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When will the Andromeda Galaxy be close enough to be visible to the naked eye? How big would it be in the night sky? | Andromeda is visible to the naked eye now, in decent light conditions. It has an apparent magnitude of 3.4. It is more than six times the width of the moon in the sky, but the full diameter is not bright enough to be seen. | [
"At an apparent magnitude of 8.4, comparable to that of Saturn's moon Titan, it is not visible to the naked eye but can be made out using binoculars under favourable conditions. The nebula lies in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, at a distance of about from Earth. It has a diameter of , corresponding to an ... |
How did Newton derive the Law of Universal Gravitation? | Observations demonstrated that the planets in our solar system orbited the Sun in ellipses. Newton discovered through his investigation (IE invention) of Calculus that a body undergoing acceleration proportional to the inverse square of their distance would travel in an ellipse. He then made a mental leap and realized that observable natural laws we see on Earth also are obeyed in the heavens, and thus concluded that the process that causes an apple to fall to the ground is the same force that keeps the Moon in orbit around the Earth and the planets in orbit around the Sun. He then reasoned that every particle in the universe acts on every other particle with this force, meaning that the force between two objects must be related to each of their masses.
It was this series of mental leaps that led to his deduction of the law of gravitation. There was very little theoretical derivation involved; it was mainly an assertion which turned out to be demonstrably accurate. The gravitational constant G was not known for nearly a century afterwards when it was finally empirically measured. No known first principle derivation can produce G, so it remains an empirical observation. | [
"Newton used Kepler's laws of planetary motion to derive his law of universal gravitation. Newton's law of universal gravitation was the first law he developed and proposed in his book \"Principia\". The law states that any two objects exert a gravitational force of attraction on each other. The magnitude of the fo... |
can the body repair a rupture of a spinal disk? | So I ruptured the disk in my neck. The doctor explained it like this:
The disk is like a krispy Kreme doughnut. When it ruptures the jam inside spills out. It could split on the inside or on the outside. On the outside is not such a problem. However on the inside it can directly apply pressure to the nerves it surrounds. After a while this jam can 'dry' out and can retract back inside. This is painful for obvious reasons.
Now the non ELI5 bit. See a doctor if you can. If you loose feeling or get pins and needles in a limb see one immediately. This is, according to my doctor 'really bad'. Now I just had extreme pain, we are talking screaming and being taken away in an ambulance high on ketamine bad. The 'jam' was only 2.6mm according to the scans. It has healed but is weaker and occasionally happens again to a less serious degree each time. | [
"A spinal disc herniation, commonly referred to as a slipped disc, can happen when unbalanced mechanical pressures substantially deform the anulus fibrosus, allowing part of the nucleus to obtrude. These events can occur during peak physical performance, during traumas, or as a result of chronic deterioration, typi... |
Have there ever been a situation where a booming city or town went "out of business"? | This sort of thing is THE hallmark (not just A hallmark!) of the Intermountain West. Towns frequently burst into existence around the discovery of an ore body with precious metals. But precious metals being what they are, they are typically rare, and so while an ore body might seem promising, it was a finite resource and typically limited at that. This resulted in a rush to the new location with people eager for an opportunity to strike a claim, find a job, or to provide essential services. This often resulted is a sudden rise in population and the building of a lot of structures. When the ore was exhausted, the population would just as suddenly dwindle. Buildings were often hauled away to the next boom - or they fell victim to a harsh environment.
If the community was sufficiently long-lived and promising, it might succeed in establishing itself as the seat of county government, with the promise of a few jobs when the boom subsided. That said, seats of government can be moved - and they frequently are - so even this source of revenue and employment was vulnerable, and some communities went from shadows of their former selves to complete oblivion.
There are hundreds of instances of all of this in the vast uninhabited outback of Nevada, the seventh largest state in the nation (with roughly 87% of its land under federal management). In the nineteenth century, Hamilton was home to an important mining boom and became the county seat of White Pine County. It yielded that title to Ely, which retains it to this day. Dayton prospered as a result of it being able to offer milling to the Comstock Mining District, but as the mines failed, so did Dayton. It retained the title of Lyon County seat until its courthouse burned in 1910 (locals maintain it was arson caused by someone who wanted to move the seat of government). Dayton subsequently dwindled, although it has enjoyed a recent resurgence as a bedroom community. Yerington took the seat of government, and it retains that title.
Austin in central Nevada became a boomtown with such promise that everyone thought it would overtake Virginia City, which was suffering a slump (Virginia City's mines prospered for an astounding two decades before it also crashed). An entrepreneur even moved Virginia City's International Hotel to Austin in the mid 1860s, and Austin became the seat of government for Lander County (building what is likely the nation's last Greek revival courthouse, erected in 1872). Its mines quickly failed. It lost a part of Lander County to neighboring Eureka County (experiencing another mining boom-bust cycle), but it retained its government for nearly another century until Battle Mountain was able to take the seat of Lander County government.
One of the most dramatic examples of this phenomenon involved Goldfield, often put forward as the site of the last gold rush in the continental US. Shortly after the turn of the century, thousands flooded into remote south-central Nevada and established the town of Goldfield, which quickly took the title of Esmeralda County government from Hawthorne (which had earlier taken it from failing Aurora, now a ghost town). At one point Goldfield had about 25,000 people and was the largest city in Nevada. Its mines failed within a decade, and eventually Hawthorne began a fight to regain its seat of government: although its mines had also failed, it was able to claim other means of support. Ultimately, the Nevada government split the enormous Esmeralda County to form two new counties, so both places could have the benefit of county government. Goldfield and its diminished Esmeralda County declined until that enormous piece of real estate (rivalling the size of some smaller states) had only a little more than 300 residents.
This cycle of boom and bust has resulted in what may be a record for the most times that "largest community in the territory/state" has been exchanged: That title has moved from Dayton (AKA Chinatown) to Mormon Station (AKA Genoa) to Carson City to Virginia City to Reno, to Goldfield, back to Reno, and finally (or so far!!!) to Las Vegas. That's eight times that the title has moved; whether that is record could be contested here, but it is certainly remarkable.
This is a pattern throughout the mining West, caused by an industry with resources located in remote, often inhabitable land, where cities boomed into existence because of the attraction of wealth, and then just as quickly disappear. Two state parks are dedicated to this phenomenon: California's Bodie State Park and Nevada's Berlin State Park both commemorate the nineteenth-century quest for wealth and ingenuity that it took to scrape together an existence where nature provided little - together with the inevitable abandonment of the towns when it was no longer possible tor resist the effects of gravity. | [
"With limited infrastructure, resources and people, the town's economy fell into decline. Most of the merchant and business class left, resulting in the town's decay and ruin. By the end of the 18th century, John Wesley noted during his visit how: \"Two-thirds of the old town is in ruins or has entirely vanished. P... |
why does your body temperature increase when you're nauseous and or vomiting? | Body temperature doesn't increase because you're nauseous or vomiting.
It rises so it can kill the intruder, like bacteria.
Vomiting happens so the body can get rid of the bacteria. I assume the main reason for vomiting is that the body tries to get rid of the material that has the intruder in it. Like spoiled food.
It also happens even if you ingest safe substance because the body doesn't know it's safe. | [
"Another possible cause of exercise induced nausea is overhydration. Drinking too much water before, during, or after extreme exercise (such as a marathon) can cause nausea, diarrhea, confusion, and muscle tremors. Excessive water consumption reduces or dilutes electrolyte levels in the body causing hyponatremia.\n... |
why do kids and some adults jump up and down when excited or happy? | Have you never done this? Never gotten so excited and filled with energy you just have to move? It's an energy release. We're also social animals and this is a way to express our excitement.
Plus it's good for ventilation, moves the air around. | [
"While these children often came off as happy due to their sociable nature, often there are internal drawbacks to the way they act. 76–86% of these children were reported as believing that they either had few friends or problems with their friends. This is possibly due to the fact that although they are very friend... |
Did the U.S. Government encourage people to move to the suburbs during the Cold War in order to avert catastrophic population losses from nuclear attacks? | I've never found any evidence suggesting it did.
Kathleen Tobin has written [an article](_URL_0_) claiming that policymakers' fears of atomic attack was a significant factor in population dispersal. I find it to be an astonishing piece of rhetorical sleight-of-hand, using a few magazine articles discussing the *concept* of dispersion to prove that it was federal policy—despite the absence of a single federal law or regulation on the subject.
As for the role of Interstate highways, those were proposed long before the Cold War, and throughout the years of congressional debate, military strategists repeatedly testified that they didn't need any particular routes or geometric specifications, always saying that highways built to promote commerce would also serve their needs. To Pres. Eisenhower, the public-works and job-creation aspects of the system were about as important as defense aspects. I am not aware of any serious civil defense or military rationale that was part of Congressional debate. The words "and Defense" were added to the name of the "National System of Interstate Highways" in conference committee, almost as an afterthought, and played no role in congressional voting. See *Congressional Record* 102, Part 8, pp. 10991-10997. The definitive source on this history is Rose, Mark H. *Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989.* | [
"The government began making evacuation plans in late 1943, and started removing entire schools from industrial cities to the countryside, where they were safe from bombing and had better access to food supplies. In all 1.3 million children were moved—with their teachers but not their parents. When the American bom... |
how are roads on steep cliffs built? | Dynamite. I remember going on a hike somewhere in Utah and there was a trail that was originally going to be turned into a road but they just left it unfinished and made it a trail instead. You could see where they drilled the holes and were going to blow the cliffside. It takes a lot of precision to keep it somewhat level and prevent the whole side of the cliff from just crumbling. To level the road, they'll just use all the dirt and small rock debris to make a flat surface, then pour asphalt over it | [
"The actual building of the road involved the definition of a trafficable route which was then cleared of vegetation (trees being cut-off below ground level but rarely \"grubbed out\"), boulders and rocky outcrops. The formation of the road itself was as minimal as the terrain allowed, with low side-cuttings and em... |
Why is it so hard to distinguish between something that is cold versus something that is wet? | Gonna take a shot here.
An object feels cold because we're feeling heat transfer away from our skin. This is dependent on both the temperature difference between our skin and the object, and the heat insulation/transmission properties of both. The faster heat transfers, the colder a contact feels.
Water has a very high specific heat and transfers heat quickly, so a small temperature difference still transfers heat quickly as opposed to touching something like titanium with a large difference, since titanium transfers very slowly. A wet object with a ten degree difference will feel colder than titanium with a twenty degree difference.
| [
"Wetting is a measure of the thermodynamic compatibility of two surfaces. If the surfaces are well-matched, the surfaces will \"desire\" to interact with each other, minimizing the surface energy of both phases, and the surfaces will come into close contact. Because the intermolecular attractions strongly correlate... |
If I lived in the USSR during the purges, were there any choices or steps that I could take to guarantee my survival, and to what extent could this not require moral compromises like denouncing innocent neighbors? | There wasn't anything that would guarantee survival, but there were things you could do to increase your chances. Even in the worst years, 1937-1939, the number of people who were "repressed" (contemporary term for those that were arrested and either deported, imprisoned, or executed) was between 1.5 and 2 million -- about 1% of the total population of the country. So your chances to survive we're pretty good -- unless you were one of the priesthood, or a relative of former czarist civil servants or officers, or rich, or Jewish, or a supporter of the wrong political movement du jour, or, funnily enough, being a communist party member -- in 1936-39 arrest rate among those was 50%!
Generally, not being one of the above, and not getting yourself noticed (e.g. making political statements in front of others, having a business or trading "under the table", being in someone's way (always a good chance of being denounced)), you would have very good chances to survive, above 99.9% I would say.
Sources: born there and know history; Conquest's "The Great Terror" (1990), Rogovin "The Party of the Executed" (in Russian). | [
"In addition, sizable resources were employed in the purge, such as in Hungary, where almost one million adults were employed to record, control, indoctrinate, spy on and sometimes kill targets of the purge. Unlike the repressions under Nazi occupation, no ongoing war existed that could bring an end to the tribulat... |
how does 50% sodium salt exist? | They displace sodium chloride with potassium chloride. It doesn’t taste exactly the same, which is why light salt tastes a bit strange.
Source: _URL_0_ | [
"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... |
If only one photon goes through a double-slit, is there an interference pattern on the other side? | Yes. Have a look [here](_URL_0_) for more information.
It's not so much that the photon has multiple positions as that its position is not known accurately. This uncertainty in the position allows the photon's wavefunction to interfere with itself, because its probability distribution is spread over both slits.
