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why is it that 8:30-5 or 9-5:30 seem to now be the most common working hours? growing up i was always told 9-5 (thanks dolly). is there a reason for the extra half hour? i work in the u.k. if that helps. | Usually it's that you're entitled to a break by law, but they don't have to pay you for your break. So the shift is 8.5 hrs even though you only get paid for 8. Doing it on 8s is usually easier for HR/payroll to deal with | [
"In many Germanic languages the half-hour is referred to the next hour (\"half to nine\" rather than \"half past eight\"). In colloquial language, this can cause confusion between English and German (and other Germanic languages). In conversational English as spoken in the UK, \"half past eight\" (for 8:30) is ofte... |
why does your body want to keep changing position at night? | Lying in one position for a long time can cause pressure points on certain areas of the body which may then cause the tissue to break down from lack of blood flow. The wounds are called pressure ulcers and you see them frequently in people who are not able to reposition or move around while in bed. I believe your body A) moves around to try to find a comfortable position that also reduces pressure areas and B) once you have been in one position for too long your body will signal you to move and thus put the pressure on different areas of the body. I am sure there are other mechanisms involved as well, but this plays a large part. | [
"People with the shift work type of the disorder benefit most from a non-changing work schedule. If rotating or changing shifts are unavoidable, rotations that occur in a clockwise direction, where shifts get progressively later and later, are preferable to those in a counter-clockwise direction. Also, when attempt... |
During the tenure of great composers like Mozart, Bach & Beethoven, would it be common to hear their music played outside their country or did music spread slower? | Mozart traveled [A LOT, even for the standards of our time](_URL_0_). He also published his music, he was known in many countries.
Beethoven's works were also published in different countries. His 9th symphony was commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of London in 1817. [He was known even across the Atlantic](_URL_1_).
Most of Bach's music was not published during his life. He was nowhere near as famous as Mozart or Beethoven.
Musicians did travel during the Baroque period, and there were some super stars touring all over the big cities. Publishing was a good way for music to spread, and we find music traveling across Europe even before the Baroque, but it was nowhere close what was seen during the 19th century.
Musicians did come in contact with music from other countries, and even traveled to pick up some things and use them in their own music. | [
"The great composers of the classical era wrote sparingly if at all for the organ: Haydn wrote for clockwork organs, and wrote several concerti for organ and orchestra. Beethoven and Mozart wrote only a handful of works. Brixli and Wagenseil also wrote organ concerti. All works are restricted to a single manual.\n"... |
Who are the Spanish descended from? | The Iberian Peninsula was inhabited long before the Romans occupied it, and the PaleoHispanic people's had lived in northern and Western Iberia since the Stone Age (35-40,000 BCE). Modern Spanish are descended from a rich mixture of Roman, Visigoth, Vandal, Muslim, Celtic and the PaleoHispanic, but all of these ratios are different depending on where you go in Spain to look at the population. Portugal is rich in Muslim and Roman influence because of the importance of the region for trade, whereas the North in places like Basque remained pretty culturally and linguistically solid even through Roman and Muslim occupation. Besides that, in the South East there's even influence from the Greeks and Phoenecians. So ultimately the peoples of Spain have many different origins, so it really depends on where you want to focus on. | [
"Most of the Spanish settler descendants in present-day Texas, California, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona self-identified as Spanish-Americans to differentiate themselves nominally from the population of Mexican-Americans who came after the Mexican Revolution and more often identified as Mestizo, that is mixed n... |
what is a "thinktank" company? | "Thinktanks" are in the business of generating solutions to problems - basically, they are like a consultancy, but admittedly the scope and type of problems they work on can be unusually difficult and very specialized. For instance, whereas consultancies e.g. Aon-Hewitt; Bain's Co, for businesses, may instruct or advise customers about company restructuring, marketing strategy and the like, "thinkthanks" in the form of non-government organisations work on say, how to prepare and best structure Afghanistan for a viable democracy, or how to raise popular awareness of seasonal drought in some third-world country. Thinktanks may also often have a visible bias, which may in fact be packaged as part of their company mission to attract customers, versus consultancies which front a more transparent, objective image - for instance, in the US you'll have publicly "Conservative" thinktanks which try to study government policies and criticize them specifically from a Conservative POV and think about how aligned they are with Conservative practice.
People attached to thinktanks then are luminaries who typically have had loads of experience in the field they are working at - like politicians, scholars, and they make use of a great deal of interdisciplinary thinking from the sciences to humanities to construct solutions for scenarios and crises. There are for-profit and non-profit thinktanks, so they may be paid per-assignment by clients, or exist by generous academic grants and private donations. As I mentioned earlier, the people who run thinktanks may themselves already be well-recognized in their original fields of specialties - this means that money ain't as much a concern for them so the need for a "viable business" part is diminished. They may run thinktanks as a "hobby", a "side interest" of sorts - to provide themselves a public platform for their political and social views, or they may just be wealthy enough to fund it themselves. | [
"The company chose the name \"Think Tank\" because they consider themselves primarily an \"idea producing\" company, focused on solving photographic needs by listening to the suggestions, feedback and complaints from photographers and creating tools to solve their problems.\n",
"Think Tank is a comic book limited... |
In his day was Leopold von Ranke (and his ideas about history being science) as harshly criticised as he is nowerdays by my history department? | My knowledge of this is pure historiography, so maybe a historian of the period can elaborate, but the answer is no. Leopold von Ranke is largely credited with creating the discipline of history itself, so for much of his career he was unassailable. Late in his life there were some critics of his methods, but he was, for his day, pretty revolutionary.
I'm not sure what kind of criticism you're seeing in your department, but I don't know if I would categorize modern historiography's take on Ranke as 'harsh'. The discipline has grown and evolved, mostly for the better, and Ranke is an important figure even if his ideas are no longer applicable.
Source: Any historiography book ever. I referenced *From Historical Methods* by Powell and Prevenier because that's what I have on the shelf next to me. | [
"Friedrich, who was arguably the most knowledgeable scholar in his field (of German Constitutional history) of his time, was endowed with a healthy self-regard. Indeed, some of his colleagues at Harvard regarded him as a \"somewhat hybristic person who was overly confident of his own abilities.\"\n",
"He publishe... |
how do people get stuck inside of fridges and freezers? | The first refrigerators that were produced for home use had actual latches on the door. This was decades ago. People would throw them out and, apparently, kids would climb in and lock themselves inside. But, for the last 40-50 years, refrigerators haven't had the latched doors. It's an old wives tale about kids getting locked in refrigerators now. | [
"Disposal of discarded refrigerators is regulated, often mandating the removal of doors; children playing hide-and-seek have been asphyxiated while hiding inside discarded refrigerators, particularly older models with latching doors. Since 2 August 1956, under U.S. federal law, refrigerator doors are no longer perm... |
why does most graffiti have the same generic style/look that we have come to expect from vandals | Speed, if you take too much time spraying it on the walls you will be caught doing it so speed is essential. | [
"Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example i... |
Is there anywhere that models predict will get nicer to live because of climate change? | First off, "nicer to live" requires individual value judgements because not everyone is the same in what they like. By conventional metrics, most places are going to be losers in climate change but if the mean temperature was a bit warmer there will be some places which will generally be considered more pleasant places to live. Canada and Russian will be warmer but they will still have long dark winters. New York will get more like Miami and some people love Miami. It's known we are altering the climate but exact predictions of regional details are not as certain. It's not yet time to be homesteading new places based on predictions of climate 100 years in the future.
Rainfall and precipitation are also important factors in quality-of-life. While rain is inconvenient for picnics it essential for agriculture. Climate change is going to alter rainfall patterns but it's not as predictable which places will get hotter and drier and which get hotter and wetter. Storminess is also expected to increase for most places in the mid-latitudes. Timing of rainfall is also important - does it all come in winter or is it spread out through the year? It is unfortunately those places which are already struggling (Africa, Southeast Asia) which are forecast to have some of the worst negative effects on agriculture. | [
"BULLET::::- A paper by the Carnegie Institution for Science concludes that climate models with the most severe impacts for later this century are likely to be the most accurate, suggesting that the IPCC reports may be underestimating the future trends.\n",
"The crux of the problem is that scientists can run mode... |
why do android phone manufacturers not force carriers to use the same software like on ios? | Because the manufacturers have very little power. If Samsung gives the carriers a hard time, they can immediately switch to HTC or another brand that's quite similar.
By contrast, if Apple gives the carriers a hard time, there is no very similar substitute they can choose, so they tolerate it. | [
"iOS is engineered with security measures including a \"locked bootloader\" to prevent users from modifying the operating system, and to prevent apps from gaining root privileges; jailbreaking an iOS device to defeat all security measures presents a significant technical challenge. It violates Apple's end-user lice... |
explain how 0.999 recurring = 1 (li5.) | All the numbers can be ordered on a very, very big line, like on a gigantic ruler. Now, if two numbers are different, that just means that there is some space on this ruler between them. That space is full of numbers, too. So, for example, 2 is a different number than 4, because (for example) 3 is between them. In fact, you can find more numbers than you could write a piece of paper between *any* two different numbers. Try it!
Now, 0.99999... = 1 is just another way of saying that there are no other numbers between them. It makes sense once you try to come up with such a number yourself: Obviously it would have to start with 0.99999 as well but then be a little bit higher. But there is no such number that's still smaller than 1. | [
"The standard definition of the number 0.999... is the limit of the sequence 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, ... A different definition involves what Terry Tao refers to as \"ultralimit\", i.e., the equivalence class [(0.9, 0.99, 0.999, ...)] of this sequence in the ultrapower construction, which is a number that falls short of ... |
Why is CBD's action on the 5HT-1A receptor non psychedelic, compared with e.g. LSD's action on the 5HT-2A? | So to begin, CBD is a partial agonist which is not the same as LSD, which is a full agonist. Partial agonism is jargon in that the drug binds quite well, but only exerts say 40% of an effect compared to a full agonist, which would give 100% of effect.
As well as this, we don't really know why certain drugs like LSD and substituted amphetamines cause hallucinations via activation of these receptors as we have drugs in our arsenal that are agonists at many of these receptors but without the psychedelic properties of LSD etc.
To make this a bit clearer for you (nothing to do with CBD but fascinating nonetheless) - Buprenorphine is a partial agonist of mu receptors for the treatment of opioid addiction. Because of its partial agonism it has a 'ceiling effect' (going back to partial agonists only being able to activate a receptor so much) meaning its abuse potential is greatly reduced as it cant give the high morphine can.
The reason Bupe works so well in the context of addiction is very interesting, and I'll tell you why. So, when both a full agonist (morphine) and partial agonist (buprenorphine) are present, the partial agonist actually acts as a competitive antagonist (consider the opposite of a agonist, it reverses or blocks the effects), competing with the full agonist for receptor occupancy and producing a net decrease in the receptor activation observed with the full agonist alone. This is why Buprenorphine is fantastic in what it does, because it, in a biological sense cock blocks morphine to those mu receptors it desperately wants to bind to.
I am a pharmacology student so I would be more then happy to answer any q's you may have (especially in regards to psychopharmacology) as I love the subject and love to help people understand pharmacology. :)
| [
"Although only very little pharmacological information about 5F-AMB itself exists, its 4-cyanobutyl analogue (instead of 5-fluoropentyl) has been reported to be a potent agonist for the CB receptor (\"K\" = 0.7 nM).\n",
"Activation of the 5-HT receptor is necessary for the effects of the \"classic\" psychedelics ... |
why do some tennis players grunt loudly whenever they hit the ball? | Tensing the torso allows maximum rigidity and power transfer to the strike. This tends to push air out of the lungs and produce a grunt, and grunting can be a way to focus on maintaining that form. | [
"Louise Deeley, a sports psychologist at Roehampton University, believes that grunting is part of the rhythm for tennis players: \"The timing of when they actually grunt helps them with the rhythm of how they're hitting and how they're pacing things\". She also believes that banning grunting isn't the solution: \"T... |
Could chemoautotrophic bacteria live in the hostile environments of another planet? | The discovery of extremophile organisms like bacteria has certainly broadened our understanding of life, and the sheer strangeness and lengths it can go and survive.
So, the answer is yes. There definitely *could* be organisms on other planets, even those that we might have traditionally thought of as being too hostile to life to support it.
The discovery of such extreme organisms has led some scientists and more than a few science fiction authors to speculate about the possibility of life on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, or on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Both are rather extreme compared to earth, but it might just be possible. | [
"Another area of investigation in geomicrobiology is the study of extremophile organisms, the microorganisms that thrive in environments normally considered hostile to life. Such environments may include extremely hot (hot springs or mid-ocean ridge black smoker) environments, extremely saline environments, or even... |
Shimmering on roads. | It is caused by the refraction of light when traveling through a density gradient in the air. The air near the surface is being heated by the hot pavement, and therefore expands reducing the pressure, resulting in less density. Light coming in from the sky is bends upwards when traversing from the colder and denser air above to the hot and thin air near the surface in a rather smooth arc and coming to meet your eye from a strange direction. You'll see more refraction when looking at pools of hot air from a shallower angle, hence why it's more apparent when you are changing elevation and can look along the tangent of a hill.
Here's a quick picture demonstrating this: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
In fact, if you turn the picture upside down it resembles light bending downwards as it moves from less dense air, to much denser water (that is, each step is like an upside-down water surface, light doesn't arc like this when entering water). The deep reason behind this and other phenomena is the peculiar fact that light tends to go along paths that take the least amount of time. Rather than trying to get to you by slugging along through the colder air, it would rather dip down and zip through the hot air. | [
"Air temperature variations close to the surface can give rise to other optical phenomena, such as mirages and Fata Morgana. Most commonly, air heated by a hot road on a sunny day deflects light approaching at a shallow angle towards a viewer. This makes the road appear reflecting, giving an illusion of water cover... |
As Historians, how can we utilize novels and literature as research? | Well, certainly you can use period literature to provide evidence for a lot of things -- social norms, changing attitudes, the values and morals of the time, as well as a great source of linguistic data for language evolution.
