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Why are there so many books on Rome, Greece, and Egypt, but hardly anything on Persia? | Part of this is simply what we find in popular literature. Because the classical past is very prominent in western memory and is a "prestige" topic it is easier to sell and publish books on the topic; in addition there are simply more people out there with the background needed to write on Greece and Rome. Egypt is less prominent in the "Western Past"(a terrible term but we'll use it) but its monumental architecture and spectacular funerary practices have given the subject a considerable public appeal as well. Having said that, there are a considerable number of very fine books on Persian history before the Islamic conquests. Weishofer's _Ancient Persia_ is a commonly recommended general overview of Persian History from the Achaemenid Empire to the Islamic conquests. For further reading on the Achaemenid Empire in particular, Briant's _From Cyrus to Alexander_ remains so far as I know the standard treatment of the subject, with a extensive bibliography on more detailed topics in the field. | [
"Western art, no less than history and theology, bear testimony to the ubiquity of the Persian presence in antiquity. Of all the extant works of Greek tragedy, for example, the only one that is about a non-Greek subject is Aeschylus' play \"The Persians\".\n",
"The non-Iranian sources are mainly Greek. The most i... |
How does the heat from the sun reaches the earth? Are the rays of light emited by the sun hot? | Yes the rays are hot as in they carry a lot of energy. This energy is in the end what is captured by the earth and the plants and the solar cells to turn into other forms of energy. There are two reasons why the temperature in the Himalayas is still lower:
* First of all the energy of this beam does not really depend on how far it has traveled. This because the air does not absorb a lot of its energy. The energy density will slightly decrease (since the rays are divergent) but comparing the height of the Mt. Everest (~9km) to the average distance from the earth to the sun (~100M km) this effect will be negligible. So the energy of the rays is the same at both positions
* However energy is proportional to pressure, and the pressure decreases with altitude. This because temperature is nothing more than the average velocity of the particles. With more particles more particles will bump into you and in this way transfer energy to you. This is why in the Himalayas it's cold.
So for your second question: it's not so much "friction" (friction is not really the right word) between the rays and air, it's between the rays and more solid (absorbing surfaces), these surfaces will transfer the heat to the air, which will in turn transfer it to you. | [
"Very hot objects emit UV radiation (see black-body radiation). The Sun emits ultraviolet radiation at all wavelengths, including the extreme ultraviolet where it crosses into X-rays at 10 nm. Extremely hot stars emit proportionally more UV radiation than the Sun. Sunlight in space at the top of Earth's atmosphere ... |
What would happen if you tried to manipulate a rod of material that was a lightyear in length? | Just _some_ of the times the same question has been asked before:
[If I pushed a button 10 light years away with a stick that was 10 light years long, how long would it take for the button to be pushed?](_URL_5_)
[If I have a theoretical rod that is 1 light-year long and I have the ability to pull it one meter towards me, will the opposing end pull away from an observer at the same time or would there be a delay?](_URL_0_)
[If I have a string that is one light year long](_URL_2_)
[If you had a pole 2 light years long on supports would the friction stop you from pushing/pulling it?](_URL_3_)
[If I were floating in space next to a 1-light-year-long metal rod, and I pushed the end of the rod forward one meter, would the far end of the rod move one meter instantly?](_URL_4_)
[If I had a pencil that was 2 light years long, and I managed to use it to write a message on another planet, would I be achieving FTL communication?](_URL_1_)
| [
"It follows that if a rod is accelerated by some external force applied anywhere along its length, the elements of matter in various different places in the rod cannot all feel the same magnitude of acceleration if the rod is not to extend without bound and ultimately break. In other words, an accelerated rod which... |
how much luck is involved when something goes viral on social media? besides the merits of the content itself, what other factors contribute to it? | You normally need a key person to comment or forward it. Someone who is followed or read by lots of other people to start a kind of cascade effect. A single comment by someone like George Takei will send an ordinary item into a potentially viral one | [
"BULLET::::- Network Analysis: social data is also interesting in that it migrates, grows (or dies) based on how the data is propagated throughout the network. It's how viral activity starts—and spreads.\n",
"The growth of social networks significantly contributed to the effectiveness of viral marketing. As of 20... |
would we still get hungry if everything our body needs is directly pumped into our bloodstream? | There is TPN, total parenteral nutrition. It is expensive. Everything you need is pumped into the bloodstream. They are very prone to getting infections. It is a big catheter.
Patients getting getting TPN are generally very sick. They do not complain about being hungry. But it could be that they are sick. | [
"Although the passage of food into the gastrointestinal tract results in increased blood flow to the stomach and intestines, this is achieved by diversion of blood primarily from skeletal muscle tissue and by increasing the volume of blood pumped forward by the heart each minute. The flow of oxygen and blood to the... |
if it is illegal to hire someone base on race, why does job applications still have you choose what is your race, why does it matter? | Background information is used by HR departments for tracking purposes internally and isn't used for hiring. Legally any racial/personal information must be removed from the application before being forwarded to hiring officials. Also, offering that information is purely voluntary and can't be held against if you choose not to disclose it. | [
"Race not only plays an important role in the way that employees act with each other, but also how employees act toward customers based on what race they are associated with. People expect others to behave in a certain manner due to what race they identify or associate with. Race influences and changes the way we s... |
1 out of 10 men are direct descendants of genghis khan. why men specifically? is it impossible for women to be direct descendants? | Male descendants are just much easier to trace, because it has to be the same Y chromosome. | [
"There are no living males known to descend directly from Genghis Khan, or any of his nearest male relatives. Many researchers have attempted to infer his Y-DNA haplogroup, according to various criteria, from those now prominent in Mongolia and other areas formerly part of the Mongol Empire.\n",
"Khan had four wi... |
in southern countries, was north originally considered south? | [it's arbitrary. ](_URL_0_) There are historical occurrences of maps that are "upside down". So even though "north" meaning toward the North Star or magnetic north is always the same direction the way you choose to draw it on a map is up to you. It could just have easily been on the left or right side of the map instead too.
Edit: to better answer your actual question though it's because the dominant countries at the time maps were becoming standardized wanted to be "on top". | [
"The visible rotation of the night sky around the visible celestial pole provides a vivid metaphor of that direction corresponding to up. Thus the choice of the north as corresponding to up in the northern hemisphere, or of south in that role in the southern, is, prior to worldwide communication, anything but an ar... |
Are cancerous cells ever observed in non-animal organisms such as plants, fungi, etc...? | Yes, plants can form tumors, but in general it is thought they are not as harmful as in animals because plant cells have cell walls while animal cells don't. Similar pathways lead to plant tumors as in animal tumors (ie they develop from stem cell niches). But, one of the key steps in cancer metastasis in animals is the interaction between the cancerous cell and the extracellular matrix surrounding the cell. In plants, due to the rigidity of the cell wall, the cancerous cell has very little room to grow and metastasize, and the cell wall is thought to be critical for the proper development/maintenance of the plant.
Source:
_URL_0_ | [
"Multicellular organisms, especially long-living animals, face the challenge of cancer, which occurs when cells fail to regulate their growth within the normal program of development. Changes in tissue morphology can be observed during this process. Cancer in animals (metazoans) has often been described as a loss o... |
What are the earliest examples of a North/South divide in England? | This cultural / administrative divide can be traced back at least as far as 11th Century.
In the reign of Edward the Confessor, Northumbria was regarded as a bit of a wild backwater and was never visited by Edward in his entire reign. Indeed, their own Earl Tostig Godwinson spent a large part of his time in Southern England, at court. Unsurprisingly, this state of affairs was unpopular with Northumbrians, who eventually mounted a minor rebellion that resulted in the death of some of Tostig's lieutenants. Eventually Northumbria chose their own earl: Morcar. After some bargaining, Edward was grudgingly forced to accept this, as there was little appetite for a civil war.
William the Conqueror famously 'harried' the North, which obviously caused some resentment to say the least.
Northumbria continued to be a problem for William for years after the initial invasion in 1066 with at least one of Williams local lords being murdered there.
Here is what I believe to be a source: _URL_0_
(I am new to AskHistorians so please tell me if I have broken any rules or if this post is bad in some way. Thanks) | [
"Potential historical reasons for the divide include the influence of Scandinavian rule in the latter centuries of the first millennium CE, with much of the cultural differences of the north-south divide coinciding with the borders of the Danelaw. The Economist proposed in a 2017 article that the origins of the Nor... |
What was the effect of marijuana on the ancient world? | I don't actually know if they criminalised the drug or not, but the origin of our word cannabis is from the Akkadian word *qunubu*, meaning that in the Near East at least they had been aware of cannabis for a very long time. At least in a religious ritual context, it's clear that the Assyrians and Babylonians used cannabis, but it is entirely possible that it was *only* used in this context and there is no evidence for common household useage. You can detect chemical traces of drugs with modern archaeology, we've used it to detect opiate traces in a few containers (the ones i'm familiar with are from Bronze Age Cyprus).
I'll be honest- of all the drugs that can be seen throughout history (rather than just the last 100-200 years) Cannabis does not seem to have made a big impact anywhere. Hemp was used as a material for weaving and clothing, so it was certainly useful to people. But off the top of my head, Opium certainly had more impact. It doesn't really seem to have been any more important than many other herbs and plants, and was certainly less important than grain, barley, olive trees, opium and salt in history to name a few natural products off the top of my head.
I am less familiar with its recent history, i.e the Industrial Revolution and onwards, and someone familiar with that area may give you a different answer. | [
"Prior to the introduction of opium to ancient India and China, these civilizations pioneered the use of cannabis incense and aconitum. c. 400 BC, the Sushruta Samhita (a text from the Indian subcontinent on ayurvedic medicine and surgery) advocates the use of wine with incense of cannabis for anesthesia. By the 8t... |
herding dogs. how do they know where the livestock needs to go? how much is instinct, and how much is training? | Where to take the animal is training, whatever method they use to do it is the genetics. Aussies will body block, nip heels, bark (very loud) and strafe. Other dogs like the Catahoula will be much more aggressive with the nipping, and I think Healers to some degree. A herding (or stock) dog will direct, a shepherd will protect. Great pyrinese is a good example of a protector. All these fit into what is known as pastoral dog breeds.
A nickname for the Aussie is "Velcro Dog." Get one and find out why. They're great with kids. I have a 9 mo female who warned a friend with get mouth for playing too rough with the kids. | [
"Herding instincts and trainability can be measured when introducing a dog to livestock or at noncompetitive herding tests. Individuals exhibiting basic herding instincts can be trained to compete in herding trials.\n",
"Some animals instinctively gather together as a herd. A group of animals fleeing a predator w... |
why is the us media overly sexualized, but then people are shamed for sexualization? | > The FCC is so sensitive about some things (language, no nudity) on television/in media, but yet, the media still finds a way around that.
...
> why is there such restraint over sexuality when it is blatantly obvious that people find ways around it?
Your question has a built-in presumption that the FCC is tightly regulating these things and that TV stations / content producers are actively trying to find loop-holes / ways to exploit these tight restrictions and get around them. In reality it's pretty much the exact opposite.
Firstly, the FCC doesn't regulate Cable/Satellite TV stations, only freely accessible broadcast stations (the ones you can pick-up with an antenna). Secondly, even for the broadcast stations which are regulated by the FCC, there is nothing stopping them from broadcasting explicit language, nudity and sex at night time. The FCC regulates content during the daytime strictly for the protection of young children. At night, the safe harbor kicks-in at about 10 PM and any TV station (including broadcast stations like ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, etc.) are all free to air highly explicit language, nudity, sex, etc.
The fact is these stations choose not to air such content and impose voluntary censorship. It's not the case that they're trying to push the boundaries as far as the rules will let them - quite the opposite... They are actually imposing rules of self-censorship upon themselves which are much more strict than any government regulations require.
This is mostly because they want to appease advertisers (many of whom don't like to be associated with Risqué content or anything which could be controversial). Self-censorship is also imposed to avoid public outcry from vocal parent/family and religious groups who may take offense to (what they see as) inappropriate content like explicit language, nudity, sex, and these groups have been known to organize boycotts. So basically TV stations electively choose to be uptight when it comes to things like sexuality because they're afraid of upsetting the people (e.g. advertisers) that help fund their stations.
You will notice that premium channels like HBO (which rely on subscriber fees rather than advertising) have no problems showing explicit language, nudity and sex on their channel. | [
"Most studies consistently show that after exposure to pornography and other forms of misogynistic media depicting degradation of women and rape, including hip hop and rap, viewers show attitudes that are less sympathetic to rape victims and more tolerant and accepting of violence toward women – in effect, such beh... |
why does jello pudding mix only work with dairy milk? | They make ones that will work with non dairy milks. The proteins and fats and sugars in milk are pretty unique which is why they can make cheese. You cant make almond cheese or coconut cheese, and you cant make dairy pudding with them either. Maybe someone can explain the science behind the interactions with the casein(or whatever milk enzyme it is) that makes it work specifically | [
"A dairy mix is the blend of milk, cream, sugar, stabilizers, and vanilla packaged by a dairy for commercial use. This mix can either be made directly into ice cream or placed into containers for the use in soft serve, frozen custard, or ice cream machines. Dairy mix used in restaurants can be also used to make fro... |
When did owning swimming pools become fashionable? | In Rome and Greece, swimming was part of the education of elementary age boys and the Romans built the first swimming pools (separate from bathing pools). The first heated swimming pool was built by Gaius Maecenas of Rome in the first century BC. Gaius Maecenas was a rich Roman lord and considered one of the first patron of arts - he supported the famous poets Horace, Virgil, and Propertius, making it possible for them to live and write without fear of poverty. However, swimming pools did not became popular until the middle of the 19th century. By 1837, six indoor pools with diving boards were built in London, England. After the modern Olympic Games began in 1896 and swimming races were among the original events, the popularity of swimming pools began to spread. | [
"Swimming pools became popular in Britain in the mid-19th century. As early as 1837, six indoor pools with diving boards existed in London, England. The Maidstone Swimming Club in Maidstone, Kent is believed to be the oldest surviving swimming club in Britain. It was formed in 1844, in response to concerns over dro... |
What happens to disease immunity from vaccinations if you're HIV positive? | The body does still produce an effect but it is significantly reduced with a low CD4 count. Think of T helper (CD4) cells as basically the [bugles](_URL_1_) calling in the cavalry of the immune system; once an antigen presenting cell (APC) hands them some info and gives the T helper the secret handshake, they rally and direct the immune system. Without these you'll only really see a local response which isn't great for memory. Someone with a low CD4 count has to be very careful of live, attenuated (weakened) vaccines like influenza, smallpox, or [BCG](_URL_0_) because they can quickly develop an infection and die. Before obviously would be ideal for vaccination, afterwards (like most other infectious disease treatment with HIV+) has to wait until the HIV is under control. | [
"The type of vaccination for this disease is called artificial active immunity. This type of immunity is generated when a dead or weakened version of the disease enters the body causing an immune response which includes the production of antibodies. This is beneficial to the body because this means that if the dise... |
is there a difference between a racist and a bigot, and if so, what is it? | A racist is intolerant towards people of other races. A bigot is intolerant of other people's opinions. But bigot can sometimes be someone who's prejudiced because of another person's identity (be it their sexuality, class, gender, disability, etc). | [
"An example of Peattie's views that can be construed as racist is the following, from \"An Almanac for Moderns\": \"Every species of ant has its racial characteristics. This one seems to me to be the negro of ants, and not alone from the circumstance that he is all black, but because he is the commonest victim of s... |
Questions about aspirin... | 1. I synthesized aspirin in my undergraduate organic chemistry class. We dissolved it in 100% ethanol, then added water for recrystallization. The aspirin dissolves completely in EtOH, but is not as soluble in the water/EtOH solution. So, I would go with ethanol. Edit: [this paper](_URL_0_) describes solubility of aspirin in various solvents. Acetone seemed to work the best.