If you observe the photon going through one slit, you lose your interference pattern because there's no longer any probability that the photon went through the other slit. | [
"It was shown experimentally in 1972 that in a double-slit system where only one slit was open at any time, interference was nonetheless observed provided the path difference was such that the detected photon could have come from either slit. The experimental conditions were such that the photon density in the syst... |
Why can you rename, or change the path of, an open file in OS X but not Windows? | The Windows filesystem identifies files by their paths (including the file names)—if you change a file’s path, applications and the operating system will perceive it as a new file with no connection to the original.
The OS X filesystem identifies files by an independent file ID, which remains fixed if the file is moved or renamed. | [
"When moving or copying files from one folder to another, if two files have the same name, an option is now available to rename the file; in previous versions of Windows, the user was prompted to choose either a replacement or cancel moving the file. Also, when renaming a file, Explorer only highlights the filename... |
Is it just complete coincidence that the outline of the moon fits nicely inside that of the sun during an eclipse? And if so, what an amazing coincidence it is... | The fact that the Moon and Sun are very similar angular sizes in our sky is indeed a complete coincidence. The Moon has retreated somewhat from the Earth over time, and earlier on it would have fully covered the Sun, including most of the corona. | [
"Another thing to consider is that the motion of the Moon is not a perfect circle. Its orbit is distinctly elliptic, so the lunar distance from Earth varies throughout the lunar cycle. This varying distance changes the apparent diameter of the Moon, and therefore influences the chances, duration, and type (partial,... |
If someone died and had their brain preserved, could we map their entire neural network? | Yes, but a dead brain may look very different than a live brain.
Currently, in vivo techniques (MRI, PET, CT, etc...) do not have the resolution required to do this. Serial block imaging along with automated taping lathe ultramicrotome and heavy duty custom neural imaging software can reconstruct every synapse and connection, but the data file would be in the petabyes.
Essentially, here is how this works: a brain is frozen in a big block of ice, and a VERY thin blade shaves off a very small section at a time. Something in the micrometer range. After every time a piece of brain is shaved, an electron microscope takes an image. From there, computer software can reconstruct the brain in 3d and trace individual neurons and their connections. It is an exciting time for the field of connectomics.
Check out these links:
[Quest for the connectome](_URL_0_)
[Sebastian Seung's](_URL_1_) I am my connectome. His [faculty webpage at MIT](_URL_2_) is also a great read.
Edit: Also to further answer your question, this cannot be done in an alive human. In alive people, the best resolution we can get is 1.5-2 mm, which contains thousands of neurons and other types of cells (such as glial cells) | [
"Some patients with anterograde amnesia can still acquire some semantic information, even though it might be more difficult and might remain rather unrelated to more general knowledge. H.M. could accurately draw a floor plan of the home in which he lived after surgery, even though he had not lived there in years. T... |
What percentage of lift is generated by the shape of an airplane wing and what percent is generated by the angle of attack? | Well, depends what kind of wing it is, first of all. Secondly, speed, pressure altitude, temperature, etc. Tons of variables to consider here aside from the shape of the airfoil and the AoA.
Would be a good question for [/r/AskEngineers](/r/AskEngineers) or [/r/aviation](/r/aviation). | [
"The graph shows that the greatest amount of lift is produced as the critical angle of attack is reached (which in early-20th century aviation was called the \"burble point\"). This angle is 17.5 degrees in this case, but it varies from airfoil to airfoil. In particular, for aerodynamically thick airfoils (thicknes... |
Is everything at least a tiny bit soluble in water? | Enough energy isn't the problem, there's more than enough in a macroscopic amount of water, it's the probability of having enough energy in one spot (e.g. a single carbon atom) to cause the reaction you want (the carbon atom dissociating). The probability of that decreases exponentially with the (energy required)/(absolute temperature), so it's never an exactly zero probability except for the fictional situation where the substance would be at absolute zero. But since it's exponential, it also means it quickly becomes an astronomically small number if the energy required is large.
The equation in question that describes this is the Boltzmann distribution.
| [
"By contrast, substances are said to be immiscible if there are certain proportions in which the mixture does not form a solution. For example, oil is not soluble in water, so these two solvents are immiscible, while butanone (methyl ethyl ketone) is significantly soluble in water, these two solvents are also immis... |
How does physics address the situation in Zeno's arrow paradox? (This is not the same as the Achilles and tortoise paradox) | Velocity cannot be determined by the position of the arrow at one given instant of time. So you can't say "at an instant in time, the arrow is still and not moving". You have no idea whether the arrow is moving or not moving. You need at least two positions to calculate its average velocity over the time elapsed. As the time elapsed goes to zero, the average velocity goes to the exact instantaneous velocity. | [
"The archer's paradox is the phenomenon of an arrow traveling in the direction it is pointed at full draw, when it seems that the arrow would have to pass through the starting position it was in before being drawn, where it was pointed to the side of the target.\n",
"In physics, Carroll's paradox arises when cons... |
how does preloading games on apps such as steam work? | Two ways:
1. The game files are encrypted, and the decryption key is given only when the game is released.
2. Most of the game files are assets such as music, textures and models. The actual game executable is relatively small. Preloading downloads these assets but not the executable. | [
"Valve added the ability for developers to sell games under an early access model with a special section of the Steam store, starting in March 2013. This program allows for developers to release functional, but not finished, products such as beta versions to the service to allow users to buy the games and help prov... |
Are there any nuclear fusion processes that don't give off excess energy? | Yes, many fusion reactions don't release energy, but *take* energy instead. Generally, fusion of two heavy nuclei will be endothermic. | [
"The fusion process alone currently does not achieve sufficient gain (power output over power input) to be viable as a power source. By using the excess neutrons from the fusion reaction to in turn cause a high-yield fission reaction (close to 100%) in the surrounding subcritical fissionable blanket, the net yield ... |
when you google a certain store or restaurant and it gives you a bar chart of peak times, where does the data come from? | When you have Google Maps, you can turn on location tracking to help Google learn certain tasks. For example, it will learn where your home and work are, and what route you usually take to get there, so then it will send you a message when it's time for you to leave for work based on current traffic.
When you have location tracking enabled, Google can use GPS to determine that you're probably at a particular store or restaurant if you linger in that location for a while. So if Google notices that around 6pm, not many phones are announcing their location at a particular restaurant, but at 7pm, a lot are, then at 8pm, not many are pinging again, they can surmise that 6pm and 8pm aren't very busy, but 7pm is.
Repeat that over weeks and weeks and they can build a pretty good idea of how busy a restaurant or store will be at any given time.
If you use google Maps, you can even look at where Google thinks/knows you have been. Go to Menu > Your Timeline and it will show a history if you have location tracking enabled. For instance,[ here's some of my tracking from yesterday.](_URL_0_) I didn't have to do anything or even confirm I was at those places. Google Maps just knew from my GPS. | [
"Assume the database is owned by a book retailer franchise that has several franchisees that own shops in different locations. And therefore the retailer decided to add a table that contains data about availability of the books at different locations:\n",
"At the same time, though, the same page indicates store's... |
Why do we get frustrated? | Just because we do it, doesn't mean there is an evolutionary advantage or that it is even related to evolution.
We get frustrated because we are inherently selfish beings who want to succeed. Failure to succeed or proceed at a pace we like causes frustration. | [
"In psychology, frustration is a common emotional response to opposition, related to anger, annoyance and disappointment, frustration arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of an individual's will or goal and is likely to increase when a will or goal is denied or blocked. There are two types of fru... |
why can we listen to music at a loud volume, but once it cuts to a commercial or someone talking, it sounds a lot louder? | You know how at the loud volume of your music the music itself has variations in loudness?
Some sounds are louder some are softer.
So, without changing the volume of your speakers you can encode and change the volume of the music.
Advertisers know this and just make their sound super loud.
Its illegal in most media in the US. There is a max encoded volume for television commercials, at any rate. | [
"Sound around mode allows for real time overlapping of music and the sounds surrounding the listener in her environment, which are captured by a microphone and mixed into the audio signal. As a result, the user may hear playing music and external sounds of the environment at the same time. This can increase user sa... |
Can ohms law be applied to any circuit? | No, Ohm's law is a special case. In general, the relationship between the voltage you apply across a given circuit element to the current that flows through it (or current density to electric field) is not linear.
For example, see diodes, transistors, operational amplifiers, etc. | [
"Ohm's law is one of the basic equations used in the analysis of electrical circuits. It applies to both metal conductors and circuit components (resistors) specifically made for this behaviour. Both are ubiquitous in electrical engineering. Materials and components that obey Ohm's law are described as \"ohmic\" wh... |
How long did it take for Poland's post-WWI borders to be established? | The Versailles Treaty in 1919 assigned to Poland the territories of Poznan (Great Poland) and Gdansk Pomerania (is Germany and the West also known as Western Prussia or Danzig Corridor) and decided that Upper Silesia and southern part of the Eastern Prussia will be plebiscite territories.
Greater Poland was already controlled by local Polish authorities since the uprsing in December 1918; Pomerania was taken over in July 1919.
The Prussian plebiscite took part in July 1920 and was quite a disaster for Poland who only won a few villages.
Upper Silesia was finally was divided after 3 Polish uprising and a plebiscite in October 1921.
Polish southern borders were created after heavy disputes (sometimes open conflict) with Czechoslovakia over the former Duchy of Teschen/Cieszyn and Spis(z) and Orava regions. The conflict was somehow resolved in 1920 with the arbitration of the Western Powers, on terms that were rather unfavorable to Poland. Some very small border changes were later made in 1924.
Polish eastern border largely defined by the March 1921 Riga Peace Treaty with the Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (USSR not yet existing)
This didn't include the important areas of Vilnius and Eastern Galicia through. Vilnius was taken over by a "rebellious" (actually acting on the orders of Polish supreme leader Józef Piłsudski) Polish general in 1920; for some times it functioned as an "independent" state of Middle Lithuania before it was officially annexed in 1922.
Eastern Galicia was captured by Poles in 1919 but its legal status was complicated: Western allies only consented to Polish administration for the period of 25 years, not incorporation. Polish ownership was offically recognized in 1923.
| [
"After more than a century of foreign rule, Poland regained its independence at the end of World War I as one of the outcomes of the negotiations that took place at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The Treaty of Versailles that emerged from the conference set up an independent Polish nation with an outlet to the... |
Has there been a change in how academic history is written over the years? | There have been overall shifts, but there is also a "horizontal" diversity in the approach taken by historians, based on different theoretical models. Today, almost any good academic history will contain a section discussing its methodology. Academic history essentially consists of writing _narratives_ which are then critiqued, rejected, amended and so forth in the broader historiographical discussion.
One broad shift that I always think of is from the Rankean paradigm of figuring out history "as it really was" based on identifying the most reliable sources or harmonizing diverging narratives. This kind of presupposes that a history should always represent what a historian think is, overall, the most plausible account of everything. The problem is that this generally leads to a prohibitively broad scope (or more likely, vastly suboptimal criteria for choosing how to read sources), and therefore, historians will often deliberately write histories from a particular perspective. For example, Richard Payne's "A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity" re-examines the notion of the zealous, theocratic Sasanians oppressing their Christian and Jewish minorities by reading the traditional Armenian and Aramaic martyrdoms as situated in an Iranian political context, and discussing how the Sasanian Empire could be understood as a pluralistic society under a supreme monarch, submission to whom was paramount. For instance, this perspective suggests that Khusrau II's pilfering of the True Cross from Jerusalem was not merely intended to humiliate his Christian adversaries, but also to yield a glorious trophy for his Christian subjects and a banner for his legitimacy among the Christians of the Eastern Mediterranean he intended to subjugate.
This reading has various advantages, such as highlighting potential tensions between a more pluralistic monarch and religiously conservative high nobility and clergy, and yielding a potential explanation of the dissolution of noble support for Khusrau at the zenith of his empire's power. But it isn't necessarily the most plausible or palatable narrative in all regards - it has a tendency to gloss over real religious violence and persecutions as a necessity to uphold the barriers Payne takes as essential to this "state of mixture". However, Payne's monograph is far more useful in this form as a point of reference, than would be the likely outcome of an attempt to consider _every possible angle and implication_ of _every single source_ to highlight _every single possible implication of interest_.
So yes, the era a history is written in should absolutely be taken into account, but writing will differ not just based on time but also on the individual historian and their preferences, whether they have a degree in history or something like philology, and so forth. Ultimately, you should look at the historian's argument for reading a source in a particular way, as well as why what that reading yields might be interestikng. In most cases, you are unlikely to find a single monograph that is a truly satisfactory account of an era; studying the actual historiography and differences between accounts is necessary to get a strong understanding. | [
"The early history is of the gradual replacement during the middle of the eighteenth century of a traditional method of oral examination by written papers, with a simultaneous switch in emphasis from Latin disputation to mathematical questions. That is, all degree candidates were expected to show at least competenc... |
What happened to Supersymmetry? | A little background info first: in particle physics you begin with the so-called "Standard Model". It's kind of like the periodic table of the elements, cataloguing and grouping the known fundamental particles. It's not just a table though, it's also a mathematical model that predicts how all particles behave. It predicts what you'll see when you smash, say, protons together (as they do at the LHC). Then you go smash the particles and see what actually happens. The prediction is called the background, and anything different is called an excess. Excesses are an indicator the SM might be overlooking something, a suppersymetric (SUSY) particle for instance.