But if you try to use say, a Mary Renault novel as evidence of Alexander's campaigns, you're probably going to have a bad time. | [
"A study of cultural history could include fictional sources such as novels or plays. In a broader sense primary sources also include artifacts like photographs, newsreels, coins, paintings or buildings created at the time. Historians may also take archaeological artifacts and oral reports and interviews into consi... |
Why not make smaller turbojet engines instead of a larger turbofan with high bypass ratio? | I think /u/throwhooawayyfoe's answer, while correct, misses the point.
Jet engines, like rocket engines, work by generating negative momentum and putting it onto some propellant, which gets discarded out the back of the vehicle. Since momentum is conserved, the leftover positive momentum remains in the vehicle -- the engine has applied some thrust! Jet engines differ from rocket engines only in that they grab material from the surroundings, to use as propellant.
The problem with both kinds of engine is that putting momentum on matter costs energy. The momentum of a piece of propellant rises like ( mv ) -- it's proportional to how fast you push the matter out the back. But the energy on that piece of propellant rises like ( 1/2 m v^2 ) -- it is proportional to the *square* of the speed you push it.
So the faster you push the propellant out the back, the less energy efficient it is: the ratio of propellant kinetic energy to propellant momentum grows like v, so the faster you push the propellant, the more energy it costs you for each little bit of momentum.
In a rocket, the big deal is that you want to get as much momentum on as little propellant as possible, since you have to carry the propellant with you -- so you push the propellant as fast as possible. That maximizes propellant efficiency (how much thrust you get for each kg of propellant you throw out the back), but minimizes energy efficiency (much thrust you get for each joule of energy you expend).
But in a jet, you get propellant for free -- you can harvest it from the surroundings. So you want to put your momentum on as much propellant as possible, to reduce the amount of energy you have to load onto that propellant. Propellant is free, but energy costs money.
That's why high bypass ratio engines are more efficient: they push more propellant (the bypass air), so they can get away with loading less total kinetic energy onto it. That means they don't have to burn as much fuel to produce the same amount of thrust.
A side effect of that is that high-bypass engines are quieter. That's because the extra kinetic energy from low bypass engines' exhaust gets dissipated as noise. Since the designers of military fighter jets care more about compact form than about fuel efficiency, fighter jets generally use low bypass engines with high speed exhaust. That's why they're so damn loud compared to large passenger jets.
**tl;dr concentrating momentum onto a small amount of propellant costs energy. Using more propellant (in a high bypass engine) reduces the total amount of energy needed for the same thrust.** | [
"Low bypass turbofans have a lower exhaust speed than turbojets and are mostly used for high sonic, transonic, and low supersonic speeds. High bypass turbofans are used for subsonic aircraft and are quite efficient and are widely used for airliners.\n",
"Because of these distinctions, turbofan engine designs are ... |
Was Aristotle ever right? | > I'm just talking about hard science facts
This only works if you believe science is an accumulation of facts. Instead, it might be useful to think of science as a project to model nature ([see Thomas Kuhn](_URL_0_)). For instance, Newtonian physics is a model that has retained much of its predictive power even as its assumptions about the nature of reality have been questioned by subsequent physicists.
On that understanding of science, Aristotle offered some models that were very useful until more precise and predictive models came along. For instance, the idea of elements with inherent tendencies can be useful. It makes sense of fire reaching upward, water settling into holes, and the incredibly regular motion of heavenly bodies. Ultimately, every Aristotelian model of nature that I'm familiar with has been replaced by more precise models with very different assumptions about the nature of things. | [
"Aristotle is perhaps, even today, the most influential of all the early Western philosophers. His view is often summarized as 'moderation in all things'. For example, courage is worthy, for too little of it makes one defenseless. But too much courage can result in foolhardiness in the face of danger. To be clear, ... |
what is the point of rooting android products and jailbreaking apple products. | Rooting on Android gives you administer access to the device, letting you install custom software, overclock the hardware, delete built in apps, and allow apps to have functionality they otherwise would be denied.
Jailbreaking on iOS installs a second app store known as Cydia that lets you download and install software not approved by Apple. These apps also do things normal appstore apps dont, such as allowing you to tweak the functions of the OS and customize it. | [
"iOS is engineered with security measures including a \"locked bootloader\" to prevent users from modifying the operating system, and to prevent apps from gaining root privileges; jailbreaking an iOS device to defeat all security measures presents a significant technical challenge. It violates Apple's end-user lice... |
Did Shakespeare and His Plays Cause Any Naming Trends? | Probably the most influential names invented by Shakespeare were (and are) Jessica and Olivia. The following is from *The Merchant of Venice* (Arden Shakespeare, 3rd Series) Act 2, Scene 4, Lines 19-20:
> LORENZO:
> Hold here--take this, tell gentle Jessica
> I will not fail her; speak it privately.
What you just read is the earliest known appearance of the name Jessica with its modern spelling. Jessica was the most popular name for girls in the United States in the 1980's and 1990's and was the United Kingdom's most popular name of 2005.
Here is the first appearance of the name Olivia in *Twelfth Night*:
> DUKE ORSINO:
> ...
> O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
> Methought she purged the air of pestilence!
-TN, 1.1.19-20 (Arden, 2nd Series)
Olivia became very popular throughout the English-speaking world in the 1990's and chances are pretty good that you've met one.
But that doesn't completely answer your question. You asked about Shakespeare's influence on naming trends in his own time and in the years following his death.
Shakespeare began his career as an actor some time in the 1580s. His debut as a playwright came some time between 1589 and 1591. In 1594 - 1595 a string of popular hits begin to make Shakespeare's career take off and by ~1599 - 1606 (what used to be called his "great" period) he was a minor celebrity and the plays of the Lord Chamberlain's Men were in very high demand.
So let's look at the most popular names for girls in England from 1600 to 1630. I'll be using [Names and Naming Patterns in England, 1538-1700](_URL_0_) by Scott Smith-Bannister, Oxford University Press, 1997:
The top four were (in order of descending popularity) Elizabeth, Mary, Anne, and Margaret. Alice, Jane, Joan, Agnes, Susanna, and Catherine round out the top ten. All of these were very common in the late 1500s as well, so Shakespearean names didn't crack the top ten until a few decades after he died.
**However**, *Much Ado About Nothing* opened (supposedly) in the fall - winter of 1599 and was very popular in its first run. The name Beatrice appears in the top 20 English baby names in 1600-1610 for the first time in many years and then drops off again until 1680. This correlation of the debut of *Much Ado* with the spike in the popularity of Beatrice suggests (but does not necessarily prove) that Shakespeare did indeed influence naming trends in his own time. | [
"Shakespeare's authorship was first openly questioned in the pages of Joseph C. Hart's \"The Romance of Yachting\" (1848). Hart argued that the plays contained evidence that many different authors had worked on them. Four years later Dr. Robert W. Jameson anonymously published \"Who Wrote Shakespeare?\" in the \"Ch... |
What does the spin on a bullet do for the pressure wave it creates? Does it change its nature much compared to as if it was not spinning and simply translating? | I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but [here is an image](_URL_0_) of a gun being fired underwater. You can see the cavitation caused by the bullet is twisted because of the bullet's spin. A similar thing should happen in air. | [
"This is because the projectile's longitudinal axis (its axis of rotation) and the direction of the velocity vector of the center of gravity (CG) deviate by a small angle, which is said to be the equilibrium yaw or the yaw of repose. The magnitude of the yaw of repose angle is typically less than 0.5 degree. Since ... |
how are we able to sense where our body parts are in space without actually looking at or feeling them? | That's called proprioception, or kinesthetic awareness. It's also somewhat tied into reflexes, like catching or dodging a ball. You can increase the sensitivity with practice, too. Sadly, though, the “spider sense” is just for comics and movies for now. | [
"Johns-Messenger critically examines the role of the body in space and her primary concern with altering ordinary \"ways of seeing\" began during early childhood, where she spent days sketching, conceptualizing and photographing shapes from ordinary objects.\n",
"In fact, the human body has seven sensory systems ... |
is there any situation in which the mathematical median can be higher than the mean? | The relationship between the mean and median are based on how skewed the data is, and in what direction the skew is. Generally speaking, things that we are familiar with tend to be skewed right, so we get that the mean is greater than the median. But if the data is skewed left, then the median will be greater than the mean. Consider the following data set:
{1,100,101}
What is the median? 100. What is the mean? 67-ish.
It is just that data tends to not really look like this in most familiar situations. | [
"If a distribution is symmetric, then the median is the mean (so long as the latter exists). But, in general, the median and the mean can differ. For instance, with a random variable that has an exponential distribution, any particular sample of this random variable will have roughly a 63% chance of being less than... |
can someone explain whether obesity is only present in humans or other mammals too have this disorder within their species? | I've seen some fat ass cats and dogs. | [
"Animal models have contributed a fair amount to the current understanding of eating disorders and obesity, in different ways and to different extents; one of the main reasons being the difference in pathophysiology of these disorders. The one specific feature of eating disorders not shared with animal behavior, is... |
do/can animals in nature outside of human contact get fat or even mordidly obese? | They don't become obese due to limited food resources. Even if they could eat all they wanted, being fat would slow them down and increase their chance of becoming prey to something bigger and faster. Bears are the only thing I can quickly think of the eat to excess, but that is because they are storing energy for their winter hibernation. That, and they are an apex predator. The only thing that hunts them are humans. | [
"The appearance and effects of emaciation in animals, both wild and domestic, is like that of humans–severe thinness, loss of fat and muscle, extremely pronounced and protruding bones, and weakness. Starvation and regularly dehydration, brought on by neglect and cruelty from humans, or as a result of illness are th... |
why do i keep getting acne when i have showered every day for 4 years and have a healthy diet/work out? im a 18 year old male | Not a doctor here, but maybe you should see a dermatologist if you haven't already (not that this is strange, but they can really help).
A lot of acne in adolescence is caused by androgens being released in the body, such as testosterone (this is released in *everybody* during puberty, regardless of sex). Sometimes acne is deep in the skin tissue (cystic acne). Sometimes, acne can be caused by bacteria in the skin, not just hormones or unhealthiness or uncleanliness. If this appears to be the case, a dermatologist might prescribe an antibiotic such as Minocycline, or Isotretinoin (Accutane). However, a doctor would not prescribe Accutane unless you had severe acne and they'd tried basically everything else. It has nasty side effects. If the acne is not caused by bacteria, you will probably just be using some sort of topical cream (versus using a cream and an antibiotic).
Remember that there is no cure for acne -- there are only things you can do to prevent it. | [
"Oil production in the sebaceous glands increases during puberty, causing comedones and acne to be common in adolescents. Acne is also found premenstrually and in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome. Smoking may worsen acne.\n",
"In general, it is recommended that people with acne do not wash affected skin mor... |
what exactly the 10nm, 14nm, 22nm, etc nodes mean in semiconductor processing | Well, it's a bit confusing even to people in the industry. The devil's in the details.
In the distant past, the geometry of the "node" meant the size of the smallest transistors. But a while back it started to refer more to the pitch of the tightest metal layer (usually metal 1), where "pitch" means the width of the line plus 1/2 the space on either side. It was claimed that this was a better metric for how tightly things could be packed together. Marketing had crept into the engineering domain.
There is no single accepted standard now; different companies use different ways to measure their process geometry, and one company may change their definitions a bit at different process nodes. All are a bit deceptive, because *both* the transistor pitches and the metal pitches are important in determining how many circuits can be put in some area.
To really know about any fab's geometries, you need to dig into the details of all the different layers. For example, a process might have very tight pitches for transistors and metal 1 and 2, but very loose pitches for the higher layers of metal. So in theory you can pack transistors tightly...you just can't very efficiently hook them up to each other. It is possible for one company's 16nm process to be better at getting transistor density than another company's 14nm process. | [
"The 14 nanometer (14nm) technology node is the successor to the 22nm/(20nm) node. The 14nm was so named by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). One nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter. Until about 2011, the node following 22nm was expected to be 16nm. All 14nm nodes use FinFET (fi... |
Nixon courted southern Democrats with the Southern Strategy. Prior to that, what common cause did these people have with northeastern elites like FDR and Kennedy? | Roosevelt's biggest contribution to American politics was the establishment of the New Deal Coalition. Roosevelt united the traditional Democratic base (conservative Southerners, northern immigrants and Catholics, liberal northerners) along with expanding into traditionally Republican groups (such as blacks and Midwesterners) by promising an end to the Great Depression. The New Deal brought electricity, modernization, jobs, and most importantly, hope, to the South, the Midwest, and America at large. Basically, Roosevelt created common cause by improving people's lives across the board.
The tradition of the South voting Democrat (no matter what) for most of the party's history, boosted by the New Deal Coalition, made it so Southerners kept voting Democrat as long as they held a prominent position in the Democratic Party, and as long as those northeastern elites turned a blind eye to race relations. Despite being a New Yorker, Roosevelt was still 'their guy,' in the same way the northeastern elitist Mitt Romney was 'the guy' for the South in 2012.
The differences began when Kennedy *didn't* turn a blind eye. He didn't promise total desgregation or anything, but he discussed civil rights enough that it made the Southern base upset. It's somewhat inaccurate to compare Roosevelt and Kennedy for relations with the South, as in 1960, Kennedy had one of the worst performances of a Democrat in the Southern states, losing Virginia, Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee to Nixon, and Alabama and Mississippi to Dixiecrats. | [
"Republican President Richard Nixon adopted a \"Southern Strategy\" for the 1972 election: continue enforcement of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, but be quiet about it, so that offended Southern whites would continue to blame the Democrats, while talking up the Democrats' increasing association with lib... |
When a sufficiently sized star dies and collapses into a black hole, does the gravitational attraction that it yields change? | Either "no" or "it might go down" depending on what you mean.
At large distances, old fashioned classical gravity is accurate for both. The force of gravity is proportional to the mass. So if all the mass is retained, then gravity doesn't change. But in a supernova, a lot of mass is thrown out, so the resulting black hole has a lower mass than the star, and has *weaker* gravity*.
