want as well as light it, frame it and film it to look as good as possible. | [
"A survey conducted in the United States by the Pew Internet & American Life Project between January 20 and February 19, 2012 revealed that most of Americans are not in favor of targeted advertising, seeing it as an invasion of privacy. Indeed, 68% of those surveyed said they are \"not okay\" with targeted advertis... |
Do man made magnets affect the Earth's magnetic field? | Magnetic fields generally fall off as the inverse cube of the distance from the 'source'. You have to define that, since it's not a point charge like EM fields. The core of the Earth is huge, so the source is very different from your regular dipole electromagnet. But this should tell you that it's not that our fields don't reach as far. They do. We just stop noticing. And it's not at all linear.
If you jump, you have an effect on the Earth's gravitational energy. If you build a new magnet, you have an effect on the dynamo driving the whole system. But it's an entirely negligible effect given the size of the system. The overall energy involved is what matters, not field strength at this specific point. Your little piece of metal isn't going to cancel out the Earth's rotation.
Every electric field has an effect on every other field. But usually it's in the form of additive vectors. If you were detecting field strength at a particular point, it would add to the existing field strength pulling your detector towards North. Which is why compass systems have to be hardened and calibrated to deal with local electronic interference. Yes, there is an equal and opposite reaction, but you don't always notice. | [
"The Earth's magnetic field is believed to be generated by electric currents in the conductive iron alloys of its core, created by convection currents due to heat escaping from the core. However the process is complex, and computer models that reproduce some of its features have only been developed in the last few ... |
Were the people of Vietnam displaced by the Vietnam War, and if so did the United States Government ever reimburse them? | If you're talking about contemporary compensation by the US to individuals in South Vietnam then the answer is yes and sort of. Internal displacement, both organic in response to conflict and managed as part of the counterinsurgency strategy, were significant issues in South Vietnam. By agreement of the United States and the South Vietnamese government compensation for combat-related damages, injuries, and death was made the responsibility of the South Vietnamese government. However, non-combat related damages, injuries, and deaths determined to be the result of the actions of US forces were the responsibility of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. MACV even established a Foreign Claims Office to manage such claims.
According to the MACV Command History for 1966, during that calender year they paid out over $526,000 in compensation claims for non-combat related grievances. No mention is made of the amount paid out by the Republic of Vietnam for combat-related grievances for which US forces were responsible. There isn't any mention of the criteria for the approval or rejection of a claim, meaning that its not immediately clear whether or not internal displacement was a valid reason for compensation. It is known that while the Strategic Hamlet program was in operation, some compensation was provided to those who agreed to relocate. The Command History also says that US military units were authorized to use unit funds to support civic actions and pay out compensation, and that these were amounts were often unrecorded. | [
"The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975 with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army and the subsequent evacuation of more than 130,000 Vietnamese closely associated with the United States or the former government of South Vietnam. Most of the evacuees were resettled in the United States in Operation New L... |
How different is the brain of people who have good memory? | The real answer here is we don't *really* know what makes memory good/better/pretty good. Memory is a very complicated combination of neurons and hormones. But usually, you can tell if a person is trained to remember something with a brain scan. So, empirically, people with better memory will show more brain activity when remembering memory-intensive things that they have trained to remember. But this doesn't really mean much in the big picture. | [
"No structural differences have been found in the brains of accomplished memorists, who have achieved superior memory with the practiced use of mnemonic devices. One study that sought to locate the neural differences between these and people with typical memory abilities using fMRI, was unable to find any differenc... |
why do race for life only allow women to enter? aren't they losing out on thousands of potential donations? | It's likely that because of it being a woman only event, more women are likely to feel comfortable about competing since they're on a more equal playing field (men tend to be larger, have more muscles, and thus more likely to win), and also because it makes it a woman-only social event.
Those factors probably counteract the donations they'd get from allowing men. | [
"Research has shown that women tend to wait longer to run for political office and are recruited less often than men by major political parties. Women, in general, are less likely to self-nominate; they often do not run for political office unless asked to do so. The aim of The 2012 Project is to ask women over the... |
what does it mean that new jersey & maine government has 'shut down'? | When a government "shuts down," they basically stop operating anything considered to be a non-essential service--things like parks, tourist bureaus, etc. In addition, a lot of paperwork-related things are curtailed if not shut down--so if you're waiting for a car registration or a licensure or some other thing, you may not get it at all or it will be heavily delayed while the shutdown is in place.
The state employees are not paid while this happens (at least by the state--some state unions have funds specifically for this to keep paychecks coming in.) although benefits will continue. Sometimes they are reimbursed after the shutdown, sometimes not. | [
"The 2017 New Jersey state government shutdown was the second shutdown in the history of the U.S. state of New Jersey. The shutdown occurred after the New Jersey Legislature, and Governor Chris Christie failed to agree on a state budget by the constitutional deadline. Exercising his constitutional powers as governo... |
Did a Japanese Admiral during WWII really say "We've awaken a sleeping giant"? and if he did, did he completely forget about WW1 or was he talking about our Navy? | The quote is widely attributed to Admiral Isoroko Yamamoto, the man who designed the Pearl Harbor attack and the poorly conceived Midway campaign 6 months later. The specific quote, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve" is from the 1970 movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, a dramatization of the Pearl Harbor attack, and there is no evidence Yamamota ever said or wrote these words. Yamamoto is widely thought to have believed Pearl Harbor was a huge gamble, one that would buy the Japanese a brief window for taking control of enough of the Pacific to own their own supply chains so the Americans and Europeans would no longer be able to threaten them with embargoes of oil and metal.
The Reluctant Admiral by Hiroyuki Agawa goes into detail about Yamamoto's belief that Japan could not win a long drawn out war with the US. | [
"In the final scene Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto says \"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant\". An abridged version of the quotation is also featured in the 2001 film \"Pearl Harbor\". Although the quotation may well have encapsulated many of his real feelings about the attack, there is no printed evid... |
Does the size of an object passing through the sound barrier have an effect on the force of the shock wave? | Aerospace engineer here.
There's a little bit of misinformation going on in this thread. This may sound unintuitive, but that's physics for you.
The mass of an object does *not* affect a shock wave's "strength" (i.e. pressure differential across the shock boundary, which directly correlates to how loud the shock wave is). Larger objects will give you a larger shock wave in terms of size (i.e. Mach angle), but a baseball the size of a bullet and a baseball the size of a baseball will have shock waves that sound similar.
However, the shape of the object *does* affect "strength." It often causes a higher number of shockwaves because of, say, multiple supersonic regimes on an aircraft, which gives you multiple shock waves that are very closely spaced apart, so the whole stackup sounds louder. So what you're hearing isn't a stronger shock driven by size, but more than one shock driven by shape. An F-22 the size of an F-22 and an F-22 the size of an SUV will sound similar, and these sound different compared to an SUV-sized baseball.
Also, the length of an object (i.e. along the direction of travel) could also cause something called boundary layer separation, which could cause another shock wave to form somewhere along the object. That's how you get a double shock wave (i.e. two cracks, which will usually sound different from each other because of, again, different characteristic shapes).