2. I haven't looked at the thermodynamics of the reverse reaction, but it seems as though the acetyl group in aspirin would fall off and give you acetate/acetic acid. Edit: OK, I think I have it. A base would attack the carbonyl present in aspirin, leaving salicylic acid and acetate/acetic acid. | [
"Aspirin is used in the treatment of a number of conditions, including fever, pain, rheumatic fever, and inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, pericarditis, and Kawasaki disease. Lower doses of aspirin have also been shown to reduce the risk of death from a heart attack, or the risk of stroke in pe... |
what is today's news on google forking webkit and launching blink mean? | Webkit is a web page rendering engine that Google chrome has been using for a while now because its lightweight and fast. Its also used in other browsers and is open source, meaning everyone can see how it works and more easily find flaws with it. Because its open its used in many other browsers on many different platforms and Google wanted to make it more tightly integrate with the rest of Google chrome. So basically chrome will soon use a tweaked version of webkit they're calling Blink. Forking means they basically copied web kit, renamed it and took control over the development so they could have the freedom of modifying it however they'd like.
So in short, Blink will make Google Chrome faster than it already is. | [
"On April 3, 2013, Google announced that it would produce a fork of WebKit's WebCore component, to be named Blink. Chrome's developers decided on the fork to allow greater freedom in implementing WebCore's features in the browser without causing conflicts upstream, and to allow simplifying its codebase by removing ... |
If I were to accelerate a pebble to 99% the speed of light aimed at the center of the earth....what would happen? | A 10g pebble moving at 99% of the speed of light, hitting a solid surface, would release about 5.5*10^15 J of energy. This is similar to the energy of a 1-megaton nuclear bomb (by comparison, the Little Boy was about 1.5% as much and the Tsar Bomba 5000% as much). | [
"Moving at a speed close to the speed of light and encountering even a tiny stationary object like a grain of sand will have fatal consequences. For example, a gram of matter moving at 90% of the speed of light contains a kinetic energy corresponding to a small nuclear bomb (around 30kt TNT).\n",
"Based on these ... |
amanda knox trial | Since this is a dupe, I'll repost my comment from [here](_URL_0_):
---
Amanda Knox was an American studying in Italy. She lived with a British roommate, Meredith Kercher, and was dating an Italian man, Raffaele Sollecito. In November 2007, while Knox and Sollecito were out together, a man named Rudy Guede broke into Knox and Kercher's apartment and raped and murdered Kercher.
Guede's guilt was thoroughly and irrefutably established by ample physical evidence. He protested that he had simply been burglarizing the apartment when someone else broke in and murdered Kercher. He later changed his story to some kind of bizarre sex game involving both Knox and Sollecito in which he himself was blameless.
The evidence against Knox and Sollecito is essentially nil. Prosecutors claimed to have found DNA evidence implicating them, but the alleged evidence was contaminated and mistreated, and to get any traces of DNA, the lab needed to perform experimental (and questionable) amplification procedures that they were not qualified for. There were also footprints that tested negative for blood, "proving" that someone had cleaned up the scene to conceal their involvement.
In addition to the "physical" evidence, the prosecution claimed that their conduct had been suspicious. You can google this if you want, but it's all inconsequential given that there was never any reason to suspect them to begin with. Much of it is ordinary character assassination – painting Knox as "loose" and a partier, that sort of thing, as though that were evidence of murder.
All three of them were convicted, Guede because he was clearly, unambiguously guilty and Knox and Sollecito because people are stupid and make stupid decisions when confronted with violent murder, sex, and international tensions. An appeals court overturned that verdict, largely citing a report pointing out that the alleged physical evidence was garbage. That court freed the two and ordered a new trial.
---
I did a bit more reading, to catch up with what's happened in the last couple of years. Addenda:
- One of the "suspicious" things that Knox did was falsely implicate her boss. This occurred during an extended high-pressure interrogation during which Knox claims to have been mistreated. It turns out that the whole idea of her boss being involved was fed to her by the police based on their misunderstanding of the phrase "see you later" in a text message. Knox retracted the implication the next day. She was convicted of slander, and the appeals court did not overturn this, setting her sentence as three of the years she had already served.
- Guede did change his story to implicate Knox and Sollecito after hearing that they were suspects, but the wild orgy-murder scenario was dreamed up by the prosecutor. Also, alleged Satanism. Yeah.
- There will be another trial because the prosecution appealed. This is a thing that can happen in Italy. Knox will not return to stand trial, and it is unlikely that she would be extradited even if (somehow) found guilty. | [
"Featuring interviews with Amanda Knox, her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, and others involved in the case, the documentary chronicles the murder of Knox's roommate Meredith Kercher and the subsequent investigation, trials and appeals. Her notoriety bolstered by tabloid journa... |
could australia use seawater to put out the fires, or is fresh water required, so as not to add a bunch of salt to the soil? | We could, but it would have the consequence you mentioned. Also, transporting water inland is a very expensive thing to do. | [
"As a result of the water supply crisis during the severe 1997–2009 drought State governments around Australia began building desalination plants that purify seawater using reverse osmosis technology. Many of these plants have included in their overall cost the building of renewable energy sources such as wind farm... |
what is an integrated circuit, what does it do, and how does it do it? | An integrated circuit is another word for s silicon chip where many components (transistors, resistors) are *integrated* on the same chip. Prior to the invention of the integrated circuit, all the individual resistors, transistors, diodes, and capacitors had to be wired into and soldered onto a breadboard.
The advantage is it uses less electricity and less space and generates less waste heat.
It accomplishes what it does by layering silicon that has been alloyed with various substances to make conductive, semi conductive, and non conductive layers - as well as metal layers to carry electricity and perform other effects. Depending on which layers are exposed to the metal tracery, various effects happen, which create transistors, resistors, etcetera. | [
"(i) 'integrated circuit' means a product, in its final form or an intermediate form, in which the elements, at least one of which is an active element, and some or all of the inter-connections are integrally formed in and/or on a piece of material and which is intended to perform an electronic function,\n",
"An ... |
why do storage devices have capacities that are multiples of 8? | storage is a collection of 1's and 0's (bits) and 8 bits form a byte. all the information about your files, programs and anything else is stored in this binary form. lets just call this the data.
however just storing the data isn't enough. you have to be able to manage all this data, and how to find it all. that way when you open a file, the computer knows where to go to find all the data that comes together to form the file. this is done by giving each location on the storage device an address. and since there are SO many addresses, we actually need a way to label them all. which we do - in binary.
and because of this, a storage device has a certain number of locations we are able to reference before we run out. and without getting technical about binary (with 8 bits you can address 2^8, or 256 locations), multiples of 8 means we are using every single available location to store data.
so if we had a 16GB USB and wanted to make it bigger, to expand it to 20GB would be silly. since we are already making more locations available to reference, we might as well use every single location and expand it to 32GB.
*thougt id add this in in case you do want to get technical:
so like i said, 8 bits mean you can address 256 locations. if we add one more bit, we get 2^9 different locations available to us, or 512. this continues... 1024, 2048, 4096..... so you can see that with the addition of each bit we get a twice as many more locations to store the data. this is why you often see 512mb, 1GB, 2Gb, 4Gb, 8Gb etc... sizes for storage! | [
"The most commonly used units of data storage capacity are the bit, the capacity of a system that has only two states, and the byte (or octet), which is equivalent to eight bits. Multiples of these units can be formed from these with the SI prefixes (power-of-ten prefixes) or the newer IEC binary prefixes (power-of... |
how can a butcher "age" beef for a large period of time (21 days etc.) yet if you were to take the same cut of meat not aged and leave it in the fridge for a time after its expiry it would turn rancid and have to be thrown out? | It has a lot to do with conditions and surface area.
A butcher hangs meat in all one piece in a cold room, such as a full "side" of a cow, and that side of beef isn't touching anything besides the hook it hangs from, and generally is not handled while it hangs. No flies are allowed in the area thanks to multiple plastic sheet door protectors, bug lights and other means. So its exposure to germs is very much minimal, as is the surface area of meat that contacts the air. And the whole region's humidity, temperature, and other variables is really tightly controlled.
When you take a steak or roast home, it's been de-packaged from the slaughterhouse, carved up, cut, and repackaged. All of this handling exposes it to germs and surfaces. Add to it all of your handling, the germs drifting around more freely in your house, and the already-advanced age of the fresh meat, and it'll go rancid a lot quicker. | [
"Dry-aged beef is beef that has been hung or placed on a rack to dry for several weeks. After the animal is slaughtered and cleaned, it is hung as a full or half carcass. Primal (large distinct sections) or sub primal cuts, such as strip loins, rib eyes, and sirloin, are placed in a refrigerator unit, also known as... |
Why did Hitler declare war on the US? | Modified from an [earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_)
Although it was in many respects a foolish blunder in hindsight, there was a lot of strategic calculation that went into German declaration of war on the United States. Hitler and the Germans did not so much see the declaration of war as the start of a *quid quo pro* process with Japan leading to a Japanese invasion of Siberia, but rather an opportunity to gain time and militarily isolate the United States by giving German armed forces a free hand in the Atlantic and encourage the Japanese to keep fighting in the Pacific.
Both Hitler and German military planners were not on board with the bombing of Pearl Harbor itself mostly because they were completely ignorant of Japanese the scale and extent of Japanese planning. Although the Japanese occupation of French Indochina and the resulting US blockade of strategic raw materials made it apparent that war in the Pacific was imminent, German leaders were in the dark about future military operations. Two days before Pearl Harbor, the German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop actually hoped that America would be the one to instigate military aggression against Japan.
Von Ribbentrop's thoughts on the situation in the Pacific was emblematic of much of German geostrategic thought in the winter of 1941. The actions of the USN in the Battle of the Atlantic in which US ships jettisoned most pretensions of neutrality indicated that the US was readying to enter into the war. Although an expansion of the war carried with it new uncertainties, a number of German military planners mistakenly concluded that Japan's entry into the was in the Pacific was largely beneficial to Germany's strategic interests.
Part of this miscalculation stemmed from the dire situation Germany had found itself in at the end of 1941. Although Barbarossa had achieved spectacular gains, the German invasion had not achieved the desired result of a complete collapse of the Soviets. The strengthening Soviet resistance and counterattacks was a bitter pill for the Germans to swallow. Moreover, the strengthening of the British military position in North Africa and the Atlantic seemed to threaten German-occupied Europe's southern and western flanks. German planners hoped that Japanese conquests in East Asia and the Central Pacific would rectify this global strategic balance by forcing both the British and Americans to reorient their military resources to the Pacific. An OKW strategic assessment produced on 14 December outlined their expectations for the British response:
> Securing her position in the Middle East has gained even greater importance for Britain since Japan's entry into the war-not only because of the Persian and Mesopotamian oil, on which the British navy in the Indian Ocean must depend once the oil wells of Borneo and Sumatra are lost to it, but also because of the especially important maintenance of sea communications through the Suez Canal and because of the air communications, based upon this region, between the mother country and India, East Asia, and Australia. Execution of this strategic task will no doubt be seen by Britain to be just as vital as the maintenance of her Indian-Malayan position, which is crucial for the safeguarding of India, Australia, and New Zealand.
In OKW's estimation, the Japanese conquest of SE Asian rubber, tin, and oil sources would deprive the British and Americans, and by extension the Soviets, of this strategic war material. The *Kriegsmarine*, facing its first serious reversals in the Battle of the Atlantic and Mediterranean, welcomed the thought that both the RN and USN meeting the Japanese naval challenge would give German and Italian naval forces time to regroup. The declaration of war gave the *Kriegsmarine* a free hand to attack American shipping without as much interference from the USN and RN. According to the Naval Staff's estimation, expanding the war would divide Allied naval power, which prior to Pearl Harbor was in seeming danger of uniting.
Underlying this German enthusiasm for Japanese belligerence was the hope that the Japanese would present enough of a strategic diversion to allow German military forces to complete the job in the USSR they had begun the previous June. The defeat of the USSR remained the main strategic priority for Germany military planning. Only the *Kriegsmarine* evinced any great interest for a grand military hookup with the Japanese in India. Although both the Navy and von Ribbentrop urged Hitler to agree to a joint Axis declaration on India, the German leader refused on the grounds that such an anticolonial measure was not in the strategic interests of Germany. Hitler held out hopes that an anti-Churchill faction would come to the fore once Stalin had been beaten and threatening India would supposedly undercut support for a separate peace. OKW began in 1942 tentative plans for a wider invasion of the Middle East, but only after the success of Blue's offensive in the Caucasus.
Hitler's declaration of war on America gave German military much greater latitude to plan for a western defensive barrier. Expanding the war would also cow the various neutrals on Germany's flanks (Turkey, Spain, and Sweden) to accede to German demands. German entry into the war on Japan's side would also prevent the latter from making a separate peace prematurely. Although Hitler's government did not want to give sanction to Japan's anticolonial pretext for the war, it was sympathetic to Tokyo's request on 2 December for the Axis partners to never hold a separate peace, which culminated in the 11 December declaration for no separate peace. This was in keeping with the Third Reich's strategic thinking with regards to the Anglo-American powers in that it was in German interests to keep them preoccupied outside of areas controlled by Germany. So long as Japan was stiffened up to resist the Anglo-Americans, Germany strategic interests would be secured. OKW's 14 December report claimed the prognosis for the following year good for these four reasons:
> I) Within the period left to it before the full mobilization of the American war machine, Germany would reach its military objectives in the east, in the Mediterranean, and in the Atlantic.
> II) Germany would succeed, by political means, not only in inducing its allies to intensify their war efforts, but also in securing the periphery by bringing the flanking powers-hitherto neutral-of Turkey, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden into the continental defensive bloc.
> III) The Japanese offensive would have enough endurance and momentum to tie down a substantial part of the Anglo-American potential in the Pacific for a considerable time.
> IV) Under these circumstances the United States would not be able to conduct an offensive two-ocean war in the foreseeable future.
The experience of 1942 would prove each of these suppositions unduly optimistic. In short, the Germans believed that they possessed both the time and the resources to meet the new strategic challenge. They fundamentally underestimated America's industrial capabilities and overestimated the ability of Japan to act as a sink for Anglo-American resources. Even more fatally, both Hitler and OKW overestimated both Germany's own ability to deliver a fatal blow in Operation Blue and their chances of securing their strategic flanks with secondary forces like DAK and the *Kriegsmarine*.
There was also a domestic component to Hitler's decision to declare war. One of the central mythologies at the center of National Socialism was that Germany was at the cusp of a victory in 1918 until stabbed in the back by the "November Criminals." While much of the public invective of the NSDAP was directed at the Judeo-Bolshevik instigators of the November Revolution, there was a considerable concern behind the scenes that the German civilian population were duped into following peace. In this schema, Wilson's promise of an honest peace proved to be a siren call for the German public that had suffered greatly during the war. Consequently, the Third Reich devoted considerable resources to mollify domestic public opinion during the opening stages of the war. Goebbels's diary entries consistently noted an acute attention to German public opinion and disgruntlement. By taking the initiative out of the US's hands and declaring war on them, the declaration of war was being proactive by preventing another iteration of the 14 Points. Hitler's public declaration at the Reichstag went to great lengths to highlight America's Rainbow Plans and the pre-existing belligerency of the US in the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler's speech troweled on a great deal of antisemitism as well, differentiating a strong Europe from an allegedly Jewish global conspiracy that stretched from Moscow, to London, and Washington. By painting the US as a self-interested power in thrall to Jews, Hitler was cutting off a possible redux of 1918 where America's offer of a geopolitical moral alternative ate away at German civilian support for the conflict.
| [
"In fact, Hitler's declaration of war came as a great relief to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who feared the possibility of two parallel but disconnected wars – the UK and Soviet Union versus Germany in Europe, and the US and the British Empire versus Japan in the Far East and the Pacific. With Nazi Ger... |
What was Damascus steel? | Truthfully, we are still trying to understand the process of Damascus steel! We still don't know how the ancients did it.