That said, when you get close to a black hole, weird general relativity stuff does start to happen - stuff that doesn't really happen in a star. This is because the mass is concentrated in a smaller region, and you can get much closer to the centre of mass (without being *inside* the object) and feel stronger gravity.
But if you're a planet orbiting a star, and that star magically turns into a black hole, your orbit won't change. | [
"The gravitational collapse of a star is a natural process that can produce a black hole. It is inevitable at the end of the life of a star, when all stellar energy sources are exhausted. If the mass of the collapsing part of the star is below the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff (TOV) limit for neutron-degenerate matter... |
Was Gandhi actually a positive influence on the development of India as a country? | It's complicated; if you're not already aware of it there's a three hour long three part [BBC Documentary on Gandhi](_URL_0_) that covers a lot of his life and legacy. while it doesn't attempt a final judgement it does show various sides to the man and his actions.
| [
"Gandhi's thinking on what we would consider socia-secular issues (he himself saw little distinction between the sacred and its expression in the social world) was influenced by John Ruskin and the American writer Henry David Thoreau. Throughout his life, Gandhi sought to develop ways to fight India's extreme pover... |
what generates the messages in computer errors? | Computer programmers write the error message into their software.
Sometimes they do so for their eyes only as a way of fixing their code.
It's like walking in a forest and making a mark on each tree.
If everything goes right, you will not ever see the mark again.
But if you are lost, you can look for the mark that you made to see where
you went wrong.
Computer programmers make lots of marks in their code, so they can
fix/debug their code later. | [
"An error message is information displayed when an unexpected condition occurs, usually on a computer or other device. On modern operating systems with graphical user interfaces, error messages are often displayed using dialog boxes. Error messages are used when user intervention is required, to indicate that a des... |
how did scientists first hypothesise that an meteor killed the dinosaurs? | It was proposed by [Luis Walter Alvarez](_URL_0_) after he noticed a thin layer of clay in the geologic record between the Cretaceous and Tertiary (now called the Paleogene) periods. After further investigation of the composition of the clay (in particular, the high-levels of iridium), Alvarez and his team proposed it may have originated from an impact from space.
Later, finding evidence of an impact crater in Mexico along with the relatively quick demise of many species (including the dinosaurs) led credibility to the theory. | [
"65,000,000 years ago, a mountain-sized meteor crashed into the Earth in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, with a major chunk of the object landing in Uganda. The impact and resulting ecological catastrophe causes the extinction of the dinosaurs. In present day, wealthy industrialist John Greystoke has b... |
what is going on in your brain when you stare? why are you so focused on one thing you can't look away? | I am not a psychologist, but generally it is because you are seeing something your brain considers valuable or possibly dangerous. If a man stares at a woman with large breasts, then it is because his brain considers it something valuable and wants it. You will focus more easily on something or someone that you find inherently valuable compared to something you consider important like math. Your brain wants the large breasted woman so it will encourage you to focus on that object and retrieve it.
Now if you see something out of the ordinary like a kid wearing some crazy braces with a head set for their jacked up teeth, then you brain is assessing it for possible danger. You inherently won't trust it even if you consciously know that the 12 year old with extreme dental issues is not a threat to you.
Either way you are assessing whatever you stare at and your brain considers it too important to just glance at and look away. | [
"Changes in spatial attention can occur with the eyes moving, overtly, or with the eyes remaining fixated, covertly. Within the human eye only a small part, the fovea, is able to bring objects into sharp focus. However, it is this high visual acuity that is needed to perform actions such as reading words or recogni... |
Who made the bombs for the IRA? | Early on the bombs were mostly homemade using Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser. While the process is simple it does take skill to get it right and there were several people who specialised in it. The explosives were often made in ordinary houses or sheds.
The provision of Semtex from Libya in the 1980s gave the IRA a lot of flexibility as it is more powerful and useful.
Richard English, *Armed Struggle* is probably the best history of the IRA. You could also look at James Bowyer Bell or Tim Pat Coogan. Coogan is a journalist with good sources but his historical analysis is very poor so be warned. | [
"The 1970s saw Irish Industrial Explosives Limited producing annually 6,000 tonnes of Frangex, a commercial gelignite intended for use in mines and quarries. It was produced at Ireland's largest explosives factory in Enfield, County Meath. The Gardaí and the Irish Army patrolled the area, preventing the IRA from ga... |
What can you tell me about pirates? | Pierre Le Grand (_URL_0_ Legendary Pirate who captured a Spanish treasure galleon with 28 men and a leaky boat.
L'Olonnais(_URL_6_) - Allegedly ate a man's beating heart out of his chest to intimidate prisoners.
Du Pointis - _URL_2_ captured 20 million Livres and defeated one of the greatest forts in the Carribean.
Grace O'Malley (_URL_1_) - Irish queen and pirate.
Jean Bart (_URL_5_) Born a fisherman's son, died an admiral.
Black Bart (_URL_3_) captured 470 ships.
Woods Rodgers (_URL_4_) started off as a legitimate businessman, became a pirate, and later broke the back of the Golden Age Pirates as governor of the Bahamas.
These are some of the lesser known among most people pirates who were actually pretty bad ass and more successful than the likes of Blackbeard and Kidd. I'm a bit tired, so I may come back later and add some more here. | [
"The Pirates story focuses on the struggle between Captain Brickbeard's crew trying to find a massive amount of treasure & the Imperial Navy led by Governor Broadside with assistance from the Ninja Master & his clan of ninjas, trying to thwart their plans.\n",
"The Pirates! is a series of five comedy books follow... |
why do humans need to be taught about sex while other animals just know what to do? | Humans don't *need* to be taught about sex. In fact, sex education is hardly *at all* about the mechanics of sex. It's about safe sex, and other bodily functions that are peripheral to the actual act.
Some of it is stuff that people *would* figure out on their own, but why not take a short cut and learn about it *before* it's an issue? | [
"Research has proven that non-human animals can and do have sex for non-reproductive purposes (and for pleasure). In 2006, a Danish Animal Ethics Council report concluded that ethically performed zoosexual activity is capable of providing a positive experience for all participants, and that some non-human animals a... |
Why don't salamanders bleed to death when they lose limbs? | If you chop off a person's limb they don't just fountain blood out of the open wound. At least not initially. The blood vessels constrict during trauma which buys valuable time for treatment. For salamanders I think the process is similar only the surface area of the wound is much smaller and it has time to clot before they would bleed out. | [
"Salamanders use their tails in defence and some are prepared to jettison them to save their lives in a process known as autotomy. Certain species in the Plethodontidae have a weak zone at the base of the tail and use this strategy readily. The tail often continues to twitch after separation which may distract the ... |
When energy is converted into heat and then dissipates, how is energy conserved? | When heat dissipates, it doesn't disappear; it just spreads out. | [
"In physics and chemistry, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be \"conserved\" over time. This law means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. For... |
what is ethereum, and how does it have a monetary value? | I can't speak about Ethereum specifically, but I can give you a generalized explanation of bitcoin and hope the information is useful to you. The processing power used to generate a new coin is not *useful* or *practical* to someone in the same way as Folding@Home. The processing requirement to creating new coins is a means of creating and regulating scarcity. If each coin requires a certain amount of work to be produced, and there is a finite amount of work available, then the amount of new currency entering the market is restrained, which is extremely important for a currency. Cryptocurrencies do not have inherent value. Their valuation is merely what other people are willing to value it at, similar to other FIAT currencies used by nations around the world.
The American dollar's availability is controlled by the FED and the willingness of the public to purchase US bonds, and its value stabilized by the petrodollar. Bitcoins' availability is controlled by inherent restraints in software, and their value is somewhat intentionally not stabilized to encourage the development of a commodity trading economy. I reiterate that I don't know much about Ethereum, but I imagine it's quite similar. | [
"Ethereum Classic is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. It provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes. ... |
How far is it between solar systems in a galaxy? What is there in this space between solar systems and planets? | There's also a huge number of rogue planets, comets and asteroids out there that get ejected from their orbits around their host stars and wander the galaxy, [100 billion freely wandering Jupiter-mass planets](_URL_3_) in our galaxy according to a recent study, but your chances of running into one are incredibly slim since space is so vast and we [only recently observed our first interstellar visitor](_URL_7_) as it passed through the solar system. There's also [cosmic dust](_URL_9_), which has the interesting property of being able to [spin at microwave frequencies of 10-60GHz](_URL_0_) due to the tiny size of the dust grains, emitting microwaves at it's rotational frequency, plus there's [all manner of molecules](_URL_5_) out there and various exotic ions that aren't stable on Earth and free protons and electrons and bare atomic nuclei, which are a radiation hazard to astronauts and behave like subatomic bullets that whizz through their bodies and rip electrons from atoms, damaging their DNA and cellular machinery. But by far the vast majority of the stuff out there is plain old hydrogen and helium in various forms of ionisation. Altogether, this mix of stuff makes up the [interstellar medium](_URL_1_), and it's from this gas and dust that stars and planets form when the conditions are right for clouds of it to gravitationally collapse and form compact objects, as happens in [molecular clouds](_URL_8_).
When an article says that a probe has left the Solar system, it also depends on your definition of Solar system. Sort of like how we discover water on Mars every other week, because to one person, uncovering a patch of ice under the soil is discovering water, and to another person you've only discovered water when it's liquid water and ice, dew, transient dark streaks on crater rims and patches of frost don't count, so you get a new 'discovery' for each one.
No probe has even passed through the [Kuiper belt](_URL_4_) yet, and it'll be thousands of years before our probes reach the [Oort cloud](_URL_6_), the cloud of comets that surrounds the Sun and extends as far as 1 light year away, but [Voyager 1](_URL_2_) has passed through the Heliopause where the solar wind slows down and merges with the interstellar medium, so in the interest of attracting readers and getting advertising dollars, you'll have seen articles saying that Voyager left the solar system when it passed through the termination shock and articles saying it left the solar system a few years later when it passed through the heliosheath and more articles saying the same thing a few years after that when it passed through the heliopause, because such is journalism. | [
"The distance from the Solar System is probably about 11,000 light years, or approximately half-way from the Sun to the Galactic Center, but a closer distance of ~2800 ly is not ruled out. GRO J1655-40 and its companion are moving through the Milky Way at around 112 km/s (250,000 miles per hour), in a galactic orbi... |
Would Genghis Khan be considered a "bad guy" of history? | Potentially better follow up: Do historians actually view anyone as villains? I had got the impression that the more general sociocultural factors were being considered instead of individuals in good historical work. | [
"Accounts of Genghis Khan's life are marked by claims of a series of betrayals and conspiracies. These include rifts with his early allies such as Jamukha (who also wanted to be a ruler of Mongol tribes) and Wang Khan (his and his father's ally), his son Jochi, and problems with the most important shaman, who alleg... |
Why does a small amount of antenna extension in devices such as portable radios and satellite cellphones make such a big impact on quality of reception? | Old ‘brick’ cell phones used a frequency around 800mhz. The wavelength, ~14 inches, would make a full wave antenna cumbersome. However, a half wave length antenna (that is normally stowed inside the phone) does work pretty well while being compact.
Newer phones use higher frequencies, which combined with lower power signal and better signal processing, leads to an antenna that fits inside the phone (or IS the phone, in the iphone’s case). | [
"Antenna diversity is especially effective at mitigating these multipath propagation situations. This is because multiple antennas afford a receiver several observations of the same signal. Each antenna will experience a different interference environment. Thus, if one antenna is experiencing a deep fade, it is lik... |
What can you tell me about this Roman stone my neighbours dug up? | "AVG SACR" is short for "AUGusto SACRum"; "SILVANO" was a woodland deity. Basically it's dedicated/sacred to Silvanus and Augustus.
Source: Silvanus in Salona p161 _URL_0_ | [
"Excavations in 2003 of the town wall near the west gate showed this had been robbed of building stone in post-Roman times, except for two stones that were found \"in situ\" and the wall's rubble foundations.\n",
"A Roman boundary ditch and posthole has been found just off Nethergate Street; a strap fitting, coin... |
If visible light and radio waves are all forms of electromagnetic waves, can we emit visible light by emitting radio at a different wave length? | As you said, light and radio waves are both electromagnetic waves. They are simply at different frequencies/wavelengths, so are kinda different things. Human eyes can perceive only a small fraction of the different wavelengths that are out there.
Radio waves have a longer wavelength (or lower frequency) than visible light. There are also infrared, ultraviolet, gamma rays, x-rays, etc. which cant be seen, like radio waves.
EM wavelengths range from the size hugely, while we can only see roughly 380 nm (violet) to 750 nm (red) wavelengths, I think it is.
So by changing the wave length of a radio wave to make light like you said, would have to change the wave length drastically!
It would no longer be a radio wave you're emitting at that point :)
| [
"Although some radio waves are emitted directly by astronomical objects, a product of thermal emission, most of the radio emission that is observed is the result of synchrotron radiation, which is produced when electrons orbit magnetic fields. Additionally, a number of spectral lines produced by interstellar gas, n... |
Why do you get shocked when you lick a 9 volt but not when you lay your finger across both leads? | Different resistance values between your tongue and your fingers. Electrons can travel easily through your wet tongue from negative to positive but your fingers have a higher resistance hindering the passage of electrons. | [
"Most battery voltage testers and chargers that can also test nine-volt need another snap clip to hold the battery, while cylindrical batteries often share a holder that may be adjustable in size. Because of the proximity of the positive and negative terminals at the top of the battery and relatively low current of... |
How is the Dead Sea the lowest point on Earth ( 400m) if the Grand Canyon has a depth of 1800m? | You are comparing depth with altitude - they are not the same thing.
The Dead sea is the lowest point on Earth at an altitude of -400 m **relative to sea-level**.