The most recent LHC upgrade promised to show all sorts of new excesses but there really wasn't anything. Each time we upgrade to higher energy and don't see any evidence of SUSY, the SUSY models have to be changed and eventually you start running into problems like, say, violation of conservation of energy. The models are getting flimsier. It's becoming harder for SUSY to hold it's promises of unification and a potential explanation of dark energy. There are many different models theorists have made that use SUSY. The most prevalent is the minimally supersymmetric model or MSSM, and it's taken quite a beating from the lack of excess.
The hot thing in High Energy Physics (HEP) now is neutrinos which are known to exist but not much else is known about them. A great deal of effort is being expended just to determine their mass. All that's known right now is that it's between zero and the mass of an electron. | [
"The only unambiguous way to claim discovery of supersymmetry is to produce superparticles in the laboratory. Because superparticles are expected to be 100 to 1000 times heavier than the proton, it requires a huge amount of energy to make these particles that can only be achieved at particle accelerators. The Tevat... |
After the Big Bang, why does matter only exist in pockets of galaxies? Why is it not more 'homogeneous'? | Gravity. If there's any initial fluctuation at all, everything condenses down to points and filaments under gravity.
Here's a cool video of a calculation exploring how this happens. Dark matter's role in large-scale structure formation in the universe is a big topic in computational astrophysics right now.
_URL_2_
More here:
_URL_0_
_URL_1_ | [
"While the universe began with homogeneously distributed matter, enormous structures have since coalesced over billions of years: hundreds of billions of stars inside of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, superclusters, and vast filaments of matter. These denser regions and the voids between them must, under general r... |
Why did France (West Francia) end up more unified than the rest of the Holy Roman Empire (East Francia)? | By West Francia and East Francia I am assuming you mean the kingdoms controlled by Charlemagne's descendants? After Charlemagne's death his son, Louis the Pious (co-emperor with Charles) took over and kept the kingdom intact for the most part. After Louis' death his three sons split the Empire. This was accustom of Frankish boys to split their father possessions. Since Louis was claimed the legitimate heir to Charlemagne's throne he was the only one to receive his father's blessing and the kingdom (he did rule in a kind of co-emperor deal, but he was the head honcho if you will). Since Louis had four boys, three who were "legit" they split their grandfather's empire. Lothair was named Emperor but after a series of rebellions and negotiations each took an equal piece based on economic means. They were not split by geography but by what the land, cities, and import/exports were worth. Charles the Bald received the western portion of the Empire, Louis the German received the Eastern Part, and Lothair I (eldest) received the lands between the two and that stretched to Rome. He was also named Emperor and King of the Franks. The brothers often quarreled trying to dispel one another and seize each others lands. Louis almost obtained the Western portion but was stretched too thin along his eastern border and in Western Francia.
The reason why the German part of the Frankish empire dissolved after Louis the German's death was because of his sons, nephews, and the rival duchies on his borders like the Slavs and Magyars. So it was a political and cultural differences as to why the German portion couldn't remain together, remember their sons get their possessions. As for the Western Frankish Empire his sons had a buffer zone from those rivals but also had the support of strong rulers.
sources: [Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German](_URL_1_)
[Early Carolingian Empire: Prelude to Empire](_URL_0_)
Also the label France is just for geography reasons. But for the medieval period it should labeled Frankish Kingdoms or Gaul depending on when and where you're referring. | [
"After the Middle-Frankish kings died out, the rulers of the West and East-Frankish Kingdoms divided the Middle-Frankish kingdom amongst themselves in the treaty of Meerssen in 870. Now Western Europe had been divided into two sides: the solid West Francia (the later France) and the loose confederation of principal... |
How are the wave functions of antiparticles related to those of their "normal" counterparts? | When you're talking about particles and antiparticles, you're generally outside the regime of standard one-body, nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. So the notion of a wavefunction is sort of abandoned.
Instead you replace them with field operators. There is a mathematical operator denoted by "C" which is the "charge conjugation operator". It turns a particle into its antiparticle.
> How does one mathematically describe particle/antiparticle annihilation?
You'd use quantum field theory. For example to calculate the probability of electron/positron annihilation into two photons using perturbation theory, you'd sum over a bunch of Feynman diagrams. The lowest-order contributions look like [this](_URL_0_). | [
"In quantum mechanics, an antisymmetrizer formula_1 (also known as antisymmetrizing operator) is a linear operator that makes a wave function of \"N\" identical fermions antisymmetric under the exchange of the coordinates of any pair of fermions. After application of formula_1 the wave function satisfies the Pauli ... |
why do we grow hair in specific places? | Hair in armpits and groin is a dry lubricant, hair on your head is sun protection, men's facial hair is a sexual marker. | [
"The growth of human hair occurs everywhere on the body except for the soles of the feet, the lips, palms of the hands, some external genital areas, the navel, scar tissue, and, apart from eyelashes, the eyelids. Hair is a stratified squamous keratinized epithelium made of multi-layered flat cells whose rope-like f... |
How did soldiers know the names of enemy weapons and equipment? | u/kieslowskifan has an answer to this!
_URL_0_ | [
"Manufacturers of identification badges recognized a market and began advertising in periodicals. Their pins were usually shaped to suggest a branch of service, and engraved with the soldier's name and unit. Machine-stamped tags were also made of brass or lead with a hole and usually had (on one side) an eagle or s... |
when you suck on an m & m, why does it feel smooth, then rough, then smooth again? | The smooth part is likely the candy glaze, the rough would be the actual shell of the m & m and then the chocolate. | [
"\"Foul-bite\" or \"over-biting\" is common in etching, and is the effect of minuscule amounts of acid leaking through the ground to create minor pitting and burning on the surface. This incidental roughening may be removed by smoothing and polishing the surface, but artists often leave faux-bite, or deliberately c... |
During the Spanish Reconquista, did much of the Muslim population convert to Catholicism? | Different states treated the Muslims differently.
Castile and it's possessions were known to be extremely aggressive towards Muslims and Jews. However, for most of the period of the Reconquista, this was in the form of a heavy tax burden placed on non-Christians, similar to the Jizya (the Muslim tax on non-Muslims) in place earlier, although probably much heavier. However, prior to the completion of the campaigns, this monetary contribution was probably more beneficial, as it encouraged conversions in the same way the Jizya did; that is, without having to resort to costly and dangerous population purges. The key thing is that any attempt to avoid the heavy (often crushing) burdens placed on them was harshly punished. This was an easy way to target individuals. In addition, huge swaths of land were appropriated by incoming Castilian nobility, which was often still worked by the formerly Muslim peasantry. This gave landowners another important leverage over those that worked their land.
In Aragon, things worked a little differently. Initially attempts were made to incorporate much of the existing leadership structure of the conquered areas of Catalonia and Valencia, but a revolt in the 13th century by Muslim leadership put the kibosh to that. However, within the coastal cities relatively lax treatment was available to Muslims and Jews, as these populations and their trading relationships were seen as very valuable.
In both Castile and Aragon, things changed drastically in the very end of the 15th and early 16th centuries. Muslims and Jews were given the option of conversion of expulsion, and this is when the Spanish Inquisition earned it's reputation. Paranoia about falsely converted Muslims and Jews was what gained them that.
I am not as familiar with Portugal however. It does seem that in the early 16th century they too took a harsher tone against Muslims by expelling all Moors, but I am not as certain as to the levels of persecution prior to that. It is important to note that Portugal completed their own Reconquista far before Castile.
As for the ultimate fate of the Muslim population of Spain, most of them would be descendents of the original inhabitants there before the invasion by the Caliphate who had converted over the centuries, and probably not all that ethnically different from their northern neighbors. The Muslims in leadership positions were the ones who would be the ones most likely to be expelled on sight or killed. Southern Spain has a population with higher 'Moorish' blood origins, likely thanks to greater intermingling of the population with North Africa's due to proximity as well as time spent under their rule (leading to the distinct 'Andalusian' ethnic/cultural group. | [
"During the expansion south of the northern Christian kingdoms, depending on the local capitulations, local Muslims were allowed to remain (Mudéjars) with extreme restrictions, while some were forcefully converted into the Christian faith. After the conquest of Granada, all the Spanish Muslims were under Christian ... |
how and why did apa become the standard for referencing sources? | In research papers for publication, it's usually *not* standard (at least in most of the journals I am familiar with), partly due to the simple reason that in printed material *words cost money.* It's more common in review articles, perhaps because in primary research articles the other sources are just used for background while in reviews *most* of the content comes from other places so it makes more sense to show more of the citations.
Also, APA format has been around longer than computers, and citation-managing software specifically. Nowadays, you can automate citations in a word processor and auto-adjust the numbering pretty easily. But back in the day of typewriters and early word processors, if you wanted to number things you had to *manually* number things. So if you decide to add in another reference later, you would have to manually re-number *everything.* And if you're working with 30, 40, 50+ references... you get the idea. | [
"APA style uses an author-date reference citation system in the text with an accompanying reference list. That means that to cite any reference in a paper, the writer should cite the author and year of the work, either by putting both in parentheses separated by a comma (parenthetical citation) or by putting the au... |
is a 200hp car two times faster than a 100hp car? | No, it just has twice as much health | [
"Its three-cylinder 1.5 L two-stroke engine could produce 111 hp (83 kW), which made a speed of 135 mph (217 km/h) possible. The car could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in less than eight seconds.\n",
"A 27hp BY was tested by The Motor magazine in 1934 and achieved a top speed of 72mph and accelerated fro... |
why do actors tend to put themselves as "executive producers" & "producers" after being in a television show for a while? | This indicates they are not only acting in the show, but taking a stronger creative or production role *behind the scenes*. They are working on MAKING the show in addition to appearing on screen, but not every actor makes this change. | [
"The production company is often separate from the broadcaster. The executive producer, often the show's creator, is in charge of running the show. They pick the crew and help cast the actors, approve and sometimes write series plots—some even write or direct major episodes—while various other producers help to ens... |
Is there a historical consensus about the girls who started the accusations of the Salem Witch Trials? Were they put up to it by others? Were they psychopaths? Did they actually believe they were being afflicted by witchcraft? | To add to what the others have said, those accusers who had suffered from the conflict with neighbouring Indians had had their lives upended. Those who were orphaned were now living with relatives or friends of their late parents, and those whose families had been displaced lost whatever livelihoods they had previously worked. Their prospects, both for marriage and the rest of their life, were greatly diminished. They could provide little in the way of a dowry, a vital part of arranging a beneficial marriage, and their newfound benefactors (if they had them) had other priorities than their new wards. It is perfectly understandable to look at their situation from their perspective, and feel resentment and anger towards the events that had led to their diminished position; this was the problem. They had been taught that feeling this way made them perfect recruits for the Devil’s cause. He could use their resentment to slip through their defences of faith and use them to further his diabolic aims.
Richard Godbeer suggests that while these first accusers may have genuinely believed that they were the victims of the Devil, their ‘possession’ gave them a legitimate method of expressing their grievances in a society that disapproved of such self-pity. It’s hard for a modern perspective to understand how firmly held beliefs in magic and the Devil were. In other trials, some individuals willingly handed themselves over for the crimes they believed they had committed. Alexander Sussums of Long Melford, Essex had volunteered to be searched by a witch finder during the East-Anglian panic, out of a genuine belief that he had been a witch for over a decade and a half. Through his guilt and negativity, combined with a genuine belief in the power of the Devil and his mother’s reputation for witchcraft, Sussums convinced himself that he too was a witch. Such was his conviction that he actively sought out the man who could, and did, order his arrest and trial for capital crimes (although he was eventually pardoned). Of course, with a society as deeply strained as 17th century New England, there were definitely accusations driven by more mundane motivations, but it is very likely that at least some of the young women who declared their possession did so out of a genuine belief that they were the victims of the Devil.