It's widely believed to be the process of tempering steel to make it stronger, studies have shown Damascus steel to contains nano-fibres which greatly increased it's strength and durability compared to other metals of the time.
However we've only recently been able to duplicate the steel with modern techniques, as said we don't know how the it was actually done. And only in modern times have we had the technology to see and know that nano-fibres were the reason that made it stronger. | [
"The steel is named after Damascus, the capital city of Syria and one of the largest cities in the ancient Levant. It may either refer to swords made or sold in Damascus directly, or it may just refer to the aspect of the typical patterns, by comparison with Damask fabrics (which are themselves named after Damascus... |
How Did DNA Evolve? | Based on your previous comments, it sounds like your main question is something like "how did DNA evolve in the first place when we now know that many different proteins are required for its function and propagation?"
If that's an accurate representation, I would point you to the [RNA world hypothesis](_URL_0_). This is the idea that RNA, not DNA, was actually the first nucleic acid polymer to arise. The RNA is more satisfying as a starting material than DNA is because we know that RNA has the capacity to perform some limited catalytic functions. For instance, RNA is a major component of ribosomal structure and function and I'm not talking about mRNAs or tRNAs.
Basically, it is hypothesized that initial RNA molecules were simple replicating machines that didn't really encode anything. The RNA was simply structured to provide catalytic activity to generate a copy of other RNA molecules it came across that had similar catalytic activity. Overtime, changes in RNA structure lead to different types of catalytic activity until a relationship between nucleic acids and amino acids could be formed. | [
"DNA contains the genetic information that allows all forms of life to function, grow and reproduce. However, it is unclear how long in the 4-billion-year history of life DNA has performed this function, as it has been proposed that the earliest forms of life may have used RNA as their genetic material. RNA may hav... |
why don't baseball pitchers wear a protective helmet if a line drive could cause permanent brain damage among other things? | Simply put, pitchers don't want to wear them. It's as simple as that. As far as I know, it's perfectly legal for players to wear helmets in the field and it has been done before (by first baseman John Olerud).
Here are the reasons I've read about that account for the resistance to pitchers' helmets:
1) While the effects of getting hit can be bad, it's not a frequent occurrence.
2) Batters keep their heads steady as they swing. Pitching motions can be violent and shaky. As a result, helmets are likely to fall off or cover a pitcher's eyes.
3) Fear that wearing a heavier object on one's head can affect the pitcher's mechanics (throwing motion).
4) Concern that helmets would be hot, sweaty, and generally uncomfortable.
5) Appearance. Right now, while pitchers almost universally wear hats, violating the trend could be embarrassing or make the pitcher less able to intimidate batters.
6) A lack of knowledge/publicity surrounding devices designed specifically for pitchers.
7) Tradition. Baseball has an unusually prominent focus on remaining traditional with the way things work on the field. That's not to say that big changes don't happen, but when they do, there's often resistance. | [
"Serious injuries may result from being hit by a pitch, even when wearing a batting helmet. On August 18, 1967, Red Sox batter Tony Conigliaro was hit almost directly in the left eye by a fastball thrown by Jack Hamilton of the California Angels. His cheekbone was shattered; he nearly lost the sight of the eye, was... |
How do we know the electron is a fundamental particle and not composed of something smaller? | Theories that suggest a composite electron just aren't as effective or accurate as the ones that assume it to be an elementary particle (Namely the [standard model](_URL_0_)).
Furthermore, high-energy scattering experiments have revealed that it has a very tiny, nearly spherical charge distribution while also being very lightweight. That's hard to accomplish with a composite electron. | [
"The electron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , whose electric charge is negative one elementary charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure. The electron has a mass that... |
when having diarrhea, why is it i can sit there for 20-30 minutes after going and nothing comes out. but when i get up, i immediately have to go again? | You can get the sensation of excrement entering your anus without it actually being there. You technically feel like you have to go even while sitting down but that's only because you're actually contracting your "poo muscles." When your body doesn't feel itself trying to "go" any more, it tells your brain "hey, dude there's something big coming down" and then you instinctively contract again, repeat until you actually poo. | [
"Symptoms include chronic constipation. There can be fecal incontinence and paradoxical or overflow diarrhea (encopresis) as liquid stool passes around the obstruction. Complications may include necrosis and ulcers of the rectal tissue. Abdominal pain and bloating could also be present depending on the severity of ... |
Do insects, particularly cockroaches, use acid in their digestive system? | It really depends on the insect. Mosquitoes, black flies and some lepidopterans actually have a basic stomach pH.
However I did find a study on cockroaches that suggested that they seem to have an acidic stomach pH from around 6-2.
If you're interested here is the link
_URL_0_ | [
"Cockroaches are generally omnivorous; the American cockroach (\"Periplaneta americana\"), for example, feeds on a great variety of foodstuffs including bread, fruit, leather, starch in book bindings, paper, glue, skin flakes, hair, dead insects and soiled clothing. Many species of cockroach harbor in their gut sym... |
How legitimate are China's claims in the South China Sea? | Disclaimer: I am a Filipino poster, but I am of Chinese ethnicity. I'm just calling it as I see it based on my knowledge of international law.
If we're going to go by the Nine-Dash Claim then quite frankly the claims are a whole bunch of nonsense.
First of all, territorial waters are only supposed to extend 12 nautical miles from a nation's coast line. To claim the South China Sea would require China to massively increase this internationally agreed limit. Even using the Exclusive Economic Zone definition - which extends 200 nautical miles from the coast, simply isn't enough to cover the South China Sea. At this point China's attempt to claim the entire sea already falls apart. Here is a map showing the Exclusive Economic Zone limits versus China's claim to the entire South China Sea:
_URL_0_
However, some "geniuses" in China claim to have unearthed ancient documents that "prove" that the South China Sea was always Chinese along with the Spratley Islands. The problem is that these map actually date only from 1947, published by the Republic of China (Taiwan). Additionally, the Nine-Dash line is reliant on using reefs as the basis for extending territorial waters; which isn't recognized by international law.
Unfortunately certain Chinese officials were apparently undeterred by the legal impossibilities, and instead had the reefs expanded using concrete until they could be considered real "islands" that could be considered for the purpose of counting territorial waters. This was why there was all this recent concern about Chinese construction in the South China Sea.
At this point the Philippines decided to literally take the Chinese to court at the UNCLOS (United Nation Convention on the Laws of the Seas) to stop the Chinese plans. And the Philippine team, to a lot of people's surprise, are actually winning the case handily at this point; by focusing on the "ownership" of a number of reefs in the Spratleys (e.g. Scarborough).
To elaborate, the Philippine government showed the records of several ships which were wrecked on these reefs in the late 1800s - and how _all_ of them chose _Manila_ (capital of the Philippines) as the court of arbitration when it came to resolving the insurance claim. These records were verified by neutral third parties (e.g. Lloyd's of London, which handled the insurance claims).
Hence, the Philippine government had _demonstrated_ that they they were already exercising legal jurisdiction over the disputed reefs since the late 1800s, or decades before the Nine-Dash Map was published.
Had China really been serious about owning these reefs, then it should have filed complaints back in the 1800s protesting the arbitration in Manila courts. They never did, and thus by extension waived their own jurisdiction. And if you don't have jurisdiction over a piece of land, you certainly can't claim to have sovereignty over it.
This was why the general Chinese reaction to the hearings had been to snub it entirely and called for a return to negotiations. They knew they had been completely outfoxed on the legal front. That doesn't mean China is going to stop trying however; but it's certainly more cautious now as it does not want to be seen as breaking international law.
Edit: Added a map. | [
"China has staked its territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea with the Nine-Dash Line. Its claims are disputed by other countries. The contested area in the South China Sea includes the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, and various other areas including the Pratas Islands, the Macclesfield Bank and t... |
why does holding hands with your so feel nice? | Because physical contact releases dopamine in your brain which is a feel good chemical. Lots of recreational drugs have a similar effects. | [
"A handshake is a globally widespread, brief greeting or parting tradition in which two people grasp one of each other's like hands, in most cases accompanied by a brief up-and-down movement of the grasped hands. Handshakes are sometimes used to signify romantic relationships.\n",
"Using the right hand is general... |
Why aren’t underwater windmills more of a thing? | A few reasons,
1. Maintenance. It's very costly to maintain underwater infrastructure.
2. Corrosion is a big problem in salt water environments. Meaning more maintenance is needed.
3. Biological buildup. Again in saltwater, the blades are going to end up getting fouled by barnacles and other aquatic life making them less efficient over time... also needing more maintenance.
4. Limited useful locations - Tides are predictable, but you need to be in a place like a narrow bay inlet where the water actually flows inland and Outland. Out along most places on the coast, there's not actually a lot of tidal flow, just rising water. An ideal sort of location might be under the golden gate bridge. These high flow areas tend to be murky... complicating maintenance. That useful water flow also complicates maintenance because you can't easily service in high flow times.
5. Lastly transporting that power requires infrastructure either underwater or on the shore. In many of the ideal locations, placing that infrastructure is probably politically complicated.
Compared to wind turbines, the extra cost makes tidal systems less efficient over time. That's not to say there are no ideal places for it. It's just there are very few compared good wind production areas
Hydroelectric is more or less the same sort of thing mechanically, but you end up harvesting the potential energy from falling water flowing downhill. Frequently hydro project serves other purposes like flood control, fresh water collection, habitat and recreation. These other factors offset some of the higher capital and maintenance costs. It's also something that can be controlled and called upon in a time of need whereas a tidal system would be more like solar where it is predictable, but not controllable. Wind is neither predictable or controllable. | [
"Several types can be made; these include windmill-only ships as well as hybrid ships which store wind power from the windmill when the ship does not need to be propelled. To reduce the energy required to propel the boat, windmill ships are often equipped with low-friction hull designs, such as multihulls, or they ... |
What did people in ancient times think of dreams? | Well, at least in ancient Egypt, eating feces in your dream meant you were going to become wealthy. B. E. Shafer, ed., Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
In Mesopotamia, dreams were usually matters of interpretation. Some advanced scribes who had enough training would go on to specialize in dream interpretation. I haven't spent much time with those texts, but (suffice it to say for an only mildly helpful answer), some thought they were a big deal and had a significant impact on the religion and politics of their time.
We could also readily consider Joseph from Genesis 37-50, who had several dreams which were then interpreted as being portentous about things to come involving him and his family. Similarly, we see Daniel interpreting dreams for Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel. | [
"In ancient Egypt, as far back as 2000 BC, the Egyptians wrote down their dreams on papyrus. People with vivid and significant dreams were thought blessed and were considered special. Ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were like oracles, bringing messages from the gods. They thought that the best way to receive... |
Why does the elephant have such a big brain? Is most of it dedicated to controlling a massive body? | At its heart this is an Encephalisation Quotient (EQ) question, so we should start there.
Most psychometric texts will talk of [encephalisation quotient](_URL_0_) (EQ) as a better predictor of intelligence than brain size. So many texts state this that that most assume they must be correct. There is only only one small problem: these texts never reference any survey data in support. The reason is that, until very recently, we didn't have any quantitative metric of intelligence that we can use across species. Put simply, it was a wild guess by leading experts borne by the need to explain why elephants aren't smarter than humans (all terrestrial animals have been well studied, and this is the only one of them with a bigger brain than us). We have part of that answer now.
Elephants brains hve recently been studied in detail and have > 97% of their neurons devoted body control and sensory input (in the cerebellum) - much higher than any other mammal. Their trunk is the only other organ that is known to have similar 'dexterity' to a human hand, except hands have a score or so of movable joints, but a trunk has hundreds of muscle blocks to control. The assumption is that controlling these is what has driven their brain expansion over time. In their higher centres (neocortex) they have far fewer neurons than humans, and slightly less than other great apes. It should be no surprise then that they are still thought to be slightly less intelligent that chimps. Now let's go to more recent data on EQ.
For quite some time now, EQ has been know to be [invalid for primates](_URL_3_) – the group on which most psychometric analysis has been performed. If you go to the Wikipedia page on EQ, you will find the only survey it links to shows that raw brain size is by far the best predictor of intelligence in non-human primates. Until last year, we never had a quantitative metric that could take us beyond comparisons within that one order. We now have one, and (so far only one) survey that can. The stunning surprise from it is that, once more, [raw brain size is far and away the best predictor of intelligent behaviour](_URL_1_), and, if we adjust brain size for body size this predictive power for complex behaviour almost vanishes. So what is my guess as to the true answer to your question?
I think elephants may well need that great brain - but only to control the trunk. Sperm whales may also need theirs to be huge, but for reasons that have nothing to do with body size. Sperm whales are the ONLY animal for which the culture to which they belong [has more impact on its growth rate and reproductive success than its genetics or location](_URL_2_) there are other reasons too to expect that their social complexity rivals or exceeds even our own. [Here](_URL_4_) is my own webpage that gives further details and peer reviewed references to that possibility. | [
"Elephants have the largest brains of all land animals, and ever since the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, have been renowned for their cognitive skills, with behavioural patterns shared with humans. Pliny the Elder described the animal as being closest to a human in sensibilities. They also have a lon... |
Do some plants legitimately have medicinal properties? | Your question sort of has two sub-questions that are non-trivially distinct:
1. Do plants (used as a plant or plant extract) have medicinal properties?
2. Do plants (any component thereof) have medicinal properties?
As to the first, the court is still out on the vast majority of candidates, save a few known examples (such as cinchona and willow bark for malaria and painkilling, with evidence for marijuana piling up). One of the difficulties in measuring efficacy is that each plant produces a very diverse cocktail of many compounds, and are wildly variable in how much of any given compound they make between individual plants. The lack of control in compound production in plants/fungi makes it preferable to isolate active compounds for drug development - you can control dosage far more easily, and adverse effects are minimized to only what the active compound itself does.
This leads into the second question, where the answer is overwhelmingly yes. Basically, if a plant is found to be truly (or even potentially) medicinal, it usually undergoes a lot of analysis (screening) until the active compound is identified, purified, and modified to either amplify efficacy or reduce adverse effects. Two major historical examples are the aforementioned willow bark (to aspirin) and cinchona (to quinine). In more recent times, two major cancer drug families, the taxanes (such as Taxol) and camptothecin-analogs (such as Camptosar) were derived from pacific yew and camptotheca tree bark respectively. It's estimated that around 60% of drugs on the market are derived from natural sources, the majority of which come from plants or fungi.
So basically, yes, a few plants are medicinal and many have compounds that can potentially be medicinal, but the vast majority need pharmaceutical development to be worthwhile.