The maximum depth of the Grand Canyon is measured from the surface, in the middle of the continent. The actual altitude relative to sea-level of that point is about +730 meters. | [
"BULLET::::- Hranice Abyss, Moravia, Czech Republic, is the deepest underwater cave in the world, the lowest confirmed depth (as of 27 September 2016) is 473 m (404 m under the water level), the expected depth is 700–800 m.\n",
"The Challenger Deep, located just outside the Trench Unit, is the deepest point in th... |
Does split brain lead to split consciousness? | A “split brain” is not really 100% split: we use the term to describe patients who, for one reason or another (usually surgery), have lost the functionality of the Corpus Callosum. The Corpus Callisum is a dense bundle of neurons in the middle of the brain that is the primary structure responsible for coordinating and spreading activity between the left and right hemispheres, which is why we remove it in epileptic patients: it prevents seizure activity from taking over the entire brain.
The brain has a few other auxiliary connections between the hemispheres, however, called the Commissures. In the absence of the CC, these structures are apparently able to keep some semblance of hemispherical coordination intact. There are a few other phenomenon that can influence things, since, as you can imagine, neuroscience has exceptions to every rule, but in general it’s safe to say that split-brain patients still have some communication between their hemispheres. | [
"Splits in consciousness (\"normal self\" vs. \"secondary self\") was first described by Pierre Janet in \"De l'Automatisme Psychologique\" (1889). His ideas were extended by Bleuler (who in 1908 coined the word schizofrenia from the Ancient Greek \"skhízō\" and \"phrḗn\" ) and Freud to explain the splitting () of ... |
What was the scientific and cultural legacy of Achaemenid Persia? | > First, I am going to assume that "our culture" refers to western culture. But this is a dangerous assumption to make, so please be sure to avoid such generalizations in the future. This is an important distinction to make because the reception of the Persians in the West is much, much different from the reception of the Persians in, for example, modern Iran. These are just two extremes in a the wide spectrum of modern societies that have studied and analyzed materials and documents from Achaemenid Persia.
> All that being said, I want to point out just one major document that has impacted Western culture: the Cyrus Cylinder. Since its discovery in the 19th century in Babylon, the Cyrus Cylinder has often been heralded as a document of peace, magnanimity, and the universal tolerance of mankind. It has been argued that in the document, King Cyrus the Great guaranteed the freedoms and liberties of all citizens of the Persian Empire.
> Of course, reality is much different (and less exciting). The document was merely a dedication to the gods of the rebuilding of a sacred temple in the city of Babylon. In the text, Cyrus stated numerous platitudes about being destined to be king, and to protect these gods of Babylon, and to do the bidding of the gods, etc. But there is no "universal charter of mankind" in this document.
Nonetheless, scholarship in the early 20th century focused heavily on this early interpretation of the text, and Cyrus was aggrandized into an ancient guardian of liberty and freedom. The modern state of Iran has also developed and furthered this legend, even placing an image of the Cyrus Cylinder on some official documents and currency. Of course, there are also the biblical connections, with Cyrus being tied to the return of the Jews to Israel. Of course, the Cyrus Cylinder itself is silent on the Israelites, but his supposed magnanimity and his mention in the book of Isaiah 45 tied the Cyrus Cylinder to this growing legend of Cyrus 'the Great.'
> For further reading, I recommend Irving Finkel's The Cyrus Cylinder, which has compiled all of the most recent research and thinking on the document and its history and reception.
This is from [my previous comment on the topic](_URL_0_). | [
"The Achaemenid dynasty of the Persian Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great, ruled an area from Greece and Turkey to the Indus River and Central Asia during the 6th to 4th centuries BCE. Persian politics included a tolerance for other cultures, a highly centralized government, and significant infrastructure developme... |
Different Base Numbers? | _URL_0_
You may enjoy this. Balanced ternary has many computational benefits over binary. | [
"In the base 10 numeral system, in almost universal use today for mathematical operations, the symbols for natural numbers are written using ten digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. The radix or base is the number of unique numerical digits, including zero, that a numeral system uses to represent numbers (for ... |
- what makes peanut butter stick to the roof of your mouth, and throat? | Peanutbutter is viscous. The viscosity of peanutbutter means that it will take longer to flow than other fluids. Aside from that, peanutbutter is not only viscous, but is able to squish between nooks and crannies in a surface, allowing it to act like a glue. It's a good adhesive.
On top of that, peanutbutter is made mostly of fats, so it's not very soluble in water, and water doesn't want to interact with the fats in peanutbutter, so it takes time to go down with the help of friction from your tongue and esophagus.
Also, peanutbutter should be one word. It's one thing, and it's easier to type it that way. I vote 'yes' on *peanutbutter*. | [
"Peanut butter is a food paste or spread made from ground dry roasted peanuts. It often contains additional ingredients that modify the taste or texture, such as salt, sweeteners or emulsifiers. Peanut butter is served as a spread on bread, toast or crackers, and used to make sandwiches (notably the peanut butter a... |
Is there any evidence that "sugar rushes" actually occur? | Why are sugar rushes so popular, then, if there's no scientific evidence backing it up?
It seems pretty simple to me. Caffeine is a stimulant and gets you wired...sugar is not a stimulant and exhibits no stimulant effects.
Who got confused and invented 'sugar rushes'? I'd love to know. | [
"Sugar Rush is a British television comedy drama series developed by Shine Limited and broadcast by Channel 4, based on the Julie Burchill novel of the same name. It is centred on the life of a 15-year-old lesbian, Kim Daniels, who has moved from London to Brighton on the south coast of England.\n",
"Sugar Rush i... |
does location determine skin color? | Dark skin protects against ultraviolet radiation from the sun. But solar radiation is also necessary to stimulate production of vitamin D. In the higher latitudes, where there is less solar radiation, there is both less need for protection and more need for the radiation. Accordingly, there is a natural selection pressure (meaning people are healthier and more likely to have children) toward darker skin near the equator and light skin further to the north or south. This is also the reason that you get tanned after lying in the sun.
However, this takes tends of thousands of years to have any real effect on the genes of a population. Light-skinned people living in South Africa today are descendants of people from Europe. Maybe if they and their children live in South Africa another 10,000 years, they'll get darker skin.
So you're both right, in a sense. In the short term, where you live doesn't really matter. But in the very, very long term, it does. | [
"Skin colour is a polygenic trait, which means that several different genes are involved in determining a specific phenotype. Many genes work together in complex, additive, and non-additive combinations to determine the skin colour of an individual. The skin colour variations are normally distributed from light to ... |
What drives the molecular change in catalytic enzymes? | > tight conformation the ADP & Pi
That's pretty much the idea. The ADP and Pi are pushed so close together (in just the right conformation) that they can't help but react. | [
"Majority of the enzymes are proteins and they speeds up the rate of biochemical reactions by decreasing the activation energy. During the process enzymes combines with the substrate and convert it into product. Enzymes may have single or multiple substrate binding sites (catalytic site). As substrate concentration... |
Watching Cosmos...questions about light...brain hurts! | 1) All light moves at the same speed in space. Period. The redshift is the change of *wavelength* of light. In the electromagnetic spectrum, light has different frequencies/wavelengths, but not speeds. Maybe someone can elaborate.
2) [Inverse square law](_URL_0_). A certain amount of light is emitted from a star. As that light gets further and further the same amount of light is covering much more area in space (like the surface of a sphere). So when it hits us it is effectively diluted. The sun is close so it hasn't spread its light out and is still bright.
3) On a microscopic level everything is bumpy so light hits it and is spread out, but on flat surfaces you can get most the light to reflect one way because more of the area the light hits (even on a microscopic level) is facing the same way. But light does bounce off in a straight line with a specific angle that you can measure.
| [
"The observation of light flashes by the astronauts brought attention to the possible effects of HZE nuclei on brain function. The microlesion concept, which considered the effects of the column of damaged cells surrounding the path of an HZE nucleus traversing critical regions of the brain, originated at this time... |
If you flash freeze water, will it still expand in the same way as 'normal', gradual freezing? | Water will expand regardless of how it is frozen; however, what changes is the size of the average ice crystal. When you slow freeze water it tends to build one giant crystal over time since water can slowly collect and arrange itself to form a unified solid. When you flash freeze each water molecule basically has to grab the nearest neighbor and as a result the average ice crystal tends to be significantly smaller since they don't have enough time to diffuse and order itself.
Now as far as the biological side of this I remember hearing about it a long time ago because my sister did her master's work on this topic, but I sorta tuned it out since I lean towards the physics side of the science spectrum instead of the bio side. Not enough math for my interest. :)
It could have something to do with the formation of large ice crystal can also cause sharp ice to form which can tear tissues. But this is just conjecture so I'll defer to someone who is a little more knowledgeable on the subject. | [
"Another case of this phenomenon is the event of super-cooling, where the water is cooled to below freezing temperatures but does not immediately begin to freeze. Under the same conditions as before, the flow is developed. Afterward, the temperature of the right wall is decreased to −10 °C. This causes the water at... |
why is it better to eat actual sources of protein (eggs, fish, meat etc.) than consume protein powder? | It isn't the protein itself that is bad. It is the other stuff that comes with it. You aren't consuming pure protein when using that powder, and a lot of that is things like instant milk which contains oxidized cholesterol, which is very very very bad. And there are many more issues, such as your body requiring certain balances of things in order to absorb the protein properly. When you eat things like meat, the meat itself comes with things like specific minerals and vitamins and amino acids that your body needs so that the protein can be used properly. They always say that animal meat is 'complete' protein.
Generally speaking, it is always better to eat natural things over artificial things. Protein powder is a good supplement, not a replacement. | [
"Whole grains and cereals are another source of proteins. However, these tend to be limiting in the amino acid lysine or threonine, which are available in other vegetarian sources and meats. Examples of food staples and cereal sources of protein, each with a concentration greater than 7.0%, are (in no particular or... |
how long does it take to be a professor? | Depends largely on the school, faculty, and discipline.
The typical route is:
- Undergraduate (bachelor's).
- Postgrad (Master's).
- PhD.
- Lecturing and getting published.
- Getting tenure.
- Associate Professor.
- Professor.
Timescales vary - a bachelors and a masters can take anywhere between 5 and 10 years to do, depending on whether it's done full time, and by thesis or coursework. A lot of places also count first class honours in a bachelor's as part credit towards a masters.
PhD is typically 3-7 years, again depending on how you do it and what the research and publishing is based on.
Tenure usually takes about ten years to get between lecturing and getting published. As academics get more senior, their role usually shifts to less teaching, and more getting publications and grants for their faculty.
Associate professorship to full professorship largely depends on the school and the discipline. I'd say 5-10 years on average between one and the other. | [
"Total duration of the course is 4 years + one year compulsory internship during this period the professional examinations that is one at the end of each academic year, are conducted by the university. After passing the final professional examination it is compulsory to undergo one-year rotatory internship, Degree ... |
when a mosquito is sucking blood from my arm, where does its proboscis go after i kill it? | you probably pull it out when you brush the body away. otherwise it's still in there. not a big deal, though. the things are as thin as hair and your body has ways of dealing with stuff like that. | [
"The infective stage called sporozoites released from the salivary glands through the proboscis of the mosquito enter the bloodstream during feeding. The mosquito saliva contains antihemostatic and anti-inflammatory enzymes that disrupt blood clotting and inhibit the pain reaction. Typically, each infected bite con... |
Why do nuclear armed countries need such massive investment in conventional military? | I dabbled in nuclear strategy, tactics, and the general science of nuclear warfare a few years back, so let me try to answer.
I'm going to assume based on your comments and questions that you're exclusively asking about the United States, but this probably applies to most nuclear weapons states with significant conventional forces.
Nuclear weapons are tremendously powerful, but lack granularity and staying power. They are fine as strategic deterrents and powerful battlefield weapons, but their utility largely ends there. Modern conventional militaries allow nations to engage in (comparatively) more subtle military actions such as invasion and occupation of non-nuclear states, anti-piracy efforts, gunboat diplomacy and showing the flag, and as aid during disasters. Many nuclear powers are also major conventional powers because they have an interest in these missions, and generally in possessing more subtle forms of power projection than a nuclear strike.
Another major reason is probably a political one - not only is a professional army seen as mandatory for a nation-state by the general public, but disbanding a large military would be unpopular among unemployed bureaucrats and soldiers. When you examine how many citizens are employed by the PLA or DoD, it becomes clear that the elimination of those agencies would be controversial to say the least.
But you have realized something important - the nuclear weapon is a potentially liberating tool from the need to support a massive defensive establishment due to the unacceptable political cost (not to mention damage) of being struck by one. States like North Korea and Israel clearly agree, as shown by their actions. | [
"The designing, testing, producing, deploying, and defending against nuclear weapons is one of the largest expenditures for the nations which possess nuclear weapons. In the United States during the Cold War years, between \"one quarter to one third of all military spending since World War II [was] devoted to nucle... |
Chicago Footnote Help | Yikes, those are the tricky ones.
Okay gov't documents, you sort of cite it like any other books, but you usually include the volumes. Let's look at the gov't docs I used for my own research from the Pennsylvania Archives
Pennsylvanian, Commonwealth of. *Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, from the Organization to the Termination of the Proprietary Government. Colonial Records of Pennsylvania.* 10 vols. Philadelphia and Harrisburg: Theophilius Fenn & Co., 1852.
The author here is the state (since there isn't a given author), according the latest edition of Chicago. Include the title and series name. Volume number. Publisher, etc.
Now, the other ones. If I understand you correctly, if you're using a quoted source within another source, then you need to state that you're using an indirect quote.
Name, of Author, "Their Letter," in *Encyclopedia* and then give the rest of the citation for the encyclopedia. Repeat as needed. I think [this](_URL_0_) page might be of some service to you.
