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why does wikipedia cost so much to maintain if most of the people work for free editing the pages? | The Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia, employs a lot of people to maintain the site and the hosting. That isn't free. | [
"In an October 2012 \"Salon\" story, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stated that he was against the practice of paid editing of Wikipedia, as are a number long-time members of Wikipedia's community. Nonetheless, a number of organizations do pay employees to edit Wikipedia articles, with one writer, Soraya Field Fi... |
why do certain grapes make your mouth dry when you bite into them? | Because they have [tannin](_URL_1_) in them. Tannin is an [astringent](_URL_0_) compound, which means it binds to certain proteins in your mouth and tends to shrink and constrict body tissue. | [
"Ingestion of apple cider vinegar in tablet form poses a risk of injury to soft tissues of the mouth, throat, stomach, and kidneys. Irritation and redness are common when the eyes come into contact with vinegar, and corneal injury can occur. Using vinegar as a topical medication, ear cleaning solution, or eye wash,... |
what goes into a whiteboard paint that makes it finish like a dry erase board and not a normal paint? | Dry/wet erase markers are basically just an ink that dries into something that doesn't stick well to a surface - dry erase forms a film, wet erase is water soluble.
This works on any surface, in theory - you could use dry erase on rough wood, except that it would seep into pores and cracks and other rough spots before it dries, making it really hard to remove.
On the other hand, if you use it on something smooth and "non-porous" (which means it has no holes, even tiny tiny ones), it's very easy to wipe off the surface.
Similarly, you can use high gloss tile as a white board, but if you use tile that isn't high gloss, you will have a very hard time wiping it off.
Whiteboard paint is mostly just a paint that doesn't have those tiny holes. It's very very smooth, which makes it more shiny. It also has chemicals that make it have high surface tension (like a water drop) so that it dries nice and smooth, unlike normal paint that's designed to not hold together as well, making it flow into cracks better. | [
"BULLET::::- steel or aluminum: Painted steel and aluminum dry erase also have a wide range of quality. Painted surfaces tend to be smoother, which leads to better methods of erasing. The painted surface is generally a multiple layer of coatings made up of a base coat in color (most commonly white) and a clear perf... |
government encouraging marriage | It's not so much marriage that they're encouraging as being a stay-at-home spouse. There's only really a tax benefit if one person is making most of the money. If the two people make even close to the same amount of money, they pay less in taxes by filling separately. | [
"\"Although promoting marriage is undeniably a laudable aim, whether government programs can effectively promote marriage is far from certain. Government has virtually no track record on this issue. Moreover, before Congress commits to making significant investments in an unproven arena, policy makers must address ... |
why are music apps like spotify so much more ad intensive on phones than their computer counter parts? | It's rather simple really. Consider a billboard on the side of a road. If the road is a highway with many cars driving past, the billboard will be much more effective than a billboard next to a small farm road. The internet is the same, people tend to advertise where the most users are. Advertisers have tools that tells them how much traffic they get from mobile devices vs their computer counterparts.
The simple fact is most users are digesting content on a mobile device, which they have with them all the time (e.g. smart phone) as opposed to a desktop computer where they will only spend time on occasionally. By running more ads on mobile, advertisers are reaching more people than they would on desktop. | [
"In November 2011, Spotify introduced a Spotify Apps service that made it possible for third-party developers to design applications that could be hosted within the Spotify computer software. The applications provided features such as synchronised lyrics, music reviews, and song recommendations. In June 2012, Sound... |
why are there so many more 'simple' medical procedures available for humans than there are for animals? | Mostly it's money. Most people simply can't afford to spend multiple thousands of dollars on a pet.
The other big problems is that animals cannot take care of themselves. You can't prescribe a horse bed rest, because it's a horse and it isn't going to rest unless you keep it doped to the gills. Seriously injured animals are just not nearly as likely to recover a good quality of life as humans.
It also helps to remember that as animals go, humans are incredibly robust. We are really, really good at taking a beating. | [
"Because animals cannot voice their symptoms as easily as humans, exploratory surgery is more common in animals. Exploratory surgery is done when looking for a foreign body that may be lodged in the animal's body, when looking for cancer, or when looking for various other gastrointestinal problems. It is a fairly r... |
what is the difference between fat, saturated fat and trans fat? and what is the sudden big deal about trans fat? | Fats are a type of carbon-chain that your body uses for energy. Carbon atoms are able to form up to four bonds with other atoms.
So a saturated fat is where the carbon chain is entirely single-bonded. The 'saturated' part comes in because most of those carbon bonds are bonded to hydrogen atoms; in fact, the most number of hydrogen atoms the carbon chain can hold (thus 'saturated' with hydrogen atoms). Studies have shown that saturated fats are associated heart disease and other vascular issues. Saturated fats typically come from animals, and typically solid at room temperature as the single-bonded carbon chains are very flexible and can tightly pack with each other.
Unsaturated fats have one or more of those single carbon bonds have been changed into a double-bond. This removes some of the hydrogen atoms from the chain as a result. Mono-unsaturated means only carbon double-bond has been formed, but you can have poly-unsaturated which can have several carbon double-bonds in the chain. Unsaturated fats are typically from plant sources, and are usually liquid form at room temperature because the double-bond is a much more rigid bond and causes the carbon chain to take a sort of 'kinked' shape.
[Here's a picture of the two types just for a comparison.](_URL_0_) Note the way the unsaturated chain is bent at the double-bond, that will be important in the next section.
Trans-fats are a type of unsaturated fat, and studies have also linked these to heart disease to an even greater degree of severity than saturated fats. As I said earlier, unsaturated fats are typically liquid (more bonds = more likely to be liquid at room temperature), and humans usually use solid fats for cooking. As such a process called 'hydrolyzing' which adds hydrogen atoms to the fat chain, removing some of the double-bonds so that the unsaturated fat can be made into a more marketable form.
Now remember that 'kink' I mentioned in the unsaturated fat? Well when a double-bond is made, it can take one of two forms (called isomers), known as either trans- or cis- arrangement, which basically describes how the atoms are arranged relative to each other. Cis- arrangements are the common form in nature, but the artificial hydrolyzing process creates trans- isomers of the fat.