A relatively unbiased review on the subject can be found [here](_URL_0_). | [
"A lot of plant species are used in today's studies and have been exhaustively studied for their potential value as source of drugs. It is possible that some plant species may be a source of drugs against high blood pressure, AIDS or heart troubles.\n",
"Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been di... |
how does mazda's rotary engines work? | _URL_0_
Anyone who has owned an RX7 will get this.
| [
"Mazda is noted for its use of rotary engines, beginning in 1967 with the Mazda Cosmo. The Cosmo was a two-seat coupe with a rotary engine producing up to . Mazda continued to produce sports cars with rotary engines (sometimes turbocharged) until the Mazda RX-8 ended production in 2012.\n",
"Mazda has undertaken ... |
When the Titanic sunk due to hitting an iceberg, how iceberg filled was that part of the ocean? | The Titanic had taken a somewhat more northerly route than most liners normally had, and it was also sailing into an area (near the Grand Banks) where it had received warnings of floating bergs. At the time, no large ship had been lost to an iceberg, and it was thought that bergs did not pose a large danger to contemporary ships. (A similar passenger liner had rammed an iceberg in 1907 and was able to complete its voyage, though with damage.)
So yes, the ship was in known iceberg territory, which was not uncommon, and cutting the corner slightly closer to Newfoundland than most ships did, but there would not have been a sense on the ship that the situation or those waters were unusually dangerous. | [
"The \"Titanic\"'s collision with the iceberg at 11:40 pm on April 14 woke Anton and his brother and the two ran to the ship's welldeck where they clearly saw the iceberg. They returned to their cabin and dressed, barely finishing before water began to pour into their cabin. Anton ran to his wife's cabin and woke i... |
Any studies of the changing preferences for androgyny vs. polarized masculinity and femininity through history? | if the topic is overly vague: specifically I’m interested in any correlations between a timeline of these trends and the corresponding social moment, especially in terms of the political economy | [
"In addition to the expansion to include sexuality studies, under the influence of post-modernism gender studies has also turned its lens toward masculinity studies, due to the work of sociologists and theorists such as R. W. Connell, Michael Kimmel, and E. Anthony Rotundo.\n",
"Since the 2000s, Peter Hennen's cu... |
how does netflix stream movies in high quality smoothly while youtube can't even stream a minute long video without buffering? | You pay for netflix | [
"Unlike analogue video streams in which only serial access is possible, digital video allows for random access to the media, which raises the possibility of alternative fast forwarding algorithms and visualizations. In video streaming formats, such as H.264, fast forward algorithms use the I-frames to sample the vi... |
What does intergalactic space look like? | Disclaimer: I am a layperson.
The sky would be different--it would be completely black to the naked eye if you were at the center of the Boötes Void. At 250 million light years in diameter, if you were in the center, the closest galaxy would be 125 million light years away. The Andromeda Galaxy is our closest non-dwarf galaxy neighbor at only 2.5 million light years away and magnitude 3.44, and it's a barely-perceptible splotch in the night sky. If it was 125 million light years away, it would be 2500 times fainter, at a magnitude of 11.9. The faintest object visible with the naked eye is magnitude 6 or below (higher magnitudes are harder to see. Also, it's a logarithmic scale.). Even if you had a telescope, you would only be able to observe galaxies. No stars (except for bright supernovae within the galaxies), no nebulae, nothing. Just distant galaxies that you'd have no hope of ever reaching.
For all practical purposes, there probably wouldn't be anything larger than a [mote of dust](_URL_1_) for light years around you. I can't access the article referenced in this Wikipedia entry, but I believe it focuses on intergalactic dust *clouds*. The space between these clouds (which are probably few and *very* far between) will be filled with a [rareified hot plasma](_URL_2_) with a density of a few tens of particles per cubic meter.
There are some [extragalactic stars](_URL_0_) that have been observed, but, considering that they'd necessarily be much rarer than stars in a galaxy, you'd probably be hundreds of thousands of light years from one, on average, if not further (just my guess based on nothing more than a hunch). See also [hypervelocity stars](_URL_3_).
Edit: The galaxy brightness calculation above assumes the galaxy is similar to the Andromeda galaxy. The brightest galaxies are about ten times brighter, so they still would not be visible from the center of the Boötes Void. | [
"Intergalactic travel involves spaceflight between galaxies, and is considered much more technologically demanding than even interstellar travel and, by current engineering terms, is considered science fiction.\n",
"Intergalactic space is the physical space between galaxies. Studies of the large scale distributio... |
Collapse of the Tatars | I wrote an [answer](_URL_0_) on the history and idea of Tatars a few months ago, that might be of interest.
The rough idea is that a Chingissid state called the "Golden Horde" , which in turn broke up into a number of successor states, that were conquered by Muscovy/Russia in the 16th-18th centuries.
But Tatar people didn't "all die". There are still millions of ethnic Tatars! There are a number of different Tatar communities, the largest being the community in Russia that largely lives along the Volga River near the city of Kazan. Volga Tatars are the second-largest ethnic group in Russia after ethnic Russians, and have their own autonomous republic known as Tatarstan.
Another significant community of Tatars lives in Crimea, currently under Russian control. Large numbers of this community emigrated to Anatolia in the 19th century, when they stopped being a majority of the population, and the whole community was deported to Central Asia by the Soviet government in 1944 (they were allowed to return in 1991).
There are smaller communities of Tatars in Siberia, and in Poland-Lithuania, the latter known as "Lipka Tatars". This group is mostly assimilated into the local population (although some remain practicing Muslims), but have played a role in Polish history, notably aiding in the Polish defense of Vienna against the Ottomans in 1683. Some more famous people of Polish heritage who have Lipka Tatar ancestry include Charles Bronson and Martha Stewart. | [
"After the establishment of the Mongol Empire, the Tatars were subjugated by the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan. Under the leadership of his grandson Batu Khan, they moved westwards, driving with them many of the Turkic peoples toward the plains of Russia in the Turkic migrations.\n",
"The end of absolute Tatar... |
The Goonies got me to wondering -- was there ever any actual piracy along America's Pacific coast? If so, what was it like? | Most of the piracy along the America's Pacific Coasts were privateers, not piracy, and were limited to the South American Coast. It tended to not be as blood thirsty and prisoners were routinely released. And it was nowhere near as common as it was in the Atlantic, Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico and African coasts.
Keep in mind that Spain had a pretty good strangle hold on Pacific Ocean and guarded the Southern Passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean's pretty heavily between Drake's voyage and into the 1800s. On top of that, the Spanish didn't like to advertise that ships had been lost so they tended to keep things quiet when they were. They routinely surpassed ships logs and maps created by even their own explorers in an attempt to keep the "undiscovered" "Northwest Passage" a secret from other European powers. But even in the Pacific Ocean and with all their military might they still ran huge heavily armed Galleons and trade fleets to discourage piracy.
The other huge problem is logistics. From the 1500s through to the 1750s or so, Spain ruled the Pacific Coast and many the coastal cities there. From about the area of San Francisco northward was "unsettled" land populated only by Indians. If you were a pirate there were few places to go to get supplies or sell the treasure so you had to attempt to cross the Atlantic to China or India, or sail back around through the Southern Passage. There are some rumors of Spanish Pirates working the Pacific Coast, which makes sense as they would have been able to hoist up the Spanish flag before sailing into port to sell their goods.
The most famous privateer was Sir Francis Drake. He was involved in several expeditions as early as 1563 on the African Coast and in the Caribbean. In 1572 he commanded an expedition that successfully raided around Panama in 1572-73, and even captured the Spanish Silver Train at Nombre de Dios. That success led to Elizabeth I sending him to the Spanish owned Pacific Coast and in 1578 he captured a Spanish ship near Lima, and then chased down and captured the treasure ship Cacafuego. From there his travels are murky, speculation is that he may have sailed as far north as 55 degrees Latitude before turning around due to the cold weather. That would have put him somewhere about the Alaska Peninsula. He definitely claimed land for England. The exact location he did so is still unknown but today is generally accepted as being Drake's Bay in California. He might have even planted a colony there, an fact that is supported by how many less men he had later on. But the English falsified Log books and maps to keep Spanish spies from getting them. And all of them from this expedition were lost in a fire in 1698 at Whitehall palace.
From there out most piracy was at the hands of Privateers actively challenging Spain's military might and supporting various South American countries in their attempts at independence from Spain. In the late 1700s England was directly challenging Spanish control of Pacific Coast between Northern California and Alaska. The Russians were pushing down the Alaska coast, and Spain was still dealing with rebellions through out South America which had severely sapped their military might in the previous centuries. A lot of these privateers were working incognito to dodge Spanish Spies in Europe, and again records were still routinely falsified so concrete evidence is hard to find.
The Spanish pushed back at these incursions. In 1789 the Nootka Incident happened after Esteban José Martínez seized two British and two American ships in order to strengthen Spanish Claims on Nootka Sound. The ships were later returned, and a treaty between America, Britain, and Spain established a trading zone that all three countries violated years later. Two of the ships involved in this incident (but not seized,) are still well known. One was the Columbia Ridiviva, of which the Columbia River was named after. The second is the Lady Washington, who's replica is a well known tall ship used in the Pirate of the Caribbean Movies.
& #x200B;
But....
& #x200B;
There are also tantalizing Native American legends all up and down the Pacific Coast that tell tales of what can only be ship battles and ship wrecks. Stories of huge "war canoes" crewed with light skinned men and creating clouds from their decks are a common tale. Men landing on beaches, killing captives and then burying them and heavy chests on the beach. Early explorers running across extremely fair or dark skinned Natives who must have taken ship wrecked crews into their tribes, Chiefs of tribes who are of obvious African decent, and even an occasional gold or silver trinket. Many of these legends still fuel rumors of pirate treasure, one of the most famous being of a location called "Neahkahnie Mountain." [Here is a copy of the legend I picked up many years ago for those who want a flavor of the tale](_URL_1_). I personally know people who still travel here after every major storm with metal detectors and shovels.
It doesn't help that for many decades [huge slabs of beeswax were found washed up on shore nearby](_URL_0_) directly fueling further speculation of treasure.
There are enough tales that I find it hard to believe that a portion of them aren't true, even accounting for people stretching the truth.
Another tale surrounds Iron Jim Sallow, who was said to have buried treasure somewhere around what would become Seattle. But any information about him is of the same, rumors and uncertain stories with no evidence to back them up. In fact I can not find a single primary source for him, and suspect he may be a creation of one of the local "Pirate" groups that put on shows throughout the summer.
& #x200B;
& #x200B; | [
"The Pirate Bay is considered part of an international anti-copyright movement. The documentary \"Steal This Film\" was produced and distributed (via BitTorrent) in the months following the raid. In the words of its speakers, it aimed to present the other side of the debate, until that time dominated by the media i... |
how will autonomous cars handle not being able to see the road, ie snow | It certainly will be harder for an autonomous car to do this than normal driving.
Early autonomous cars will likely have a failsafe mode, where if they can't handle the road conditions, they will pull over and return control to the driver.
Also remember that these cars will have a lot of advantages, like 360^o vision, radar, IR, and future enhancements might allow them to talk to the road and to each other. What might appear as a white out to us would be no different than a sunny day to them. | [
"Also part of the field of autonomous vehicles and automated driving is the Live Roads technology. Here is currently developing such a technology that will be able to alert drivers of conditions such as weather to alert other drivers of possible hazards, or to avoid a particular area whilst driving. An example is t... |
What was religion like in the Palmyrene Empire? | Like other religions of the Near East of the time. The polytheist religion of Palmyra worshiped a number of gods and goddesses. There was the triad of Beelshamem, Aglibol, and Yarhibol- who represent storm god, moon god, and sun god. Other gods worshiped there include Baal Hammon, Manat, El, Allat, Poseidon, Shamash, Bel, Arsu and Azizu (the twin gods of morning and evening stars).
Check out 'The Pantheon of Palmyra' by Javier Teixidor. There's plenty of information in there about the various gods and goddesses worshiped by the Palmyrenes.
As for the empire itself under Queen Zenobia, it would include the local cults of the gods of the people conquered, as well as Jews and Christians, in addition to the gods worshiped in Palmyra itself. | [
"Palmyra was an autonomous city subordinate to Rome and part of the province of Syria Phoenice. Odaenathus descended from an aristocratic family, albeit not a royal one as the city was ruled by a council and had no tradition of hereditary monarchy. For most of its existence, the Palmyrene army was decentralized und... |
What would be the consequences for the neighbouring areas of the Atucha Power Plant in Argentina if it underwent something similar to other known nuclear disasters? | Just some context: the [plant](_URL_0_) is by a river, some 100 km upstream from Buenos Aires. What would be the risk to the city? | [
"At 7:07 a.m. (UTC-3) on 16 June 2019, Argentina's power grid \"collapsed\", according to Gustavo Lopetegui, the country's Energy Secretary. The failure occurred in the Argentine Interconnection System. In total, an estimated 48 million people lost power. The blackout affected most of Argentina (Tierra del Fuego in... |
why is texture so important in our enjoyment of a food? | Texture is a major indicator of food quality. A carrot that's mushy isn't good. We develop expectations for what foods are supposed to be like texture-wise and deviation in these expectations set off our reptile brain alarms | [
"Texture plays a crucial role in the enjoyment of eating foods. Contrasts in textures, such as something crunchy in an otherwise smooth dish, may increase the appeal of eating it. Common examples include adding granola to yogurt, adding croutons to a salad or soup, and toasting bread to enhance its crunchiness for ... |
skylanders. specific questions about what things are. | 1. The series 1 and series 2 are the same thing/interchangeable/etc, as far as I know, but the series 3 portal is different due to the swappable characters in Swap Force. As for the portals connectivity to the different consoles, so far that I've seen from various comments, only the Xbox One doesn't register other systems portals.
So, with the newest portal, all characters, series 1-3 work with it.
2. Yep.
3. Some of the things are new levels. Some of them are for example, a cannon that pops up and helps you out by attacking enemies. You put them right on the portal alongside the Skylander. Not all of the level unlocking items from Spyro's Adventure and Giants unlock a level in Swap Force, though. | [
"The Skylanders and Flynn track Wolfgang to Time Town, where they get help from the stereotypical Italian-speaking Mabu Da Pinchy. Fighting their way through town, they arrive too late as Wolfgang has already headed to the far future. Arriving in that time period, they discover that Wolfgang has completely taken ov... |
Were civilians able to cross "borders" during the US Civil War? | It was definitely possible, though it wouldn't have been without considerable hassles, and a few favors cashed in along the way. So, I assume by the way OP phrased the question that they are referring to sanctioned crossings through enemy lines (and not stealth missions where permission wasn't granted). In this case, yes, it was possible for civilians to cross from the Confederacy into the Union (and vice versa). We definitely have some examples of this, too. What was needed in most cases was a pass (a letter, really), granting specific permission for one person to move through a military district or region. These would have been written personally by the military commander in charge of that area, or someone very near the top of the military pecking order in that region. Yet even this would have only helped a person get out of an area, and would have done only so much to get them into the OTHER "enemy" region. For example, British observer Arthur Fremantle arrived in Texas in March 1863, and worked his way all the way to Richmond in time to move with Lee's army towards Gettysburg. Strictly an observer, Fremantle had managed to get permission from various generals along the way to move freely through the Confederacy, until he got a pass from Robert E. Lee himself attesting to his neutral status (the note essentially promised that Fremantle was not a spy). This pass allowed Fremantle to travel north into Union lines to continue observing (though it wasn't without some suspicion...however, Lee's note actually got him pretty far). The fact that Fremantle had several notes from high ranking Confederate officers attesting to his neutral status (and the basic fact that he was British) surprisingly got him into the Union, so it shows that such movement was possible under the right circumstances and with the right people attesting for them.
On the flip side, Mary Todd Lincoln had a half-sister named Emilie Todd Helm, which made her Abe Lincoln's step half-sister. Emilie Helm's husband fought and died for the Confederacy, and Mary Todd asked Abe to grant Emilie a pass north so that the woman could visit for purely social reasons after the death of Helm's husband. Lincoln granted the request, and after the visit, wrote a pass for Emilie to go back south, which was honored. Obviously, if the president gives the okay, soldiers manning checkpoints are obliged to allow passage, so again, it wasn't without precedent for such a request to be granted.