I think you can do that for the last one too, but I'm wary of suggesting that as I'm pretty sure it's kind of frowned upon to quote three different sources. Is this for an exercise?
| [
"This is a bibliography of selected publications on the history of Chicago. For most topics, the easiest place to start is Janice L. Reiff, et al. eds. \"The Encyclopedia of Chicago\" (2004), which has thorough coverage by leading scholars in 1120pp of text and many illustrations. It does not include biographies. I... |
the drug enforcement administration (dea) | The DEA is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Justice tasked with enforcing federal laws (primarily the Controlled Substances Act) on the use, manufacture, and smuggling of drugs in the United States. In some ways like the FBI, the DEA has "special agents" who they employ and who must pass a rigorous background check—if an applicant has *ever* used drugs, they are excluded from employment by the DEA. These special agents investigate, arrest, and detain drugs and those suspected of selling drugs.
In states where medical marijuana dispensaries are legal under state law, the DEA has been enforcing federal drug laws to shut them down. In the past, the federal government has been reluctant to enforce federal drug laws in states which chose to legalize medical marijuana. Pro-MMJ advocates say that the federal government has no authority to regulate the use and sale of medical marijuana that is fully within the state's borders. More broadly, the argument is that federal drug policy towards marijuana is shutting down legitimate businesses that help sick people, and that treating users and sellers of medical marijuana in states where it is legal like they are criminals is enormously bad policy. | [
"The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) () is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within the United States. The DEA is the lead agency for domestic enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act, shari... |
How did Taffy 3 actually pull off the defense of the Lette landing force in WWII? | Expanded from [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_3_)
The actions of Kurita at Samar are still somewhat controversial among naval historians. Kurita in theory should have acted with daring given that the *Sho* plan called for a fight to the death, but he vacillated throughout the engagement. On a more tactical level, there is the question of why did *Yamato* and *Nagato* turn northwards at ca. 0755 which pulled the ship away from Taffy 3 and the carriers when the two battleships were relatively undamaged. Second, there is the Kurita's overall withdrawal for the IJN forces at 0920 away from the American escort carriers and transports. Both decisions by Kurita earned him a degree of opprobrium at the time and in the postwar period with one common metaphor employed casting Kurita as Hamlet unable to make a decision until after the die had been cast.
Of the two decisions, the *Yamato* turn is the more explicable. Lookouts had sighted torpedoes from an earlier torpedo attack and Kurita's battleships faced two choices to "fan the torpedoes", a turn to port (north) or starboard (south). The starboard turn would have kept the fleet into contact with Taffy 3 but posed two disadvantages. Firstly, it would have been steaming into the torpedo line, risking a hit. Second, it meant that both battleships were in serious danger of colliding with the battleship *Haruna*, which had been steaming in a line parallel to Kurita's division. This particular aspect of the division's decision is one that only very recently become apparent. Older historiography on Samar such as Morrison tended to place *Haruna* in a different location than more recent work like Robert Lundgren or John Prados which triangulates the battleline more closely using surviving Japanese and American accounts (and note, this still is reasonable conjecture, but still a hypothesis). The officers in charge of the ships' maneuvering instinctively chose the course that minimized damage, with the result that the two most powerful surface units at Samar were now seven miles out of position and its commander lacked even more situational awareness.
This uncertainty shines some light onto Kurita's second turn away from battle. When the US Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) interviewed some of the surviving Japanese naval officers, they gave some inkling that they knew after the battle that the opposing naval force was much smaller than they first thought at the start of the engagement. [*USSBS NO. 170 The Battle off Samar*'s interrogation of Commander Otani Tonosuke](_URL_2_), Operations Officer on the Staff of CinC Second Fleet has a very instructive portion on this very issue and how Japan's lack of air cover contributed to the fog of war:
> Q. What type of carriers did you believe they were?
> A. We gave that question much consideration, but never fully made up our minds. We found ourselves perplexed by your carriers because they did not correspond to their photographs, and first we thought that they were regular carriers; but after the battle, we decided that they were auxiliary or converted carriers. Also we received word from the tops that there was another formation, and at that time we wondered if we were not confronted by 12 or 13 carriers in all; but this was not ascertained on the bridge.
> Q. Was there any attempt to engage in battle with the second group?
> A. First, we would encounter the first group, and then take on the second.
> Q. What damage did you inflict upon the first group you engaged?
> A. One carrier sunk, one light cruiser, one heavy cruiser and one destroyer. There was some confusion between the high gunnery control platform and the bridge. There may have been a repeat report which was understood as two carriers sunk; the bridge concluded that one carrier was sunk. Again from later reports which may have contained duplication, we concluded that we had sunk four carriers, two or three cruisers and two or three destroyers. That was the total result of the day. I now think this is rather accurate, and from a report of search planes at about 1100, we received information that one battleship was severely damaged and dead in the water.
As Commander Otani's interrogation made clear, the IJN's attempt to ascertain the reality of the combat situation was made difficult by the reliance upon visual sightings from surface ships and the constant Allied air attacks on Kurita's fleet. [Kurita's USSBS interview](_URL_0_) likewise suggested that visual surface sightings were inadequate to give the IJN admiral a proper estimate of the situation:
> Q. What type of aircraft carriers were the American carriers present? Were they the ESSEX or ENTERPRISE class? Did you recognize them?
> A. I don't remember. Starboard bridge structure was all I could tell. There wasn't enough visibility nor adequate reports from the scouting planes.
Although he was not available for a USSBS interview because of his foolhardy Kamikaze mission. Admiral Ugaki Matome's diary entries for the Leyte battles also notes that Allied air attacks and poor Japanese reconnaissance doomed Japan's efforts to throw back the Leyte invasion. Although Ukagi's diary took Kurita to task for confusing orders, he placed a good deal of blame for Japan's defeat on the inability of the Philippine's airbases to provide the surface fleet any form of cover or information. His 24 October entry noted that:
> Unless we get enough cooperation from our base air forces, we can do nothing about [concentrated American air attacks], and all of our fighting strength will be reduced to nothing at the end. In such case we should perish by fighting an air battle, hoping it to be a decisive one.
Once the gravity of the defeat off of Samar sank in, Ugaki's 25 October entry pinned responsibility for failure "in some respect to [the operation's] planning, [but] mostly to the extreme inactivity of the base air forces. Probably hindered by bad weather." One of the themes of Ugaki's remaining entries for October and November was lambasting Japan's lackluster efforts to produce as many aircraft as possible to turn back the Allied tide.
Although Kurita asserted in his interview that he did not expect air cover from land-based aircraft, Ugaki's diary entry indicates that at least some IJN officers expected an effort to be made by land-based planes. Otani placed a great deal of onus on the *Sho* operation's failure to poor coordination between Kurita and Japanese air assets:
> Q. Where do you think this whole operation broke down? Why did it fail?
> A. I feel that from the very beginning that the cooperation between the Task Force (OZAWA) and the Surface Force (KURITA) and the land-based Air Force was bad from the beginning.
> Q. What do you feel caused this poor coordination?
> A. Coordination between the Surface Force and the (carrier) Task Force was almost impossible due to the restrictions on communication and the need for radio silence; therefore, the plans for cooperation were not carried out. This lack of information from OZAWA was one of the main factors in the failure of the operation, but perhaps the biggest factor was the lack of protection from our land-based air against your (carrier) Task Force. I feel also that the original plan was too complex and inflexible to work properly.
In this context, Japanese commanders focused much less on the small size of Sprague's CVEs and instead more on the number of failures of Japanese planning and execution as the reasons for defeat. The effectiveness of the CVE's air attacks, which Otani observed were some of the most effective air strikes despite their small size, further underscored the disadvantages of surface ships operating in an environment where the enemy held complete air superiority. Combined Fleet CinC Admiral Toyoda Soemu's [USSBS interview](_URL_1_) defended Kurita's actions to retire because of this material disparity:
> Q. Under the circumstances as they are now known, in your opinion what that decision of KURITA to turn back a correct one?
> A. Looking back on it now, I think that withdrawal was not a mistake. At the time I did not have and Combined Fleet Headquarters did not have information regarding the details of the engagement. Later, when we learned that Admiral HALSEY's Task Force was further south than we thought it was, I believe that Admiral KURITA then would have been within the range of air attack from your Task Force, so that it was not unwise for him to have turned back at that time.
> Q. You would not criticize his action now in turning back?
> A. I would not criticize.
While some zealots like Ugaki saw defeat as an urgent reminder for Japan to redouble her war efforts to achieve victory (upon hearing of Hiroshima his 7 August entry expressed a wish that Japan should develop an atomic bomb of her own), other IJN officers adapted a more fatalistic attitude towards the war. | [
"Taffy 3 came under attack from a much heavier Japanese force under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, provoking the Battle off Samar. Sprague promptly pleaded for assistance from Halsey, who was responsible for protecting the northern approach to the landing site. Halsey had contemplated detaching a battle group, Task For... |
What lies behind the military success of the Ottoman Empire in the period from the 1400s to the 1600s, and would they have fared equally well against western European powers? | A search brought up [this](_URL_0_) post, which mentions the importance of gunpowder and speaks of "superiority of Ottoman weaponry". Could someone elaborate on that? How advanced were the Ottomans in the field of weaponry, how big of a role did that play and why did it not matter at later lost battles like Vienna? | [
"Strengthened by the Peace of Westphalia and the Industrial Revolution, European powers regrouped and challenged Ottoman dominance. Owing largely to poor leadership, archaic political norms, and an inability to keep pace with technological progress in Europe, the Ottoman Empire could not respond effectively to Euro... |
How did tyrannosaurus drink water? | T. rex probably drank like most birds, by bending down and taking a mouthful of water, then tilting its head back to allow the water to run down its throat. Tyrannosaurus also has a ling and heavy tail that can be used as counter weight when it leans forward. | [
"The Tyrannosaurus rex then emerged from a waterfall coming from broken pipes in front of the raft, and lunged down to grab the raft, which escaped by plunging down an drop into a tropical lagoon outside the Environmental Systems Building. A Dilophosaurus made a final attempt to squirt \"venom\" (water) at the pass... |
Does negative mass repel objects?
| Negative mass is *completely* hypothetical. Your question is like asking "do unicorns like to eat carrots?". If unicorns existed there's a chance that they would like carrots, but, unicorns don't exist, so it's not a useful thing to think about. If negative mass existed, then yes it might have the property of repelling other objects. But the question doesn't contain any physics at all. | [
"Bondi pointed out that a negative mass will fall toward (and not away from) \"normal\" matter, since although the gravitational force is repulsive, the negative mass (according to Newton's law, F=ma) responds by accelerating in the opposite of the direction of the force. Normal mass, on the other hand, will fall a... |
What makes salt flat so flat? | Lakes are very low energy environments. So while the hole in the topography they filled will have been irregular, over the long periods (thousands, perhaps even up to millions of years) that the lake is present, fine sediment gets settled out relatively evenly across the basin. The builds up a flat bottom. Once the water is evaporated, you're then left with a salt flat. | [
"The salt flat encompasses , is about long and wide, which makes it the third largest in the world, after Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia (). and Salinas Grandes in Argentina (). Its average elevation is about 2,300 m above sea level. The topography of the core portion of the \"salar\" exhibits a high level of roughness,... |
How is Gavrilo Princip viewed in Serbia today? | Although this question is likely violating the 20 year, the WWI centennial has caused some focus on the expressions of commemorations and historical memory. NPR had a good report, [*The Shifting Legacy Of The Man Who Shot Franz Ferdinand*](_URL_1_) and *Smithsonian* magazine had an article in 2000 ["Searching for Gavrilo Princip](_URL_0_) that takes a long view of Princip's legacy. | [
"In May 2008, then ICTY-imprisoned Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Šešelj compared Jovanović with the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, saying “he would enjoy the same fame and glory that Gavrilo Princip has in Serbian history”.\n",
"Under the Beli Orlovi gather not only the ordinary Serbian fans, but a... |
how would brass instruments be different if they were made from different metals such as steel? | The timbre would be slightly different, and they would be much harder and more expensive to manufacture.
We already have some instruments that are made in different metals - one example that comes to my mind is the flute. Leaving aside wooden types and thinking only of modern flutes with keys and all that, it's very classy and good-sounding to make a flute out of solid silver. It's also expensive as hell. A less expensive and less good-sounding option is a silver-plated brass flute, and the budget option is made from (I think) nickel-plated brass.
But the flute is straight, and the brass instruments are all bendy. One of the reasons brass instruments are made from brass is that it's soft enough to bend the tubes reasonably easily. I saw an episode of "How It's Made" about brass instruments, and it was pretty fascinating. If the tubes were made of steel, it would be harder to bend them, and the bells and such would be harder to spin (although it could be done).
And I have seen (and even played for about five minutes) a silver cornet - it sounded beautiful.
Another thing to think about is that any kind of steel which is ductile enough to bend well is also going to be prone to rust - and playing brass puts a LOT of moisture into the tubes.
Long story short, brass is easy to work with, comparatively inexpensive, resistant to corrosion, and traditional. There are other options, but they are much more expensive, although they do sound lovely. | [
"Alternatives to brass include other alloys containing significant amounts of copper or silver. These alloys are biostatic due to the oligodynamic effect, and thus suppress growth of molds, fungi or bacteria. Brass instruments constructed from stainless steel or aluminium have good sound quality but are rapidly col... |
what is the point of unmarked police cars if they are still very easily spotted? | This is a form of confirmation bias sometimes known as the toupée fallacy. Take the following sentence:
> All toupées look fake; I've never seen one that I couldn't tell was fake.
Such a phrase can only be said about bad toupées — ones that look fake — and not actually all toupées. Put simply, if you saw a convincing one you wouldn't have noticed it, because you think it isn't one.
| [
"Unmarked vehicles are used primarily for sting operations or apprehending criminals without alerting them to their presence. Some police forces use unmarked or minimally marked cars for traffic law enforcement, since drivers slow down at the sight of marked police vehicles and unmarked vehicles make it easier for ... |
how come man made light (leds, etc) can't really replicate the way the sun or fire lights up stuff? | The Sun and an incandescent bulb both produce light based on the same principle of [thermal radiation](_URL_2_) - the spectrum of thermal radiation depends on the temperature of the object generating it - see for example [here](_URL_0_). The surface of the Sun is at around 5800K, while the tungsten filament in an incandescent bulb heats up to around 3000K.