Here's an image of a [trans](_URL_2_) compared to a [cis](_URL_1_) unsaturated fatty acid. Both have the same number of atoms, but vastly different shapes, and this geometric arrangement impacts how they interact with the body.
The exact mechanisms that make trans-fat unhealthy for you aren't exactly known, but one leading theory is that the body simply doesn't have the enzymes to breakdown trans-fats as they are artificially created. This is partially supported by another study that found naturally occuring trans-fats that did not seem to carry the same health risks (as they were naturally occur, thus creatures evolved ways to break them down, as opposed to our artificially created trans-fats).
Not a nutritionist or a science major, so I may have glossed over some important details, but I think I got the basics covered. | [
"Although trans fats are edible, consuming trans fats has been shown to increase the risk of coronary artery disease in part by raising levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, often termed \"bad cholesterol\"), lowering levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL, often termed \"good cholesterol\"), increasing triglyce... |
How does human saliva composition differ from that of cats and dogs? | saliva is for:
* keep the mucosa wet
* lubricate food with water (or it may be too dry)
* dissolve taste vector molecules inside food (very important because it's like a fast chemical analysis on the food and may help to decide if that thing can be eaten)
* start to digest food
* keep a microorganism-free environment (or at least try)
said that, it's no surprise that, since we are different from cats and dogs, we all have different salivas (and different digestive secretion at the end of the day, because saliva is *just another digestive secretion*).
we are made to eat different things so it's not strange that we have different microorganisms in our mouths so the different salivas try to protect from different dangers, and we try to predigest what we have eaten.
cats and dogs are not starch eaters while humans eat starch.
I wouldn't find it strange if there wasn't any amylase ( the starch digester enzyme) at all in carnivorous animals' saliva like cats and dogs, where there is amylase in human saliva, and that's normal because we are more omnivorous.
| [
"Dogs have an olfactory sense 40 times more sensitive than a human's and they commence their lives operating almost exclusively on smell and touch. The special scents that dogs use for communication are called pheromones. Different hormones are secreted when a dog is angry, fearful or confident, and some chemical s... |
How would 17th century sailing companies, navies, and pirates deal with men who fell overboard? | It's from the 19th century and not the 17th, but Herman Melville talked about the subject a little in his novel [White Jacket](_URL_0_) (in which he describes life aboard a Man-o-War).
Here one passage I found:
> In men-of-war, night and day, week in and week out, two life-buoys are kept depending from the stern; and two men, with hatchets in their hands, pace up and down, ready at the first cry to cut the cord and drop the buoys overboard. Every two hours they are regularly relieved, like sentinels on guard. No similar precautions are adopted in the merchant or whaling service.
...
> Next day, just at dawn, I was startled from my hammock by the cry of "All hands about ship and shorten sail!" Springing up the ladders, I found that an unknown man had fallen overboard from the chains; and darting a glance toward the poop, perceived, from their gestures, that the life-sentries there had cut away the buoys.
> It was blowing a fresh breeze; the frigate was going fast through the water. But the one thousand arms of five hundred men soon tossed her about on the other tack, and checked her further headway.
> "Do you see him?" shouted the officer of the watch through his trumpet, hailing the main-mast-head. "Man or buoy, do you see either?"
> "See nothing, sir," was the reply.
> "Clear away the cutters!" was the next order. "Bugler! call away the second, third, and fourth cutters' crews. Hands by the tackles!"
> In less than three minutes the three boats were down; More hands were wanted in one of them, and, among others, I jumped in to make up the deficiency.
> "Now, men, give way! and each man look out along his oar, and look sharp!" cried the officer of our boat. For a time, in perfect silence, we slid up and down the great seething swells of the sea, but saw nothing.
> "There, it's no use," cried the officer; "he's gone, whoever he is. Pull away, men—pull away! they'll be recalling us soon."
> "Let him drown!" cried the strokesman; "he's spoiled my watch below for me."
> "Who the devil is he?" cried another.
> "He's one who'll never have a coffin!" replied a third.
> "No, no! they'll never sing out, 'All hands bury the dead!' for him, my hearties!" cried a fourth.
> "Silence," said the officer, "and look along your oars." But the sixteen oarsmen still continued their talk; and, after pulling about for two or three hours, we spied the recall-signal at the frigate's fore-t'-gallant-mast-head, and returned on board, having seen no sign even of the life-buoys.
> The boats were hoisted up, the yards braced forward, and away we bowled—one man less. | [
"Some crews were treated as harshly as naval crews of the time, while others followed the comparatively relaxed rules of merchant ships. Some crews were made up of professional merchant seamen, others of pirates, debtors, and convicts. Some privateers ended up becoming pirates, not just in the eyes of their enemies... |
How can I identify who the people buried at the grave site I found on my families texas red river ranch are? | Texas counties will typically have a Tax Assessor-Collector and a County Clerk. The Clerk keeps records of birth and death, amongst others. Their records may well have been co-located and both lost in the same fire, but you never know. If by "tax office" you didn't mean the County Clerk, you may want to check with them.
There are also census roles, immigration logs, and various other sorts of documents that can be used but are hard to track down. As mentioned elsewhere, genealogists often have these already in a processed and search-able form. | [
"This historic cemetery is the final resting place of a number of individuals who were citizens of the short-lived Republic of Texas. The grave sites of those individuals have been designated with metal markers and are frequently decorated with the flag of the Republic and State of Texas. Charlotte Baldwin Allen, w... |
what sound properties do different musical instruments have different from each other? | This has a lot to do with overtones and resonance.
Resonance is pretty self-explanatory: how well something (in the case an instrument) resonates throughout a room or building due to the sound waves bouncing and amplifying for a short period of time.
Overtones are what make a sound "thick." When an instrument plays a note, there is a dominant pitch that registers. However, there is also normally other pitches that "surround" that pitch to make it sound fuller. Think of a male falsetto note, or Pavarotti hitting that same note. One is thin without many overtones, and one is huge and thick.
If you play a note around a middle C on a piano and on a trumpet and a well-trained tenor sings the same note, none of these three things will sound the same as you have mentioned. This is because the piano has a fairly thin sound (less overtones), the trumpet uses its brass make-up to increase resonance and overtones, and a tenor would use his entire chest and nasal cavity to resonate the sound a fill an opera house. This applies for all musical instruments with some louder, thinner-sounding, thicker-sounding, irritating, warm and colorful etc..