* Anderson, Virginia Dejohn, 'New England in the Seventeenth Century', in Canny, Nicholas (ed.) *The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume I: The Origins of Empire*
* Godbeer, Richard, ‘Witchcraft in British America’, in Levack, Brian (ed.) *The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America*
* Hansen, Chadwick, ‘Andover Witches and the Causes of the Salem Witchcraft Trials’, in Levack, Brian (ed.) *The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America*
* Le Beau, Bryan F., *The Story of the Salem Witch Trials*
* Levack, Brian, ‘State-Building and Witch-Hunting’, in Oldridge, Darren (ed.), *The Witchcraft Reader*
| [
"Abigail Williams (July 12, 1680 – c. October 1697) was one of the initial accusers in the Salem witch trials. The trials which led to the arrest and imprisonment of more than 150 innocent people suspected of witchcraft. \n",
"A group of girls ranging in age from twelve to twenty were the main accusers in the Sal... |
No Irish Need Apply - how badly were Irish discriminated against in 1840's - 1930's America? | I am not a historian, but the Library of Congress has a good overview with source documents [here](_URL_0_). | [
"In the 19th century, this was particularly true because of anti-Irish prejudice, which was based on anti-Catholic sentiment, and prejudice against the Irish as an ethnicity. This was especially true for Irish Catholics who immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-19th century; the large number of Irish (both Catholic and... |
How Are The Chauvet Cave Drawings Still There? | Yes, they are. It's amazing they are still preserved - there are likely countless of other drawings from the period that weren't.
Access to the drawings is very limited. Here's an account from 2015 by a reporter who was granted rare access: _URL_0_ | [
"Except for the darkened rear wall, all the walls of the cave are covered to head height with cave paintings, some of which overlap each other. The oldest ones are red spots and handprints, probably dating from the first millennium BCE, assigned to the Lapita culture. However, most of the pictures are black line dr... |
the tingling sound in total silence | One form of what you're talking about is tinnitus, ringing in the ears which can be a result of age-related hearing loss, over-exposure to loud sounds (such as at frequent loud concerts or a construction job), or even sometimes brain injuries/tumors. Killing off the hair cells in your ear through loud noises leads to spontaneous activity of the neurons they're connected to, which is interpreted as sound. However, you might be referring more generally to the idea of hearing slight ringing or "tingly" noises in total silence even in people without tinnitus, something which often happens particularly after exposure to loud noises for a length of time.
Neurally, this tingly sound doesn't have a definitive explanation, but one perspective is as follows. Essentially, neurons in the ear, like most neurons (i.e., the auditory nerve) are firing regardless of whether you are hearing sounds; they just fire more in response to loud noises. The brain knows this, and so it tends to interpret overall firing rates (and some more complex patterns, etc. of firing) relative to a baseline, no-noise firing rate as 'sound.' However, this isn't a perfect process, so even in the absence of any sounds, there is some activity that might be interpreted as ringing by the brain.
This explanation isn't complete, and I'm not an expert on auditory neuroscience. Maybe someone who is can add to it! | [
"On occasion, a strange tingling effect is felt by them, and strange coloured lights seem to rise from the ground, and it seems to be due to a strange metal (possibly radioactive) that mysterious men are mining for unknown reasons.\n",
"\"When the Tingle Becomes a Chill\" is a song written by Lola Jean Dillon tha... |
why is the metric system so perfect in regards to water mass versus weight? | It's originally designed this way. Units in the SI system are all defined by certain basic quantities, like a liter of water or one Kelvin, or one meter and so on.
ex: a kilocalorie (a calorie to all dieters) is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one kelvin.
So it's right there in the definition of the unit. | [
"Since trade and commerce typically involve items significantly more massive than one gram, and since a mass standard made of water would be inconvenient and unstable, the regulation of commerce necessitated the manufacture of a \"practical realisation\" of the water-based definition of mass. Accordingly, a provisi... |
Are 98% of the atoms in the human body replaced every year? | It seems to have some good basis in experiments conducted by some dude called Paul Aebersold back in the fifties:
_URL_0_ (Note the date on the article: 1954!)
I'm not surprised that it's a high percentage (the watery bits of your body should be cycled through quite rapidly), though I am surprised that it's quite as high as 98%. | [
"All atoms exist as stable or unstable isotopes and the latter decay at a given half-life ranging from attoseconds to billions of years; radioisotopes useful to biological and experimental systems have half-lives ranging from minutes to months. In the case of the hydrogen isotope tritium (half-life = 12.3 years) an... |
Why are White House meeting minutes recorded and kept? | [Here is a paragraph from the University of Oregon Holden Leadership Center on record keeping during meetings:](_URL_0_)
> As you can see, the role of a secretary is more than "just taking minutes". The secretary is in effect, the historian. What he/she records will be referred to by current members as a reminder of finished and unfinished business, what needs follow-up and what actions were taken. It will also be kept for future members to read to gain an understanding of where the organization has been and why. Many organizations make it the secretary's responsibility to notify the membership about upcoming meetings-time, date, location-as well as any important items to be discussed.
Many business meetings, particularly important ones, will keep minutes with a stenographer, and government business meetings are no exception. Minutes of a meeting are useful for the principals to later refer to as an aide-memoire, to reference in the event of a later dispute of what was said by whom; for sharing with non-attending staff, possibly even for eventual publication for some types of organizations, there are a wide variety of reasons why minute-keeping is a common practice. Minutes are kept for many meetings, whether the governing board of the local floral society, all the way to the highest government councils, committees, and cabinets.
What is more interesting, is that in the modern era, there exists a delicate balance between keeping minutes or particularly audio and audiovisual recording of important meetings and deliberate obfuscation of such records. The infamous White House audio taping system was used to fix Nixon's responsibility, "what did you know and when did you know it" during the Watergate crisis and was instrumental in forcing him from office.
Watergate and the role of the taping system in bringing down a Presidency was definitely noted by later politicians of all parties. Part of the art of modern government is to keep the President and other important and public figures from being pinned down to a position, or to having learned a particular bit of knowledge. This permits "plausible deniability" in the event of a crisis. The leader can be vague or deny knowing about the decisions that led to the crisis, and on occasion, a convenient subordinate can be thrown to the wolves of the media or the legal system.
Look at the controversy over the use of personal, non-governmental email by some well-known public officials. Government records are almost always preserved and archived, and they are subject to subpoenas during judicial or congressional investigations. In the event of a scandal or crisis gone bad, without good records, a leader can testify with a high degree of vagueness or ignorance: "Of course if I had warning that this terrible event might happen, I would have taken action to prevent it."
| [
"White House visitor logs, also known as the White House Worker and Visitor Entry System (WAVE), are the guestbook records of individuals visiting the White House to meet with the President of the United States or other White House officials.\n",
"On Friday, July 13, 1973, during a preliminary interview, deputy m... |
Do LED lightbulb work in extreme cold temperatures? | The operating temperature of the LED will depend on the design of the device, typically -40F is at or below the lower limit of silicon devices, (this will generally be shown on the device datasheet).
Lithonia Lighting OFLR 6 MO 's datasheet quotes its minimum ambient temp as -40C. | [
"The low energy consumption of LED lights can pose a driving risk in some areas during winter. Unlike incandescent and halogen bulbs, which generally get hot enough to melt away any snow that may settle on individual lights, LED displays – using only a fraction of the energy – remain too cool for this to happen. As... |
why didn’t the Ancient Egyptians conquer the rest of North Africa to the west of them? | The Western/Libyan Desert is 1000 km north to south and 1000 km east to west and largely blocks access out of the Nile and Nile Delta.
As we saw in the WW 2 desert campaign, the Western Desert makes even mechanized and motorized maneuvering problematic. | [
"North Africa is the seat of ancient Egypt and Carthage, civilizations with strong ties to the ancient Near East and which influenced the ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Eventually, Egypt fell under Persian rule followed by Greek and Roman rule, while Carthage was later ruled by Romans and Vandals. North Africa w... |
how does keeping an avocado seed with the raw avocado 'meat' keep it from browning? | [Here's a pretty good write-up of why Avocados turn brown](_URL_0_)
In short, it's the exposure to oxygen that makes the flesh turn brown. Keeping the stone (seed) with the meat does not prevent this in any way.
Fun fact about avocados: the trees release enzymes preventing ripening of the fruit, once they're picked they lose the enzymes. This allows the fruits to stay "fresh" on the tree far longer.
| [
"It can be propagated from seed, which should be planted promptly in a moist, semi-shade position. The fleshy fruit that surrounds the seed must be removed as this inhibits germination. The seed is also vulnerable to fungal infection.\n",
"The avocado tree can be grown domestically and used as a (decorative) hous... |
why are tiff files so large? | > 18MP
> 150MP
I'm guessing that the first is actually meant to read MP, while the second should probably read "MB"? Because "MP" means "MegaPixel" (million pixels), while "MB" means "Mega Bytes" (million/ 2^(20) bytes).
So let's take a look at how much that actually is:
150/18 = 8.333…
So for every pixel, there are eight and a bit bytes used. Let's just call it an even eight and attribute the rest to metadata (when was the photo taken, what were the iso, shutter etc. settings, maybe GPS coordinates, etc.).
Depending on your colour scheme (RGB/ CMYK/ RGBa/ …) and bit-depth (8-bit/ 16-bit/ 24-bit ("true colour") / …), this leaves between one and two bytes per pixel and colour channel. That actually sounds very reasonable. Heck, it isn't even enough to give you true-colour RGB - that would need 3\*3=9 bytes per pixel (three colour channels, each of which having a precision of 24 bits = 8 bytes).
& #x200B;
The reason other formats like jpeg or png will generally produce far smaller files is that they utilize (lossy) compression, which simply means that they don't save a colour value for every single pixel but instead try to save space by doing thing like saving "the next five pixels all have this colour: \[…\]" (very simplified). | [
"The TIFF file formats use 32-bit offsets, which limits file size to around 4 GiB. Some implementations even use a signed 32-bit offset, running into issues around 2 GiB already. BigTIFF is a TIFF variant file format which uses 64-bit offsets and supports much larger files. The BigTIFF file format specification was... |
how do we develop crushes on people? | Lots of different reasons. Most influential factors include:
- Proximity: You’re more likely to have a crush on someone who you have multiple classes with each day than you are to have a crush on someone who lives across the country.
- Pheromones: Chemical signals, so to speak, that indicate a good genetic match or a person who is ovulating, to name a couple examples (there’s been a study where people use unscented soaps and deodorants and wear the same white t-shirt to bed every night for a week and then different people come to the lab and sniff the shirts to decide which person they find most attractive based on pheromones more or less. Heterosexual men prefer the shirts of women who are ovulating, and also like the smell of shirts worn by homosexual men the least)
- Similar Levels of Attractiveness: This applies a bit more to the kind of person you actually end up in a relationship in as opposed to a crush. But a person tends to pursue people who are about the same level of attractiveness as they themselves are. This way, you protect your ego because you perceive the crush to be less likely to reject you. There are obviously exceptions to this (20 year old women dating wealthy 70 year old men, as an extreme example)
- Admirable Qualities: That person has some sort of qualities that you would like to adopt in yourself or associate with your internal image of your ideal self. A person who is socially awkward and anxious and wishes they weren’t, for example, might have a secret crush on the outgoing, friendly person who strikes up conversations with the people who look like they could use a friend. This has a limitation: our egos come first - we don’t want people who we perceive as being so much better than ourselves that we feel inferior.
- Time: The more time you spend with a person (similar to proximity), the more you start to really pay attention to a person. Think of the experiment where complete strangers stare into each other’s eyes for minutes at a time, and by the end of it, they feel a bit more comfortable with them even if they never exchange words.
There are a looooot more but these are the most commonly observed in lab settings
Source: Psychology of Relationships and Intimacy class in college; also have a degree in psychology.
Edit: Pressed enter between each bullet for better readability | [
"Crushes often occur during religious pilgrimages and large entertainment events, as they tend to involve dense crowds, with people closely surrounded on all sides. Human stampedes and crushes also occur in episodes of panic (e.g. in response to a fire or explosion) as people try to get away.\n",
"Crush is a game... |
why charities with similar goals don't merge to become more effective? | Merging companies (and yes, non-profits are companies) requires a lot of work. First, just because two companies do the same thing does not mean that they could merge easily. What if one is a Catholic charity, and the other is non-religious? Is the new charity religious or not? Which of the two Presidents is going to be in charge? Are you going to fire a bunch of staff? If not, how is it more efficient to have 1 big company with twice as many workers?