They both produce a full spectrum of light, but with a different distribution across the wavelengths, which we perceive as a shift in the color of the light - an incandescent light will produce a warmer light than the Sun, due to its lower temperature.
However using thermal radiation is not a very efficient way of generating light for illumination, as a lot of the energy is wasted generating light outside the visible part of the spectrum (between 400 and 700 nm on the graph above) - especially in the infrared (IR) part above 700nm which you can feel as the heat radiating from the incandescent bulb (or the Sun).
The alternatives like LEDs and fluorescent lights use different phenomena which generate light with much more narrow spectrum, often with one or several distinct narrow peaks around certain wavelengths (a typical fluorescent spectrum might look like [this](_URL_4_)) - but without much energy being wasted outside the visible spectrum.
So really the fact that energy efficient light is not full spectrum is a feature - it is what makes it energy efficient. We don't really currently have an energy efficient process that can generate only the full visible part of the spectrum. We cheat by combining different specific methods (gases, phosphors, etc.) that each produce a peak of light at one specific wavelength to fill in as much of the visible spectrum as we can (an example spectrum from such "full spectrum" fluorescent bulb looks like [this](_URL_1_))
The reason this works reasonably well is that human vision is not actually capable of sensing the full visible spectrum either - we have what is called tri-chromatic vision, with only 3 types of cells (cones) in the eye, each capable of [detecting light in a relatively narrow range of wavelengths](_URL_3_) - typically identified as red, green and blue. So if your source of light can generate some wavelengths in all 3 areas, it will appear as reasonably white to us - although there will be noticeable differences in certain colors illuminated by any light that is not full spectrum. You can see the 3 main peaks in the fluorescent spectrum I linked above around 440, 550 and 610 nm) | [
"Some light painters make their own dedicated devices to create light trails over the photo background; this can include computer-controlled devices like the Pixelstick. These devices are often Arduino-controlled LED arrays that can render images that could not be made by drawing in the air with a single light sour... |
Why 1^∞ is undetermined? Why is it not 1? | It needs to be reminded that infinity isn't directly a number but rather a concept of numbers going on forever, depending on the infinity, 1 can be affected in a different way compared to real numbers. It's like trying to do 2^Pineapple. It's just not going to work because we don't know directly what pineapple is and if it can actually be substituted as a number.
As for 0*Infinity, similar to the above statement, you can't multiply a number by a number that might not actually be a number, trying to multiply, add, subtract, divide, power, root etc. of anything that's not directly a number is complex stuff and even makes my brain hurt sometimes. Overall, infinity needs to be treated as a concept rather than a direct number because infinity can be multiple different types of numbers as there are many types of infinities. | [
"Similarly, the casual use of 1/0 = ∞ is invalid, since the transfer principle applies to the statement that division by zero is undefined. The rigorous counterpart of such a calculation would be that if ε is a non-zero infinitesimal, then 1/ε is infinite.\n",
"Since the remainders decrease with every step but ca... |
the us system of government | The US Government is best viewed as 3 branches.
The executive branch is in charge of carrying out laws and running the government's operations. The President is the head of the executive branch. He is elected by the people.
The legislative branch is in charge of making laws. Congress (the Senate and the House of Representatives) is the legislative branch. Senators and Representatives are elected by the people.
The judicial branch is in charge of resolving disputes and challenges to laws or government actions. The Supreme Court is the head of the judicial branch. The Supreme Court is appointed by the President, subject to Congress's agreement.
All three branches have checks and balances that make it hard for another branch to sieze power. Each branch has a way to override another branch's powers.
The President can veto a law passed by Congress. The President also appoints Supreme Court justices. Congress can override a President's veto, with a 2/3 majority. Congress can override a Supreme Court decision, by passing a constitutional amendment (with help from the state governments). Congress can also impeach (kick out) the President or a Supreme Court justice. The Supreme Court can strike down a law passed by Congress, and can prohibit the President from doing certain things.
That's how it works! | [
"State governments of the United States are institutional units in the United States exercising some of the functions of government at a level below that of the federal government. Each state's government holds legislative, executive, and judicial authority over a defined geographic territory. The United States com... |
Does honey contain protease? | "Protease" isn't just one substance - there are many enzymes that can cleave proteins. (They're proteins, too, but generally don't contain sequences that they're vulnerable to themselves!) Honey has very little protein in it, only about 0.5%. I haven't been able to find out if any of that protein is, in fact, any sort of protease enzyme, but I also wouldn't expect any enzymes in honey to be in any sort of properly folded state, since the water content is so low. So they'd be expected to be inactive, even if present.
Just out of curiosity, why do you ask the question? | [
"Antibacterial properties of honey are the result of the low water activity causing osmosis, hydrogen peroxide effect, and high acidity. The combination of high acidity, hygroscopic, and antibacterial effects have led to honey's reputation as a plausible way to mummify a human cadaver, despite lack of concrete evid... |
when someone asks if i've seen a particular movie or not, most of the time i can answer yes or no with extreme accuracy, so why can i not accurately remember every movie i've ever seen when not prompted with a title? | Psychological term called priming. When you hear something your brain activates or "primes" related topics. Hearing the title of a movie usually activates the memories associated with that movie. | [
"\"What we're competing with here is not the real picture but people's memory of it,\" said George Axelrod. \"Hitchcock's film had some brilliant things in it, but as a whole picture you'd have to admit it's pretty creaky. The four or five things people remember from the original receive a homage in our version - w... |
if women make up near equal percent of gamers, why are more games not being directed at female or neutral gender audience | because these statistics count in people playing farmville, candy crush and the like.
if you leave casual games out the audience is much more male dominated. | [
"Although men and women play roughly the same number of games, there is a stereotype that women are not considered ¨True Gamers¨ because they tend to play more casual games which do not require much skill and dedication. This stereotype exists due to the fact that at a professional level, most of the teams competin... |
if exercising makes your heart stronger why are amphetamines and anxiety bad for your hear? | Increasing you heart rate is like a car going faster: through exercise is like using the gas pedal normally to control the acceleration of the car; amphetamines, anxiety, drugs like cocaine is like your car going off a cliff to go faster. You’re going faster, but you’re probably going to die in the end.
Cheers. | [
"Amphetamine is a stimulant that has been found to improve both physical and cognitive performance. Amphetamine blocks the reuptake of dopamine and norepinephrine, which delays the onset of fatigue by increasing the amount of dopamine, despite the concurrent increase in norepinephrine, in the central nervous system... |
Why don’t former Italian colonies, such as Libya and Somalia, speak Italian? | I'm just going to respond regarding Somalia, since I'm not as well read regarding Libya and other Italian colonial territories.
The short answer to your question is that Italy's footprint in Somalia was light for most of its colonial history, and just as the Italians were ramping up assimilation efforts, WWII came along and stripped the colony from them.
The area became a protectorate of Italy in 1888 when Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid of the Majeerteen Sultanate signed a treaty with Italy. Kenadid's rival and neighbor, Sultan Boqor Osman Mahamuud of the Sultanate of Hobyo, signed a similar deal the next year, forming a continuous territory.
It was not, in some ways, a traditional colony at first in that the Italians had limited interest in most of the arid Somalian landscape - they were mostly interested in the strategically important ports on the shore, which gave them access to the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden.
The Italians provided arms and money to the sultans in return for this protectorate status, but they held little direct control beyond their coastal strip. Even here, the Italian population was mostly military officers and colonial officials, with few settlers.
It wasn't until the early 1930s that a two successive Italian Governors - Guido Corni and Maurizio Rava - started actively trying to assimilate the Somalis into Italian culture. The Italians began to build out hospitals and schools around the capital, Mogadishu, around this time, and more Italians began to arrive as permanent settlers. By 1930, there were 22,000 Italians living in Mogadishu and its immediate surrounding territory, but they were still a light footprint on the ground.
By 1935 that number had grown to 50,000 Italians settlers, 20,000 of who lived in Mogadishu, representing just under half of the city's population. Over the course of the colonial governance of the territory, the succession of sultans which controlled much of the inland territory occasionally proved disloyal, and over time the Italians started taking more and more direct control of the hinterlands of the territory as a way of ensuring better control.
If things had continued like this for a few more decades it's very likely that Italian language and culture would have become inculcated, at least around the coastal areas where Italian presence was heaviest, but Italy joined the Axis during WWII. They lost Somalia to a British attack in the spring of 1941. After the war the UN made the colony a trusteeship, and it was granted independence in the 1960s.
When Siad Barre became president of Somalia in 1969, he enforced a policy of promoting the Somali language and enforcing it in government use. He adopted a new Latin alphabet for the language. Somali was the only language allowed to be taught in schools. His stated reason was to erase the gap between those who fluently spoke Italian and English and those who did not, as well as to help foster a thriving Somali culture.
As to the Italian colonists, some started leaving after WWII, but the exodus picked up after independence. There were several anti-Italian riots in Mogadishu around this time in which multiple Italians were killed. Many returned to Italy or migrated to the US, though there was still a small Italian population in the city through the 1990s.
**Sources:**
* Barrington, Lowell, After Independence: "Making and Protecting the Nation in Postcolonial and Postcommunist States."
* Baker, Bruce. "Escape from Domination in Africa: Political Disengagement & Its Consequences." | [
"Although Italy also had some colonial possessions before World War II, its language did not remain official after the end of the colonial domination. As a result, Italian outside of Italy and Switzerland is now spoken only as a minority language by immigrant communities in North and South America and Australia. In... |
what does alzheimers do to the brain? if a "cure" was invented would it help current sufferers remember? | As I understand it, Alzheimer's causes proteins to take the wrong shape in the brain. To put this in context the majority of proteins need to be the right shape in order to work.
For instance, enzyme's are used to break down your food much more quickly. Biologists describe the process using either the lock and key model, where only one shape of key can fit into a lock, or the hand in glove, where the enzyme changes shape to fit the hand. If what is required to be broken down doesn't fit nothing happens.
The protein in question is required for brain repair, as you age every part of your body slowly gets damaged and without the ability to repair you quickly accumulate damage.
That's about as simple as I can get it, if anybody can improve upon that please do. | [
"The treatment will depend on the cause of memory loss, but various drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease have been suggested in recent years. There are four drugs currently approved by the FDA for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, and they all act on the cholinergic system: Donepezil, Galantamine, Rivastigmine, and Tacri... |
how does a ship force a submarine to leave an area? | The only thing a submarine has is stealth. It uses the depths, different thermal layers and silent operations to hide in the background ocean noise.
Getting detected means the submarine is pretty much a sitting duck. It reflects either a mistake made by the submarine crew, or the skills of the surface fleet at anti submarine warfare. Attack submarines following or monitoring enemy fleets, even during peace time is common.
When they get detected, enemy attack subs do things like blast their sonar, surface ships and aircraft drop sonar buoys over the location of the detected submarine. So the detected submarine gets chased away, and will most likely try to follow again without getting detected again. | [
"The crew submerges the vessel by opening vents in the top of the ballast tanks and opening valves in the bottom. This lets water flood into the tank as air escapes through the top vents. As air escapes from the tank, the vessel's buoyancy decreases, causing it to sink. For the submarine to surface, the crew shuts ... |
If East Asians invented movable type well before Gutenberg, why didn't it take off as well as it did in Europe? Was it because of the number of characters? Economics? What? | I know there are some excellent 'asia-specialists' on here who can probably answer your question more completely, but I figured I'd just get things started.
I believe the social structure in China prevented the widespread use of the printed word. In China there was a far bigger devision between poor workers/farmers and the governing elite. There was no 'middle class' which was developing in Europe at the time printing was on the rise there.
This means there were less people to produce books (middle class people produced books on fasion, etiquette, the best ways to trade, make clothing etc) and less people to produce books for. (simply not enough people who can read.
I would also add the fact that right at the time when printing was coming up in Europe, the reformation happened, which was the biggest religious conflict the continent has ever seen. Both sides used print as a weapon, which made sure that a lot of texts were produced.
(source: Europe, a cultural history by Peter Rietbergen.)
Edit: As one of you correctly pointed out. I misrepresented my source. The source I mentioned describes in great detail the development of print in Europe. The comment about Chinese social structure is not from this work. My apologies for the inaccurateness. | [
"For example,authoritative historians Frances Gies and Joseph Gies claimed that \"The Asian priority of invention movable type is now firmly established, and that Chinese-Korean technique, or a report of it traveled westward is almost certain.\" However, Joseph P.McDermott claimed that \"No text indicates the prese... |
how can a pc game be developed for years? don't the constantly emerging new hardware capabilities far outrun what the game (engine) started out with? | There is a lot to a game besides it's interaction with hardware, essentially everything about game design is independent of hardware, save for things like user interface or graphics.
But you can write an entire game which outputs with blocky models and low resolution textures in a boring 3D world, but then relatively easily replace all those with better models/textures/lighting later in development without a huge cost. Add to that the fact that most development machines are very powerful and you have a situation where it's not hard to develop with the expectation that hardware will be able to do more in 2-3 years. | [
"Most modern PC or console games take from one to three years to complete., where as a mobile game can be developed in a few months. The length of development is influenced by a number of factors, such as genre, scale, development platform and number of assets.\n",
"The dawn of the 1990s saw a fundamental shift i... |
what is it that causes cysts/spots to rupture with such force? | The spot is visible because of pressure build up so when you pop the skin the small amount of pressure that there is, forces the gunk out. With toothpaste the only pressure comes from your fingers so it will come out as hard as you squeeze | [
"After a surface is initially affected by cavitation, it tends to erode at an accelerating pace. The cavitation pits increase the turbulence of the fluid flow and create crevices that act as nucleation sites for additional cavitation bubbles. The pits also increase the components' surface area and leave behind resi... |
Good sources for an essay on Pompey? | So this period is the most documented in Roman history. The primary sources are vast. Plutarch's Life of Pompey's already been mentioned, but Pompey comes up in several Lives. Cicero discusses Pompey in numerous letters, and gave several speeches specifically addressing Pompey (De Imperio, for instance). Caesar wrote a history of his war against Pompey. After that, the imperial historians chime in - Appian's *Civil Wars*, Cassius Dio, the fragments of Diodorus Siculus. All of these are free in English on the internet if you look for them. You could make a career of studying the primary sources for Pompey.