This isn't a conclusive answer to your question but it is a little knowledge that I know and I hope it's helpful. | [
"Each type of musical instrument has a characteristic sound quality that is largely independent of pitch or loudness. Some instruments have more than one timbre, e.g. the sound of a plucked violin is different from the sound of a bowed violin. Some instruments employ multiple manual or embouchure techniques to achi... |
does heat affect the energy absorbed by a solar panel? | [Wiki section](_URL_0_)
So your run of the mill solar panel works because the electrons in the silicon are separated into two layers. There is a bottom layer of electrons with the silicon itself (the valence band), a layer of no electrons (band gap) and a top layer of electrons that move around (conduction band). A photovoltaic cell works be having a photon (light particle) come in and give its energy to an electron in the lower layer so that it can jump from the inner layer over the layer of nothing and into the top layer where the electron can move around and essentially create a current. [This is also why silicon is called a semi conductor, because it conducts in some situation and insulates in others].
Now, that band gap (the layer of nothing) is partially dependent on temperature. Temperature is sort of like the average energy of all the electrons, the majority of which are in the lower valence band. A higher temperature means that they will have a bit more energy and the band gap will be smaller, so you'll get more current out of your cell which is good.
Bandgap has its fingers in many pies though, and changing the temperature is changing the bandgap. Changing the bandgap will change the highest possible voltage that the circuit can have. Higher temperatures end up having lower maximum voltages
[This graph](_URL_1_) pretty much explains what happens with temperature. Higher temperatures mean higher current and lower maximum voltage. The voltage rapidly decreases though, so you can think of it as either on or off, and so you'd generally want higher temperatures. At any rate, the effect is fairly marginal.
edit:I wrote this on the fly so I can reword things if it is confusing. | [
"An increase in solar cell temperature of approximately 1 °C causes an efficiency decrease of about 0.45%. To prevent this, a transparent silica crystal layer can be applied to solar panels. The silica layer acts as a thermal black body which emits heat as infrared radiation into space, cooling the cell up to 13 °C... |
why do most countries use the same calendar? | Most countries in Europe came to use the Julian calendar (developed by the Romans), with some revisions endorsed by the Catholic Church, which we call the Gregorian calendar. The power of European colonization, trade, missionary work and military might spread it across the globe, and the last holdouts eventually bowed in the face of the benefits of standardization. Some do maintain parallel calendars to the Gregorian calendar, though. | [
"Some countries use other calendars alongside the Gregorian calendar, including India (Indian national calendar), Bangladesh (Bengali calendar), Nepal (Vikram Samvat), Pakistan (Islamic calendar), Israel (Hebrew calendar) and Myanmar (Burmese calendar), and other countries use a modified version of the Gregorian ca... |
Is dandruff really related to your water and how hard/soft it is? | Well there are lots of causes for dandruff actually.
_URL_0_
Now this only lists medical reasons for dandruff, but we can already see it is a complex problem.
We know hard water is caused by a high amount of minerals dissolved into the water. We can see this by placing water on a black plate and allowing it to evaporate and observing the white/yellow residue left behind.
This same residue is left on your hair and scalp.
It usually would cause a fine powdery dandruff vs large flakes though.
Had water also causes soap to not lather properly leaving soap scum behind. This us also harder to rinse off properly. _URL_1_
Try rinsing better or using white vinegar just before you get out of the shower. Dont worry it will dry odorless.
| [
"Dandruff is a skin condition that mainly affects the scalp. Symptoms include flaking and sometimes mild itchiness. It can result in social or self-esteem problems. A more severe form of the condition, which includes inflammation of the skin, is known as seborrhoeic dermatitis.\n",
"A project in 2007 has sequence... |
What causes that sound my laptop makes when I am loading something? | It's most likely the hard disk drive you're referring to. It contains a metallic disc that rotates very quickly, and a magnetic head retrieves and writes data to it. They contain a small motor to drive the disc and the process causes some noise (a clicking or crunching sound). | [
"Current web browsers like Chrome write regularly small chunks when browsing in order not to lose any important data when the application crashes. However, this lets the disk spin very often as the drive repeatedly needs to unleash and then park its heads. The generated noises can be thus regarded as distracting by... |
what does 'dry' mean in alcohol | Yo! After panning through the replies, I figured I'd drop some thoughts here. Source: I am a Certified (edit: now Advanced!) Sommelier and a Certified Specialist of Spirits.
**Dry, as some have mentioned, is the word used to describe the opposite of sweet.** I will reference a few laws below that use this definition in legal practice to confirm this as the internationally accepted, and in many cases, legally-binding definition.
Water is dry. Add sugar to it and it has some level of sweetness. You might hear words like "off-dry" to describe a small amount of sugar, "semi-sweet" a bit sweeter yet, and "sweet" or "lusciously sweet" to describe things even sweeter still. These are typically used to describe ranges of sugar expressed in **grams of sugar per liter**, which, if you multiply by bald eagles and divide by original colonies, can be converted to American. ;)
For reference, Coca-Cola has \~126g/L of sugar. It's what most industry folk would call something like "sweet", "cloyingly sweet", or "lusciously sweet". [Source.](_URL_1_)
The amount of sugar in a wine can typically be found (except by many American producers) by searching google for "(insert wine name here) tech sheet". For example, find the technical notes for Moët & Chandon Imperial Brut [here](_URL_0_), where sugar is listed under "dosage" to be 9g/L. Keep in mind that most bottles encountered in the wild are 750mL, so to obtain a sugar level per bottle, simply multiply by .75.
A few laws for describing dryness, for the purpose of confirming the above definition:
German wines are allowed to call their wines "trocken" (dry in German) if and only if the wine has 9g/L of sugar or fewer.
Vouvray, a wine-making village along France's Loire River Valley, only allows for their wines to be labeled "sec" (dry in French) if the wines have 8g/L of sugar or fewer.
See below for a law on Gin.