Companies merge when it makes some financial sense. Since non-profits are not in it to maximize value, they don't have to worry about being the biggest and best. | [
"In 2013 Ken Stern's book \"With Charity for All: Why Charities are Failing and a Better Way to Give\" was published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. His book discusses the problems in the not for profit charity sector, and appeals to donors for more evaluation and consideration in their decision making, in ord... |
why are endorphins not used as the ultimate drug? | Endorphins can't cross the blood-brain barrier. Injecting or injesting them won't actually do anything, because they won't get to the receptors on which they exert their "feel-good" effect. | [
"Endorphins (contracted from \"endogenous morphine\") are endogenous opioid neuropeptides and peptide hormones in humans and other animals. They are produced by the central nervous system and the pituitary gland. The term \"endorphins\" implies a pharmacological activity (analogous to the activity of the corticoste... |
if pre-election polling is mostly done by phone interviews via landline, and the number of landlines is declining among most demographic groups, why are they still fairly accurate? | It is not accurate that "... poling is mostly done by phone interviews via landline". Actual polling companies call cellphones and have non-phone ways of reaching people. "Polls" limited to landlines are badly disguised political activism. | [
"This issue was first identified in 2004, but came to prominence only during the 2008 US presidential election. In previous elections, the proportion of the general population using cell phones was small, but as this proportion has increased, there is concern that polling only landlines is no longer representative ... |
What makes meth labs so dangerous? | because they're attempting to replicate processes that are normally carried out in a _URL_2_, but without the design of engineers, construction with appropriate materials or operation by trained experts. Instead they're copying instructions from the internet or passed down orally, using whatever is cheapest and available and running the processes without necessarily understanding the details, especially the energies, of the reactions.
I'm not interested in looking up the specific synthetic steps involved, but I expect at least a few of them are exothermic, meaning that when that reaction happens, one of the products is heat. If that reaction happens faster than expected, then you get lots of heat, all at once, and if that happens in a liquid solution like water, the liquid turns to gas, and expands violently, as in _URL_1_
There's nothing intrinsically dangerous about making meth, or any other pharmaceutical, but some of the reactions can be quite dangerous, even putting aside the potential for violently energetic reactions. One scary example: _URL_0_ | [
"Although the prevalence of domestic meth labs continues to be high in western states, they have spread throughout the United States. It has been suggested that \"do-it-yourself\" meth production in rural areas is reflective of a broader DIY approach that includes activities such as hunting, fishing, and fixing one... |
What is the affect of aging on sex cells in humans, and how is DNA preserved to pass on to offspring? | The [germ cell line](_URL_2_) is separated from the rest of the developing organism early in development, and is kept in a state of minimal cell division and protection from metabolic damage. There is still degradation of the genetic material in [males](_URL_1_) and [females](_URL_0_), but it doesn't become an issue until past the age of 40. | [
"Cells of affected individuals have reduced lifespan in culture, more chromosome breaks and translocations and extensive deletions. These DNA damages, chromosome aberrations and mutations may in turn cause more RecQ-independent aging phenotypes.\n",
"However, in the presence of a fairly stable environment, indivi... |
Can anyone identify the markings on this rock in my front yard? (Buffalo, NY) | You'll probably get more help over at /r/whatisthisthing, the appropriate subreddit for these kinds of questions. | [
"In the southwest corner lies a rock called \"The Goldstone\". Legend has it that the devil threw the approximately 20 ton rock there while excavating Devil's Dyke. Towards the north is a sculpture by the environmental artist Chris Drury; \"Fingermaze\" is a labyrinth-like design based on a fingerprint, consisting ... |
how did the golden eye disk hold a full game and an emulator with 10 games only on 12mb? | It is a game contained in a ROM and the emulator is what allows you to play access the ROM. There is not as much data as you think. | [
"The consoles have 76 built-in games, although marketing frequently claims to have more than 1,000 ways of playing them. Hence, the game count of 76,000 is listed as a gold sticker on the box. Most of the included games had been originally released for the NES or Famicom, but some have been created by the manufactu... |
how do the big torrent uploaders like yify, eztv, etc, not get caught? | There can be many reasons:
- hiding behind a VPN or TOR or another proxy, or all of those; remember that there still are countries where piracy is not regulated by law
- initial seeding from a remote server
- actually living in a country with no laws against piracy
- all of the above
I also doubt that they are *that* heavily hunted for. The authorities have much bigger Internet problems like hacking, fraud, drug trade. | [
"Torrents-Time is a browser plugin that allows websites to have the same functionality as the popular Popcorn Time program, without requiring the client to download an application. Released 2 February 2016, sites such as The Pirate Bay and the now defunct KickassTorrents others supported the plugin within days, all... |
what is the difference between "_url_1_" and "_url_0_"? i know that they are one and the same, but in general i want to understand how the domain name works. | _URL_0_ is what is called a subdomain. _URL_1_ is called a subdirectory. Pretty much the same on the server side except that a subdirectory is within a domain's directory while a subdomain is outside a domain's directory, yet has its address response to the initial domain. The reason that those particular two respond to the same place is that both addresses go to the same server location.
resource: I work in websites and hosting. | [
"As a rule, names in a namespace cannot have more than one meaning; that is, different meanings cannot share the same name in the same namespace. A namespace is also called a context, because the same name in different namespaces can have different meanings, each one appropriate for its namespace.\n",
"The second... |
what exactly happened to gandalf after the snafu at moria? | He slays the beast. He dies. While dead, he does things in the afterlife which he never talks about. He is reborn as the white, for I imagine his bravery, valor, and just doing the right thing.
He then gets taken away by the eagle, taken somewhere where he gives advice, and such, I believe it was to the cliff of the birds. | [
"After a long fall, Gandalf and the Balrog crashed into a deep subterranean lake in Moria's underworld. Gandalf pursued the Balrog through the tunnels for eight days until they climbed to the peak of Zirakzigil. Here they fought for two days and nights. In the end, the Balrog was defeated and cast down onto the mou... |
Did ancient Israel abolish or prohibit slaveowning in any way after the Exodus from Egypt? Was it socially frowned upon to own slaves? | EDIT: Just to be clear, not a historian, but I’ve been reading this book for the past ten years, I think I know a little bit about it.
The Law actually says a lot about slaves and servants and how you were to treat them. How well they followed it or if they followed it all is questionable whether you believe the Bible (That’s a heavy theme of the Old Testament) or not but we can look at what they thought they were supposed to do.
Among fellow Israelites the law was explicit about keeping one another out of poverty, helping the poor, forgiving debts Ect. But not everyone cooperates. So if you could not afford to pay a debt, pay for your land, pay for a dowry, or if you couldn’t even take care of yourself, you could sell yourself, or your children and become a servant.
But this was not permanent. The law gave you two outs. You could work for seven years then you were free to go. If you married while in service and had kids, the owner kept those. And if you were Female, you had to marry into the family, if you could. But other then that, you were free. You could even go back to your own land or your husbands land if you were working off a Dowry.
Interesting though if you didn’t want to leave, you could become an Indentured servant, from Exodus 25.
“But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.“
Basically if you treated your slaves well, they could stay on and become basically a family member. It’s was a good incentive to be nice to slaves.
(And there were laws in place to prevent people from like forcing slaves into indentured servitude without consent but that’s another story)
The other way to be free was called the year of Jubilee. The idea was that every fifty years, all debts just stopped. If you sold land to someone, you got it back. If you owed someone money, you were covered. And if you were a Israelite slave, you were free. Period. And as cool as it sounds (If completely unpractical for a more advanced civilization) I can say for certainly, I doubt this was ever observed due to Ocupation and quarreling before the exile. And afterwards, land was fairly scarce.
Foreigners weren’t quite as lucky. If someone came to live in your land peacefully, you weren’t allowed to enslave them. The law said that you should incorporate Foreigners into your land and basically make them Israelites. People you were fighting though were fair game. Though most of the time, the law said kill everyone and take none for slaves. Like the invasion of the promised land, and they didn’t want the natives to breed with the Israelites so they didn’t turn to idols. The Old Testament acknowledges this didn’t happen basically at all. And Foreign slaves were not under the seven years rule, I don’t believe. Luckly the law was pretty lax about becoming an Israelites. Basically be circumcised and respect Passover. So a foreign slave could become an Israelite and become free by extension.
Treatment of slaves was pretty good according to the law. You were to respect slaves as people, feed and give them space, and refrain from sexual relations. Indetured servants were to be treated as family. And punishment for mistreating slaves ran from heavty fines to freedom for the slave.
I’ve been mostly pulling from Leviticus, Exodus, Joshua, and the all important, Spurgeon’s commentaries. | [
"In the continuation of the reading, Moses taught that if a slave sought refuge with the Israelites, the Israelites were not to turn the slave over to the slave's master, but were to let the former slave live in any place the former slave might choose and not ill-treat the former slave. A closed portion (, \"setuma... |
Someone I met got me curious... in the early days of America, mineral surveyors would cross the country looking for metal deposits. How exactly did the bore into rocks and test things without modern equipment? | A lot of it boils down to understanding the geology itself. If you can recognise evidence of (for example) a large igneous porphyry body you might take a good guess at there being workable amounts of copper mineralisation.
Alternatively, simple techniques such as panning for heavy minerals in stream beds can tell you that there's economically viable mineral deposits somewhere upstream. | [
"When detailed geological investigations were carried out by Geologists from the US and Britain, their finding was a dampner to the development of the mines in the hill. They inferred that the ores found were mere deposits only and not sourced by ore bearing veins in the rocks which could produce mineral ore for a ... |
cryptocurrency mining. what is the process and why is a gpu required? | Currency has value in part because it is rare. If you can get however much of it you want, it becomes worthless. Imagine you can just print off $100 bills from home and they count as real dollars. Why, then, would I sell you, I dunno, a used book for $5? I can just print off $100, so why do I want your $5? Or even $500? Or even $5000? I don't need your dollars, I can have as many as I want whenever I want.
Likewise, cryptocurrency derives value in part because of its rarity. You can't just *have* bitcoins. But like real dollars, bitcoins still have to come from *somewhere*. You may be thinking "dollars come from the US mint" but that isn't really true. Physical paper dollars come from the US mint, but the underlying *value* of a dollar comes from the goods and services you can use the dollar to purchase. Those goods and services take time and resources to acquire, and the dollar value it takes to purchase the goods and services is assigned based on how much time and the cost of those resources. Take the simplest example: gold.
You want gold, it's shiny, it's malleable, it doesn't tarnish, it's an important part of electronics, etc. *I* want food, for obvious reasons. I don't know how to farm and I don't have the tools or land for farming. I *do* have the tools and expertise to find gold. The opposite is true for you: you have farming stuff, but no gold-getting stuff. So I will trade my time getting gold, which to me has less value than food, and trade you my gold for your food. Everyone wins, and it's not complicated until you start adding in a bunch of other people all trading for different resources and you need a way to keep track of who owes what to whom, and that's where currency is useful. Assuming nobody is just stamping out money, the amount of currency you have in the system depends on how much of the resources are available and how much time it takes people to get it. If there's a lot of gold to go around, you need more dollars to represent that gold. And getting gold takes *time* and *tools*.
Back to bitcoin: you have to have a way for your cryptocurrency to enter the system. But you can't just dump it in, because then you'll have more currency in your system than you have absolute value in the system, and the currency will be worth less. You also can't just hand it out to people, because that isn't fair, and those people can horde the cryptocurrency and create artificial scarcity, and control the currency such that it's a hassle to use and nobody wants it, which also makes it worth less (although in both cases, perhaps not worthless). You have to have a way for the currency to enter the system *slowly* to keep up with the demand for it, and control who gets it, and give the currency inherent value by making it - like gold - hard to obtain.
The solution is "mining" it. The cryptocurrency is obtained by having your computer "mine" it by solving very long, difficult math problems. This takes a lot of time - the problems aren't simple 1+2, they're incredibly complex functions that take even fast computers a very long time to complete. It also takes resources: you can solve more problems with a faster computer, but that means you have to invest in a faster computer. It solves the cryptocurrency dilemma perfect, though, for those reasons: you are investing time and resources, which are inherently valuable, into the cryptocurrency, which makes *it* valuable. And anyone can do it.
GPUs or graphics processing units are useful because they attack computing by using a *lot* of small, efficient processors rather than the traditional CPU (central processing unit) way of doing it, which is to have a few very powerful processors. CPUs solve problems by having a few core processors, like *maybe* eight, doing thousands of processes each second. A GPU has thousands of processors instead, and they each do a few processes each.