This was not a normal occurrence, however, and would have required a high-ranking individual to sign the pass allowing movement, and some level of trust on the other side to recognize the validity of the enemy pass, and accept that the person was not a spy (so, a pass signed by Lincoln or Robert E. Lee would have been looked upon as fairly safe, as their "word" on the matter was seen as somewhat sacrosanct).
A normal person without political connections on the level of Lee or Lincoln would have needed a pass from the commanding general in the area to get out of that side's lines, and would have needed some pre-arranged agreement to get into the other side's lines (so a parlay would have needed to have been called, where it was established that a person was coming through, and agreements would have been made to allow it based on extenuating circumstances).
[Sources: Doris Kearns Goodwin, 'Team of Rivals'; Bruce Catton, 'Glory Road'] | [
"The Army of the Border was a Union army during the American Civil War. It was created from units in the Department of Kansas to oppose Sterling Price's Raid in 1864. Samuel R. Curtis was in command of the army throughout its duration.\n",
"During the American Civil War, the Blackwater River was for a time the di... |
how does image compression like .jpg work? a 500x500 pixel image can vary massively in filesize depending on 'detail' and file extention | Compression, in general, aims to remove redundant information. Some forms of compression, such as a zip file, do this without much special knowledge of what it is compressing, and also has to make sure it can get back the exact data before it was compressed (ie be lossless).
Other types of compression are specialised, such as audio (eg mp3), video (mp4), or images (jpg). Because they are specialised, this allows them to throw away information people don't perceive and to use clever tricks that improve compression vs lossless techniques.
So in the case of jpg, tricks are used to intentionally drop the quality of the image vs the original, but in ways that are only minutely perceptible. By focusing on aspects of the image we notice (edges, colour gradients etc) and degrading others (blocks of colour, textures) high compression can be achieved without losing much visual quality.
Its the ratio between these important bits and the unimportant bits that determines how compressed it can become. A scene full of interest, colour and shapes? Not much can be thrownaway, so big file. A scene of a polar bear in the snow? Lots to throw away, small file.
| [
"The size of raster image files is positively correlated with the number of pixels in the image and the color depth (bits per pixel). Images can be compressed in various ways, however. A compression algorithm stores either an exact representation or an approximation of the original image in a smaller number of byte... |
why do pc's become slow and "aggravating" to use after little time, but macs seem to stay at top performace for a long time? | IT professional here: Can you please define "slow"? This word is thrown around often when it comes to computer complaints but details matter. Is it taking a long time to boot up? Is netflix choppy? Is it slow when you open a third powerpoint deck? Those can help me answer you better.
The shorter answer is RAM, that helps keep things quick. Additionally, macs I have found are less inclined to have background processes initiated and installed silently. When you hit ctrl-alt-Dlt and go to task manager, then to the "processes tab" that shows you all of those things your computer is doing that you can't see. That list may be longer and thus taking up more of the computer's resources than it is on a mac. | [
"The major problem of using the above scheme is that fast CPUs compute much faster than slow CPUs. Further, higher-end computer systems also have sophisticated pipelines and other advantageous features that facilitate computations. As a result, a spammer with a state-of-the-art system will hardly be affected by suc... |
why are there different levels of sunscreen? wouldn't someone want to use the highest level that is most effective against sunburns? | Because SPF 100 sounds way more awesome than SPF 15 and people might pay more money for it.
The difference between sunscreens above SPF 50 is basically negligible. SPF 15 blocks about 93% of the harmful UV features from the sun. SPF 30 about 97% and SPF 50 blocks 99%. Any higher and you're just adding fractions of a percent of additional protection. So yes, higher levels of sunscreen are "more effective", but are you more likely to get a sunburn with SPF 50 than SPF 100? Not really. | [
"Sunscreen appears to be effective in preventing melanoma. In the past, use of sunscreens with a sun protection factor (SPF) rating of 50 or higher on exposed areas were recommended; as older sunscreens more effectively blocked UVA with higher SPF. Currently, newer sunscreen ingredients (avobenzone, zinc oxide, and... |
how are large, intricate corn maze designs made? | Using a board with strings attached to each end, the artist holds a string in each hand and keeps the board under foot pushing the cornstalks down with the board and using the strings to pull the board back up. The board is used to keep a uniform width of the lines in the corn, and the motion of kicking down and then pulling up the board helps them do this rapidly.
TL;DR Aliens | [
"A corn maze or maize maze is a maze cut out of a corn field. The first corn maze was in Annville, Pennsylvania. Corn mazes have become popular tourist attractions in North America, and are a way for farms to generate tourist income. Many are based on artistic designs such as characters from movies. Corn mazes appe... |
when companies like facebook track their user's activity to sell it, who do they sell it to? and what do the buyers do with the data? | Have you ever used Hulu, and seen one of those ads that asks you to pick the one that is most relevant to you? Basically, companies like Facebook are selling user data so that marketing companies can do this without additional input and target ads to you. | [
"Through data mining, companies are able to improve their sales and profitability. With this data, companies create customer profiles that contain customer demographics and online behavior. A recent strategy has been the purchase and production of \"network analysis software\". This software is able to sort out thr... |
Can anyone recommend a good book of world maps with political borders from various periods throughout history? | I can't give you any advice on the pre-USSR map specifically, but one I can personally vouch for is [this book](_URL_1_) called *Great City Maps*. It's a full-color collection of various surviving maps of great cities dating from Roman times up until about 1900. There are a couple of maps of Moscow and a couple of maps of St. Petersburg in there.
I have it and it's a pretty great coffee table book. You're not going to get a huge in-depth study of any particular city, but the maps are all big and colorful, and are full reproductions of the originals. So you'll see stuff like a map of London in 1572, and the text will point out some of the highlights on the map from then, and what still exists and what doesn't and, to some extent, what happened. It also serves as a good overview of the history of maps, as you can see how much more detailed and accurate they got over the centuries.
You can see the table of contents in the link above, and a few more pages can be seen in [its Amazon preview](_URL_2_). Hopefully, that gives you enough to see if it's worth it. It should be said that the pages in the preview are from the first pages in the book, which are the oldest maps. As they move into the 1400s and later, they begin to have the detail that we're now used to. The dimensions of the book are large, so it looks better in real life than it does in the preview.
By the same publisher is [*Great Maps*](_URL_4_) which seems to be basically the same thing, except the maps are mostly country-wide, or continent-wide instead of city maps.
For the Russian maps, though I can't vouch for them myself, it looks like [*Restless Empire: A Historical Atlas of Russia*](_URL_0_) from Harvard University Press and [*The Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia*](_URL_3_) from Penguin Publishing are going to be two of your best bets. They both have smaller dimensions than the *Great Maps* books, but the *Restless Empire* book is 8.5" x 11"--the standard size of a sheet of paper. The Penguin book is smaller.
I hope this helps. Good luck! | [
"This map covers areas which today are countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, and the republic of Azerbaijan. The map also contains parts of today’s Russia, Pakistan, Turkey, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the Arabian Peninsula. In the map Gilom has also drawn m... |
How did the Romans brush their teeth | The Natural History by Pliny the Elder is a very good source for this.
A substance called *dentifricium* which was quite similar to our toothpaste was produced from powdered pumice [Plin. HN 36.42](_URL_1_) ("Considered medicinally, pumice is of a resolvent and desiccative nature; for which purpose it is submitted to calcination, no less than three times, on a fire of pure charcoal, it being quenched as often in white wine. It is then washed, like cadmia,5 and, after being dried, is put by for keeping, in a place as free from damp as possible. [...] dentifrices, too, are prepared from it"), or the calcinated bones of several animal species (e. g. the ashes of deers horns, wolf's heads, heads of mice, the pastern-bone of an ox). The latter are mentioned in [Plin. HN 28.49](_URL_0_) which is generally a good read on roman dentistry.
| [
"The predecessor of the toothbrush is the chew stick. Chew sticks were twigs with frayed ends used to brush the teeth while the other end was used as a toothpick. The earliest chew sticks were discovered in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia in 3500 BC, an Egyptian tomb dating from 3000 BC, and mentioned in Chinese reco... |
When did rhyming in poetry start? What culture implemented it, and how did it get passed on to the way we view rhyming poetry today? | I will presume you're thinking of European poetry of Dante, Cavalcanti and Petrarca in particular as rhyme is found across the world, [including pre-Columbian America](_URL_0_) and [Ancient China](_URL_1_).
Until a better answer comes around I'll discuss the academic opinions known to the modernist poet Ezra Pound way back in the beginning of the century.
The problem with writing a narrative is that we will have to connect dots of poetry different times and in different languages and these dots can be connected in different ways.
Well, the Florentine language poets explicitly harkened back to the troubadours of the Provence (Jaufré Rudel, Bernart de Ventandorn, Daniel Arnaut...). Their culture and language came to a downfall with the Cathar Crusade in the 13th century, but, presumably, *their* example has also been followed in Germany (Minnesang) and went, through France (Trouvères), to England, with the Anglo-Norman poets Maistre Wace, Richard the Lionheart and Tumas de Britanje. For some reason, they are rarely even mentionned as *English* poets, so that you get a gaping nothingness between the Middle English of a Geoffrey Chausser and the Beowulf.
Speaking of which: one of the academic opinions mentionned by Pound seeks the roots of a troubadour's rhyme in such Germanic staff rhymed poetry as Beowulf and the Ludwigslied. Here academics (mostly German ones) count the lines that rhyme and come to the conclusion that a fashion is arising to rhyme together with the middle ages. The French academics instead sought the beginning of troubadours in North Africa (which happened to be French at that time), by drawing parallels between Andalusian Arabic poetry (such as that of ibn Zaydun) and, through christian Spanish folk poetry (such as the cantigas de Santa Maria), to Southern France. Pound finds the French position more convincing than the German one but we still have no explicit credit given by any of the troubadours. | [
"The earliest surviving evidence of rhyming is the Chinese Shi Jing (ca. 10th century BC). Rhyme is also occasionally used in the Bible. Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not usually rhyme, but rhyme was used very occasionally. For instance, Catullus includes partial rhymes in the poem \"Cui dono lepidum novum l... |
Does World War I actually deserve the title of World War? | The UK in 1914 was a world power having bases and territory directly and indirectly under its control on every continent.
Germany also had land (though much smaller then the UK) on several continents.
There where battles that took place outside of the trenches and the middle east. For example the [Siege of Tsingtao](_URL_1_) was in the Pacific while the [Battle of Coronel](_URL_0_) was in South America.
Thus we can see Battles taking place in South America, Africa, China, Europe, and the Middle East. By any definition that is world wide combat.
However it is also considered a world war because it involved thanks to Empire every continent and almost all the major power of the day. The US, Russia, Germany, France, UK, Italy, and Japan where all involved. | [
"The term \"World War I\" was coined by \"Time\" magazine on page 28b of its June 12, 1939 issue. In the same article, on page 32, the term \"World War II\" was first used speculatively to describe the upcoming war. The first use for the actual war came in its issue of September 11, 1939. One week earlier, on Septe... |
How did the lion, an African animal, come to be so prominent in Chinese art and sculpture? | > an African animal
I can't comment on why Chinese culture focuses on lions, but it's worth pointing out that lions once ranged throughout much of Asia as well. Although by now the only Asian lions left are in the Gir forest in India.
Considering their [historic range]( _URL_0_), it's not surprising that they could have a significant influence on a lot of Asian cultures | [
"The lion is a common motif in Chinese art; it was first used in art during the late Spring and Autumn period (fifth or sixth century BC) and became more popular during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – AD 220) when imperial guardian lions started to be placed in front of imperial palaces for protection. Because lions have... |
how do spiders make noises? | A couple ways.
First, they have bristles all around their body that can be rubbed to make purring or buzzing noises.
Second, some types can force air out of their breathing holes (spiders don't breath through their mouths!) to create hissing or screaming noises (think, like a kettle with air being forced out of it -- or a balloon with air being squeezed out).
Edit: [Here's my favourite spider gif. Conveniently, it's also my favourite ant gif.](_URL_0_) | [
"Males of \"Heteropoda venatoria\", one of the huntsman spiders that seems to easily find its way around the world, have recently been found to deliberately make a substrate-borne sound when they detect a chemical (pheromone) left by a nearby female of their species. The males anchor themselves firmly to the surfac... |
Old paintings and portraits | Could you specify what you mean by "weird"? | [
"Portrait paintings are representations of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. The art of the portrait flourished in Ancient Greek and especially Roman sculpture, where sitters demanded individualized and... |
how do billboards work? | > Who owns them?
Most billboards will have a small sign on them that states who owns it. Most in my area are owned by VIACOM. That might be true everyware or not, I assume it depends on area.
> Who regulates them and determines how many billboards can appear in a certain area?
Some city's would have rules where they can or cannot be placed, some don't. It's something that is goverened at the local level.
> Do the landowners where they appear get paid for allowing them to be built on their property?
Yes, the company would likely lease a small strip of the land.
> How much do they cost?
As with all things, this is determined by supply and demand. So billboards that are in high traffic areas would cost much more and ones in the middle of nowhere would cost less. There is no hard price guide. But for the most part they are priced with a large payment to cover the construction of the new sign (you would likely need to provide the design) and then have a monthly rent component depending on how long you wanted it to stay up.
> How successful are they and have they been negatively affected since the Internet (a la the newspaper industry's ads)?
Newspaper adds are down because fewer people are looking at newspapers. As the internet has not affected peoples need to get around (much) I do not imagine there has been much slump in billboard adds. | [
"A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertisements to passing pedestrians and drivers. Typically showing witty slogan... |
Are there other theoretical dimensions that are not spatial or temporal? | In relativity, the difference between a spacial and temporal dimension is how we measure distances. If two events are separated only by time (say you now and you still sitting on your chair in 5 minutes), the distance between these two events is negative (or positive, in the other convention). In the case where the distance is spatial (say you and the statue of liberty, measured now), then this distance is positive (or negative, in the other convention).
That being said, if you introduce another dimension and require the metric to be real, then this extra dimension can only give a positive or a negative contribution to the distance, thus making it either spatial or temporal. | [
"It is therefore common (though not universal), for B-theorists to be four-dimensionalists, that is, to believe that objects are extended in time as well as in space and therefore have temporal as well as spatial parts. This is sometimes called a time-slice ontology.\n",
"Unlike the four dimensionalist, the three... |
how can it been cheaper to buy something new than to repair it? | Two answers you were given so far reference something called [economies of scale](_URL_0_) which means that making a whole lot of something means each one by itself can be made cheaper than by not making a lot of something.
And that's not a wrong answer to your question. But it's also not the only answer to your question. Sometimes the creation process for something is just easier than the repair process. Let me demonstrate with a set of instructions that I want you to imagine yourself doing.
1. Go make a cake. Two layers, with cream and icing, decorated with "Congratulations" and little icing flowers on top.
2. Punch the cake. Put a nice big hole in it.
Now you have two options. You can spend time to clean up the splatter, take measurements of the dimensions and volume of the hole, make some extra bit of cake and carve it into the exaact shape of the hole, place in in, fill cream again in the right places, add the bits of frosting needed to complete the words and flowers as they looked before and smooth everything over so you can't see any seems.
Or you can just make a whole new cake.