& #x200B;
**Common misconceptions:** "Dry" is often used by consumers to refer to the drying sensation one experiences after taking a sip of a beverage. This is a mistake, because the technical word to describe that sensation is "bitterness”, while the word most often used to describe the bitterness coming from grape and oak tannins is “tannic”. However, most beverage professionals (assuming they're paying attention) are in tune with the fact that this misconception is quite prevalent, so an astute salesperson should respond to "I'd like a dry wine" with something to the effect of "Dry as in 'the absence of sugar' or dry as in 'dries my mouth out'?"
The word "tannic" describes the sensation of astringency brought on by tannin, a compound--long name polyphenols--found in grape skins. Red wine, which is colored by leaving the crushed grape skins in the juice until the color seeps out--think of a tea bag leaching out its color--are prone to having tannin by the nature of this process. The longer the skins stay in the juice (sometimes as long as several weeks) to color, flavor, and add texture to the wine, the more tannin will be extracted from the skins, and the more the wine will dry your mouth out. But, again, this is not "dryness" technically, this is tannin--polyphenols--binding to your saliva and leaving a drying, sandpaper-like, cottonmouth feeling. Tannin can also be found in such things as tea leaves. Think over-steeped tea.
& #x200B;
About things like gin specifically, London Dry Gin is a spirit which must, by law, be flavored predominantly by juniper and have no more than .1g/L of sugar. This level of sugar is what the industry folk would call "bone dry". Keep in mind that this is different from "Dry Gin" and simply "Gin", which are principally made the same way (by flavoring a neutral spirit) but may have different interpretations of flavors and different levels of alcohol and sweetness.
& #x200B;
Dryness is also distinct from alcohol content in terms of organoleptic qualities, though high levels of alcohol can change the mouthfeel (especially adding viscosity, a liquid's resistance to flow or "thickness") and add a perceived sweetness--a bone dry liquid with the viscosity of maple syrup may seem sweeter to the taster than a bone dry liquid with the viscosity of skim milk simply by perception, even though the two liquids in question have the same amount of sugar.
& #x200B;
**A word of caution:** As alluded to above, many wines and spirits are regulated by law in their production. Those which are not so regulated (American products, and products of countries who don't have bi-lateral trade agreements with countries who do regulate these things) are a great deal more laissez-faire when it comes to what words and designations end up on their products. A wine labeled "dry" in the states has no required limit of sugar. It could have 200g/L and face no legal recourse for naming it as such. Do your research on wines if you have any questions!!
& #x200B;
Hope this is helpful! Happy Thursday! | [
"Dryness is a property of beverages that describes the lack of a sweet taste. This may be due to a lack of sugars, the presence of some other taste that masks sweetness, or an underabundance of simple carbohydrates that can be converted to sugar by enzymes in the mouth (amylase in particular). The term \"dry\" may ... |
How did currency work in the Soviet economy if it was a command economy? | Under a price fixing system you didn't have to deal with inflation you don't want because you (the government) set the price, thus by definition you didn't have inflation (outside of the black market anyway) if you don't increase prices. Instead, the problem you had to deal with were shortages (as the Soviet Union actually have to deal with) because prices don't adjust. Note that this wasn't always the case and there were bouts of inflation in the Soviet period, but unlike in a market economy, you could always just fix prices to avoid it and exchange the problem of inflation for the problem of people waiting in long lines to buy consumer goods.
The banking system was completely state ran, capital allocation was done through the bureaucracy. Household savings etc would be handled by the Sperbank, Investment was handled by the Stroibank, and another bank ran foreign exchanges. Above those you had the Gosbank, which was the core of the state banking system. In effect, the USSR had a single state ran banking monopoly.
Money sort of mattered when you are dealing with the consumer economy, workers were paid in wage, and bought goods in wage. However, cash didn't factor into the equation when you start talking about exchange between enterprises. If enterprise A transfers raw material to factory B for use, the Gosbank would oversee the process and credit A's account while debiting B's account without direct exchange of money between those two entities.
One implication of this is, of course, that inter-enterprise lending is not allowed because there is no mechanism for it except through barter (which did take place). Enterprises in the Soviet Union were forbidden from holding onto cash except paying worker's wage.
Foreign trade was conducted through the Vneshtorgbank. An enterprise producing trade goods would first sell it to the Vneshtorgbank, which would then credit its account, then sell it to foreign countries for hard currency. Which it would then hold on to until it needs it to buy foreign imports, which it would do with the foreign currency it holds. Then it will sell the imports to a Soviet firm, debiting and crediting accounts as needed in the process. | [
"Economic analysts have argued that the economy of the former Soviet Union actually represented an administrative or command economy as opposed to a planned economy because planning did not play an operational role in the allocation of resources among productive units in the economy since in actuality the main allo... |
With Scotland's rejection of independence is there any other British territory/colony that did the same in history? | Newfoundland was offered the opportunity to become a dominion with the Statute of Westminster 1931. This would have given it free self-rule in its domestic matters, basically just leaving it allied and in a privileged trading position with the United Kingdom and the other dominions, which included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. A series of financial crises and near-bankruptcy caused Newfoundland to reject this arrangement, and its parliament requested that the British take up direct rule from London, which continued until it became a province of Canada in 1949. | [
"By the end of the campaign, Scotland was independent and remained thus, until the unification of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland to create the single Kingdom of Great Britain was completed in the Treaty of Union of 1707.\n",
"Today, the independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom remains ... |
How many times can a piece of plastic be recycled? | This is highly dependent on how you want to recycle the plastic and the plastic material itself.
A thermoset plastic is a non-reversible process, so it can't be used as re-grind in an injection molding process, whereas a thermoplastic may be able to be used depending on the performance required. Each time to process a thermoplastic it loses some of its properties, as well as potential effects on fillers.
You can also recycle plastic as an aggregate such as in products like extruded plastic lumber. Plastic isn't fully melted in the process, and the performance isn't as critical, so you can theoretically recycle the plastic more times. | [
"The percentage of plastic that can be fully recycled, rather than downcycled or go to waste, can be increased when manufacturers of packaged goods minimize mixing of packaging materials and eliminate contaminants. The Association of Plastics Recyclers have issued a \"Design Guide for Recyclability\".\n",
"The fi... |
when igniting a flammable substance from a gas canister, why doesn't the flame travel inwards towards the source and blow up the gas canister | you need oxygen/fuel at a minimum ratio to combust. There is little or no oxygen in the gas canister. | [
"Combustion consists of various radical chain reactions that the singlet radical can initiate. The flammability of a given material strongly depends on the concentration of radicals that must be obtained before initiation and propagation reactions dominate leading to combustion of the material. Once the combustible... |
Was there a sort of international court dialect used between European monarchs in medieval times, or were there just a lot of translators | Okay, there were a couple of different things going on here. In the first place, we need to remember that monolingual inhabitants of monolingual nation-states is a comparatively recent notion. Medieval Europe was a giant quilt of different competing dialects, pidgins, creoles, and languages. As a result, aristocrats especially would frequently be fluent in several other languages. It's now time for a block quote because Tyerman said the next part best.