GPUs are useful for crypto mining because you can work on many different functions simultaneously, and the functions can be broken down into smaller, easier problems that can be solved in parallel. Compare that to a normal CPU that would solve one of the functions much faster, but has to solve *just that one* function, in its entirety, before moving onto the next one. It's the difference between having a tiny group of miners that work really fast and nonstop, but are all in the same mine, and having thousands of miners that are kind of ok at mining but you have hundreds of them in each mine and you have hundreds of different mines. | [
"In cryptocurrency networks, \"mining\" is a validation of transactions. For this effort, successful miners obtain new cryptocurrency as a reward. The reward decreases transaction fees by creating a complementary incentive to contribute to the processing power of the network. The rate of generating hashes, which va... |
if a 213g potato has .2g of fat, 4.3g of protein, and 37g of carbs, what is the other 171.5g? | Water, fibre, and other things that humans don't digest into energy. | [
"Serv size: 12 pieces, servings: about 3.5, amount per serving calories: 60, total fat: 0 g (0% DV) Sodium: 0 mg (0% DV) total carb: 14 g (5% DV) sugars: 13 g protein: 0 g (Percent daily values (DV) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.)\n",
"For nutritional purposes ICDS provides 500 kilocalories (with 12-15 gm gr... |
Gigantic Black Holes in galaxy centers keeps 'devouring' matter. Why doesn't that eventually result in whole galaxies being consumed and merging into single immense 'holes' with all galactic mass inside them? | The planets don't fall into the Sun because they basically "keep missing" when they fall towards it, hence going around in elliptical orbits. Matter around a black hole is essentially the same. The gas and dust orbiting a black hole carries angular momentum with it that must be conserved and hence it will orbit around the hole in a disk, always missing the black hole and never falling into it. Of the entire accretion disk it is only a small fraction that eventually falls into the hole. Even if more matter fell into the hole, the rate of accretion would eventually stop when the luminosity created by the infall gets so high that the radiation pressure counteracts the infall motion. This limit is known as the Eddington luminosity. One of the big misconceptions of black holes is that they are cosmic vacuum cleaners that just go around in a galaxy and suck up everything they encounter, but this is vastly untrue. In fact, only very little mass actually enters a black hole.
Also, if the Sun's mass was doubled somehow, the period of the planetary orbits would get a lot shorter according to Newton's law of universal gravity and Kepler's laws, but they wouldn't necessarily fall into the Sun unless they could somehow lose their angular momentum like if the Earth was moving through a cloud of gas, which it isn't. | [
"Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) can be ejected from the centers of galaxies by gravitational wave recoil. This happens when two SMBHs in a binary system coalesce, after losing energy in the form of gravitational waves. Because the gravitational waves are not emitted isotropically, some mo... |
Not quite connecting the whole Franks, Alemanni, Charlemagne, Holy Roman Empire, and France thing. | Charlemagne, at his death, ruled an Empire encompassing modern day France (sans Brittany), the Pyrenees, Austria, Switzerland, the low countries, the northern half of Italy, and the majority of modern Germany. After his death, his son Louis I came to power, then died leaving his three sons to divide up his Empire, which they did in 843 with the Treaty of Verdun. Charles the Bald was given West Francia (modern France without Provence or Brittany), Lothair (the eldest) was given a strip of land encompassing the low countries, Burgundy, Provence, and northern Italy, and Louis the German was given the eastern territories (East Francia). [Here](_URL_0_)'s a map to clarify things. East Francia and parts of Lotharingia developed into the Holy Roman Emperor.
The traditional dislike between the French and the Germans come from more recent sources (such as the Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian war, and the two World Wars). | [
"The Franks or the Frankish people were one of several west Germanic federations. The confederation was formed out of Germanic tribes: Salians, Sugambri, Chamavi, Tencteri, Chattuarii, Bructeri, Usipetes, Ampsivarii, Chatti. They entered the late Roman Empire from the present day Netherlands and northern Germany an... |
Can bees tell the difference between their own hive's honey and another hive's honey? | Well they certainly know the difference between their hive and other hives, even if there are several of them adjacent to each other.
Honeybees will also rob other hives of their honey if food is scarce. This is intentional; they are not mistakenly at the wrong hive, and the host hive will try to repel the invaders. As far as if they would "know" the difference between their own honey and another hives if you placed this in containers near the hive, there is no way of knowing. Bees are pure genetics, I don't think there's really much going on in their brains besides the various primal instincts that allow the hive to survive. You would need one tiny MRI machine seeing how the brain lit up to answer this. | [
"Monofloral honey is made primarily from the nectar of one type of flower. Monofloral honeys have distinctive flavors and colors because of differences between their principal nectar sources. To produce monofloral honey, beekeepers keep beehives in an area where the bees have access to only one type of flower. In p... |
if you sweat salt does that mean your body needs more salt or it already had too much? | One of those pesky "electrolytes" all these sports drink companies are trying to sell us on buying, salt (or sodium, if you prefer) is necessary for proper bodily function.
Sea water has a an average content of about 35 parts per thousand, so for every liter (1000ml) of seawater, you've got 35 grams of salt.
The reason it's harmful to drink seawater is because the human kidney is only capable of making urine that is LESS salty than 35 parts per thousand, so you'd have to urinate more liquid than the content of the seawater. Your body literally dehydrates faster than you can drink it.
You can drink small amounts of seawater occasionally, so don't worry if you get a little in your mouth when you're swimming at the beach. Just don't make it a habit.
When you add a little salt to some water, you're adding much much less than that, so it's not a problem. Neither is having some salt in your food, because we take in so much more water per day than is required to filter out the salt. Even your food as water in it!
EDIT: I forgot to answer the main question!
Yes, your body needs salt. And yes, when you sweat, a small part of that is salt.
You get all you need from the foods you eat, even if you don't eat processed foods that are high in sodium, so don't worry about it.
It doesn't mean your body had "excess salt", nor should you worry about trying to put extra salt on your food later to compensate. | [
"In both apocrine and eccrine sweat glands, the sweat is originally produced in the gland's coil, where it is isotonic with the blood plasma there. When the rate of sweating is low, salt is conserved and reabsorbed by the gland's duct; high sweat rates, on the other hand, lead to less salt reabsorption and allow mo... |
How does the body build tolerance to caffeine? | By regulation of the number of receptors sensitive to caffeine on the cell membrane.
Caffeine functions by inhibiting adenosine receptors in the brain, which we believe is involved in our biological clocks. After prolonged exposure to caffeine, the cell tries to return to homeostasis by *increasing* the number of adenosine receptors present on each cell's membrane to compensate for caffeine's effects. This results in the need for more caffeine to achieve the same effect on the brain as before, and can lead to withdrawal symptoms once the baseline caffeine level is removed.
Of course, there's more to it than that, but that's the crux of the idea. | [
"Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant that reduces fatigue and drowsiness. At normal doses, caffeine has variable effects on learning and memory, but it generally improves reaction time, wakefulness, concentration, and motor coordination. The amount of caffeine needed to produce these effects varies from ... |
Why are there nuclear-powered subs and aircraft carriers but no nuclear-powered airplanes? | This was experimented with a bit in the '50s by both the Americans and the Soviets. The main issue is that to protect the crew from radiation you need a lot of heavy shielding, and this makes it difficult to fly.
_URL_0_ | [
"The United States Navy has by far the most nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, with ten Nimitz-class carriers and one Gerald R. Ford-class carrier in service. The last conventionally-powered aircraft carrier left the U.S. fleet as of 12 May 2009, when the USS \"Kitty Hawk\" (CV-63) was deactivated. France's latest ... |
Physics problem that has been plaguing me since high school. | The question at hand is: What causes the speed limit on the motion of the missiles? Is it air resistance (as is the case for airborne missiles)?
If so, then firing a missile (limited to 200 m/s velocity in air) from a jet (traveling at 500 m/s in air) will cause the missile to fly backward at 300 m/s from the perspective of the jet pilot. Imagine throwing a beachball from the window of a rapidly moving car. The air catches it going "above its speed limit," and drags it back down pretty quickly.
If all of this is happening in outer-space, where there is no air resistance, whatever speed limit is imposed won't be with respect to the air, so you're the pilot will likely see the missile move forward in the expect fashion. | [
"The spread of the conceptual approach to teaching physics broadened the range of students taking physics in high school. Enrollment in conceptual physics courses in high school grew from 25,000 students in 1987 to over 400,000 in 2009. In 2009, 37% of students took high school physics, and 31% of them were in Phys... |
what is the impact of palestine being promoted to "non-member observer status" in the un? | It's not a full UN membership but it's a more symbolic move since it gives them more status than before. They are now on the same level as the Vatican and Switzerland (until a few years ago).
If they now try to join the international criminal court, this status of theirs will give them more 'points' in their favor. That's quite important.
Also, they can now go to many UN meetings. So mostly it's a step forward. | [
"By September 2012, with their application for full membership stalled due to the inability of Security Council members to 'make a unanimous recommendation', the PLO had decided to pursue an upgrade in status from \"observer entity\" to \"non-member observer state\". On 29 November 2012, Resolution 67/19 passed, up... |
What were Pinkerton agents duties, roles, etc. in 1890-1912? | Pinkertons were part of a huge private detective agency that was essentially the Black Water of the 19th century. One of the Pinkerton's specialties was strikebreaking. Employers would hire the company to provide thugs that would stop strikes in progress, and this is arguably what Pinkertons are most famous for. So yes, that is definitely something a Pinkerton would do. | [
"Pinkerton, founded as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, is a private security guard and detective agency established in the United States by Scotsman Allan Pinkerton in 1850 and currently a subsidiary of Securitas AB. Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate president-ele... |
How would one derive electricity from post-fusion plasma? | Boil water.
That is how pretty much every power plant makes electricity. Its easy to make heat with nuclear or fossil fuels. You use the heat to boil water, which makes a lot of pressure, and you use the pressure to turn a turbine, which is geared to a generator. | [
"Adapting this concept to a fusion experiment was first proposed by Dr. Jay Kesner (MIT) and Dr. Michael Mauel (Columbia) in the mid to late nineties. The pair assembled a team and raised money to build the machine. They achieved first plasma on Friday, August 13, 2004 at 12:53 PM. First plasma was done by (1) succ... |
Why does adding more components to a transistor increase clock speed? | At the level of fundamental physics, the speed of transistors is limited by physical effects. Among other effects, the smaller a transistor is, the less electrical charge you have to move around to make it turn on and off. That means you can turn it on and off more times per second when it's smaller.
In addition to faster speeds, having smaller transistors means that you can add new circuits to the integrated circuit 'chip'. This might be more memory (higher amounts of cache memory), or duplicate processing units (2, 4, 8 cores, etc). It can also be additional function that used to be outside the processor. Many current processors now incorporate graphics processing on the same die.
Having the extra functionality in one IC not only gives you more processing for the buck, but it reduces the number of chips and amount of system interconnects required to build a complete computer, which reduces cost. If you compare the number of chips on motherboards from ten years ago with the number now, you'll find fewer chips, and those old motherboards required add-on cardsfor graphics, USB, and more.
[EDIT] for clarity | [
"First of all, as chip geometries shrink and clock frequencies rise, the transistor leakage current increases, leading to excess power consumption and heat... Secondly, the advantages of higher clock speeds are in part negated by memory latency, since memory access times have not been able to keep pace with increas... |
why can't a state just print more banknotes to create more money? [li5] | Think of a rare baseball card. If there's only 10 of them in existence, then everyone would want them and they would be willing to trade hundreds of chocolate bars for it.
Now think if they printed 990 more of that rare baseball card. Now everyone has one, and no one is willing to trade a chocolate bar for it. | [
"Only seven banks still retain the rights to print their own notes, all of which are in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Lenders that print these notes must hold assets that are equivalent to the amount of notes they have in circulation.\n",
"All circulating notes, issued from 1861 to present, will be honored by th... |
what is the "sharing economy"? | Instead of being full time taxi drivers anyone with a car and a license can hop on and be an uber driver.
Similarly, Airbnb allows individuals to host people in their homes as a hotel would.
The "sharing" idea is that personal assets (cars, homes, etc.) are utilized to provide services for a fee instead of assets that are wholly dedicated to providing those services. | [
"Sharing economy is a term for a way of distributing goods and services, a way that differs from the traditional model of corporations hiring employees and selling products to consumers. In the sharing economy, individuals are said to rent or \"share\" things like their cars, homes and personal time to other indivi... |
is hemp realistically a great replacement for many materials (plastics and papers) or has this been over emphasized by those seeking legal marijuana? | Hemp is a decent replacement for a broad range of things. You won't see paper companies switching from wood to hemp just because it's legalized.
Also hemp contains almost none of the active ingredients that recreational marijuana has (you can't get high off of it). | [
"As of April 2019, CBD extracted from marijuana remains a Schedule I Controlled Substance, and is not approved as a prescription drug, dietary supplement, or allowed for interstate commerce in the United States. CBD derived from hemp (with 0.3% THC or lower) was delisted as a federally scheduled substance by the 20... |
what's a military formation? | Any set of soldiers marching under one command, usually in a regular form.
Already Egyptians did so that the they had the less experienced at the front, and the more experienced at the back, to prevent retreat and fill in gaps. The ancient Greeks invented the phalanx. The enemy can do more damage if they can strike multiple soldiers or go behind them and hit them for the side or back. If the soldiers form an unbroken line, no one can get through and the enemy can face the formation only from the front, which is strongest. The shields are locked together, so there is one long armored wall. But, some of the soldiers are struck and killed, so there will be holes in the line. If there is already another line behind it, the gap is easily filled.