Note: The reason I keep putting "strength" in quotes is because that word not technically accurate. The only time strong vs. weak shocks are considered in aerodynamics are for oblique shocks, which are outside the scope of this conversation. | [
"Shock waves are formed when a pressure front moves at supersonic speeds and pushes on the surrounding air. At the region where this occurs, sound waves travelling against the flow reach a point where they cannot travel any further upstream and the pressure progressively builds in that region; a high pressure shock... |
why is the body so dehydrated after a full body deep tissue massage? | I don't think it's necessarily dehydrated. They tell you to drink lots of water because the act of massaging the muscles releases lactic acid. The water intake helps to flush this out of the muscle tissue because otherwise it will cause you to be incredibly sore. | [
"According to Biodynamic massage, the digestive tract has a dual function; to digest physical nourishment, but also the emotional digestion of stressful situations. Once away from the stressful situation the experience can be digested in our guts when rest is possible. Biodynamic therapists use a stethoscope during... |
Would it be possible to make an object that is invisible when viewed in visible light and visible in other wavelengths? | Earth's atmosphere, for example, is transparent to visible light and mostly opaque in many other wavelengths. This is a primary reason why we evolved to see this section of the EM spectrum. Also things like glass and water are transparent to visible light and opaque in many other frequencies, but not exactly invisible. Without meta-materials or other high technology, transparent materials will always be visible acting like lenses to bend light. | [
"Since objects can be seen by light in the visible spectrum from a source reflecting off their surfaces and hitting the viewer's eye, the most natural form of invisibility (whether real or fictional) is an object that neither reflects nor absorbs light (that is, it allows light to pass through it). This is known as... |
If a bird is inside a box, but it's flying, does the box weigh the same as it would if the bird was standing on the bottom. | If the box is closed (no air coming in or out) then the box will weigh the same on average regardless of whether the bird is flying. Over a long period of time, the average acceleration (averaged over time) of all the mass in the box (bird, air, and box) is zero, which means that the forces sum to zero (averaged over time). The forces are the supporting force from your hand and the force of gravity on all the mass in the box. Therefore, the force you're applying to the box is equal in magnitude (averaged over time) to the force of gravity on everything in the box (including the bird).
One way to make sense of this is to remember that birds (and airplanes and helicopters) fly by pushing air down. If the air can't go down through the floor of the box, then the floor of the box must stop that air. On average, this force applied to the air by the box is the same magnitude as the force applied from the bird to the air (which is the weight of the bird). | [
"The television series \"MythBusters\" investigated the question in a 2007 episode, testing it both with a box of pigeons and again with a model helicopter. They concluded that the contents being in flight made no difference to the weight, and theorised that the downdraft of air from the wings or rotors pressed dow... |
can insects really make a home for themselves inside a human's ear canal? | Yes. Yes they can. There are also blowfish which can lay eggs in your eye and then grow maggots inside your eyesocket. There are also 3 foot long nematode worms which can get into your feet, grow into your leg, and then spend weeks crawling out when they die. Fortunately, we are pretty close to wiping out that particular one. | [
"Some insects possess a tympanal organ. These are \"eardrums\", that cover air filled chambers on the legs. Similar to the hearing process with vertebrates, the eardrums react to sonar waves. Receptors that are placed on the inside translate the oscillation into electric signals and send them to the brain. Several ... |
why does the internet not come together and rally for a 4th party candidate for the next us presidential elections? | Well a 3rd party candidate would be good for a start. But the problem is that the way US elections are set up, voting for a third party candidate tends to work against your own interests. Imagine this:
* There are 2 main party candidates, A and B. You think A is meh, but B is really bad.
* There is a 3rd party candidate C, that you really like.
* Because A and C are both candidates you like at least sort of, they probably share views on some major issues, meaning that a lot of people will at least sort of like both of them.
* Generally elections go roughly half each way, so in the next election, *at best* half of the voting population likes A *and* C, and half likes B.
* Some of the people who like both A and C vote for A, some vote for C.
* Candidate B wins because the people who voted for A and C split the vote of the other.
| [
"In March 2000 the Arizona Democratic Party ran its Presidential Primary over the internet using the private company votation.com. The announcement received significant press coverage around the world, covered in virtually every country and medium as a test of whether internet voting could actually work in a statew... |
if the dosages on otc medicine are for the average person, how dangerous would it be to increase the dosage slightly? | For legal reasons I don't think anyone here can safely give you medical advice. You should probably just ask your doctor/pharmacist. | [
"Opioid-tolerant patients may require higher than normal dosing. For the opioid tolerant patient, doses in the range of 3-6 mL every 3–4 hours would be usual. This would represent an equivalent daily dose of between 180 mg and 480 mg of morphine.\n",
"In clinical trials, several studies reported minimal or absenc... |
how does a pulse width modulated digital to analog converter work? | The converter produces a pulse train at a fixed frequency, but with a variable ratio of on to off time. It is easy to manipulate the on/off ratio digitally, with good precision. Now consider the average value of the pulse train.
100% ON full scale
50% ON half scale
0% ON bottom of scale
So all that is needed is an averaging circuit to extract the analog value from the on/off ratio. It turns out that an analog averager is easy to build.
This is a cheap form of DAC.
Like anything cheap, it has its disadvantages. In this case, the problem is speed. By the time you have scaled down your clock rate to obtain the required resolution, then allowed for the lag of the averager, the speed of response is not good. For many applications this is acceptable. | [
"In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC, D/A, D2A, or D-to-A) is a system that converts a digital signal into an analog signal. An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) performs the reverse function.\n",
"The Analog Digital Converter module (ADC) uses the successive approximation method to convert analog ... |
how does the map app on my ipod (which has no cell phone function) track my course when it is not connected to wifi? it accurately tracks down to a few meters. | iPods are integrated with Google Maps and use nearby wireless signals to locate themselves. You don't have to connect to a wifi network for the iPod to identify it and use the signal to find it's location. | [
"In 2011, Kamkar discovered the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone mobile devices were continuously sending GPS coordinates, correlated to Wi-Fi MAC addresses, back to Apple, Google and Microsoft respectively, and released his research through several front page \"The Wall Street Journal\" articles. The iPhone would... |
why do you see individual pixels in small droplets of water on an led screen? | The droplets form a kind of lens which magnifies the screen under them, showing the colored segments which make up the pixels of the screen. | [
"A feature that comes preinstalled is the \"Attract\" application, an image of water with leaves and rocks within it. By touching the screen, users can create ripples in the water, much like a real stream. Additionally, the pressure of touch alters the size of the ripple created, and objects placed into the water c... |
why does it feel so damn weird to walk after running on a treadmill | Your muscles are used slightly differently on a treadmill vs running on solid ground. This is caused by the moving belt, you aren't propelling yourself forward in the same way compared to running on the ground.
It may also have to do with you spending time "running" but not moving (your view generally stays the same) when on a treadmill, no source for that but I'd imagine it takes your body a second or two to readjust to the world moving around you when you move. | [
"BULLET::::- Some treadmill runners develop bad running habits that become apparent when they return to outdoor running. In particular a short, upright, bouncy gait may result from having no wind resistance and trying to avoid kicking the motor covering with the front of the foot.\n",
"BULLET::::- Treadmill train... |
What was gun control like in Nazi Germany? | > Did the Nazis enact any types of firearm laws while they had control over Germany?