Which one do you think will take less time? | [
"BULLET::::- The first, obvious advantage is having the item available again, which aides in the restoration of a vehicle to the correct, factory specifications. It also cancels the need to find a good used part otherwise not available new, or the sourcing out of NOS parts (New Old Stock) which can be a difficult, ... |
Does air quality get better after a storm passed through an area? | Yes for a time air quality improves after a storm passes through. The mechanism is called "precipitation scavenging" in which droplets of rain will absorb particulate matter as they fall towards the ground. This is the primary mechanism - removal of PM in the air.
There is no Wikipedia page I could find specifically on this subject, but [here](_URL_0_) is a paper from Lawrence Livermore that has a good introduction on the topic.
Incidentally, a scrubber used to remove pollutants from an industrial process (or even mobile ones used for ships at berth) works on basically the same principle. | [
"Considering that North Americans spend a large proportion of their lives indoors, it’s clear why this is a key issue in designing healthy spaces. Additionally, air quality is not a stand-alone problem; rather, every other component of the home can affect air quality. Air quality can be compromised by off-gassing f... |
Can a deaf person become bilingual? | You're asking a few different questions here.
First off, the deaf person in your example is already bilingual in English and a signed language. There are many different signed languages in the world, and they are not based on spoken languages. For example, British Sign Language and American Sign Language are very different, despite the language users' proximity to a shared spoken language - English. In contrast, French Sign Language and American Sign Language are very similar. (As a side-note, there are several signing systems that attempt to combine the syntax of a spoken language with the vocabulary of a signed language. However, these are not naturally acquirable systems, and are really just a subset of the spoken language rather than a true signed language.) So the short answer here is yes, they can become bilingual just like any other person. However, you're specifically wondering about spoken languages, so there's more to my answer.
It's important to recognize that being able to read lips does not necessarily indicate fluency in the language. A lot of it is very context-dependent. Try this on a friend some time: Let them know you're going to say something silently and ask them what you've side. First, make eye contact, smile, and silently say "Hello, how are you today?" Be sure to keep your lip movements as natural as possible. Odds are that they'll understand what youve said fairly easily. Now try "purple monkey dishwasher" or some other unexpected combination of words and notice how they are unable to understand what you've said. That's because only 30% of speech sounds in English are visible. Your lips are pretty much in the same position for "boat," "but," "butt," "bat," etc. Your tongue and vocal tract are shaping most of the sound. Hopefully that gives you some idea of how context-dependent lipreading is. This should also show that people who are very good at picking apart contextual clues and have a wide vocabulary of content words (such as nouns and verbs) could get by without a strong knowledge of function words or language structure. Unfortunately, I don't have statistics for speech sounds in Spanish, but I know there are sounds that exist in Spanish that do not exist in English (the trilled r comes to mind.) This is conjecture on my part, but I would imagine that would make lip reading more difficult than it already is.
The final component is second language acquisition and the age the person lost their hearing. Children acquire language much more readily before a certain age (what exactly that age is is still being fiercely debated, but it is a widely-accepted hypothesis nonetheless.) It's also much easier to learn a second language if you have a first language (more on this in a moment.) So someone who loses their hearing at age 10 is going to have a much easier time acquiring a second language, either spoken or signed, than someone who loses their hearing at 40. However, it's a different story for children born deaf. It used to be, and in many cases still is, that a child's deafness is not discovered until they are several months to several years old. Since 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, this also means that the parents have to decide whether they want to teach their child a signed language first (which the parents have to learn and are unlikely to become fluent in,) or whether they want to try to force the child to learn their spoken language (a good analogy is "like trying to read Sanskrit without ever having heard it spoken." That is, it's hard to explain to an infant the connection between the fact that their parents seem to move their mouths when looking at each other, the fact that squiggles on a page are somehow related to concrete concepts, etc.) By the time this is all resolved, the child has missed out on lots of critical language exposure, and in some cases, impacts their ability to acquire a first language normally. This also makes sense - hearing children are surrounded by rich language input all day every day, more than a deaf child will ever have access to. Not only do the majority of people in the deaf child's life not use an accessible language, but even deaf children of deaf parents aren't able to see how their parents talk to each other in the other room, something a hearing child takes for granted.
So basically, yes, under the circumstances you described and under most circumstances, a deaf person can become bilingual (many deaf people are already bilingual in a signed and spoken language.) However, if they fail to adequately acquire a first language, second language acquisition can be difficult or impossible. As a side note, one of my former sign language teachers was fluent in five signed languages and two spoken languages. | [
"To be defined as bilingual, an individual need not have perfect fluency or equal skill in both languages. Bimodal bilinguals, like oral-language bilinguals, exhibit a wide range of language competency in their first and second languages. For Deaf people (the majority of bimodal bilinguals in the U.S.), level of co... |
how did the u.s., a country only a few centuries old, become the world's largest economy so quickly? | You've been somewhat misinformed.
[The US is the worlds third largest producer of oil, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia](_URL_5_), as well as the second largest producer of coal and natural gas.
The US auto industry has been the largest in the world since the invention of the car, and it's only fairly recently that china has been outproducing the US, though their cars have much worse reputations, and have difficulty reaching foreign markets.
[In fact, The US had been the largest manufacturing country in the world for over a century, until china over took them in 2010](_URL_2_)
As for natural resources, The US has the most [arable land](_URL_4_), [#1 in timber](_URL_3_), [is #2 in copper](_URL_7_) [# 3 in gold](_URL_1_), as well as a [few other things](_URL_6_)
But the US has a few huge advantages over other countries. One, it's massive population. The best resource a country can have is people, everything else is secondary. The reason China has been able to catch up to the US economy is by leveraging it's massive population, and if they're careful, it's what will allow their economy to double ours in the next 100 years.
Two, it's isolation from the rest of the world. While Europe was conquering Africa, robbing China blind, and extracting every cent from India, the US was left on it's own to grow as they wished. While Europe was blowing it's self up, both times, the US saw approximately 0 fighting on it's homeland, leaving all of it's infrastructure and production capabilities intact while European factories and roads were all destroyed. When the wars were over, the first thing Europeans would do is buy American goods.
Three, technology. I won't go too into it, but read up on [Big Science](_URL_0_). Essentially, WWII made it very clear how important technology was, and the US starting funding it large-scale.
Four, The US is really good at exporting it's culture. When was the last time you saw an Indian movie? They make thousands every year. Or a french one? they're very well respected by movie critics. Or heard a German song? or read an Italian book? Or ate at a Spanish chain restaurant? Probably not very often, but anyone in Germany can go see the latest Hollywood batman movie, buy a Lady Gaga cd, and grab some McDonalds on the way home. Not many countries can do that that well. | [
"This historical list of the ten largest countries by GDP according to the World Bank shows how the membership and rankings of the world's ten largest economies has changed. Historically, the United States was consistently year after year the world's largest economy since the early twentieth century. However, the r... |
why does honey form small coils when it's being poured? | Destin from Smarter Every Day has a video on this: _URL_0_ | [
"According to the traditional methods of preparation, honeycombs are crushed, and the balls of wax containing 20-30% of honey are collected in generic containers. In the days immediately after all the honey extract has settled, the remaining combs containing honey and pollen are dipped in hot water (~ 50 °C), so th... |
Is there anything saltier than table salt? | Well, how strongly you taste something is mostly determined by how "well-fitting" molecules of the substance are to your tastebud receptors. For sodium, there are specific receptors that have evolved to strongly fit Na+, termed ENaC. Though there are other receptors that are taste ions from salt more broadly (K+, NH4+, etc), I think the implication is that since there are specific ones for Na+, we will taste the Na+ part of NaCl more strongly than any other salt.
Check the paper [here](_URL_0_) for more details. | [
"Table salt is made up of just under 40% sodium by weight, so a 6g serving (1teaspoon) contains about 2,300mg of sodium. Sodium serves a vital purpose in the human body: via its role as an electrolyte, it helps nerves and muscles to function correctly, and it is one factor involved in the osmotic regulation of wate... |
What did being wealthy look like in the bronze age? | This is a pretty broad question both geographically and chronologically, so I'll limit my answer to Middle and New Kingdom Egypt and can provide comparisons with other regions and time periods if necessary.
Turning first to houses, the site of Lahun provides examples of houses of different sizes and levels of complexity. Lahun was founded as a pyramid town of Senusret II and flourished during the Middle Kingdom; a town plan can be seen [here](_URL_16_). Domestic space at Lahun consists of the "mayor's house" on the acropolis, five northern mansions, three southern mansions, eastern housing, and western housing. The latter two were fairly simple compared to the mansions; comparative floor plans [can be seen here](_URL_24_). A mansion at Lahun consisted of a reception hall, sleeping quarters, an office, servants' quarters, and workshops and food preparation areas. Egyptian tomb models depict many of the parts of the house of an elite Egyptian family, including the [granary](_URL_25_), [butchery](_URL_7_), [livestock pens](_URL_13_), [weaving workshop](_URL_9_), [baking and brewing facilities](_URL_11_), and [carpentry workshop](_URL_3_). A [garden and pool](_URL_19_) formed the center of the house. Finally, the exterior of the house contained porticoes used for public appearances and [cattle counts](_URL_5_).
Wealthy Egyptians had many different ways to entertain themselves. [Banquets](_URL_8_) were quite popular, and [musicians and dancers](_URL_10_) as well as [harpists and storytellers](_URL_14_) were hired to entertain guests. To relax and escape the heat, wealthy Egyptians often took boat excursions into the marshes for [fishing and fowling](_URL_2_). These [boating excursions](_URL_17_) often involved numerous people.
Ancient Egypt had several grades of linen, including "royal linen" (*sšr nsw*) and "fine linen" (*šmat nfrt*). Elite clothing was therefore distinguished from the clothing of commoners by quality as much as complexity. For a comparison of the clothing worn by commoners and the clothing of the Egyptian elite, see this [New Kingdom tomb painting](_URL_27_); note the quality of the sheer linen worn by Nakht, the tomb owner. Egyptian male nobles sometimes received the [gold of honor](_URL_6_) from the king as a sign of favor, and elite Egyptian women wore elaborate [jewelry](_URL_21_) and [wigs](_URL_20_) as a mark of their status. The elite also used [makeup](_URL_15_) and [perfume](_URL_23_), which was indicated in art as a cone atop the head.
Many, but certainly not all, wealthy Egyptians were literate. The [Heqanakht papyri](_URL_22_) provide a rare glimpse of literacy within a middle class family during the Middle Kingdom. The papyri, written in a lovely hieratic hand, are the remnants of a correspondence between a priest and his family. Heqanakht seems to have been a rather irritable fellow, and his letters are full of indignation and criticisms on how the household is being run in his absence. One of his sons, for example, seems to have been harassing his father's new wife.
> As this man lives for me - it's Ip l'm referring to - whoever shall make any sexual advance against my new wife, he is against me and I against him. Since this is my new wife and it is known how a man's new wife should be helped, so as for whoever shall help her, it's the same as helping me. Would even one of you be patient if his wife has been denounced to him? So should I be patient! How can I remain with you in the same community if you won't respect my new wife for my sake?
Egyptian status was in many ways tied to literacy, and the "Satire of the Trades" notes the benefits of being a scribe while denigrating other professions.
> See, there's no profession without a boss,
> Except for the scribe; he is the boss.
> Hence if you know writing,
> It will do better for you
> Than those professions I've set before you,
> Each more wretched than the other.
Elite Egyptian men were responsible for producing and copying almost all surviving Egyptian literature, such as the [library of Qenherkhopeshef](_URL_0_) at Deir el-Medina.
When wealthy Egyptians died, they were buried in elaborate tombs that they prepared before their death. Burials typically consisted of a [rock-cut tomb](_URL_26_), a [painted coffin](_URL_4_), and [canopic jars](_URL_12_) for internal organs. Elite burials of the 18th Dynasty often included [food and furniture](_URL_18_) as well. Tombs often contained lengthy biographies outlining the career of the tomb owner. For example, the tomb of Weni contained an autobiography shedding light on Old Kingdom history. An excerpt:
> When there was a secret charge in the royal harem against Queen Weret-yamtes, his majesty made me go in to hear (it) alone. No chief judge and vizier, no official was there, only I alone; because I was worthy, because I was rooted in his majesty's heart; because his majesty had filled his heart with me. Only I put (it) in writing together with one other senior warden of Nekhen, while my rank was (only) that of overseer of royal tenants. Never before had one like me heard a secret of the king's harem; but his majesty made me hear it, because I was worthy in his majesty's heart beyond any official of his, beyond any noble of his, beyond any servant of his.
> When his majesty took action against the Asiatic Sand-dwellers, his majesty made an army of many tens of thousands from all of Upper Egypt: from Yebu in the south to Medenyt in the north; from Lower Egypt: from all of the Two-Sides-of-the-Houses and from Sedjer and Khen-sedjru; and from lrtjet-Nubians, Medja-Nubuians, Yam-Nubians, Wawat-Nubians, Kaau-Nubians; and from Tjemeh-land.
> His majesty sent me at the head of this army, there being counts, royal seal-bearers, sole companions of the palace, chieftains and mayors of towns of Upper and Lower Egypt, companions, scout-leaders, chief priests of Upper and Lower Egypt, and chief district officials at the head of the troops of Upper and Lower Egypt, from the villages and towns that they governed and from the Nubians of those foreign lands. I was the one who commanded them - while my rank was that of overseer of royal tenants - because of my rectitude, so that no one attacked his fellow, so that no one seized a loaf or sandals from a traveler, so that no one took a cloth from any town, so that no one took a goat from anyone...
For further reading, I highly recommend [*High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt*](_URL_1_) by John Baines.
| [
"The 8th century BC saw a marked increase of wealth in Cyprus. Communications to the east and west were on the ascent and this created a prosperous society. Testifying to this wealth are the so-called royal tombs of Salamis, which, although plundered, produced a truly royal abundance of wealth. Sacrifices of horses... |
why is plastic surgery "plastic"? | "Plastic" means "capable of being molded or shaped into forms". The substance called "plastic" was named after this property, and the surgery term uses the first meaning. | [
"Plastic surgery is a surgical specialty involving the restoration, reconstruction, or alteration of the human body. It can be divided into two categories. The first is reconstructive surgery which includes craniofacial surgery, hand surgery, microsurgery, and the treatment of burns. The other is cosmetic or aesthe... |
Is Carl Jung's work relevant? | The psychiatrists I know don't think much of Jung (YMMV). However, I would point you to [Joseph Campbell](_URL_0_). His work is heavily derived from Jung's and is considered quite relevant in fields like cultural anthropology. In fact more people learn about Jung's ideas from exposure to Campbell than from reading Jung. | [
"Jung's writings have been studied by people of many backgrounds and interests, including theologians, people from the humanities, and mythologists. Jung often seemed to seek to make contributions to various fields, but he was mostly a practicing psychiatrist, involved during his whole career in treating patients. ... |
AskHistorians Podcast 115 - The Friends They Loathed - Quaker Religion and Persecution in the American Revolution | Thank you as always to the incredible podcast team and all of you who participate on it! Looking forward to sitting down and having a listen. | [
"Engardio's documentary film \"Knocking\" explored how the unpopular religion of Jehovah's Witnesses played a major role in First Amendment history, setting Supreme Court precedents that expanded individual liberties for all Americans. In interviews, Engardio said \"Knocking\" is not about the theology of Jehovah's... |
A couple questions about redshift and relativity. | I don't know if I follow your first scenario very well, but I will try my best to answer what I can.
First off, there is no system which can "measure redshift." All you can do is measure the frequency. Now, there are times you can use that frequency and determine the amount of red shift if you know what frequencies of light you are looking at (for instance, find where the absorption lines are looking at the Sun, know that they are actually helium and hydrogen lines, and calculate). However, you can never directly measure red shift.