> Learning to speak, even read, other languages came as less of a burden to twelfth-century western aristocrats than to some of their modern successors. In addition to his own local vernacular, an educated nobleman would have daily confronted Latin (if only in church or at prayers) and probably numerous other vernaculars, if only orally. Henry II of England was fluent in northern French and Latin, with a smattering of other western European languages; his son Richard I cracked jokes in Latin and recited verse in northern and southern French. To rule England or Sicily, Norman rulers or their officials needed to be trilingual. (Tyerman 234).
In addition, French was something of a *lingua franca* among Western European aristocrats and also your mercantile classes. If you look at Wolfram von Eschenbach's *Parzival*, you'll see that he occasionally drops a bit of French in to show his courtliness. Basically, French in the twelfth through fifteenth centuries had a status among Western European elites very similar to that of English among global elites today. For a good example of how French culture especially affected German aristocrats, I'd recommend a look at Joachim Bumke's *Courtly Culture*, my copy of which seems to have grown legs.
In my own neck of the woods, namely thirteenth-century England, you see an aristocracy that almost certainly spoke the Anglo-Norman dialect of French and also English. Richter and Rothwell have pretty convincingly shown that within about a generation of the 1066 Norman Conquest most English nobles spoke English as their first language. In the first half of the thirteenth century, your aristocracy was probably fully bilingual. By contrast, by the second half of the thirteenth century, we can get a sense that your nobility might have been more comfortable in English than with French (Crane 110). Even so, elites were more comfortable with French than Latin, and that holds true even at the rank of the parish priest (Richter 190).
There's some evidence of French as a living language even in fourteenth-century England (see, for example, Richard Ingham's “The Persistence of Anglo-Norman, 1230-1362," but we're on pretty firm ground to say that by the later fourteenth century your English aristocracy was mostly Anglophone but more or less fluent in French as a learned language.
Sidebar: even as early as the late twelfth century, the term "Marlborough French" -- a sneer for the French of England -- could be used as a punchline by someone like Walter Map, the raconteur who wrote *De nugis curialium* (*On the Trifles of the Court*).
Does that answer your question?
**Sources**
Bumke, Joachim. *Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages*. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991.
Ingham, Richard. “The Persistence of Anglo-Norman, 1230-1362." In *Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100 – c. 1500*, edited by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne *et al*, 44-54. York: York Medieval Press, 2009.
Richter, Michael. *Sprache und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter: Untersuchungen zur mündlichen Kommunikation in England von der Midde des 11. bis zum beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts*. Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1979.
Rothwell, William. "The Teaching and Learning of French in Later Medieval England." *Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur* 111 (2001): 1-18.
Tyerman, Christopher. *God's War: A New History of the Crusades*. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006. | [
"During the 12th century, development of the administrative and judicial institutions took place. Because the king and the lawyers at the time normally used French, it also became the language of these institutions. From the 12th century until the 15th century, the courts used three languages: Latin for writing, Fr... |
- are speed bumps designed to damage your car if you go over them too fast? | Speed bumps are intended to force drivers to slow their speed. Most are designed in such a way to make it uncomfortable for the driver to take them too fast, but are not intended to damage their vehicle. Others are poorly designed and *will* damage the vehicle, even at a reasonable speed. Even properly designed speed bumps can damage a vehicle if the vehicle is going much too fast, though.
The wear and tear you experience going over a speed bump is negligible. You'll experience more wear and tear through simple road driving because you do more road driving than you spend time driving over speed bumps.
Thing to remember about speed bumps is this: the speed that it is safest to driver over the speed bump is the speed you are supposed to be driving on the road even where there are no speed bumps. If you are going 45 mph, then slow down to 25 mph to go over the speed bump, accelerate back up to 45, slow down to 25, again to go over the next speed bump, you are doing it wrong. You should be traveling 25 up to the speed bump, over the speed bump and between the speed bump. The city likely placed the speed bump on that road because drivers are travelling that road too fast. | [
"Research has shown that reducing driver speeds in built-up areas reduce injuries for all road users, including motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians. The link between vehicle speed and pedestrian crash severity has been established by research studies, with crash severity increasing as a function of motor vehicle... |
the purpose of the recent orion flight and what it means for both future space exploration as well as nasa itself? | It was to first test out if the Orion was safe for human Flight. If something went wrong with the capsule, they could use the data to avoid astronauts being killed.
As far as the future is concerned, this can really mean anything. NASA is currently planning to use this series of vehicle to transport humans to mars, and to set up a colony there. For the expedition participants, it will be a one way trip.
The Orion is designed to be able to dynamically attach to a lot of different add ons, like a larger living area on long expeditions, using the same example as mars.
In the future, this may be used as what brings astronauts to iss, since its reusable and cheaper than space shuttle to maintain. The rockets designed to launch it with(not this test flights, this time they used delta IV heavy; the actual one is still in construction) will allow deep space exploration line never before due to its massive thrust.
So really, in short it means manned space exploration and colonization. | [
"NASA brought the Orion MPCV back to life from the defunct Constellation Program and successfully test launched the first capsule on December 5, 2014 aboard EFT-1. After a near perfect flight traveling 3600 miles above Earth, the spacecraft was recovered for study. NASA plans to use the Orion crew vehicle to send h... |
Any good sources on the illegal smuggling of slaves into the US in the 19th Century? | You could look into the De Wolfe family, of Rhode Island. Slavers, congressmen, financiers of the Episcopal church in RI.