Yes they did in 1938. Up to this point the situation has been rather confusing:
The Verssailles treaty not only wanted to disarm the german army, but also the civilians, which the Reichstag started in 1920. The problem was that there was no need to register weapons, so they had no idea where to look for weapons, and weapon owners weren't keen on giving their arms away without any compensation. In 1922(after the assasination of the minister of foreign affairs Walther Rathenau by right wing group "Organisation Consul") the "Republikschutzgesetz"(law protecting the republic) forbid:
* Organisations with unallowed possesion of weapons
* Weapon storages
* Non reporting of weapon storages
The Reichstag realised that the execution of the law can't be done without weapon registration and enabled the first real gun control law in 1928. 2 qualifications were needed for the acquisation and carry of weapons:
* Zuverlässigkeit und Bedarf(reliability and necessity)
Reliability meant that no person with connections to criminal organisations or mental issues was allowed to buy weapons. Necessity meant that even a sane, law abiding citizen can't buy weapons if there is no need to possess one(e.g. automobilists that drove through shady regions regularly were allowed to own guns)
Additionaly there were people that remained untouched by the restrictions:
* Members of the central or state government
* Employees of the railways
1933 the NSDAP came to power and passed the "Reichswaffengesetz"(weapon law of the Reich) in 1938. Possession of firearms was strictly forbidden for enemies of the state(Jews, Gipsies, commies and so on). .
New exceptions from the restrictions on buying handguns were: members of the NSDAP and hunters.
Gun permits remained de jure the same, but of course the reliability and necessity was judged differently.
The interesting point is that only buying handguns was restricted, rifles were allowed to anybody from 1938 on(except the enemies of the state of course). The reasons behind this was an armament of the people, in order to make them ready for war. | [
"Gun Control in the Third Reich is a non-fiction book by lawyer Stephen Halbrook. It describes the gun control policies used in Germany from the 1918 Weimar Republic, through the Third Reich in 1938. The book aims to substantiate the Nazi gun control theory of gun politics in the United States by referencing German... |
how did people more than a thousand years ago handle epidemics? | They died. The black plague wiped out something like a third of Europe. Even 100 years ago, the Spanish flu killed more people than combat did in World War One | [
"During the period of the Renaissance from the mid 1450s onward, there were many advances in medical practice. The Italian Girolamo Fracastoro(1478–1553) was the first to propose that epidemic diseases might be caused by objects outside the body that could be transmitted by direct or indirect contact. He also propo... |
why our bodies can recover from common cold and then forget how to next year? | The common cold is not one disease. It's *hundreds* of different diseases. Once you're over a cold, you're now immune to that specific strain of the virus, but you can still be infected by a different strain. | [
"Treatment for the common cold primarily involves medications and other therapies for symptomatic relief. Getting plenty of rest, drinking fluids to maintain hydration, and gargling with warm salt water are reasonable conservative measures. Much of the benefit from symptomatic treatment is, however, attributed to t... |
Is there an Asian "version" of Marco Polo? Who were the first people from East Asia to visit the West? Do we have first person accounts of their travels? | Though I'm not sure which person was the exact first, I wrote an possible answer about a week ago to [the similar question thread](_URL_0_) to OP's. | [
"In the late 13th century, a Venetian explorer named Marco Polo became one of the first Europeans to travel the Silk Road to China. Westerners became more aware of the Far East when Polo documented his travels in \"Il Milione\". He was followed by numerous Christian missionaries to the East, such as William of Rubr... |
Did the French aristocracy really invent the idea of having a lawn? | I don't think anyone can claim to have 'invented' a patch of decorative grass as such, but a commonly cited example is Louis XIV's expansion of the Palace of Versailles out of marshland and surrounding it with decorative gardens containing 'tapis vert'- green carpet. Clearly owning land which takes effort to keep decorative (pre-lawnmowers this would have been a laborious task) is going to be the reserve of the wealthy, but it's when you get into landscaping through the 17th & 18th Centuries that decorative gardens really take off into the realms of an art form- shaping the land to create specific effects (none with actual uses), using techniques pioneered in the Netherlands, and styles popularised in Britain. | [
"BULLET::::- Early 17th century: The closely cut \"English\" lawn created in the Jacobean epoch of gardening, as the garden and the lawn became places created first as walkways and social areas. The English lawn became a symbol of status of the aristocracy and gentry; it showed that the owner could afford to keep l... |
Why does the Higgs boson interract with electrons but not photons? Is there some property subatomic particles have which determine the 'level of interactivity'? | Actually the mass is what determines the extent of their interaction with the Higgs field. It's not that the Higgs field determines a particle's mass; rather, the existence of the Higgs field simply makes it possible for other particles (fields, really) to have mass. | [
"Under electroweak unification, the boson mixes with the weak hypercharge gauge boson , resulting in the observed boson and the photon of quantum electrodynamics; the resulting and the photon both have weak isospin = 0.\n",
"electron is converted to a neutrino (and vice versa) by the virtual particle exchange. Me... |
Is quantum tunneling a valid theory past the molecular level? | I'm not going to lie- it would be virtually impossible to solve [Schrodinger's equation](_URL_1_) (the equation that explains exactly how a particle will behave) for a group of protons and electrons arranged in the form of a Red Bull can on top of a table.
When you solve Schrodinger's equation, the bottom line is that electrons are unlikely to end up in places where there's a large potential energy (i.e. away from the protons, and close to other electrons), and are more likely to end up in places where there's a smaller amount of potential energy.
If you solve the Schrodinger's equation for an electron orbiting the hydrogen atom, you get [these probability densities](_URL_2_), which correspond to [these electron wavefunctions](_URL_0_).
If you know the value of the wavefunction at a certain point, you can square that value to calculate the odds of a particle appearing at that specific point.
Just for kicks and giggles, I decided to take the wavefunction for the outermost electron in a carbon atom (which would follow [this equation](_URL_3_), with a0 being the Bohr radius, which is 5.29\*10^-11 meters), and used Mathematica to calculate the odds of a carbon atom appearing 3 centimeters away from the atom (which I assume is the thickness of the table).
My results were:
Psy=-2.28\*10^-82,097,225
Psy\*Psy=5.18\*10^-164,194,450
So there's less than a 5.18\*10^-164,194,450 in 1 chance, or 1 in 1.93\*10^164,194,449 chance of a single electron tunnelling through that table.
There are a whole bunch more electrons, along with protons and neutrons, in your red bull can. If your red bull can is 10 ounces, which is 1.71\*10^26 atomic mass unit, and it was 100% carbon atoms, then that's 1.42\*10^25 carbon atoms, which would equate to 8.54\*10^25 protons, 8.54\*10^25 neutrons, and 8.54\*10^25 electrons, or 2.56\*10^26 total particles.
Let's assume that:
* Your red bull can was completely flat, so that all the particles have to tunnel the exact same distance.
* The table is still exactly 3cm thick
* All the particles are in the exact same state, so that I don't have to do 2.56\*10^26 different calculations. My apologies to Wolfgang Pauli and all the physicists here.
* The mass of an electron, proton, and neutron are all the same. Again, sorry.
* There is absolutely no potential barrier between one side of the table and the other side of the table.
That means that the odds of you putting the Red Bull can on top of the table, leaving the room, and coming back to see that it has tunnelled through the table comes out to be 4.94\*10^164,194,475.