Ok, so now to your question about heading towards a distant star. Yes, if you traveled fast enough, the light coming towards you would be blue shifted to the gamma range, and all of the negatives of gamma radiation would affect you unless you protected yourself from them. That also means that if you traveled at an object quickly enough, it could become invisible to you, unless it was emitting long enough wavelength (so a low heat perhaps?) that was blue-shifted to the visible spectrum.
The reverse is also true, you could travel away from the Sun quickly enough so that its light would be red-shifted away from you and thus you could no longer see it. | [
"At the time of discovery and development of Hubble's law, it was acceptable to explain redshift phenomenon as a Doppler shift in the context of special relativity, and use the Doppler formula to associate redshift \"z\" with velocity. Today, in the context of general relativity, velocity between distant objects de... |
how do you train messenger birds? | Messenger birds can't deliver messages to arbitrary locations. They're birds (generally pigeons) that have a homing instinct that helps them return to their roost over long distances. So you raise one at your location, release them from further and further away from their roost to help them learn the area, and then give them to people you want to be able to send you messages.
Likewise, if you want to be able to send someone messages, you have to have one of their pigeons delivered to you. | [
"Birds use contact calls in flight to establish location and to keep aware of each other's presence while flying and feeding. For some species, this call consists of a short, high-pitched sound, recognized and duplicated exactly by mates. Some fowl, such as geese,\"honk\" while in migration to communicate location ... |
why is it illegal to record a phone call without the person's consent? | You are mistaken. Michigan courts have said it is eavesdropping for anyone not a part of the conversation to record the call. Federal law requires only one party on the call know that it is being recorded.
Back in the old days, there were multi-party phone lines, which made it cheaper for people living in rural areas to get phone service. It meant that many people 'shared' a single phone line. If you wanted to use the phone, you would need to check and make sure someone else wasn't already using it. You could also listen to a conversation taking place by quietly picking up any phone in the loop. That behavior was inconsiderate and rude to your neighbors, and made illegal to protect persons from gossip or blackmail.
_URL_0_ | [
"Call recording laws in some U.S. states require only one party to be aware of the recording, while other states require both parties to be aware. Several states require that all parties consent when one party wants to record a telephone conversation. Telephone scammers and others intentionally violating the federa... |
Did Ancient Greece ever have sectarian conflicts? What were the major religious lines of division? | By Sectarian, I’m taking from your question that you mean religious and not territorial sectarian violence. Because the Greeks had a whole lot of territorial violence that could be defined as Sectarian. Religions could be used as a spark for a conflict but there wasn’t constant sectarian religious warfare like the Catholics/IRA v. England, Catholics v. Protestants, Muslim v. Christian,Muslim v. Hindu,etc...
While we rattle off names like Zeus,Ares,Artemis,Hera,etc… the various city-states had their own interpretations of each usually. The Idea of Ares in Sparta would be different than the one in Athens or Argo. They’d also often have their own holidays/festivals/holy days. The Spartans were famously late for the Battle of Marathon because they had a religious observance(The Carnea festival honoring Apollo) and couldn’t march until it was completed. Athens didn’t wasn’t beholden to the Carnea so they marched to Marathon to meet the Persians.
Also, cities and areas would have their own preferred gods like Athena and Athens, Helios for Rhodes,etc.. As to them fighting over their various interpretations, it was never a primary reason. It may have been thrown out as a secondary reason but the Greek City-States fought amongst themselves over the normal things: Land, Supplies,Money or Insults.
I think a big reason for a lack of large-scale religious sectarian violence is that there were just so many different religions,cults, mystery cults,etc… floating around Greece. The island of Delos was a major port for trading so it came in contact with the levant, north Africa, Italy,etc… It had Greek religious temples, a temple to the Philistine god Baal and even a synagogue. It’d be real hard to fight solely from a religious sectarian view when your neighbors,family members,etc.. have different religions. It’d be exhausting. | [
"There is, however, no reason to suppose that there was a decline in the traditional religion. There is plenty of documentary evidence that the Greeks continued to worship the same gods with the same sacrifices, dedications, and festivals as in the classical period. New religions did appear in this period, but not ... |
How did scientists figure out that the mantis shrimp can see 12 different wavelengths if humans can only see three? | They extracted the proteins from the retina of the Mantis Shrimp. We have three types of cone cells in our eyes that are activated when differing wavelengths of light hit them. The mantis shrimp is the same, except they found up to 12 different types of detectors; each for a slightly different wavelength.
The real question is: with a visual cortex so small, can the Shrimp really perceive all the beauty he could see? Or is he limited by the small size and power of his brain and able to only really see one or two wavelengths at a time? | [
"Mantis shrimp can perceive wavelengths of light ranging from deep ultraviolet (UVB) to far-red (300 to 720 nm) and polarized light. In mantis shrimp in the superfamilies Gonodactyloidea, Lysiosquilloidea, and Hemisquilloidea, the midband is made up of six omatodial rows. Rows 1 to 4 process colours, while rows 5 a... |
can we pump greenhouse gases into space? | No. None of us have the money, very few of us have the technology.
**Problem #1:** Sorting out the "bad gases" from the "good gases". It's easy to verify those gases are present, but difficult to collect amounts of just that gas from the atmosphere in any reasonable amount. Most production of greenhouse gases for industrial use is done by making that gas with a chemical reaction.
**Problem #2:** Pumping them out of the atmosphere. To make any reasonable dent in global warming, modern estimates usually figure a few *million tons* of greenhouse gas need to go. In order to get them into space, you have to somehow transport all those millions of tons straight up. Pressure pumping alone won't work: you would need a pipe that goes straight up out of the atmosphere. Google the space elevator problem for why this is problematic.
**Problem #3:** You gotta keep all of it up there. Figuring out where to put all that gas would be difficult enough: you can't keep it in orbit, because it would pose a serious risk to spacecraft. That means that you are already transporting/piping this gas some 384000 km away.
So tl;dr: No we can't, it's way too hard to do.
EDIT: Some formatting | [
"Because long-term climate stability would be required for sustaining a human population, the use of especially powerful fluorine-bearing greenhouse gases, possibly including sulfur hexafluoride or halocarbons such as chlorofluorocarbons (or CFCs) and perfluorocarbons (or PFCs), has been suggested. These gases are ... |
If you're breed into a war driven society like the Spartans, Mongols, Romans, etc. Is it a highly likely chance the soldiers still experience PTSD. | Insofar as PTSD is the result of neurological changes due to overexposure to traumatic situations, there is no reason why conditioning and training should make anyone less susceptible to it. Arguably the training itself, depending on the methods used, could become a cause of PTSD in itself.
In any case, I'm not sure to what extent the societies you mention were "war driven". Recent work by Stephen Hodkinson has shown that Sparta, for one, was not a militaristic society at all. It did not even have a military. Its social conditioning was focused on fostering obedience and endurance, and the outward features of its culture were intended to minimise and hide differences of wealth and status within the citizen body. The purpose of this entire system was not to create perfect soldiers, but to create a perfectly stable society, in which neither the destitution of the common people nor the rivalries of the elite would lead to an overthrow of the established political and legal institutions, as it did everywhere else in Greece on a regular basis. Sparta was not a military powerhouse but an elaborate and remarkably successful experiment in social engineering.
The Roman approach to warfare became more organised and disciplined during the mid-Republic, but I doubt the average Roman citizen would regard himself as bred for war. Most of them were farmers and labourers who were called to arms only at need. The rise of the professional army went hand in hand with the release of ordinary citizens from military duties, allowing them to focus entirely on their normal everyday activities as war became the business of those who chose a career in it. | [
"Since the \"Machel Report\" further research has shown that child recruits who survive armed conflict face a markedly elevated risk of debilitating psychiatric illness, poor literacy and numeracy, and behavioural problems. Research in Palestine and Uganda, for example, has found that more than half of former child... |
dry shampoo | Dry shampoo is basically a powder that absorbs hair oils. No, it's not just laziness. Washing hair every day can be bad for your scalp (not only does it remove oil, as you mentioned, but shampoo ingredients can be incredibly harsh. Styling hair can also be incredibly damaging. If your hair gets wet, it needs to be restyled. For all of these reasons, people may want to extend the time between shampoo washes. Doesn't mean they aren't showering).
For people with thicker hair, washing and letting your hair air dry can mean you have a wet head for *hours*. If I shower before bed, I wake up with still damp hair. If I braid it, it could be wet for over a day. And my hair isn't particularly long or thick. Someone with longer, thicker hair might need to wash their hair less often or else they will just *always* have wet hair. Which is awful.
The other reason people use dry shampoo is because they want the texture that it gives hair. It might make their hair look fuller, more voluminous, or help hold certain styles better. Dirtier hair in general is seen as easier to style and dry shampoo can be a way for people to get the styling ease in still-clean hair.
Also, some people like the smell.
There are also dry conditioners for people who don't have greasy hair. They're basically anti static/frizz ingredients combined with dry conditioners to add shine and smooth flyaways. | [
"Shampoo () is a hair care product, typically in the form of a viscous liquid, that is used for cleaning hair. Less commonly, shampoo is available in bar form, like a bar of soap. Shampoo is used by applying it to wet hair, massaging the product into the hair, and then rinsing it out. Some users may follow a shampo... |
Why is belly fat different from other fat? | abdominal fat is more correlated with insulin resistance. We don't know if the belly fat causes insulin resistance or if insulin resistance makes you more likely to store belly fat.
_URL_0_ | [
"Visceral fat or abdominal fat (also known as organ fat or intra-abdominal fat) is located inside the abdominal cavity, packed between the organs (stomach, liver, intestines, kidneys, etc.). Visceral fat is different from subcutaneous fat underneath the skin, and intramuscular fat interspersed in skeletal muscles. ... |
Is it possible that Earth has had moons in the past and they were destroyed? | Not only is it possible, but there is actually evidence suggesting the Earth did in fact used to have two moons: _URL_0_ | [
"Claims of the existence of other moons of Earth—that is, of one or more natural satellites that orbit Earth, other than the Moon (Luna)—have existed for some time. Several candidates have been proposed, but none has been confirmed. Since the 19th century, scientists have made genuine searches for more moons, but t... |
Power Transformer explosions in Ft. Worth, TX. What could cause this? | I actually just saw a lecture about this. The explosions are caused when the oil used as a coolant ignites. The thing has to fail prior to this happening, for instance by a component melting. | [
"However, Con Edison later said that the power failure originated at a substation on West 49th Street. Gov. Cuomo further specified that an explosion and resulting fire at the substation caused damage to other substations. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio initially said via Twitter that a \"manhole fire\" was the caus... |
When PTSD was officially recognized as mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980, were there a substantial amount of people that denied PTSD's existence/credibility? and why? | The profession of clinical psychology in America actually came into being specifically because of soldiers suffering psychological distress as a result of their wartime experiences in World War II. In America during World War II, psychologists were seen as valuable by the U.S. military; of the ~4000 psychologists in a 1942 survey, about 25% were employed by the military. However, at this point, professional psychologists were either researchers or people who performed psychological testing or applied psychological principles in a broad sense. So, for example, a professional psychologist in the U.S. military might administer IQ tests or other suitability tests for the military, or might serve in advisory capacities on how to best increase the speed of production on factory lines (and so forth). Psychologists in 1942 weren't sitting in rooms with people talking about their problems. Instead, that was what psychiatrists - medical doctors specialising in mental illness - did.
However, at the end of the war, there were 44,000 hospitalised veterans who were hospitalised for psychological reasons, presumably many of which had symptoms of what we'd now call post-traumatic stress disorder, though it wasn't called as such at the time. As a result - and because there just weren't enough psychiatrists to keep up with demand - in 1946, the VA set up clinical psychology training institutions at many major U.S. universities, who aimed to turn out graduates who could apply psychological theory to the art of therapy.
In general, the early clinical psychologists did not seem to spend much time arguing that their military psychiatric population had something like post-traumatic stress disorder which manifested differently in some people but was basically the same; a [very early 1946 paper by Abraham Luchins](_URL_0_), for example, trying out a group psychotherapy on his patients doesn't try to classify the disorder at all, or divide patients into different groups. That said, there's a ['War Bulletin' in a 1946 issue of the *Journal of Clinical Psychology*](_URL_1_) which lists a variety of different psychological conditions. In this war bulletin, the conditions that seem most like PTSD to me, judging by their descriptions, are divided into three conditions: 'transient personality reactions to acute or special stress', 'combat exhaustion', and 'acute situational maladjustment' (you can see the descriptions on the preview page on the link - they're obviously more general guides than the bullet point 'must have 6 or more'-style lists of the DSM-III from 1980). So clearly, at an institutional level in the U.S. military post World War II, there was an awareness that soldiers were being hospitalised for being unable to cope with the stress of their war experiences, and their re-integration into society.
One of the things to point out here, therefore, is that both psychologists and psychiatrists in the mid-20th century were generally unconcerned with diagnosis in the systematic way that we would now understand a diagnosis like PTSD. Instead, in general, there's much more focus on the cause of the symptoms rather than the broad pattern of symptoms. In American psychiatry this speaks to Freud's influence - he was less concerned with differentiating between anxiety and depression, and more concerned with the childhood issues that might be causing the symptoms. In clinical psychology, this likely spoke to the influence of behaviourism, an influential theory within psychology at the time, which argued that environmental stimuli played a large role in behaviour (and that, as a result, you could alter the environmental influences to alter the behaviour); clinical psychologists at this point, therefore, would in general focus more on the environmental stimuli connected to the upsetting emotional disturbances of soldiers, and less on the taxonomy of those disorders (PTSD treatment still does focus on identifying environmental stimuli that might be triggering flashbacks and the like).
The difference between 1946 and 1980 is that, within psychology, the influence of behaviourism waned, replaced by cognitivism (which argued that internal psychological modules that were often domain-specific played a large role in behaviour - cognitivism was much more inclined to seeing a *thing* called PTSD inside the mind than behaviourism was). Similarly, in psychiatry, the Freudian influence waned as psychiatrists became able to prescribe reasonably effective drugs for many disorders. Freudian ideas were replaced by more obviously medical ideas about psychiatric disorders being caused by, say, imbalances in brain chemicals like serotonin.
The DSM-III in 1980 - where post-traumatic stress disorder was first named as a specific disorder - was influential precisely because it reflected this new *medical* understanding amongst psychiatrists; it's fundamentally designed to look for constellations of symptoms that commonly occur together, so that psychiatrists can get a sense of what medications work best for what constellations of symptoms. It's safe to say that the disorders in the DSM-III do broadly reflect conventional wisdom amongst psychiatrists on what disorders were important to treat. These days, when new disorders are added to the DSM, it generally denotes awareness amongst psychiatrists that people are coming to them with distressing symptoms that do not neatly fit into existing categories.
Of course, in an age where Freud's influence was waning but not entirely absent, not all psychiatrists were particularly happy about the medical slant of the DSM. Michael Trimble, writing a 1985 book chapter about the history of the PTSD concept, complains that 'post-traumatic neurosis' - which psychiatrists had been using previously to the DSM-III - is a perfectly fine term that the compilers of the DSM-III had avoided because it was too Freudian in its implications. Nonetheless, while Trimble grumbles about the DSM-III concept of PTSD somewhat, he ultimately thinks that the PTSD diagnosis is a good thing, because it means that there will be wider recognition that there are sometimes long delays between traumatic events and PTSD symptoms, and so sufferers will be more widely able to get treatment and insurance funding for that treatment - the DSM-III diagnosis at least seems very scientific and medical.