And then there's the legacy. His son Sextus was a pain in the ass for Octavian for quite a while. He gets a good reception in Virgil, and I'm sure there's more out there. Depending how far you want to take it you might get as far as Shakespeare.
Good luck! | [
"Montaigne's \"Essays\" draw extensively on Plutarch's \"Moralia\" and are consciously modelled on the Greek's easygoing and discursive inquiries into science, manners, customs and beliefs. \"Essays\" contains more than 400 references to Plutarch and his works.\n",
"Foucault has frequently been criticized by hist... |
why are people scared by and fascinated with seemingly supernatural occurences? | Basically? Evolution. Back in the day (the era of evolutionary adaptation) our ancestors that heard noises in the dark and assumed the worst (that must be a predator!) outlived the ones that just went back to bed. Long story short, we confuse correlation for causation, and draw connections where there are none. | [
"The cause of the accident is still a mystery and, years later, nobody dares to step a foot in the town for fear of what lies there. There have been numerous reports of strange creatures and a dark, brooding fog within the town. Some locals who believe in the supernatural say that there lurks an ever-present force ... |
why does cheating in a sport, i.e. the biogenesis scandal, deserve a 4 year prison sentence? | It doesn't necessarily. However, falsely posing as a doctor and distributing a controlled substance, in this case testosterone, is a crime. Similarly, winning a game by murdering the entire other team would also likely give you a lengthy prison sentence, but not on account of cheating to win. | [
"Corruption in tennis has been long considered as issue. In 2011, the former world No. 55 Austrian tennis player, Daniel Koellerer, became the first tennis player to be banned for life for attempting to fix matches. The violations were outstanding between October 2009 and July 2010 after The Tennis Integrity Units ... |
how do aircraft stabilizers actually "stabilize" the aircraft? | Aircraft wings create a force perpendicular to the chord of the wing, called Lift. They also create a nose down torque. Both of these change with airspeed.
To keep the wings from rotating forward you can either:
1) apply an upward force ahead of the wings by using a small set of wings called a canard. This was the configuration of the Wright Flyer, and is more efficient, but is also difficult to design because the aircraft will tend to be dynamically unstable in pitch.
2) sweep the wings/ delta configuration
3) apply a downward force behind the main plane by using an tailplane. This is less efficient because the aerodynamic force is downwards, meaning that the main plane has to lift the weight of the aircraft + the downward force from the tailplane. However, this is inherently dynamically stable.
Most aircraft are of the latter design; modern airliners reduce the inefficiency, which ultimately equates to higher fuel burn, by pumping fuel into the tail so that the downward force required is kept to a minimum.
Tailplanes also help to damp out short term pitch oscillations, and provide a convenient way for the pilot to change the angle of attack of the wings in order to manoeuvre the aircraft. | [
"Another role of a horizontal stabilizer is to provide longitudinal static stability. Stability can be defined only when the vehicle is in trim; it refers to the tendency of the aircraft to return to the trimmed condition if it is disturbed. This maintains a constant aircraft attitude, with unchanging pitch angle r... |
Historians, what do you think the North Korean people were told about WWII? | We actually don't have to speculate too much about it. While we don't have access to everything that's been written or published within North Korea, South Korea has a ministry that collects North Korean publications and media, and both Korean and Western scholars have been able to establish what the dominant narrative in North Korean culture has become. While it's frustrating not to have every detail, it's fairly obvious how and why that narrative has come to exist.
**What the North Koreans are told:** Kim il-Sung and his band of freedom fighters bravely forced the Japanese to relinquish the Korean peninsula, conducting brilliant attacks from a secret base on the sacred Mount Paektu. During the struggle, the future Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il was born, and he fired at retreating Japanese as early as age three. Sometime in the middle of all this, the freedom fighters also found the time to carve predictions of Kim il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il's eventual greatness into 13,000 trees in the forest surrounding Paektu. The secret base, chairs, cups, and trenches used by Kim il-Sung were miraculously preserved and are available for tour by appointment. When he had time off from slaughtering the Japanese, Kim also wrote several revolutionary operas that are performed in North Korean theaters to this day.
Foreign visitors tend to have problems keeping a straight face on the rare occasions when they're taken to these sites. Some of the more obvious "slogan trees" referenced above were also quietly removed in the late 1990s when a visiting Japanese arborist asked how it was possible for 60-year old carvings to exist on 30-year old trees.
**What actually happened:** This narrative is really only accurate in the sense that Kim il-Sung fought against the Japanese, but I have yet to find any historian -- Korean, Russian, Chinese, or otherwise -- who's argued that he was anything other than a fairly minor figure in a widespread anti-colonial struggle. In fact, he didn't fight in Korea at all, but rather Jiandao province in Manchuria (the northeast portion of China that has a sizable Korean-speaking minority), leading companies and battalions of the Second Corps in what became known as the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. While not the highest-ranked officer in the Corps, he seems to have been competent, and by 1935 the Japanese had put a price on this head. At that point he'd been harassing them for about 4-5 years, and he lasted another 4-5 before things got too hot and he had to run for it. He sat out World War II and the rest of the fight against the Japanese occupation in a Red Army camp in Siberia. Kim Jong-Il was actually born there in 1942, and not in Korea at all.
**Small interjection:** Most of what we know of this period has been constructed from old Soviet, Chinese, and Japanese records, and Kim wasn't sufficiently important to merit mention at every turn. By necessity, there's some guesswork involved, and we don't have as much information as we'd like about Kim's actual record in (X) battle, or when Kim left Manchuria, etc.
By the time Kim returned to Korea with the Red Army in 1945, he'd been out of the country for something like 20 years and spoke Chinese much better than Korean. He was tasked with giving a speech in Pyongyang -- the Soviets were on the lookout for someone they could install in local government to help control the peninsula, and he seemed like a good prospect because he took orders well and had credibility as an anti-Japanese fighter -- and Soviet Koreans not only wrote the speech for him but had to coach him on pronunciation. This was only the first of many speeches he gave, and both these and the initial run of propaganda (again, largely written by other Soviet Koreans) were heavy on gratitude to the Soviets for their assistance in driving the Japanese off the peninsula and the Chinese for having supported the anti-colonial movement.
**How and when this changed (i.e., we have always been at war with Eurasia):** Now, the most interesting thing about North Korean propaganda is tracing how and when it changes (subtly or otherwise) to reflect contemporary political needs. As far as the NK government is concerned, their history is flexible and can be made to serve whatever ideology they need to push at a given time. This has even extended to archaeologists going on the hunt for ancient tombs in central Pyongyang in order to prove the city's classical importance. But that's not really what you're asking about.
Anyway:
- **During the early 1960s and Khrushchev's tenure in Moscow, references to Soviet aid before and during World War II start to vanish from both North Korean history books and records of Kim's speeches.** Why? Because Khrushchev was trying to reform both the Soviet Union and its client states away from the Stalinist model (something to which North Korea was heavily wedded), and he also ridiculed both Mao and Kim's personality cults. While Kim had always been the figure of primary importance in the North Korean narrative concerning World War II, he changed from being the beneficiary of Soviet generosity who used resources wisely to being someone who struggled without any serious help from other nations.
- **References to Chinese aid wax and wane too.** To the best of my knowledge, they, too, have largely vanished from the North Korean narrative of World War II, and they are definitely not acknowledged as the people who were really running the army in which Kim was an officer.
- **Nothing is said of American or Allied involvement in the fight against Japan in the Pacific.** Unfortunately, I don't know what, if anything, is said about the European theater.
- **References to the *juche* doctrine start appearing in Kim il-Sung's speeches about 15-20 years after they were actually given.** IIRC, Kim's actual mention of the doctrine dates to 1961 at the earliest, but *juche* starts showing up everywhere in the mid-1960s to early 1970s. Why? Because Kim Jong-Il was starting to build a power base for himself in the government, and needed a concrete contribution with which to be identified; they couldn't really pass him off as a major freedom fighter when he'd been all of 3 as the war ended. So *juche* was it. The actual architect of the policy was Hwang Jang-Yop, who defected to South Korea in 1997, but Kim Jong-Il expanded on it, wrote papers, essays, and books (or, just as likely, had someone write them for him), and *juche* mysteriously started being peppered in speeches Kim il-Sung had given two decades earlier in order to establish an unbroken line of thought concerning North Korea's need for economic self-reliance. *Juche* is not the only idea to have been given this treatment; in fact, scholars "mined" Kim il-Sung's speeches for pro-capitalist sentiments when the government needed a way to justify its tolerance of private markets in the 1990s and 2000s.
I'm trying and failing to remember if there's anything else that jumps out about North Korean education on World War II, but I think that addresses the most important stuff.
**As a TL:DR,** North Koreans are told that Kim il-Sung conducted a brilliant guerrilla campaign from a secret base on a sacred Korean mountain and that he sent the Japanese packing off the peninsula. They aren't told that he wasn't really a significant figure in the anti-colonial resistance, they aren't told that he never fought in Korea itself, they aren't told that he sat out World War II in Siberia, and whatever they do know about Soviet or Chinese (much less Allied) involvement is severely underplayed where it exists at all. Overall, the North Korean narrative of its own history is whatever the government wants it to be in order to serve a contemporary political need. | [
"On September 17, 1996, the \"New York Times\" reported the possible presence of American POWs in North Korea, citing recently declassified documents. The documents showed that the U.S. Defense Department knew in December 1953 that \"more than 900 American troops were alive at the end of the war but were never rele... |
When the astronauts looked at the earth from the moon, could they see the stars as well? | Considering that the Moon's atmosphere is so tenuous that it might as well not exist (as far as this question is concerned), they actually would have been able to see the stars a lot better than we can here on Earth. Most photos from the Moon (well, from anywhere, really) tend to lack stars because the cameras' exposure times aren't anywhere near long enough to detect objects so faint.
Basically, a longer exposure equals a brighter image - this would reveal the stars if it was long enough, but also completely wash out the Lunar surface. And keep in mind that the human eye is sensitive to a MUCH wider range of luminosities, so stars look brighter to us than they do to cameras. | [
"BULLET::::- The Great Wall of China is not, as is claimed, the only human-made object visible from space or from the Moon. None of the Apollo astronauts reported seeing \"any\" specific human-made object from the Moon, and even Earth-orbiting astronauts can see it only with magnification. City lights, however, are... |
Does a photon have to be absorbed in order for it to have been created in the first place? | A little bit about quantum mechanics that's important to understand:
The real physical object is the wave function. A particle is only the manifestation of the wave function when it gets collapsed (when you observe it).
Therefore, the wave function of the photon exists regardless of wheter it is observed or not ( being absorbed is being observed ). The photon itself only exists when the wave function is collapsed, hence when it gets absorbed. | [
"Photons can also be absorbed by nuclei, atoms or molecules, provoking transitions between their energy levels. A classic example is the molecular transition of retinal (CHO), which is responsible for vision, as discovered in 1958 by Nobel laureate biochemist George Wald and co-workers. The absorption provokes a ci... |
Did ladies really faint all the time in the past? | Well, first of all, we must wave away fiction (as we sadly often have to do...) when it comes to history. The idea of women fainting at the sight of terrible things or even their mention is not as old as history. We have no suggestions (to my knowledge) of medieval French women, ancient Egypt women or Mayan Mesoamerican women fainting at the sight of blood, spiders or hearing that the priest has seduced a local teenager.
Indeed, this occurrence took place mainly in the Victorian area and was a combination of several different things. For it is true, women did feint at regular and irregular occasions during these years but the reasons aren't simply as vague as "the female mind".
Let us start with corsets.
In the nineteenth century (and other time periods) the corset was extremely popular among women who could afford choking and being immobile to look pretty. As such, this was primarily something for bourgeois women and upwards, as female farmers, factory-workers, nurses and what not would find it impossible to work in the corsets of the 19:th century.
Worn around the chest (and thus the lungs and the intestines) corsets were often made out of wool or leather, tightly woven and supported to so called "boning", which were vertically placed "ribs" of a sort made out of whale-bone, ivory or in the cheaper kind, wood. The purpose of the corset has varied, sometimes it's produce a curvier look, sometimes it's to suppress said curvier look. During the Victorian era it was definitely the former.
Girls did not start wearing corsets as they became women (which might seem logical, because that's when you start getting curves) but rather girls started wearing them at a -very- young age. As in, pre-teen age. Take a look at this [nifty commercial](_URL_0_) from the time-period.
So, what happens if you wear something that presses on your chest in general and your ribs in particular for a great part of your life, including growing up when you form said rib-cage? Well, they get permanently displaced, that's what happens. As a result, lungs get compressed, intestines get shoved around, hearts struggle to function properly as the body struggles to function properly.
Eating disorders followed, as there simply wasn't enough room to eat anything but the mere minimal.
------------------------------
With that said, it's highly likely that a lot of the swooning and fainting was put on display. It was simply a fad, it was lady-like, it was proper and it was considered nice. A lady that did not feint and swoon was no lady at all. Finer houses all included a so called 'feint-room', which was a pretty neatly set up room in some distant, silent corner of the big house. It had a feinting couch, soothing light, probably a bit to drink and so on and so forth. It was a social retreat where you could bring one or two friends with you while excusing yourself for a moment.
Additionally, -some- of the wealthier houses could afford a midwife or a doctor to help treat 'hysteria' which was a very common diagnosis at the time. In 1859, physician George Taylor for instance made the claim that 25% of all women suffered from hysteria. Hysteria had several treatments, including high pressure cold showers and other shock-therapies... But the most commonly accepted one was that it stemmed from sexual desire. As such, midwives or doctors could be working around the clock in these "fainting-rooms", offering pelvic massages to women who needed to take a break. As such, there was a pretty decent incentive to suddenly feel a need to feint and withdraw to hang out with your two best friends, have a cup of wine and get some... massage. There are reports of doctors filing complaints of pained wrists and fingers due to having to work with as many patients as they did (once again to underline here, this really was NOT a problem for poor people, who could not afford fainting rooms or doctors to staff them).