I would have to go back and review time-dependent perturbation theory in order to calculate how long you'd have to wait in front of the can before you saw it tunnel through the table.
**Edit: I screwed up**. In order to find the odds of a particle ending up inside a particular volume, I gotta take Psy\*Psy, and *integrate it* around a certain volume.
I redid some calculations. The odds of the outermost carbon atom ending up more than 3 centimeters away from the atom is 1 in 2.11\*10^18. The odds of 2.56\*10^26 total particles doing this in unison is 1 in 5.39*10^44. And that's just to get more than 3cm away from the carbon atom. That says nothing about them rearranging themselves in the form of a Red Bull can. | [
"Quantum tunnelling falls under the domain of quantum mechanics: the study of what happens at the quantum scale. This process cannot be directly perceived, but much of its understanding is shaped by the microscopic world, which classical mechanics cannot adequately explain. To understand the phenomenon, particles a... |
the current situation with the kepler space telescope and what it might have found. | With regard to the star KIC 8462852, it's important because while it is over 1,400 light years away, it has been the focus of astronomers because Kepler had been watching it for planets. It does this by measuring the flux (how much the intensity of light drops when something such as a planet in orbit passes in front of it). Normally, the flux drops by a tiny amount: a Jupiter-sized planet, for example, would cause it to drop about 1%. The astounding thing is that the drops in flux have been measured at a staggering 22%, which indicates that something massive around it could be causing it.
There are some proposals:
-A comet broke up or otherwise passed around it, with the tail causing the dip. The problem is, comets generally don't have enough mass to cause that.
-A dust or debris field in orbit. This is almost always only possible around a very young star, because over time the dust and debris clumps together to form asteroids or planets. KIC is a main sequence star that is far too old for this.
-A wandering star passed through the neighborhood of KIC, and its gravitational influence caused cometary material to be deposited into orbit around the star, but again, this is thought highly unlikely.
-The report goes on to say it may be possible that an alien intelligence has constructed a Dyson Sphere, which encloses the star so the civilization could absorb all the sunlight and convert it into energy to fulfill their needs. This is unlikely, because it would still radiate waste light in the infrared range, which doesn't measure any differently than we'd expect. It is more likely that it could be a Dyson Shell, millions or billions of satellites forming a shell-like structure around the star while allowing some sunlight through.
-The alien intelligence hypothesis is probably the most unlikely. What it most likely is, is probably some unknown natural phenomena that, while natural, would still be an exciting observation and addition to our knowledge of astronomy. However, it is still considered a great candidate for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (much more than your average star), which is why the authors of the paper have requested a radio telescope to be pointed at the star to see if anything is coming from it. If such megascale construction was ongoing there 1,400 years ago, there's a good chance that they're emitting some form of electromagnetic radiation such as radio. | [
"BULLET::::- NASA announces that its Kepler space telescope mission has ended, with the telescope having run out of fuel two weeks before, after nine-and-a-half years in space. The telescope discovered 2,681 exoplanets, with a further 2,900 candidates at the time of its retirement. The spacecraft also discovered th... |
the keto diet and how it is different from actually starving | Starving you don't eat. Keto you eat a higher percentage of fat and a lower percentage of carbs to change the way your body produces energy. You have a caloric deficit usually, but the higher fat foods make you feel more full. | [
"The ketogenic diet is a diet high in fat en low in protein and carbohydrates, with up to 90% of calories obtained from fat. Since the diet is low in carbohydrates, the body gets little glucose, normally the main energy source. The fat in the diet is converted by the liver in ketone bodies, which causes a build up ... |
- health insurance companies have grown exponentially over the past 15 years and post record profits year after year - why do premiums and out of pocket expenses keep rising? | 1) Hydraulic despotism. Our country runs medicine as a business, and so it allows capitalist businessmen the power of life or death. If you let someone have control over a resource people need in order to live (like medical care) they can charge whatever they want for it.
2) Since the ACA was passed, health insurance literally became mandatory. Insurance companies can no longer reject sick people (which defeats the whole point of having insurance) and so they have to charge more for the services they are providing.
3) People keep voting Republican, whose entire platform is built on opposing socialized medicine. Countries that have socialized medicine have lower medical costs overall because the government has more power to dictate medical costs and negotiate low prices with drug providers. But America says: Fuck the sick people, it's their own problem. | [
"Insurance Industry profits have increased due to the result of increasing privatization of Medicaid and Medicare programs. A 2012 Bloomberg Government Study examined the financial performance of the five largest publicly traded health insurers by market capitalization. Quarterly revenue for Medicare business, of t... |
the transition from greek gods to their roman counterpart? | The Greek pantheon emerged first as Greece developed earlier.
Rome though did have a sort of animalistic, spiritualist religion. Very observant of family and household gods, and the spirits that dwelt all around them in almost anything and hey did begin building early gods and myths, influenced in part by their neighbors the Etruscans, developing a heavy focus on ancestor veneration for instance.
Italy though was heavily settled by Greeks and Greece began to be seen as the standard of cultured living. And through a few centuries the pantheons merged for the Romans, the Greek gods being seen simply as aspects or parts of the story of their Roman gods, helped along by more and more distinctly Roman writers, poets, etc.
Where as the Greeks began to see their gods in a much more metaphorical view in some ways the Romans never lost that early superstition, and were very transnational about it all(much like Judaism) such and such a sacrifice was required so that such and such a positive omen would be given, before such and such ana ction could be done to assure success. | [
"In Ancient Roman times, a new Roman mythology was born through syncretization of numerous Greek and other foreign gods. This occurred because the Romans had little mythology of their own, and inheritance of the Greek mythological tradition caused the major Roman gods to adopt characteristics of their Greek equival... |
why do we get paid by the hour/salary instead of getting paid for how much work you get done? | Mostly because it's much easier to measure time:
To pay **by time**, you just need to know the start time and end time that the person was working.
By contrast: If you paid **by unit of work**, you would need a reliable system to measure quantity of work completed. The specifics depend on the type of job (and there are some jobs that actually do pay per unit of work completed.) But generally, this is much harder and/or more expensive to measure. | [
"The reason that employees are often paid according to hours of work rather than by direct measurement of results is that it is often more efficient to use indirect systems of controlling the quantity and quality of effort, due to a variety of informational and other issues (e.g., turnover costs, which determine th... |
is water infinite? | Water is a constant, rather than being infinite. Through normal use, the amount of water on earth stays constant over time; it just relocates, or gets turned into ice, or vapour.
The only exception to this is conversion of water into hydrogen and oxygen, but generally the hydrogen is then converted back into water through burning or other forms of oxidisation (which also uses the oxygen). | [
"Although it was becoming evident that water could no longer be considered an \"infinite resource\", as had been the case in the 1950s when there were fewer people on the planet, no one knew just how scarce the resource was. This prompted IWMI to try to find out. Its research culminated in publication of \"Water fo... |
why is "pounds" shortened "lbs"? | "Lb is an abbreviation of the Latin word libra. The primary meaning of libra was balance or scales (as in the astrological sign), but it also stood for the ancient Roman unit of measure libra pondo, meaning “a pound by weight.” We got the word “pound” in English from the pondo part of the libra pondo but our abbreviation comes from the libra. The libra is also why the symbol for the British pound is £—an L with a line through it. The Italian lira also used that symbol (with two lines through it), the word “lira” itself being a shortened version of libra." - [source](_URL_0_)
*Edit* - huh, cool, gold. thanks anonymous person. | [
"The Latin word for \"pound\" is libra. The £ or ₤ is a stylised writing of the letter L, a short way of writing libra. This is similar to how a pound of mass is abbreviated \"lb\". Up until 1972, especially on typewriters or keyboards without a \"£\" symbol, it was common to write \"L\" or \"l\" instead of \"£\".\... |
if i do something illegal that becomes legal the next day, am i still guilty of the crime? why or why not? | Yes.