The question of how the wider culture reacted to psychological disorders in general is almost another topic on its own - but there was a slow increase in how sympathetic wider Anglophone culture was towards people with psychiatric disorders which started in the 1960s. The hippie movement famously flouted society's expectations, and seemed to enjoy the use of brain-altering chemicals and thus had a certain degree of sympathy for other people who also flouted society's expectations because of altered brain chemistry, such as schizophrenics. Similarly, people in the hippie movment like John Lennon of the Beatles played a role in the popularity of psychological fads like primal scream therapy. In the 1970s, the therapy session was a common trope in, say, Woody Allen movies, and of course the 1975 movie *One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest* (based on a book originally written in the 1960s by Ken Kesey, a prominent figure in the hippie movement) portrayed the inmates of a psychiatric hospital in a more flattering light than psychiatric nurses, at least. By the 1990s, you had an influential, popular band like Nirvana with songs called things like 'Lithium' and 'I Hate Myself And I Want To Die', and much of the alternative movement in rock music wrestled with mental illnesses like depression, addiction, and anxiety; Chris Cornell of Soundgarden sadly comes to mind here as just one example of a prominent rock star of the era who was open about suffering from depression.
I've taken the broader context route here rather than the specific answer to your question, but if there was pushback against the DSM-III amongst the public, it largely wasn't particular to DSM-III, but instead was about the medicalisation of mental illness in general. After all, acceptance of mental illness was associated with the hippie movement, and the hippies were not popular in some quarters of American society. For some people, mental illness is fundamentally not medical, because it's a disorder of a fundamentally non-material soul; they instead might believe mental illness as being fundamentally a sign that the person needs to accept Jesus into their life. And for people with right-wing authoritarian personalities, for whom strength is an important marker of a person, mental illness is often considered shameful because it's indicative of fundamental weakness. There was talk in the 1970s of 'post-Vietnam syndrome', whereby PTSD seemed to sometimes have an onset delayed by years, which previously hadn't been discussed much. There was also some speculation that 'post-Vietnam syndrome' might be related to the ambivalent-at-best way that soldiers who fought in Vietnam were often treated, in comparison to returned soldiers from previous wars. This certainly would have been a current in popular culture as the concept of PTSD was debated and codified in the DSM-III in the late seventies. | [
"Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was included in the DSM-III (1980), mainly due to the relatively large numbers of American combat veterans of the Vietnam War who were seeking treatment for the lingering effects of combat stress. In the 1980s, various researchers and clinicians suggested that PTSD might also ... |
Have we ever found a species which does no fit into the genetic "tree of life"? | The short answer to this is no.
All living things (I am excluding viruses from this discussion) are composed of cells surrounded by a membrane. They also all use DNA to store the instructions necessary to create proteins. Given these similarities, scientists have concluded that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor. It is important to note that this does not preclude the possibility that life *originated* elsewhere however.
Since all life must perform many of the same functions (DNA replication, protein synthesis, metabolism), there is a subset of genes that all currently known living organisms possess. One of the most well-described of these genes is is the ribosomal RNA (or rRNA) gene. Similarities in this gene are used to determine the "relatedness" of two species since parts of it are not under selective pressure and can mutate at a (somewhat) predictable rate.
| [
"When an analysis of real biological data is performed, there is generally no access to the sequences of ancestral species, only to the present-day species. However, when a model is time-reversible, which species was the ancestral species is irrelevant. Instead, the phylogenetic tree can be rooted using any of the ... |
Does global warming on Earth affect the solar system at all? | The Earth is part of the solar system.
Apart from that there is no relevant effect. The emission spectrum of the Earth shifts a tiny bit towards shorter wavelengths but that doesn't matter outside of Earth. | [
"BULLET::::- A NASA study reports that changes in solar activity cannot be responsible for the current period of global warming. The sun's total solar irradiance has in recent years dipped to the lowest levels recorded during the satellite era. (ScienceDaily)\n",
"Scientists opposing the mainstream scientific ass... |
why won't flies and other insects react on sudden movements on the tv or computer monitors? | I'm not sure about this, but I think flies and other insects move because of air moving around. As screens don't make air move, they ignore it.
Kind of relevant: _URL_0_ | [
"Insect eyes are unable to move independently of the head. In order for flies to stabilize their visual fields, they must adjust the position of their entire head. Sensory inputs detected by halteres not only determine the position of the body, but also, the position of the head, which can move independently from t... |
why do wireless headphones produce a less quality sound than wired ones? | Well to ELI5 (im sure someone will add a better technical information).....blue tooth technology used for wireless headphones simply transmits less information than wires. An analogy would be similar to comparing mp3 to cd quality audio.....mp3 simply has less of the information about the audio than CD which means something, somewhere is lost..... | [
"Headphones are made in a range of different audio reproduction quality capabilities. Headsets designed for telephone use typically cannot reproduce sound with the high fidelity of expensive units designed for music listening by audiophiles. Headphones that use cables typically have either a 1/4 inch (6.35mm) or 1/... |
Are all solar systems formed within nebulae? | The largest stars (O and B type) form inside H II regions. Well, this might be the wrong way to think about it. It's the largest stars that actually *create* H II regions. Here's how it goes:
1. Big cloud of (mostly) neutral hydrogen molecules
2. Gravitational collapse
3a. If the gas gets dense enough, the cloud core collapses into a big star, O or B type, that sends out high energy, highly ionizing photons that ionize the hydrogen in a region around the star, thus creating an H II region. Probably, not many planets form around these stars since the solar winds from the stars are extremely strong.
3b. If the gas doesn't get very dense at the center, this process takes a little longer and we get a smaller (solar-type) star. Probably, these are the kinds of stars around which planets have time to form.
Hope this helps! | [
"The Solar System has its own interplanetary dust cloud, as do extrasolar systems. There are different types of nebulae with different physical causes and processes: diffuse nebula, infrared (IR) reflection nebula, supernova remnant, molecular cloud, HII regions, photodissociation regions, and dark nebula.\n",
"T... |
why are the republican/democrat debates called debates? there's hardly any debating going on. | They're mostly called debates to lend some gravitas to the situation.
What they are these days, however, is joint press conferences.
It would be nice to have actual debates, but that would require politicians who are willing and able to think on their feet, and argue in defense of a position, rather than requiring an army of writers to create pre-prepared statements for them to memorize.
There aren't many who are willing or able to do that. | [
"Debate has been common in recent elections in regards to the election of the President of the United States via the electoral college. The debate stems from the fact that the electoral college is a malapportioned body., and thus provides for a scenario whereby a candidate may win the election via the electoral col... |
Adult adoption seems to have been very common by the late Roman Republic; was this a political development, driven by social forces, or interpersonal ones (or something else)? Was it particular to the aristocratic class or common in general? Do we know how it developed? | On his 62nd birthday, the emperor Hadrian - tormented by an illness that had crippled him and left him subject to bouts of murderous rage - convened a council of advisers at his bedside. Painfully shifting his dropsy-stiffened limbs, he delivered a short address about his succession plans. The historian Cassius Dio (who wrote nearly a century later) gives this version:
"I, my friends, have not been permitted by nature to have a son, but you have made it possible by legal enactment. Now there is this difference between the two methods — that a begotten son turns out to be whatever sort of person Heaven pleases, whereas one that is adopted a man takes to himself as the result of a deliberate selection. Thus by the process of nature a maimed and witless child is often given to a parent, but by process of selection one of sound body and sound mind is certain to be chosen. For this reason I formerly selected Lucius before all others...But since Heaven has bereft us of them, I have found as emperor for you in his place the man whom I now give you, one who is noble, mild, tractable, prudent, neither young enough to do anything reckless nor old enough to neglect aught, one who has been brought up according to the laws and one who has exercised authority in accordance with our traditions, so that he is not ignorant of any matters pertaining to the imperial office, but could handle them all effectively..." (69.20)
Thus Hadrian announced his plans to adopt the man we know as Antoninus Pius, who would succeed him a few months later.
Roman adoption might best be conceptualized as an oligarchic society's response to demographic realities. Thanks largely to cripplingly high rates of child mortality, many Roman families failed to produce a male heir. Adoption allowed a childless man to perpetuate his family- a concern to all classes, but most pressing and visible among the aristocracy. There were two legal forms of adoption - one for those who had previously paterfamilias of their own family, another for those who had been under the paternal power of another - but the upshot in each case was to make one man the legal son of another.
Legal adoption seems to have developed fairly early - probably by the fourth century BCE. It was certainly well-established by the middle Republic, when the general and statesman Aemilius Paulus negotiated the adoption of two of his sons into prominent families:
"So then Aemilius, having divorced Papiria, took another wife; and when she had borne him two sons he kept these at home, but the sons of his former wife he introduced into the greatest houses and the most illustrious families, the elder into that of Fabius Maximus, who was five times consul, while the younger was adopted by the son of Scipio Africanus, his cousin, who gave him the name of Scipio." (Plut., *Aem*. 5.5)
The institution of adoption was famously abused / creatively applied by Cicero's nemesis Clodius, who had himself adopted into a plebeian family to make him eligible for the tribunate. We also hear more and more about testamentary adoptions (posthumous adoptions by will) in the late Republic, which (unlike the two legal forms of adoption) entailed only taking the name of one's new "father," not formally joining his family. The most famous instance of this is of course the future Augustus' adoption by his great-uncle Julius Caesar. Adoption continued to evolve in the imperial era, when women were allowed to adopt for the first time. It also became, as we have seen, a principle of imperial succession - though no emperor ever passed over his natural son in favor of an adopted one. | [
"Markedly different from the modern period, ancient adoption practices put emphasis on the political and economic interests of the adopter, providing a legal tool that strengthened political ties between wealthy families and created male heirs to manage estates. The use of adoption by the aristocracy is well docume... |
Is gravity the strongest at the surface of the earth? | That would be true if the Earth was a sphere of uniform density, but since the core is much denser than the mantle and crust, gravity peaks at the barrier between the mantle and the outer core. [Graphs for comparison.](_URL_0_)
You can think of this as the amount of less dense "stuff" that the mantle/crust adds doesn't compensate for the extra distance away from the very dense core. | [
"Gravity on the Earth's surface varies by around 0.7%, from 9.7639 m/s on the Nevado Huascarán mountain in Peru to 9.8337 m/s at the surface of the Arctic Ocean. In large cities, it ranges from 9.7760 in Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City, and Singapore to 9.825 in Oslo and Helsinki.\n",
"The gravitational field of the ea... |
why does nintendo create "artificial demand" | There is no evidence they have **ACTUALLY** created fake shortages, this story pops up with virtually every console launch (I remember it for the Playstation 2) but the economics behind it don't work.
Nintendo would not make more money by having people fight over a limited set of existing devices. You're right, it only benefits scalpers.
They simply make devices that sometimes get really popular and have a hard time manufacturing enough to meet demand. Remember, Nintendo has to *spend the money first* to build the devices before it can sell them and make it back. It's hard to convince the Ninty finance guys "yeah let's build ten billion of them" until they can prove there's a demand for ten billion.
| [
"Nintendo is one of the world's biggest video game development companies, having created several successful franchises. Because of its storied history, the developer employs a methodical system of software and hardware development that is mainly centralized within its offices in Kyoto and Tokyo, in cooperation with... |
How would a Medieval castle's garrison (say, 1300's) work? How would one join it and how many would be employed at peace? | Most castles did not have "garrisons" per se. The average castle in Europe was the home of a knight. The "garrison" would be the knight, any of his family (sons or brothers) who still lived at home and were of fighting age, and his servants and retainers (cooks, grooms, falconer, huntsman, etc.) who could be armed in case of need. In times of danger, the villagers would take refuge in the castle and would be armed with the weapons stored there.
Larger royal castles or fortress castles, or the castles of great nobles might have had a garrison in peace time. Even so, these garrisons were often surprisingly small.
For example, here are some of the garrisons for important castles guarding the Welsh Marches in about 1160 (a little earlier than the period you are looking for).
The Pipe roll entries show that Oswestry Castle had a garrison of one knight, two porters and two watchmen between 1160 and 1165 (William Fitz Alan was the lord of the castle, but he was a young child and was a ward of the king. The King appointed Guy Lestrange to administer the Fitz Alan lands, and this is the garrison which Lestrange paid for as shown in his accounts of his guardianship).
The two other Fitz Alan Welsh border castles of Clun and Ruthin seem to have had the same peacetime garrison of 5 men.
The Welsh border castles of Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth, seem to have had even smaller garrisons. Shrewsbury was a royal castle, but about 12 miles from the Welsh border and shielded by intervening castles such as Oswestry. It had a garrison of one porter and one watchman. Bridgnorth, another royal castle, slightly further from the border had a garrison of one permanent year round porter.
In time of danger or war, the troops in these castles would be increased. In the summer of 1165 Henry II used Oswestry Castle as his base for a campaign against Owain Gwynedd (an unsuccessful campaign), and during this summer 200 soldiers were stationed at Oswestry and Knockyn Castles.
Again, in 1166-67, the border was troubled and 40 soldiers were paid for at Oswestry Castle for two years. For 158 days of one of these years another 60 soldiers, paid for by the local barons, not the King, were also stationed at Oswestry Castle. By 1168, the soldiers at Oswestry castle were reduced to 20 and that garrison seems to have remained until 1174.
Source:
_URL_0_ | [
"As a static structure, castles could often be avoided. Their immediate area of influence was about and their weapons had a short range even early in the age of artillery. However, leaving an enemy behind would allow them to interfere with communications and make raids. Garrisons were expensive and as a result ofte... |
how come songs/music these days have so many writers yet they only last 3 minutes tops? | 3 minutes is the standard pop song length. Now why are there so many writers? The answer is usually "samples". Here's one of my favourite examples: The Kanye West song "Stronger", which samples Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger" which in turn sampled Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby" resulting in Kanye's song being credited to West, Bangalter, De Homem- Cristo, and Birdsong. If you see more than three writing credits, it's a safe bet at least some of these people did nothing more than record a song that got sampled in the new song. | [
"For each year, Miller wrote about ten or more of his favorite songs, providing analytical insights and placing the songs in context in the musical world of their era. Miller had kept annual countdown lists of his favorite records throughout his life, and his personal project of compiling those lists onto CDs evolv... |
Looking for a couple of good books for two exams I have coming up. British society 1900-1950 ish | I'd recommend Peter Clarke's *Hope and Glory* (2nd ed, 2004) as a good overview of social, political and economic history of Britain during the 20th century. Based on your interest in sufferage and the impact of the Great War, Id also recommend Nicoletta Gullace's *The Blood of Our Sons* (2002) which looks at how the war impacted the relationship between gender and citizenship.
That said, as a teacher myself, if this is for an exam I'd recommend focusing first and foremost on the readings assigned for the class. That's the material that you will be directly graded on. | [
"BULLET::::- In July 1998, students of the Radcliffe Publishing Course, at the request of the Modern Library editorial board, compiled their own list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, and the book was ranked 84th.\n",
"The history of the book in the United Kingdom has been studied from ... |
Why does physics assume the existence of elementary particles? | Physics does not *assume* the existence of elementary particles. Rather, we construct models, see if they work, and it turns out that models that predict the existence of elementary particles work very well.
When you smash particles together, you are not breaking them apart. You are taking them and all their energy -- including the energy present in their mass via E=mc^(2) -- and making it possible for that energy to re-form into new entities.
We refer to some objects as matter and some as force carriers because of the way we happen to think about different entities and their interactions, but that is not necessary. | [
"Around 1980, an elementary particle's status as indeed elementary—an \"ultimate constituent\" of substance—was mostly discarded for a more practical outlook, embodied in particle physics' Standard Model, what's known as science's most experimentally successful theory. Many elaborations upon and theories beyond the... |
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