The sexual treatment of hysteria lead up to the development and invention of the vibrator who at first required medical personnel to handle but sooner rather than later (to the doctor's great lament!) became hand-held and easy to use on their own. The fad eventually grew out of fashion and the corsets of today are quite comfortable and women seldom feel the need to feint when watching the SAW movies. A more commonly accepted behavior is to gasp or simply avert your eyes when you encounter something shocking.
Sources: *Tystnadens historia* (History of Silence) - Peter Englund (2005)
EDIT: Before we go bananas on corsets, I'd like to underline that 21:th century corsets are fine, even comfortable at times. | [
"In the Victorian era, a variety of conditions which affected women were referred to as \"a case of the vapours\". Ladies' tight corsets could squeeze their internal organs, including the lungs, and could restrict breathing causing the wearer to feel faint and suffer \"the vapours\".\n",
"The following does not i... |
The higgs boson doesn't actually constitute most of the mass to our bodies, right? | You are partially correct. The electron does owe all of it's mass to the Higg's mechanism. However, protons and neutrons are a little bit different as they are composite objects (they are made of quarks). Quarks also have mass, given to them by the higgs mechanism.
But there is a caveat. The up and down quark have (approximately) the same mass...somewhere around 3 MeV/c^2 (I think that's near the upper limit of the u/d quark mass...). Each proton has three "on-shell" quarks, and so we would predict our proton to have a maximum mass of somewhere in the neighbourhood of 9 MeV/c^2. If you look up the actual mass of the proton, you find that the proton weighs ~900 MeV/c^2. So the mass given to the quarks by the Higgs mechanism only adds up to about 10% of the overall proton mass!
It turns out that in general, only 10% (or so) of our mass comes from the Higgs mechanism. The other bit of our mass (and the rest of the proton's mass) comes from what is called quark confinement. The strong nuclear force that holds together the quarks into things like protons and neutrons is incredibly strong (duh!), and some of the energy of that force actually goes into increasing the mass of an object.
So yes and no, the Higgs mechanism **is** responsible for giving us mass, but most of our mass comes from quark confinement in the strong nuclear force.
EDIT: okay, I got off my lazy ass and actually checked out the quark masses. Up quark is around 1-3 MeV/c^2 and down quark mass is 4-6 MeV/c^2. So our proton (two up, one down), would be around 12 MeV/c^2 maximum...still much much less than the actual proton mass... | [
"The Standard Model does not predict the mass of the Higgs boson. If that mass is between 115 and (consistent with empirical observations of ), then the Standard Model can be valid at energy scales all the way up to the Planck scale (10 GeV). Many theorists expect new physics beyond the Standard Model to emerge at ... |
why does the usa seem so obsessed with race more then other countries? | Because of (1) yes slavery and (2) the USA has a more mixed population, with more immigrants from more countries and backgrounds, than nearly any other country. | [
"The construction of race in Latin America is different from, for example, the model found in the United States, possibly because race mixing has been a common practice since the early colonial period, whereas in the United States it has generally been avoided.\n",
"According to sociologist Rodney Stark, few Amer... |
why is it that every lighting bolt is shaped differently? | A lightning strike is basically an electrical charge in the air trying to reach the ground. Electricity always tries to find what's called the *path of least resistance*, or the easiest way down. That's going to vary based on lots of different factors - air pressure, humidity, finding a nice tree or an unwitting golfer to zap... the charge is always [searching for the best path to take](_URL_0_) until it can find the best one and hit ground.
And since there are millions of tiny variations that can affect that path, every lightning bolt will be a little different. | [
"Grid cell activity does not require visual input, since grid patterns remain unchanged when all the lights in an environment are turned off. When visual cues are present, however, they exert strong control over the alignment of the grids: Rotating a cue card on the wall of a cylinder causes grid patterns to rotate... |
how does decriminalization of drugs reduce drug abuse and crime in the countries that have done it? | Decriminalization or legalisation allows drug sales to be more controlled, meaning you know what is going into the drugs and people are more informed about safe drug use. It also means that drug supply can be more easily controlled, and you can more easily limit how much people get. It makes people more likely to seek help if they have drug issues and makes help easier to get. Addiction levels fall, which makes drug related crime fall.
Decriminalization also allows police to focus on more pertinent issues, while also removing the violent crime that goes with illegal drug supply. It also reduces organised crime which is largely funded by drug supply. | [
"There are numerous economic and social impacts of the criminalization of drugs. Prohibition increases crime (theft, violence, corruption) and drug price and increases potency. In many developing countries the production of drugs offers a way to escape poverty. Milton Friedman estimated that over 10,000 deaths a ye... |
why do you continue to try and vomit/dry retch when you have drank to much, even after your stomach contents have completely vacated your body? | The vomiting is your body’s response to an excessive amount of alcohol in your system, not just your digestive tract | [
"Retching (also known as dry heaving) is the reverse movement (retroperistalsis) of the stomach and esophagus without vomiting. It can be caused by bad smell or choking, or by withdrawal from some medications after vomiting stops. Retching can also occur as a result of an emotional response or from stress, which pr... |
do rgb led's have the ability to display a wide range of colors. what causes the color to change, is it the voltage? | An RGB LED is actually 3 LEDs in one package. One each of Red Green and Blue. But changing the intensity of each of the 3 LEDs you get a unique color from the single bulb. The human eye doesn’t see the individual colors but a mix into a single color.
Lots more details: _URL_0_ | [
"RGB or trichromatic white LEDs use multiple LED chips emitting red, green, and blue wavelengths. These three colors combine to produce white light. The color rendering index (CRI) is poor, typically 25 - 65, due to the narrow range of wavelengths emitted. Higher CRI values can be obtained using more than three LED... |
apple airport express shows xbox one speed 270mb, xbox network stats says 30mb. | I'm not sure, but maybe the units are different.
Apple airport express must be showing in Mb(Mega-bits) and Xbox network stats must be using MB(megabytes).
8bits=1byte!
So that explains 30MB=240 Mb.
Left 30Mbs in apple express is just a difference of 3MBs. | [
"On June 10, 2013, Apple unveiled an updated AirPort Extreme, referred to as \"AirPort Extreme 802.11ac (6th Generation)\". The 6th generation AirPort Extreme (and 5th generation AirPort Time Capsule) features three-stream 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology with a maximum data rate of 1.3Gbit/s, which is nearly three times ... |
How often were peasants used in Middle Age battles? How were they trained? How were they equipped? Who paid for their equipment? | Could you clarify what you mean, do you mean in the sense of any peasant class individual participating in a war or do you mean armed mobs with no training at all? | [
"Peasants gather three resources in the game: rice, water and horses. Horses are war units that can be used to combine with other military units i.e riding or can be turned into pack horses when assigned for peasants. Only one type of builder unit is required. Peasants are the only units that can be produced outrig... |
When roman emperors were divinized posthumously, what did that mean to the surviving population? And were the divinized emperors endowed with "powers", like Neptune/Poseidon's power over the sea? | Hi, that's a very interesting question, I have never questioned the 'why' in that way before. The answer goes back to Julius Caesar, the persona and the events around his death.
> "He died in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was ranked amongst the Gods, not only by a formal decree, but in the belief of the vulgar. For during the first games which Augustus, his heir, consecrated to his memory, a comet blazed for seven days together, rising always about eleven o'clock; and it was supposed to be the soul of Caesar, now received into heaven: for which reason, likewise, he is represented on his statue with a star on his brow." (Suet. Jul. 88)
> "They afterwards erected in the Forum a column of Numidian marble, formed of one stone nearly twenty feet high, and inscribed upon it these words, TO THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY. At this column they continued for a long time to offer sacrifices, make vows, and decide controversies, in which they swore by Caesar." (Suet. Jul. 85)
And a tad too long to quote, [this section](_URL_0_), which shows how popular Julius Caesar was among to common people.
Looking at the above quotes, we can tell that Julius Caesar was divinized because the people wanted it and because of certain divine circumstances following his death. Starting with the comet, an understanding of the superstition of the Romans is necessary. I made a quick search on the subreddit and [this](_URL_2_) discussion shows upon the problems with using the term 'superstition', so I'm not going to analyze that further. What I wanted to say though is that the Romans were very aware of things such as birds in the sky, comets, how healty animals were, and so on. A comet showing in the sky for seven days following the death of such an important man as Julius Caesar, that's got to be important, and Suetonius shows us that.
Secondly, having cults around a person was by no means a new invention. Scipio Africanus was said to have had a cult created around him in Iberia following his successes in the Second Punic War (Polybios, 10, 40). Cults around the Persian kings, the Egyptian Pharaohs and even Alexander the Great, had also been well established before this time. What was new here was the political situation. Caesar had won the civil war and had the people on his side. When he was murdered chaos ensued and one of Marcus Antonius (Mark Anthony) moves was to suggest that Caesar was to be divinized.
So, this is a bit of the background to why Julius Caesar was divinized, let's get into the deeper parts of your queries. The Romans were fans of continuity. As you can see above, Caesar's divination wasn't something completely new because it had been done before (in a way) with Scipio Africanus, except Scipio only had a cult, he wasn't divinized. This continuity along with the legal adoption of Gaius Octavius (henceforth Augustus) meant that it wasn't questioned whether or not Augustus was a *divi filius* (son of a god) or not. Because Julius Caesar became *divus* Julius after his death it was obvious that Augustus must be *divus* Augustus *divi* Julius.
Now, if you look at the book titles [here](_URL_1_.), you can see that far from all emperors were in fact divinized. Suetonius died early in the 2nd century AD so there are a few divinized emperors missing there, but as you can see there are a lot of missing *divus* titles.
Starting with Augustus, all emperors were actually titled *divus* < name > during their lives. Supposedly also the empresses considering the Livia was divinized in 27 AD and thus became *diva* Augusta, but that's the only example and thus hard to tell. Anyway, looking at the structure of the Imperial Cult, we can deduce that living emperors had the title *divus* (except Tiberius who refused to be seen as divine), which became *divi* after their deaths. However, just like with the case of Julius Caesar, the *divi* appointment actually had to be voted after the emperor's death. Meaning that just because you were a *divus*, which can be explained as a-god-to-be, there was no guarantee that you'd in fact be divinized after you died. You had to deserve to be made a god.
The last part of course sounds really strange to us. That also begs the question of what kind of god the emperors actually became. During my own research of the subject I created three categories of gods to separate them. The first category was the great gods like Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, etc., Olympian gods with unquestionable powers. The second category was smaller gods, such as Roma (the personification or Rome) or Mithras, gods that weren't omnipotent. The third category is then where the emperors fit, along with ruler kings and such. As far as I have seen, we don't have a single source explaining what kind of powers the emperors had after they died, which is why the above categorization is necessary.
However, the emperor had a unique trait, the *numen* on top of the *genius* that everyone had. I wrote this a little while ago so I'll just copy-paste:
*Numen*: The emperor's life spirit. Only the current living emperor had a *numen* as far as I've understood it. Meaning no one else than the emperor even had a *numen*. Genius: Today we like to describe it as the soul. However that's a really easy explanation and isn't quite correct. Soul is a christian term. Everyone had a *genius*, but what made the emperor special was that he had both a *genius* and a *numen* and they were both worshipped differently.
So, on to the last part of your queries (unless I have missed something, feel free to ask) - "what did that mean to the surviving population". This is something that might be rather hard to tell since we don't have writings from the general population about it. We do however have inscriptions on tombstones of dead priests in the Imperial Cult. Those tombstones show us that the cult of a dead emperor was abandoned or neglected as soon as a new emperor was divinized. This was, the divinzed emperor was a sort of god after his death and they weren't un-divinized, but when there was a newer divinzed emperor, whom the living were more familiar with, they turned to him instead. There is one exception to this. Because of the short life-span of Titus (he was only emperor for 2 years), the cult around *divi* Vespasianus stayed strong a lot longer than might have been expected when Titus also was divinized.
An ending note is that the Imperial Cult wasn't just a religion, it was politics and propaganda. Therefore it follows that the older the divinization of an emperor is the less it's worth in current times, for the current Imperial family. The Flavian family had no reason to keep the Augustan Imperial cult alive and likewise the adoptive emperors (Nerva-Pertinax) didn't strengthen the Flavian cult, especially after Domitianus reign. This explains in part why the cult of a previous emperor died out as soon as there was a newer one.
Sources:
Suetonius, *The Lives of the Caesars*, translated by Alexander Thomson.
Polybios, *Histories*, translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh.
Taylor (1931), *The Divinity of the Roman Emperor*.
Fishwick (2002), *The Imperial Cult in the Latin West, Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire*, III 1, III 2.
Fishwick (2004), *The Imperial Cult in the Latin West, Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire*, III 3. | [
"The \"divi\" had some form of precedent in the \"di parentes\", divine ancestors who received ancestral rites as \"manes\" (gods of the underworld) during the Parentalia and other important domestic festivals. Their powers were limited; deceased mortals not normally possess the divine power (\"numen\") of the high... |
In terms of evolution, do beneficial traits often get passed down with irrelevant/negative traits? | What you mean is generally called gentic draft or hitchhiking effect and it can cause all kinds of interspecies (and sometime intraspecies) variation.
As a simple example from [wikipedia](_URL_0_)
> The Y chromosome does not undergo recombination, making it particularly prone to the fixation of deleterious mutations via hitchhiking. This has been proposed as an explanation as to why there are so few functional genes on the Y chromosome.
I can explain more if you want to :) | [
"Antagonistic pleiotropy has several negative consequences. It results in delayed adaptation, an altered path of evolution, and reduced adaptation of other traits. In addition, the overall benefit of alleles is cut down significantly (by about half) by pleiotropy. Still, antagonistic pleiotropy has some evolutionar... |
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