People in jail for marijuana posession etc are still in jail in the states that legalized it. | [
"If an offense requires a specific kind of culpability, then any more severe culpability will suffice. Thus if an offense is defined in the form, \"It is illegal to \"knowingly\" do X,\" then it is illegal to do X knowingly or purposely (a more severe state), but not to do so recklessly or negligently (the two less... |
engine oil ratings | This question has many answers. I can answer the car/motorcycle one with authority: motorcycles use wet clutches (engine oil lubricates the clutch). Most modern car oils have friction modifiers which decrease friction between parts. If you used oil with friction modifiers in a vehicle with a wet clutch (ie. almost all motorcycles) the clutch would slip, which is obviously pretty bad.
You can use diesel oil in motorcycles no problem. One of the most popular motorcycle oils out there is actual a diesel oil.
So a lot has to do with what kind of crap they're including in their product, since no oil is pure oil, they all have additives.
The other stuff, like 5w-40, 10w-30 is temperature ratings. The first number is how viscous it is when cold, the 2nd number is viscosity when hot. | [
"A single-grade engine oil, as defined by SAE J300, cannot use a polymeric viscosity index improver (VII, also viscosity modifier, VM) additive. SAE J300 has established eleven viscosity grades, of which six are considered Winter-grades and given a W designation. The 11 viscosity grades are 0W, 5W, 10W, 15W, 20W, 2... |
How is an ebola patient treated? | Ebola is treated symptomatically - meaning that you don't use a drug to wipe the virus out from the body (there is no available drug for the treatment of ebolavirus), but that you treat symptoms as they appear.
Patients are supported with different medical interventions depending on their status. These interventions include (but are not limited to):
* IV fluid replacement (for dehydration, blood volume/pressure, kidney functions, electrolytes/minerals etc.)
* Blood pressure management
* Oxygen support
* Blood replacement
* Treatment of other infections
The body fights the virus on its own, and depending on the patient's immune system, they live or die.
Early treatment is of course important - it allows the symptoms to be controlled before they can get worse. Your question about Thomas Duncan is hard to answer. Maybe he could have been saved, but keep in mind that his symptoms still could have got to the same point that lead to his death.
TL,DR: You support the patient's body functions until their immune system wipes out the infection or they die. | [
"Treatment using a transfusion of plasma from Ebola survivors, a form of “passive immunotherapy,” since it contains antibodies able to fight the virus, has been used with apparent success on a number of patients. Survivor Kent Brantly donated his blood to Rick Sacra, Ashoka Mukpo and nurse Nina Pham. The World Heal... |
the effect of regular exercise on bone health. | Exercise makes good bones. The best type of exercise for bone health is what's called resistance training, but any exercise that requires you to 'use your bones', essentially, is great. For this reason, a lot of aqua-based exercise isn't optimal -- you ideally want to be forcing your bones to help keep you standing.
The reason why is that bone is made up of lots of different stuff. There's different minerals, proteins, and even about 25% water. There are specialised cells that live inside your bone, that monitor how much of each of these components are in the bone already, and how much of each the bone needs. If you're using your bones to carry lots of weight (by exercising), then these cells sense that, and build stronger bones. If you're very sick and have to lay in bed for 3 months, then the bone cells will think that you don't really need all that good, strong bone mineral and will break it down and send it to other places in your body, where it can be used.
All adults over 50 should be participating in some form of regular exercise to help their bone strength. Bone naturally decays as we get older, so adults over 50 should also speak to their doctors to see if they need to get their bone density checked. If you have low bone density, there are only 2 ways to find out about it -- the first is to get a simple scan, and the second is to break a bone (often with something as minor as falling from standing height).
Finally, balance exercises are exceptional. They don't have as good an effect on bone strength, but can help prevent falls which is super important. | [
"Developing research has demonstrated that many of the benefits of exercise are mediated through the role of skeletal muscle as an endocrine organ. That is, contracting muscles release multiple substances known as myokines which promote the growth of new tissue, tissue repair, and multiple anti-inflammatory functio... |
why do some people who wear costumes paint black around their eyes? | The eye holes of the costumes show some of the actor's skin, so it's best to paint the area around the eyes a similar color to prevent any human features from slipping through and breaking immersion. | [
"Many performers of both popular and European classical music, including French singers Edith Piaf and Juliette Greco, and violinist Joshua Bell have traditionally worn black on stage during performances. A black costume was usually chosen as part of their image or stage persona, or because it did not distract from... |
in computer networking, what is the difference between a port and a socket? | If your computer were an apartment building, with programs living in the apartments, the address of the building would be your computer's IP address, and the apartment numbers would be the ports. So if you want to talk to a specific program, you need to know which computer, as well as which *port* on that computer the program is listening on.
A socket is the entire communication link between two computers, and is defined as the combination of the local address and port, the remote address and port, and the protocol being used. It would be like one of those tin-can-and-string telephones that your little brother has set up with his friend in the apartment across the alley behind the building. | [
"The term \"socket\" is analogous to physical female connectors, communication between two nodes through a channel being visualized as a cable with two male connectors plugging into sockets at each node. Similarly, the term \"port\" (another term for a female connector) is used for \"external\" endpoints at a node,... |
what happens when you blank-out whilst driving and realise 5 minutes later you haven't paid attention, but also haven't crashed? | Once something is "learned" - like hardwired into your brain cells -, you don't have to use as much "resources" as you had the first few times. Here, repetition and interaction is the key. The brain can be "programmed" in the sense that if you do the "same" task over and over again, the brain "builds" a specific set of combinations that facilitate the travel of the electrical pulses that help your motor coordination to work smoothly.
Which means that the workload that was executed in your brain to performed that task gets "memorized" and "optimized". It's more technical than that, but essentially the brain devises shorter routes and faster pulses to deal with that task. In some way, is like the brain "understands": "*Ok, this is somehow important, let's make it semi-reflexive.*"
You can still maintain focus on it, since the parts of the brain that deal with attention, the right cerebral hemisphere, the "back" part of your parietal lobe, the cerebellum a little and the brain stem, can take control some of our reflexive actions, such as breathing, which you normally do regardless of your attention to it, but can also control it if necessary.
In a way, you brain works together with you and what you do. When you "space out", the brain - obviously, it does not have its own will, but it works based on what you do or don't do - takes control of the now well known process necessary to drive. Since you have done it before plenty of times, the brain "doesn't need" you to do it anymore. You are still paying attention in some way, which is why you can remember what happened and realize that you weren't exactly completely focused, but the brain power necessary to perform that task was optimized, so sometimes you don't need to feel so "alert", specially if you heart beatings are low - if you are calm or sleepy, in a way.