The formation is psychologically effective against unorganized fighters, but degenerates into a pushing match in phalanx-to-phalanx combat.
Closed formations were used also even in the firearms era. But, he machine gun made them useless as an actual fighting formation. Still, soldiers are taught to walk and move about in formation in military drill. It creates a sense of an organized force and develops discipline. | [
"A formation is defined by the US Department of Defense as \"two or more aircraft, ships, or units proceeding together under a commander\". Formin in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia emphasised its combined-arms nature: \"Formations are those military organisations which are formed from different speciality Arms and S... |
Why was Dwight Eisenhower made Supreme Allied Commander during WWII despite the United States entering the war after other nations? | I asked a similar question a few months ago that I think might get to the heart of what you're asking. Hopefully this helps? The response I got was fantastic! (all credit to u/goodmorningdave)
_URL_0_ | [
"BULLET::::- The opening scene suggests that Great Britain and the United States had not seriously considered the possibility of a supreme allied commander prior to planning the D-Day invasion. In fact, appointing supreme commanders for the various theaters was seen as a given as it had proved beneficial in the las... |
AskScience AMA Series: We study neutrinos made on earth and in space, hoping to discover brand-new particles and learn more about the mysteries of dark matter, dark radiation, and the evolution of the universe. Ask us anything! | How exactly can neutrinos shed light on the nature of dark matter? Is there any hypothesis that scientists want to test regarding the connection between the two, or is the research more exploratory at this stage? | [
"His 2010 book \"Neutrino\" discusses the tiny, difficult-to-detect particle emitted from radioactive transitions and generated by stars. Also discussed are the contributions of John Bahcall, Ray Davis, Bruno Pontecorvo, and others who made a scientific understanding of this fundamental building block of the univer... |
what do people who speak different languages hear when someone speaks english? | It sounds just like what you hear when you hear someone speak in a language you don’t know. You can tell they are saying something that means something because their voice is controlled and their body language will tell you they are not just making up sounds like a crazy person. When I hear American English vs United Kingdom English, American English sounds like the mouth is more open so the words are more full sounding. There is a great video online that demonstrates what English sounds. The video uses a mix of English words and gibberish, but sounds like how an American English speaker would. This is what English would sounds to someone who doesn’t know English. The video can be found [here](_URL_0_) . | [
"While English is spoken by all residents, over 10% of the population also speak a second language with Cree, German, Ukrainian, French, Tagalog, Spanish, Afrikaans, Dutch, Chinese, Korean, Inuktitut, English, Albanian, Bantu languages, Bosnian, Greek, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and Mandarin represented... |
why do people donate to different cancers (breast, prostate, etc), won't one cure lead to cures for all the others? | Cancer is actually a term that broadly describes a group of diseases, not just one, where there is uncontrollable cell growth that invades other parts of the body. What this means is that there are a number of different causes as to *why* the cells become cancerous, requiring different types of research to find different causes (i.e. caused by DNA damage in gene A, as opposed to being damaged in gene B, etc).
For your second question, there is not a most 'important' one to uncover to cure the others. It's like comparing apples to sheep, cancers are different and can even vary between people. While it's possible that the cures may be connected and have the potential to shed light on other types of cancer, this is absolutely not a 100% guarantee. | [
"Even though the health benefits are not established, the use of high doses of vitamins is also common in people who have been diagnosed with cancer. According to Cancer Research UK, cancer patients should always seek professional advice before taking such supplements, and using them as a substitute for conventiona... |
Effects Of Shakespearean/Elizabethan Theater on the London Society? | **Clothing**
The major theaters served as fashion runways, setting popular trends in clothing. Costumes were elaborate, expensive, and often borrowed from or donated by local tailors, cobblers, and jewelers. These clothiers could then advertise that they were producing the clothes being worn in the most fashionable theaters in town. And in late 1500s - early 1600s England, fashion was serious business:
> In these days a wondrous excess of apparel had spread itself all over England, and the habit of our own country, though a peculiar vice incident to our apish nation, grew into such contempt, that men by their new fangled garments, and too gaudy apparel, discovered a certain deformity and arrogancy of mind whilst they jetted up and down in their silks glittering with gold and silver, either imbroidered or laced. The Queen, observing that, to maintain this excess, a great quantity of money was carried yearly out of the land, to buy silks and other outlandish wares, to the impoverishing of the commonwealth; and that many of the nobility which might be of great service to the commonwealth and others that they might seem of noble extraction, did, to their own undoing, not only waste their estates, but also run so far in debt, that of necessity they came within the danger of law thereby, and attempted to raise troubles and commotions when they had wasted their own patrimonies
* [A Complete History of England: IV. The history of Queen Elizabeth I](_URL_1_), written by Edward, lord Herbert of Cherbury in 1706, page 452.
See also:
Stephenson, Henry Thew. The Elizabethan People. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1910. Shakespeare Online. 20 Feb. 2010. (accessed March 27, 2014) _URL_3_
**Language**
There was no dictionary of the English language prior to 1755. In the Elizabethan period, London was teeming with foreign trade and with it came linguistic influences from many far-flung cultures. English was a fluid, dynamic language and the plays of the period are famous for their wordplay. Theaters of the day became laboratories for language with new words being adopted, adapted, or invented to convey the emotions of the characters. Shakespeare alone is believed to have invented (or at least been the first to write down) some 1,300 common words.
See [The Development of Early Modern English](_URL_2_), by Marta Zapala-Kraj, 2009.
**Thought/Society**
In *Hamlet* Act 3, Scene 2, Shakespeare describes acting (and by extension, the purpose of theater) as being an art "whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure".
Shakespeare's plays reflect the society they were written for. England was in a period of transition between its Medieval past and its Renaissance future and the growth pangs of that transition were being played out on stage. Among Shakespeare's greatest influences on the art of theatrical storytelling is the heavy use of the soliloquy as a means of allowing the audience to listen to a character's most intimate thoughts. As we listen, we meet people who are simultaneously progressive and old fashioned. They have complex, multi-faceted personalities and think of themselves as unique individuals defined as much by merit and personality as by social class. We hear superstition wrestling with science, urban sophistication clashing with provincial wisdom, and numerous variations on the eternal human question: "Given the knowledge of our own mortality, what should we do with the time that we have to be alive?"
See:
[Shakespeare's Philosophy](_URL_4_), by Colin McGinn, 2009.
[From Shakespeare to Existentialism: An Original Study : Essays on Shakespeare and Goethe, Hegel and Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud, Jaspers, Heidegger, and Toynbee](_URL_0_), by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 1980 | [
"The late 16th century, when William Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived and worked in London, was one of the most notable periods in the city's cultural history. There was considerable hostility to the development of the theatre, however. Public entertainments produced crowds, and crowds were feared by the au... |
why do they need so much money for cancer research? | For some charities, the money is directed almost entirely to research. For example, the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation has received an A+ rating from _URL_0_ judging by [these criteria](http://www._URL_0_/criteria.html).
Other charities aren't so dedicated to actual research, and instead often are categorized as 'awareness' charities. Now, that's not to say that they weren't started in an attempt to do some good, or that they aren't doing good now, but they're not really helping. Everyone is aware of breast cancer now, but the goal of many of these is to make sure that people get mammograms and do self checks. Why these things aren't part of regular health care exams is an entire other kettle of fish. Groups like the American Breast Cancer Foundation are these sort of groups. Unfortunately only about 25% of their raised funds go to actually help people get exams. The rest is spent on continued fund raising, and that includes pay for their employees and the board. | [
"Breast cancer advocates have successfully increased the amount of public money being spent on cancer research and shifted the research focus away from other diseases and towards breast cancer Breast cancer advocates also raise millions of dollars for research into cures each year, although most of the funds they r... |
Unlike in Europe, where the tradition is still to build in brick and concrete, why does the US construct buildings using cheap building materials? | > Unlike in Europe, where the tradition is still to build in brick and concrete
What do you mean by "in Europe"? I'm from a European country where pretty much all houses are made of wood. | [
"Post-World War II the industry had to face the decline of buildings built during the heyday of the material, 1910–1940. Structural problems resulting from incomplete waterproofing, improper installation, poor maintenance, and interior corroding mild steel made the material unpopular in newer constructions.\n",
"... |
what is a car engine really doing when it is "warming up"? | Well, first off you don't need to warm up the engine of a modern car. They are designed and built to such a fine tolerance you can simply turn them on and drive under normal operating conditions year round.
As to what they are doing they are literally warming up, or getting hotter. Since the engine is made of metal which expands slightly when heated the parts of the engine will expand a bit, and the main engine components (the block and head, or lower and upper part of the engine) will expand enough to float off each other a bit when they get fully heated.
This isn't a worry because the parts have a gasket between them designed to make a proper seal so no oil or radiator fluid leak out. This has been a problem in the past, some engines from the 70's and 80's that leaked notoriously did because newer materials expanded at unpredictable rates. We are well past the days of those exotic (for the time) alloys and early aluminum head/cast iron block hybrids. | [
"Cold start enrichment is achieved by the fact that the engine coolant is cold when the engine is cold. This causes denser vapour to be delivered to the mixer. As the engine warms up, the coolant temperature rises until the engine is at operating temperature and the mixture has leaned off to the normal running mixt... |
how can i avoid mosquito bites? | Source: I live in the south, and I have visited north east Arkansas which has more mosquitos than air at times. In Texas we have mosquitos that are so large they look like baby wasps. You can clearly see they have black and grey stripes on them. When you smack them on your arm it's a bloody mess. I have a friend that contracted West Nile while at work and I hate itching so I like to avoid them. In order of most to least effective or important:
* Stay indoors around sunset. You will learn that there is a peak time where it's time to seek shelter, just as it starts to cool off. No amount of Deet is going to ward them all off during that time.
* Keep some Deep Woods Off nearby at all times. You don't necessarily have to wear it all the time, but when you get your first bite go ahead and hose down with it. Don't spray it in your face, but be sure and get your back, and the backs of your legs and arms. They love behind the knees. Be careful of overly powerful deet products. I once was handed a DEET wipe that claimed "maximum strength". Putting it on my skin made me sick almost instantly and I was not in a place where I could wash it off or remove it effectively.
* Never allow anything to collect water around your living space. Outdoor standing water = mosquito breeding ground. They look like tadpoles in the water but in reality they are satan's spawn. turn over all buckets, or other things collecting water.
* Citronella products can be effective to a point but you have to be close to them. ThermaCELL appliances seem to kinda work but they are expensive and cumbersome. When I go camping I have four cheap hurricane lamps ($5.00 each at Walmart) that I power with citronella lamp oil (~$10.00 for 64oz Walmart). The lamps burn very efficiently if you keep the wik short and they do an ok job of creating a bug free zone. I also just like the look of old timey lamps.
* Wind is your friend. I don't have two ceiling fans on my back porch just for cooling. They are mostly to keep the bugs away. If they can't fly, they can't get you. If you can get in front of a good fan you are not going to be getting bit by mosquitos (as much).
Hurricane Lamp:
_URL_0_
Citronella Lamp Oil:
_URL_1_ | [
"When mosquitoes bite a person, they do not inject the blood of a previous victim into the person they bite next. Mosquitoes do, however, inject their saliva into their victims, which may carry diseases such as dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, or West Nile virus and can infect a bitten person with these disease... |
The German Schlieffen Plan was in development for years prior to the breakout of WWI... how well was the plan kept secret? Was the invasion of Belgium genuinely a surprise to the other European powers? | Debates over whether or not the idea of a "Schlieffen plan" actually existing aside, the Plan itself was kept fairly secret, with wargaming of scenarios based on it being few in number, and knowledge of the actual plan being restricted to high ranking war ministry and General Staff members.
That being said, to an extent the French and the Russians had guessed German intentions before. The French formulated Plan XVII with the expectation that the Germans would invade through southern Belgium (ie south of the Meuse) and Luxembourg, avoiding the bulk of the country while also avoiding most of the French fortress line. Hence Plan XVII envisioned placing two French armies inside Alsace-Lorraine via offensives to threaten the German advance from the south, while three armies to the north parried and reversed the main German attack. Likewise, the Russians promised to mobilize '800 000 men' to be sent against presumably weak German opposition, in support of the French, while two thirds of Russia's mobilized forces would move against Austria-Hungary.
When the German invasion actually came, it was certainly a surprise for France, Britain and Belgium. The French did not expect an invasion of Belgium on such a wide front, and with all of Germany's reserve divisions committed. The British were shocked considering that the invasion encompassed the whole country; had the invasion taken place as the French believed it would, the chances of British involvement would have been greatly reduced. Few were also prepared for the ferocity of the German attack: in spite of Belgian civilians having been told to avoid altercations and largely heeding this advice from their government, the invading Germans lashed out at 'francs-tireurs' real or largely imagined, and c. 5600 Belgian and c. 900 French civilians were murdered, and tens of thousands of homes destroyed. Dinant and Lueven (including it's university library) were almost completely raised.