The New York Times just came out with an article on Rhode Island's role in the illegal slave trade:
_URL_0_
There is a great documentary from a few years back, which won awards and I'm pretty sure was played on PBS, called Traces of the Trade, which also follows the De Wolfe family. My favorite part is when they get a map of the family's holdings in Cuba post-Civil War and figure out that they still owned slaves, but in Cuba instead of in the US:
_URL_1_
An amateur historian named Cynthia Mestad Johnson wrote James Dewolf and the Rhode Island Slave Trade based on primary sources in the Rhode Island archives. That book is on Amazon.
I'm no specialist in the illegal slave trade myself so I can't give you more than that. Sorry. I just know about these guys because they had links to Cuba, which is my field of study.
Edit: Damn, I read your principle question but not so much your follow up questions. Here goes:
> Who was involved?
Directly, major figures in much of the US, including the North. The De Wolfe family was one of the single most important families of its state and were able to do so with impunity. I'm sure their case isn't the only one.
> How profitable was the trade?
Profitable enough to make the De Wolfe's one of the richest families of their time. The wealth also found its way into the local economy where the slavers lived. The slavers would buy irons from local blacksmiths, rope from rope makers, food stores from local farmers, etc., and thus these would indirectly partake in the immense gains that slavers would make.
Eric Williams spoke of a similar phenomenon occurring in English cities, like Liverpool, in his book Capitalism and Slavery, but with the difference that it was at least legal when English slavers were doing it in the 17th and 18th centuries.
> What happened to those who were caught?
On this point I am totally ignorant. Perhaps a specialist in the American slave trade could answer this better. | [
"While there are no exact figures known, historians estimate that up to 50,000 slaves were illegally imported into the United States after 1808, mostly through Spanish Florida and Texas, before those states were admitted to the Union.\n",
"In April 1818, the United States passed a law prohibiting the import of sl... |
Is it true heavier people require more alcohol to get drunk. | It has to do with body weight, stomach content, gender and genetics. reducing your body weight could have an effect, but it would be easier to just start drinking on an empty stomach if you were trying to get intoxicated, and eat beforehand if you were trying to avoid it.
But yes, if you lost Lot of weight, it could have an effect, just not a gigantic one
EDIT: spelling | [
"BULLET::::- Alcohol: beer, wine, hard spirits and other alcoholic beverages. While moderate amounts can lead to weight gain, chronic consumption of large amounts of alcohol can lead to weight loss because alcoholic liver disease is characterized by an increased metabolic rate and impaired muscle protein synthesis,... |
The new kilogram definition seems complex. Why not define it in terms of the mass of a proton? | It is not possible to precisely collect X protons under conditions that it could be used for a standard of mass. You could try for example saying that a kilogram is the mass of (0.1 m)^3 of water, but then you'd have to control precisely for temperature, pressure, isotopic composition, etc in a way that is precise to 10 parts per billion. The new Planck's constant definition is sufficiently precise.
There was an attempt to do as you suggest, and make it based on the [number of atoms in a very pristine sphere](_URL_0_), but it wasn't as practical as the Planck's constant way. | [
"The definition of the kilogram changed fundamentally; the previous definition defined the kilogram as the mass of the international prototype kilogram, which is an artefact rather than a constant of nature. The new definition relates the kilogram to, amongst things, the equivalent mass of the energy of a photon gi... |
How do millipedes walk? | First question: it was not your imagination, that's about how it works indeed. They have a segmented body, and each segment has a pair of neural ganglia that contain a [Central Pattern Generator](_URL_5_), or CPG. This thing most probably is able to maintain the cycle of activity on its own, even if you isolate it from the body. Fish actually employ the same thing for swimming (they have a CPG for each segment of their body; that is - for each muscle that makes salmon in a store look stripy). Even humans have a [CPG for walking](_URL_2_), even though this one is not nearly as autonomous as in worms or fish.
Anyway, so you have a bunch of CPG in a chain, and now you:
1) Introduce connections between CPG on the left and on the right, controlling opposite legs. Usually it ensures a fixed phase delay between the legs, as it is important for maintaining a stable gait.
2) connect CPGs to each other sequentially along the body, [making them interact](_URL_1_). Usually this kind of connection introduces a fixed lag between the phases of 2 CPGs nearby, which looks like a nice propagating wave in a centipede.
3) You introduce long fibers that run along the whole length of the body, making connections on each CPG in each segment. Most animals have [at least 1 pair of fibers](_URL_3_) to [trigger escape responses](_URL_0_), and maybe a bunch of fibers to fine-tune the gait (to switch phase delays between the CPGs), and to [regulate speed](_URL_4_).
Now, on your 2nd question. I don't know for sure (never studied centipedes), but I would expect them to have several speeds, and several gaits (at least forward / reverse motion). Most probably all these gaits will be pretty regular and "symmetric", because otherwise legs will move chaotically. These animals simply have too many legs to control each of them individually in a meaningful way, mathematically speaking. But maybe (probably) the levels of "symmetry" will be different: different phase lags between segments, and thus different "wavelength" along the body; different delay between left and right to make a turn, etc. (Edit: references) | [
"Centipedes and millipedes have many sets of legs that move in metachronal rhythm. Some echinoderms locomote using the many tube feet on the underside of their arms. Although the tube feet resemble suction cups in appearance, the gripping action is a function of adhesive chemicals rather than suction. Other chemica... |
How did this mountain ridge form? pic inside | What you have there is an anticline structure - Imagine a fold in the rocks running NE-SW. MAybe 5-10 degrees dip on either side, but with the NW corner dipping down toward the NW, and the SE Corner dipping SE. These kind of large scale folds are very common in geology. Once the fold is excavated to the surface differential weathering can start to occur.