However, it's important to point out that driving is a highly complex task for the brain. Your "auto-pilot" **cannot deal with unexpected stimuli**. Which means that it will do what you have done a thousand times before, but not something new. If someone cuts you off or breaks too suddenly, everything is "shut down" and the part of your brain that deals with self-defense kicks in. Blood pressure goes up and the brain starts to handle this as a "fight or flight" situation. Now, in a way, you're on your own. If you were in auto-pilot, it takes "a little longer" for the brain to get everything ready to kick ass than it would take if you were paying attention - since this paying attention side of your brain also works together with other parts in a "fight or flight" situation. It's partially activated already, so your reflex is faster.
To sum up, if you're in a deserted road, it's ok to space out a little every now in then. If you're going Fast & Furious Detroit Drift, than you better pay attention to what you're doing. It might not look like it, but you're carrying a very heavy weapon. | [
"Upon getting out of the vehicle, the driver and passenger(s) often will experience a blank period and amnesia (see Missing Time), after which they will find themselves again standing in front of, or driving their car. While they frequently will not consciously remember the experience, either subsequent nightmares ... |
Is there any truth to the claims that Marshal Michel Ney managed to fake his execution and emigrate to the USA? | So, generally there is a large lack of sources to verify this.
This is from the Essay "The Bravest of the Brave" by Brigader (Ret'd) Peter Young.
> On December 7, 1815, condemned by his peers, he appeared before a firing squad at the Carrefour de l'Observatoire in the Jardin du Luxembourg. "Soldiers," he said, "when I give the command to fire, fire straight at the heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her." Genearl Count Leon Rochechouart, who was in charge of the proceedings, remembered that Ney's demeanor was "noble, calm and dignified beyond reproach. The marshal gave the order to fire, and fell struck by 11 bullets. "One of the soldiers had the good taste to hit the top of the wall."
This is a certain and definite source detailing the last moments of the Marshal. This is evidence of his death, a primary source that details it. Due to a lack of evidence to explain how he fled America and the fact that the French Crown wanted to make an example of him for others.
However, one other item is of unique interest that may prove the story incorrect. Ney's primary education was going to be that of a Notary at Sarrelouis and an overseer of mines and forges, he would have become a civil servant. He rejected this life to become a hussar in the *Ancien Regime*. However, this education would have given him a large amount of French legal knowledge, which wouldn't detail an extensive knowledge in Latin, Ancient Greek, or mathematics. Even Napoleon, who received one of the best education available to a *petite noblesse* only received Latin.
Further, beyond being interested in military theory, Ney didn't have a strong passion for academics. The military was his life and that may be one of many reasons as to why he may have developed PTSD over the years.
The entire story is dubious and thus not to be trusted. | [
"Police believed that six men were involved in the robbery but only had enough evidence to convict three enlisted United States Air Force airmen: Dale Selby Pierre, William Andrews, and Keith Roberts. Pierre and Andrews were both sentenced to death and executed for murder and aggravated robbery, while Roberts, who ... |
The slaughter of French prisoners at the Battle of Agincourt: How did this happen and how common was the mass killing of prisoners in battle? | The accounts of how the massacre exactly happened are contradictory. One simply says that the English killed all of their prisoners except for a few deemed "illustrious" enough to spare. This does not specify exactly how the killings were administered. Another describes how the English weren't really excited about the prospect of losing their ransom money, so Henry placed one of his esquires in command of a special unit of archers to actually do the deed. None of the sources give us any detail as to the number of prisoners at this time of the battle, but modern estimates have come up with numbers as high as three thousand. If this is even somewhat close to the real number, then it explains Henry's desperation to have them all killed, but not why the French prisoners passively accepted their slaughter.
In solving this mystery, we must turn to a third account, that of the French knight Ghillebert de Lannoy, who was captured at Agincourt. After being wounded, he was seized by the English and locked in a local home with a handful of other French soldiers. When Henry ordered the execution of the prisoners, the English set the house on fire. de Lannoy barely managed to escape the house, but was captured again by someone who recognized his value as a prisoner. By this time, the moment of desperation had passed, and the English were content to take prisoners for ransom again.
If de Lannoy's account is true, and the English did in fact herd at least some of their prisoners off the battlefield and into separate groups, it goes a long way towards explaining exactly how the massacre of the prisoners occurred. Some, and possibly the majority, of the prisoners would still have been closer to the front line of the battle, where they had been taken. After this had been carried out, Henry's special execution squad could easily run back and slaughter the groups of prisoners that had been marched away from the front lines previously. The French prisoners would have all been disarmed and demoralized. Many were likely wounded, as de Lannoy was. Even if the French prisoners thought about fighting back as they were being slaughtered, they would not have much ability to do so.
Henry's decision to slaughter the prisoners was counter to ideals of war and chivalrous knightly behavior, but contemporary sources seem to have recognized the necessity of his decision. The English had previously executed wounded French soldiers at the Battle of Crecy in 1346. The Portuguese army also massacred their prisoners when the situation seemed desperate at the Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385. Curiously, there was a force of English archers present at Aljubarrota fighting for the Portuguese. It may have been the case that they were the ones who executed the prisoners on this occasion as well. While executing prisoners taken for ransom was not common, neither was it considered completely out of the question if the situation called for it. | [
"After two days, Napoleon ordered them massacred. The prisoners were marched down to sand-hills of the coast and they were arranged in small squares. They were given a few minutes to prepare for death. The execution lasted for hours with some fleeing out in the ocean and asking for mercy. When they returned they we... |
What are some widely respected historical overview-type books that cover British history throughout the medieval period? (650-1550). Something that is easy/entertaining to read is a plus. | A professor of mine who specializes in medieval Britain had us read "The Anglo-Saxon Age: a Very Short Introduction" by John Blair. It is not kidding about being very short--seriously, this thing is a breeze to get through. They have other short introductions in the series that would absolutely help give you a good grasp on medieval Britain. This collection also has introductions to Roman and Medieval Britain that I would highly recommend. I also really enjoyed "From the Vikings to the Normans" by Wendy Davies. It only covers 800-1100 CE, but I think it would be a good start for you. Hope this helps you get started! | [
"The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages (), widely known as the is a major collection of British and Irish historical materials and primary sources published as 99 works in 253 volumes between 1858 and 1911. Almost all the great medieval English chronicles were included: mo... |
how do autoimmune diseases work? | Your immune system works sort of like combining different lego pieces. Combining these leads to different places they can fit onto. We have a system to try and break down the combinations that don't work or that hurt us, but sometimes that system fails.
Frequently in an autoimmune disease you form a combination of lego pieces that attach to your own cells causing your own body to mount an immune response. This is commonly due to genetic factors and an environmental event that occurs.
There are also things your immune system wants to attack but that look a lot like your own body, which can confuse your immune system and lead to an autoimmune disease. | [
"Autoimmune disorders are when the body has an immune response to itself, causing an inflammatory reaction to occur within the body. Because autoimmune disorders involve abnormalities in the immune system cells (i.e., B-cells, T-cells). It can be inferred that miRNA are strongly expressed in regions of the body tha... |
how is it possible for gopro to capture those video shots where the camera is rotating around the person mid-action? | Looking at the segment as 1:10 I'd say that the camera is mounted on an arm which is connected to the snowboarders helment. Which can rotate freely. Inertia keeps the camera in the same position while the snowboarder spins around.