* *War Planning in 1914*, Holger Herwig and Richard Hamilton
* *Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War*, Annika Mombauer
* *Catastrophe*, Max Hastings
* *Belgian Atrocities 1914: A history of denial*, John Horne and Alan Kramer
* *The War that Ended Peace*, Margaret MacMillan | [
"From as early as 1904, Alfred von Schlieffen of the German General Staff began to draw up a military strategy, known as the Schlieffen Plan, which could be put into action if Germany found itself involved in a two-front war against France and Russia. The core of the plan was a rapid attack on France on the outbrea... |
Was WWI a true good guy vs bad guy war? | Okay, no. No, no, no, no. No war is ever a "good guy vs. bad guy" sort of thing from a historical perspective, though individual nations by and large choose to cast the war they're fighting in that sense. You can bet World War II was seen by citizens of the Axis powers as a "good vs. evil" affair, just as certainly as you can bet that they didn't see themselves on the "evil" side.
The truth of the matter is that history really is, to raise the old cliche, "written by the victors". Or at least by those left alive to write it. Retrospect allows us to see the horrors of the Holocaust or the unspeakably brutal after-effects of the Eastern or Chinese or Philippine Fronts, but it's probably safe to say that the majority of German conscripts fighting at, say, Kursk, were not there so that their leaders could continue to exterminate millions of innocent civilians in frighteningly efficient fashion.
**tl;dr: No war is ever "good vs. evil"; individuals and nations just choose to cast it that way.** | [
"In his book \"The Great War\", Ian F. W. Beckett also cited Sheffield: the latter commented that \"Blackadder Goes Forth\" was successful because \"the characters and situations needed no explanation, so familiar was the audience with the received version of the war\". Beckett noted the popularity of the episode's... |
Would it be right to say that semiconductors are produced by doping? | No, not all semiconductors are doped. There are also [intrinsic semiconductors](_URL_0_), where pure materials act as semiconductors. For example, a pure chunk of silicon is an important example of such an intrinsic semiconductor. | [
"Doping is the key to the extraordinarily wide range of electrical behavior that semiconductors can exhibit, and extrinsic semiconductors are used to make semiconductor electronic devices such as diodes, transistors, integrated circuits, semiconductor lasers, LEDs, and photovoltaic cells. Sophisticated semiconducto... |
what are the "loudness wars", why are they happening, and why should anyone care that music is getting louder? | Music is getting compressed so it sounds louder. Before this you're set your volume to your preferred level and would hear everything from quiet notes to very loud and distinct drum hits. Now the quiet notes are louder, the mid range is louder, and consequently the formerly loud and distinct drum hits are just barely louder than everything else.
[This](_URL_0_) video demonstrates it better than any written description really can. | [
"The loudness war (or loudness race) refers to the trend of increasing audio levels in recorded music which reduces audio fidelity and, according to many critics, listener enjoyment. Increasing loudness was first reported as early as the 1940s, with respect to mastering practices for 7\" singles. The maximum peak l... |
How would a Christian church service have differed in Rome in 500, 1000, and 1500 CE? | I can only give some descriptions on the changes throughout history. The essence basically remains the same throughout history: the mass of the catechumens and the eucharistic liturgy proper. Initially Mass was offered only on Sundays and feast days, but as more feast days were inserted, daily masses began to be offered.
Changes were made throughout history: additional prayers, or changes in the order of prayers. But the Canon of Mass, the core eucharistic prayer in the eucharistic liturgy, has more or less been the same in Rome since Pope Gregory I (600 AD) to 1500 AD. Elsewhere there is more variation, and only unified by Pope Pius V in 1570 after the Council of Trent.
The liturgy in 500 AD compared to 1000 and 1500 AD was simpler, with fewer prayers, graduals, and no Credo, just to mention a few. It should therefore be shorter, but since the medieval ages sometimes did not have sermons, the length could be the same. A Tridentine mass (after 1500s) could reach 3 hour long in high mass form with a sermon.
| [
"By the end of the early Christian period, the church within the Roman Empire had hundreds of bishops, some of them (Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, \"other provinces\") holding some form of jurisdiction over others.\n",
"By the end of the early Christian period, the church within the Roman Empire had hundreds of bish... |
why can hospitals charge $50 a pill for tylenol, but i can buy a whole bottle at the store for $5? | You're not just paying for the tylenol. You're paying for the nurse to give it to you, to make sure it's the right thing, for the diagnosis from the doctor to give you the tylenol, for anything any of the techs have to do for you, for the bed you're sitting in, for the air conditioning, for the TV, for the electricity, for the hospital administration and record keeping. You're paying for all of it. Going to the hospital for a tylenol is a very silly thing to do.
It's the exact same reason you get charged $1.99 for a coke at a restaurant, when you can get a whole two liter for $0.99 at the store. You're not just paying for the soda, you're paying to have it brought to you, with ice and a straw, in a social setting, with food available, by a server. Same idea. | [
"It is available as a generic medication and is moderately expensive. Globally, the wholesale price of the medication is about US$1.80 to $3.00 a month. In the United States a month's supply is about $50 to $150.\n",
"Large US retailers that operate pharmacies and pharmacy chains use inexpensive generic drugs as ... |
How long does it take for a nerve signal to travel from a blue whale's tail to it's brain? | Assuming an optimally myelinated fibre, nerve impulse speeds in humans are circa. 100m/s. So if there were 1 fibre travelling the distance of the blue whale, about 0.3s.
I don't know much about whale physiology, but I very much doubt there is a single axon travelling the whole whale. Instead it will be punctuated with synapses which dramatically slow down the total time taken to traverse the whale.
Reflex arcs are faster due to fewer synapses, but will also go via the spinal column rather than the full distance to the brain - so it's an unfair comparison! | [
"Some neurons are responsible for conveying information over long distances. For example, motor neurons, which travel from the spinal cord to the muscle, can have axons up to a meter in length in humans. The longest axon in the human body belongs to the Sciatic Nerve and runs from the great toe to the base of the s... |
why would someone want to jam gps receivers? | The usual reason is people who are commercial drivers who want to do something they aren't allowed to do (take a detour to visit a relative, for example) but their commercial vehicle logs or transmits the vehicle's information to their boss. The vehicle usually gets its location, time, and current speed from GPS, and either logs this information periodically to a recording device or transmits it to the boss/company via the cellular network.
Jamming the GPS intermittently as well as when "needed" for clandestine activity, and it looks like mechanical GPS / equipment failure. | [
"Man-made EMI (electromagnetic interference) can also disrupt or jam GPS signals. In one well-documented case it was impossible to receive GPS signals in the entire harbor of Moss Landing, California due to unintentional jamming caused by malfunctioning TV antenna preamplifiers. Intentional jamming is also possible... |
is there a fixed amount of money/assets in the world? | no it wouldn't. because you can create money out of nothing. aka interest. the amount of money is always going up basically due to interest. | [
"In 2008, the world's total tradeable financial assets (stocks, debt securities and bank deposits) were estimated at $178 trillion, more than three times the value of what the whole world produces in a year. In June 2017, the world's total public and private debt was estimated at US$217 trillion, again more than th... |
how do processors work? how is a simple silicon chip able to perform calculations? | This is a complicated topic built on very simple ideas. If you go step by step you should be able to wrap your head around it.
**What is a semi-conductor?** Starting all the way down at the atomic level. In pure silicon crystals, the atoms are neatly arranged, and all have their outer electron shell full, so it won't conduct electricity because all the electrons are nice and cosy. By adding impurities into the crystal, we make two types of semiconductors,: P and N. N (negative) has more electrons, so it's willing to give them away and P has fewer electrons (positive) so it's glad to take in electrons.
You [put a chunk of N next to P](_URL_4_) and you have a diode. Pass electric current (aka a flow of electrons, but in the other direction) through it in the P-N direction, and the electrons will flow freely. however if you pass current in the N-P direction, the part where the two semiconducting materials meet will become "full" of electrons, like natural silicon crystals, building a wall between the N and P where electrons don't want to move, and any new electrons will hit that wall and won't be able to move forward, instead they'll just keep building that cosy wall.
So we can force electricity to only pass one way through a circuit, pretty cool...now what?
**What is a transistor?** By [sandwiching semiconductors](_URL_3_) in an N-P-N or P-N-P way, and attaching electrodes (wires), we have a component that will behave differently depending where the electron flow comes from. This was first used as an amplifier (like a transistor radio), But can also be [used as a switch](_URL_1_).
Depending which part you put current in, what comes out of the transistor will either be current or no current.
**Logic circuits.**
Now that we have this little thing that can switch depending on if it has current or not, we can string a bunch of them together in various ways to make boolean logic circuits. boolean just means you either have yes or no, or, in binary, 1 or 0.
Here's a [NAND gate](_URL_0_), meaning *not and*, as you can see it pretty much looks like a transistor, because it is! You have two inputs, and if A has current (A=1) and B has current (B=1), it will put out a 0 (because it's a *not and*).
[Here's a basic XOR, *exclusive or* gate](_URL_2_), meaning that A need to be 1 or B needs to be 1 for Q to be 1, but if A and B are both 0 or both 1, Q will be 0. This is just one way basic AND or NAND gates can be strung together.
Now slap a few billion of these together in a CPU and you have a logic machine that can do all kinds of calculations.
(sorry for the brief ending, I ran out of time, hope you learned something)
EDIT: thanks to all the other people explaining boolean arithmetic on a higher level. Teamwork, yay!
EDIT2: Fixed some links and hopefully cleared up the confusion between electron flow and current. | [
"The CPU in modern computer hardware performs reads and writes to memory most efficiently when the data is \"naturally aligned\", which generally means that the data address is a multiple of the data size. \"Data alignment\" refers to aligning elements according to their natural alignment. To ensure natural alignme... |
why do my teet hurt when i eat sugary candy (taffy, tootsie rolls...) | Sounds like cavity creeps | [
"Making candy can be hazardous due to the use of boiled sugar and melted chocolate. Boiling sugar often exceeds —hotter than most cooked foods—and the sugar tends to stick to the skin, causing burns and blisters upon skin contact. Worker safety programs focus on reducing contact between workers and hot food or hot ... |
Intelligence documents from WWII and after from my Grandfather | First and foremost it's amazing that they've been kept. Please do what you can to make sure they don't get damaged and do what you can to minimize the damage. Original documents are often a wonderful treasure trove to many historians. Often even mundane documents can lead to some critical insight that nobody would have suspected at the time or even a century later. So please make sure they stay safe until they can be properly inventoried/scanned/saved.
It is also possible that they are of little actual value outside of the connection to your grandfather. Still better safe than sorry. Scanning the documents (provided the scanner itself does no damage) would probably be a good place to start as it preserves what is there.
Not sure about the UK, if this were the US I would probably look at whatever preservation/museum that the particular unit he served in might have. I know the several army, navy, and air force units in the US have museums and archives at their home bases. That might be a place to start in the UK as well.
| [
"Established in June 1945 as the Air Documents Research Center (ADRC), the agency's first mission was to collect German air documents. The documents collected were divided into three categories: documents that would assist the war in the Pacific theater, documents of immediate intelligence interest to the United St... |
what does it mean when someone is "in shock"? | Nobody has given a unified answer so I will try. Basically there are two kinds of shock that somebody could be referring to.
/u/upvoter222, /u/someanonymousaccnt have alluded to **physiological shock**, a condition you are unable to maintain a blood pressure to the extent that it becomes life threatening. There's a huge list of causes but the familiar terms **septic shock** and **toxic shock syndrome** fit into this category.
When you talk about somebody appearing calm after suffering some calamity, this probably refers to some form of **[dissociative episode](_URL_1_)**, which is psychological response to overwhelming pain / emotional stress / other psychological stress. Some people describe the experience as being *dream-like* or as if they were watching it *happen to somebody else* and not to themselves. Dissociative episodes are one of the symptoms of **[PTSD](_URL_0_)**, though having an episode does not necessarily mean you have PTSD. It's also an effect of certain medications. This is what I think /u/redleadereu and /u/rafflecopter are referring too.
In your example, he could very well have both: physiologic shock from blood loss and psychological shock from pain.
EDIT: grammar | [
"Shock is the state of not enough blood flow to the tissues of the body as a result of problems with the circulatory system. Initial symptoms may include weakness, fast heart rate, fast breathing, sweating, anxiety, and increased thirst. This may be followed by confusion, unconsciousness, or cardiac arrest as compl... |
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