The axial ridge has exposed the lower strata, which are harder. Hence they stick up, while the surrounding softer material is eroded down to form a flat plateau. In the very centre, where the fold is doming slightly, even deeper but softer strata have been exposed, giving you the plateau in the middle. An easier to see example can be find in the Zagros: _URL_1_
Which look like this from an angle _URL_2_
EDIT - I just built a 3D model of it you can pan around: _URL_0_ | [
"The Utrecht Hill Ridge was created 150.000 years ago as a push moraine in the Wolstonian Stage, a middle Pleistocene glacial period. Before that time the rivers Rhine and Meuse flowed more north, and created deposits of sand. The glaciers pushed these deposits in a southern and western direction.\n",
"The ridge ... |
why dont oasis in deserts get filled by nearby sand over time | An Oasis gets its water from underground aquifers. So the water would just push any sand away. Also the presence of plant life around it helps keep the terrain stable, reducing the amount of stuff that'd disrupt things. | [
"The geographical position of the oasis was the main factor in its success and wealth. To its north is one of the most arid and desolate desert climates on the earth, the Taklamakan Desert, and to its south the largely uninhabited Kunlun Mountains (Qurum). To the east there were few oasis beyond Niya making travel ... |
what dictates a wonder of the world? | There is no particular standard, only tradition. The Greeks made lists of amazing things from around the Mediterranean world familiar to them. Most of these lists made 7 choices because the number was (and often still is) considered lucky; counting the sun and moon, they knew of seven planets.
Antipater of Sidon made a particularly popular list which many other authors referred to, and which has survived into the present day as *the* list of the Wonders of the Ancient World. His choices were arbitrary based on what he knew.
Recently, people have tried to make lists of modern wonders based on various criteria. (The idea being that they are only possible with modern technology.) There's no particular list that is commonly accepted as authoritative. | [
"Worlds of Wonder is a collection of three science fiction works by Olaf Stapledon: a short novel, a novella and a short story. It was published in 1949 by Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. in an edition of 500 copies. All of the stories had originally been published in the United Kingdom.\n",
"Seven Wonders of th... |
inflation & deflation | Inflation & Deflation aren't about currency rate, they are about price level in a country. Despite the reason inflation makes some products more expensive, or you can buy lesser with money you have. You can't increase salaries at the same time because it will cause futher increasing of the prices (it is actually one of the reasons). The problem of inflation is in behavior of people and firms, when prices go up people can't afford to buy some things therefore firm can't get their profit and won't be able to pay loans or invest in futher production, then the amount of supply will decrease. When supply decreases usually prices increase so there is a cycle: goods are expensive, people buy less, lesser goods are produces, goods are more expensive.
Deflation is bad as well. If you can buy a can of coke for a dollar today and two cans next year, you will be saving more money and again, companies won't be able to pay loans etc. | [
"In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0% (a negative inflation rate). Inflation reduces the value of currency over time, but deflation increases it. This allows more goods and services to be bought than before wi... |
how do snails not lose all of their body mass as slime left on the floor while travelling? | Imagine it like sweating. You can sweat and sweat, liquid comes out of you, but your body mass stays more or less the same. | [
"Land snails move by gliding along on their muscular foot, which is lubricated with mucus and covered with epithelial cilia. This motion is powered by succeeding waves of muscular contractions that move down the ventral of the foot. This muscular action is clearly visible when a snail is crawling on the glass of a ... |
What were Aztec shield fringes made of? | You are correct that fringes are made out of feathers. In section "Defensive Weapons" in Ross Hassig's book *Aztec Warfare* (1988: 85-88), he covers the topic of shields. While Hassig describes different construction material and methods for shields, he does not describe the fringe as anything but feathers. However, Hassig does not specify which feathers were used for the creation of a shield fringe, only that shield used feathers and the feathers offered protection by deflecting projectiles. If you look at the [feather shield](_URL_0_) located at the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna, you can see that the feather fringe of this shield is not made with long feathers like the quetzal feather. Instead, it appears to have been made from shorter feathers. If feather shield construction is like other featherworking in Aztec culture, these feathers should have come from any number of birds and have been dyed before being attached to the shield.
I hope this clears up any confusion.
---
* Hassig, Ross. Aztec warfare: Imperial expansion and political control. Vol. 188. University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. | [
"Whittaker said the stone-tipped projectiles from the Aztec atlatl were not powerful enough to penetrate Spanish steel plate armor, but they were strong enough to penetrate the mail, leather and cotton armor that most Spanish soldiers wore. Whittaker said the Aztecs started their battles with atlatl darts followed ... |
Did creatures such as terrestrial hermit crabs make it onto land before the ancestors of modern reptiles and mammals? | There were terrestrial arthropods before there were terrestrial vertebrates. Terrestrial scorpions and millipedes predate early terrestrial bony fish. See the Wikipedia article on the [devonian](_URL_0_) for a brief discussion of these early terrestrial arthropods. | [
"A number of lineages of crabs have evolved to live predominantly on land. Examples of terrestrial crabs are found in the families Gecarcinidae and Gecarcinucidae, as well as in selected genera from other families, such as \"Sesarma\", although the term \"land crab\" is often used to mean solely the family Gecarcin... |
why was there a theory that nothing can go faster then light? | The relativity theory is very much valid.
I can try to explain a bit, but it's probably better explained by minute physics.
First watch this:
_URL_2_
and then watch this:
_URL_1_
It's a great youtube channel in general, so if you're not bored yet, go here:
_URL_0_ | [
"This is not to say that \"all\" faster than light speeds are impossible. Various trivial situations can be described where some \"things\" (not actual matter or energy) move faster than light. For example, the location where the beam of a search light hits the bottom of a cloud can move faster than light when the ... |
why aren't news stations (local, national, international) required to cite sources? | One reason that news reporters (be they text or video) are not required to cite sources is that doing so can result in the firing, the arrest, or even the execution of the people who are their sources. Journalists take protecting these sources very seriously. | [
"Some news sites in the Territory allow a great deal of latitude to the public to comment anonymously upon articles (referred to, slightly misleadingly, as \"blogs\" locally). In a community as small as the British Virgin Islands anonymous comments often indicate inside knowledge in relation to news items, or serve... |
What do sunglasses protect the eyes from? | > UV radiation comes to mind first.
[WHO - Effect of UV on Eyes](_URL_0_)
TL;DR: UV is bad for your eyes.
> * Do all glass lenses fully absorb UV? What about plastics?
No and no.