Kind of like how if you stir liquid in a glass it will keep going after you've stopped stirring.
edit: At 1:36 you can see the biker tapping the camera and it begins to swing on an arc which shows the camera has free range of motion along the horizontal plane.
Second edit: I don't know how they get the video so stable though. It's quite impressive considering motorcycles vibrate like there's no tomorrow at those speeds. Curious as well. | [
"However, to achieve the effect of a simple tracking shot, it is necessary to use motion control to move the camera. A motion control rig can be set to dolly or pan the camera at a glacially slow pace. When the image is projected it could appear that the camera is moving at a normal speed while the world around it ... |
why do things take longer to cook when i make more of them? | The temperature is not the same. If you have 250 degree oven and you drop in a 70 degree potato, the temperature dips slightly while it brings the potato up to 250 degrees.
Now, if you put in ten potatoes, the temperature dips a lot more and it takes longer to get them all up to 250.
Thought experiment - Boil water, drop in an ice cube. Now drop in ten. Now fifty. You can see how the more uncooked items you put in, the longer it takes for the temperature to get back up to where it needs to be. | [
"The primary advantage to this method of cooking is to save time over the course of the month by preparing meals ahead of time in one big cooking day. Preparation time for each meal is then cut down to reheating time only.\n",
"The low temperature of slow-cooking makes it almost impossible to burn even food that ... |
Is Intrapulmonary pressure less than atmospheric pressure during a cough? | Coughing represents an event of forced expiration. For air to exit the airways, the pressure inside the airways must be higher than the pressure of the cointainer they are emptying into, in this case the atmosphere.
Ergo, intrapulmonary pressure, often just called alveolar pressure, must be *higher* than atmospheric pressure during a cough. | [
"Peak inspiratory pressure (P) is the highest level of pressure applied to the lungs during inhalation. In mechanical ventilation the number reflects a positive pressure in centimeters of water pressure (cmHO). In normal breathing, it may sometimes be referred to as the maximal inspiratory pressure (M), which is a ... |
how do we know where hackers are from? | We don't. A good hacker (hackers who are intentionally hacking government servers) won't leave a trace. Or at least they will be behind so many proximity it'd take forever to find them | [
"A hacker may obtain an individual's dox without making the information public. A hacker may look for this information in order to extort or coerce a known or unknown target. Also, a hacker may harvest a victim's information in order to break into their Internet accounts, or to take over their social media accounts... |
So I finally understand why the fundamental particles are "fundamental". So what IS a "field" and what is it made of? | > What is the electromagnetic field? I know what it affects and what it does, but what is it? And what are all the other fields?
The fields are fundamental. When you ask "what *is* the electromagnetic field", for example, I think it's instructive to consider what possible answers this question can have that would be satisfying. Any answer which reduces the field to something *more* fundamental not only contradicts the claim that the fields are fundamental (and is therefore unsatisfactory), but also could be met with an infinite regression of "ok but what is *that* made of?" As far as we know, it's turtles all the way down...until you get to fields. The turtles stop at fields.
At some level, also, science isn't really meant to tell us what things *are*, but only provide a *description* of past observations that seems to reliably predict future events. Asking what the fields *are*, then, is somewhat of a non-scientific question (but perhaps a philosophical one), and may be hinting at your metaphysical premises. What is the ontological status of scientific models? I have an opinion, but let's not go there.
I could tell you briefly what the fields are *mathematically*. At a very basic level a field is just a function of space and time. One could, for example, define a temperature field in their room; for each instant of time, one can assign a number (the temperature) at each location in the room. We then have a function T(x,t), which is the temperature at location x at time t. A temperature field is an example of what we call a *scalar field*.
The electromagnetic field is a little more complicated. If we return to 19th century physics, we actually have an electric field (called E) and a magnetic field (called B) which are separate. Let's focus on just the electric field for a moment. The electric field is exactly the same object as the temperature field, except at each point in space we don't assign a number, we assign a triplet of numbers (Ex,Ey,Ez). Or in other words, we assign to each point in space a *vector*. The magnetic field works the same way, where to each point we assign the triplet of numbers (Bx,By,Bz). So the electric and magnetic fields are *vector fields*.
Aside from the obvious difference between scalar field and vector field (the number of *components*), there's an important property which distinguishes them. If we changed our coordinate system by rotating it by some angle, the temperature at a given point would not change, but the electric and magnetic fields *would* change because they are vector valued. Mathematically this means that the scalar and vector are in what we call different *representations* of the groups of rotations. They behave differently when you rotate.
In quantum field theory the story is a lot more complicated, but the basic picture is here. The fields we use in QFT are just like the ones I mentioned - functions which assign to each point in space and time an *object* (i.e. a number, a vector, or perhaps even more complicated things) - but we only consider those fields which are representations of the *Lorentz group*, which refers not only to rotations and translations, but also *boosts* in velocity. A Lorentz transformation takes you from one inertial reference frame and puts you in another inertial reference frame. We arrive at this probably unintelligible statement, but for completeness I'll state it: fundamental fields are irreducible representations of the Lorentz group. The electron, for example, is a field in what we call the *Dirac* representation of the Lorentz group. The Higgs field is a *scalar* representation of the Lorentz group. The electromagnetic field is a *vector* representation of the Lorentz group.
That's all math. The *physics* comes in when you postulate equations that these fields must obey. The fields can't take on any values they want, there are conditions. These conditions are analogous to Newton's second law for a particle. They're called the equations of motion. | [
"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 ... |
what is that little grey bar that moves ahead of the progress bar on a youtube video? | The grey bar is supposed to indicate how much of the video has loaded already.
So the red line represents the point of the video you are watching, but the grey bar represents the point till where you could watch without any connection rn. | [
"Bottom bars correspond to delay before sending a snapshot by a server and receiving it by a client (so called \"ping\"). The shorter the bar, the smaller the ping was. Red bars mean that the frame has not arrived on time, yellow ones - that the snapshot was suppressed to stay under the rate limit.\n",
"If those ... |
Is it possible for there to be a "shell" of light/energy surrounding a black hole? | Unfortunately, the [photon sphere](_URL_1_) doesn't represent a stable orbit, so light doesn't linger there for long, let alone accumulate. [reference](_URL_0_)
Speaking of which, _URL_1_ has been marked as needing attention from an expert since 2008! Would anyone here like to go clean it up? | [
"Black hole event horizons are widely misunderstood. Common, although erroneous, is the notion that black holes \"vacuum up\" material in their neighborhood, where in fact they are no more capable of seeking out material to consume than any other gravitational attractor. As with any mass in the universe, matter mus... |
why is it bad to eat carnivores? | it isn't inherently bad.
carnivores that humans regularly eat in no particular order
free range chicken
wild turkey
snake
tuna
shark
alligator
dog
whale
problem with carnivores is that feeding them is expensive. meat doesn't grow on a tree. you need to make meat with an herbivore and plants that grow from the sun. so there's vertical supply chain you need to worry about | [
"Characteristics commonly associated with carnivores include strength, speed, and keen senses for hunting, as well as teeth and claws for capturing and tearing prey. However, some carnivores do not hunt and are scavengers, lacking the physical characteristics to bring down prey; in addition, most hunting carnivores... |
Medieval Hungary was a large and powerful nation, yet the Hungary of today is a rather small and, for lack of a better term, weak. How did such a mighty nation become so small and inconsequential? | > No country was perished more viciously in Trianon than Hungary. But this country is dwelled by spiritually strong people, who won’t be resigned to the demolition of their country. Hungary’s dismembering is so dishonourable that no one takes responsibility for it. Everybody acts like they don’t know about it, everybody is in coy silence. The reference to the right of nations’ self-determination is only an untrue formula… they misused their victory in the most vicious way… There’s no French, English or Italian who would accept the conditions forced to Hungary for their own nation…
- Francesco Nitti, Prime Minister of Italy
Until the end of the Austro-Hungarian in 1918 and the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, the official borders of Hungary roughly mirrored those of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary. The history of Hungary after the death of Matthias Corvinus, who arguably brought the Kingdom to its apex, is a story of fall, resurrection, and ultimately of dismemberment.
After the death of Corvinus, Hungarian nobles elected a foreign King, Lajos II, who was no more than a boy, and dissolved the King's hated tax system and the royal army that it funded. In 1526, acting upon the perceived weakness of Hungary, the Ottomans invaded the country and defeated its entire army at Mohacs. Sultain Suleiman Kanuni of the Ottomans reportedly waited for a day at the battle site, expecting a second attack. He could not believe reports that the army he had crushed - less than a third of the size of his own, with no modern equipment and fighting with outdated equipment and tactics - was the full strength of the once mighty Kingdom of Hungary.
Of course, while the central government of the Kingdom of Hungary had been dismembered by this victory, the outlying provinces were not. Hungarian nobles continued to rebel against Ottoman rule, and momentarily established states, the largest of which was John Zápolya's state in Transylvania. In November of 1526, Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austrian Ferdinand II was declared King by much of the remaining Hungarian nobility, contesting both the Ottomans and Zapolya. Ferdinand defeated Zapolya in two battles, forcing Zapolya to take refuge with Suleiman, and vassalizing Hungary to the Ottomans. War would rage over Hungary between Austria and the Ottomans until 1683. In that year, a resurgent Ottoman Empire led by Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha raised a massive army to besiege Vienna. However, they were defeated in a series of battles by the brilliant Prince Eugene of Savoy. The resultant peace, the Treaty of Zenta, turned over most of medieval Hungary to Austria.
However, while Hungary became subordinate to Austria, it was claimed as a *hereditary possession*, not as an imperial province under central control. In other words, Austrian claims to Hungary derived from the election of the Austrian Archduke as King of Hungary, and, in an age where legitimacy was a vital point of royal diplomacy, Hungary was never partitioned into smaller provinces, despite around 60% of those living in the "Kingdom of Hungary" being non-Hungarian speakers.
Hungary lived as a subordinate but important appendage of the Kingdom of Austria until 1866. Up to that point, its manpower had been vital in rescuing the Habsburgs from the crisis of the War of Austrian Succession, and from the Napoleonic Wars. Far from being oppressed, the Hungarian magnates - the country's largest landowners - were always key in Habsburg governments, and owned some of the largest estates of Europe, part of Europe's highest social class. However, as nationalism spread through Europe after the Napoleonic wars, lesser Hungarian nobles and the middle class grew increasingly discontent with their nation's subordinate status, and that many of its laws were legislated from Vienna. In 1848, the Hungarians attempted to revolt, but were crushed by a coalition of Austrian, Russian, and Croatian forces. In 1866, however, Austria suffered a horrible defeat at the hands of Prussia, and relented to give the Hungarians autonomy in their own lands and almost equal status to Austria.
From 1866 to 1918, Austria and Hungary were united in a common economy, in which internal trade and regional specialization were important. Czechia was the most industrialized part of the Empire, while the Hungarian plain was the Empire's breadbasket, producing 500% more food than it required per annum. These economic relations, and the common interest of Austrian and Hungarian elites in repressing independence movements from the other minorities in the Empire - Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Romanians - kept the Empire together. Despite old tensions, Austria and Hungary remained together because the union *made sense*. There were, however, still points of antagonism and inequality. Austria and Hungary, aside from the central royal army, had their own separate forces, known as the Landwehr and the Honved. The Honved was notoriously forbidden to have artillery, in fears that it might separate.
For the most part, Hungary pursued its own domestic policy and was a relatively content partner in this relationship, coming the closest that it had since Mohacs to restoring some semblance of independence.
In 1918, all that ended. Hungary declared the Austro-Hungarian union dissolved after a reformed Italian army crushed the royal forces in the last battle of the Isonzo, aided by a giant artillery park. In a series of armistice agreements, Hungary agreed to surrender territory. Vojvodina and much of Croatia and Slovenia were surrendered to the Serbs. The Czech legions occupied most of Slovakia, and Romania retained a part of Transylvania at the end of the war. Allied powers had begun to negotiate a partition of Hungarian lands without Hungarian participation.
In 1919, the allies demanded that Hungary accept a new boundary with Romania at the river Tisza. Unable to refuse but unwilling to accept, the Hungarian provisional government resigned, and the Communists took power. The Communist Red Army launched a successful invasion of Czechoslovakia, taking territories and signing a ceasefire. Their invasion of Romania, however, was less successful, and their forces collapsed after a week of fierce fighting. The Romanians took Budapest and installed Regent Miklos Horthy.
In 1920, the terms of the Treaty of Trianon spelled out. Hungary lost three quarters of its prewar territory, and one third of ethnic Hungarians were outside Hungary's borders. Worse yet, the interdependent economy of Austria-Hungary was shattered by the creation of new borders. In each of the Austro-Hungarian successor states, rural unemployment ranged between 25 and 33%.
The Hungarian delegation to the peace conference made these points clear, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States was sympathetic. However, the British and French would have none of it. They had three priorities. The French saw Romania as a close historical and cultural partner, and looked out for their interests. Second, Romania and Serbia had suffered massively in the war - the manyfold territorial expansions to both states after the war, even at the expense of Italy in the case of Serbia - were rewards for the immense personal sacrifice that both nations endured in fighting the Central Powers on abandoned, hopeless fronts until the bitter end. Finally, the Anglo-French interest was in preventing the resurgence of Germany. They feared that a renewed Austro-Hungarian union could become a German proxy that would re-assert itself in the Balkans, and thus they sought to strengthen Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia such that either state would be stronger than Austria or Hungary.
Basically, Hungary ceased to exist as a completely independent power in 1526, when much of the nobility threw its lot in with Austria. It regained a measure of self-rule in 1866. Its archaic Medieval borders, which did not reflect ethnic realities, were preserved because of the legitimacy concerns of the Habsburg monarchy which owned the crown. Come the end of the First World War, "national self determination" as one of Wilson's 14 points meant non-Hungarian lands would have left regardless, but the need to reward Romania and Serbia, which fought a long and hard war, and the desire to contain former German allies, meant the allies awarded neighboring states with even larger stretches of land.
Sources:
Teszelesky, Robert. The Matthias Corvinus cultus in early modern Hungary
Judson, Pieter. The Habsburg Empire.
Merkin, Yakov. Crosscurrents: Navigating The Turbulent Politics Of The Right During The Horthy Era In Hungary, 1920-1944.
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