[Sunglasses/protection (wikipedia)](_URL_1_)
Never wear sunglasses that *don't* offer good UV protection. Dark lenses reduce the light entering the eye so the pupil dilates to allow more light in. Problem is that also lets more UV in. So shades without UV protection do *more* damage to your eyes than no shades at all. | [
"Sunglasses provide more comfort and protection against bright light and often against ultraviolet (UV) light. To properly protect the eyes from the dangers of UV light, sunglasses should have UV-400 blocker to provide good coverage against the entire light spectrum that poses a danger. Photochromic lenses, which a... |
how are sentences by judges that are aimed at making an example out guilty parties not a violation of "equal justice under law", and therefore unconstitutional? | Each type of crime has a valid minimum and maximum sentence. As long as the judge stays within these guidelines, it is 100% legal. | [
"Arguments that have been raised against sentencing by jury are that juries are not as accountable as judges; that putting them in charge of determining both guilt and the sentence concentrates too much power in one body; and that different juries may differ widely in the sentences they impose. Counterarguments are... |
why don't tv shows/movies show real websites like google and facebook? why use fake websites that look like them? | Because you gotta call them, ask for permission, sometimes they ask for a certain fee, have their PR people see if their product is being used in good faith, all that paperwork and time just isn't worth the trouble. You can literally have a mock up site with basic functions working in one or two days and pay the guy 200 bucks for it.
| [
"Legal fakes are possible because they take advantage of the ‘uninformed’ consumer who can be easily deceived and influenced by the latest trends promoted through celebrities endorsement and social networks or digital platforms.\n",
"Fake news websites often have article titles that are incredible, prompting the ... |
why do old games running on new hardware still have technical issues? | The XBox is emulating NES hardware and running the emulation at a set speed. If it ran it at as fast as possible, then it would be several times faster than the original NES game and would be unplayable. I can't speak for Mega Man exactly, but older games tended to run on a cycle locked to the screen refresh which was a fixed 60Hz or 50Hz. There was only one piece of hardware they ran on, so there was no need to adjust for different hardware speeds. | [
"In comparison to PC and mobile games, console game developers must consider the limitations of the hardware their game is being developed as it is unlikely to have any major changes. PC and mobile technology progresses quickly and there are many different configurations of their hardware and software. This is bene... |
Does an eagle see things that are say, 2 feet away in microscopic detail, blurry (like looking through binoculars) or simply as we would see them? | They can actually change the focal length of their eyes by deforming them with muscles. That said, the optics of a microscope and a telescope are very different. If they had their eyes in "far away mode", everything would be blurry, like looking at a bug through binoculars.
If they were in "normal mode", their vision would be... Well... Normal.
I have no idea if they can deform their eye to zoom in on tiny things close up, though I can't imagine why they would be able to do this. It doesn't seem like what they evolved for. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Seeing Sense\": A vulture can spot a carcass from a great distance, the four-eyed fish can see above and below water simultaneously, a fly’s multi-faceted eye sees a very different world than a human eye, while other insects can see into ultra-violet light. And lions have an area on the retina which ... |
when a court tries to discover whether someone is guilty or innocent, does their lawyer know the truth? | All parties involved have access to all the evidence available. It's not like "the truth" suddenly manifests itself in the courtroom to the surprise of everyone present. Nor does it matter.
The defending lawyer isn't there to prove innocence. He's there to ensure that his client receives a fair trial, that the prosecution is doing their job, that the evidence brought forth is valid, and trying to cast reasonable doubt on every single statement brought to question in discovery. If that's impossible he still has the job of making sure that his client receives a fair treatment and sentencing even when guilty beyond doubt.
However in most cases lying to your lawyer is a stupid move, because it hinders his ability to actually help you. | [
"The ruling protects prosecutors who withhold \"substantial exculpatory evidence\" in order to obtain an indictment, as the role of the grand jury is not to determine guilt, but rather to decide whether there is enough evidence of a crime; exculpatory evidence can be presented at trial. Justice Stevens' dissent foc... |
is a fat muffin top at your belly caused because humans wear clothes around their waistline? | Yes, but not by much. Your fat stores are all located in/around your hips/pelvic region, they swell and become distended due to an increase in volume of fat storage. Squeezing into tighter clothing does cause certain shapes (i.e. muffin top) to form, but it has no impact on the overall volume.
So if you are carrying weight in your belly it's not like that weight is going to suddenly shift to your thights, it'll still be there but just in a different shape. | [
"A muffin-top (or \"muffin top\") is a slang term typically used to describe a man or woman's skin or body fat that is visible above the waistline of pants or skirts because of tight clothing. The term is a reference to the way a muffin appears when it has been baked in a muffin tin, so that the top of the muffin i... |
Why aren't archaea human pathogens? | That is an EXCELLENT question, and unfortunately there is not a very good answer yet. It's not fully known, but there are some ideas.
It has been proposed that because Archaea use different cofactors in their metabolism, eukaryotes don't provide a good "food source." But this isn't completely satisfactory, as they do use some factors. To make this even less likely, some Archaea do act as commensals in humans, and "host as a food source" is not the only advantage to pathogenesis. So that's kind of out. It may be *a* factor, but it's not *the* factor.
One recent idea has to do with the genetics of pathogenogenesis (not a typo...refers to how pathogens are generated). One of the big ways a nonpathogen becomes a pathogen is via horizontal gene transfer of pathogenic genetic material. A friendly bug picks up a T3S or a Type II pilus gene (biochemical systems used by pathogens to injure host cells). That gene infers some kind of advantage to the friendly bug, and it starts to use it...BANG, pathogen.
A big source of these is mobile genetic elements, like phages. This is Dawkin's selfish gene; eukaryotic viruses (like the common cold) infect eukaryotic cells and thereby increase their number. Prokaryotic pathogenogenic phages *transduce* bacteria, which are in turn induced to invade and colonize eukaryotic hosts and thereby increase the range of the phage genes. From the gene (phage) perspective, this not only gives benefit via direct replication, but also through more opportunities for further transduction. The commensals in the eukaryote are fertile ground, with unsullied genomes.
And therein lies the reason (maybe): It is known that bacterial phages, on the whole, don't infect Archaea and Archaean phages don't infect Bacteria. This largely has to do with specific molecular differences between the two Domains. The result is that there isn't a good way to get those genes to jump from pathogenic bacteria into Archaea. The Arachaens don't have access to the pathogenogenic genetic information accumulated by Bacteria. Or, more accurately, the genetic information in the bacteria doesn't have access to the Archaean genomes.
OK, so why haven't the Archaens developed their own pathogenic mechanisms? Where's the Archaean version of T3S? That's even less known. Maybe it's because Archaens did a lot of early evolutionary development in the absence of eukaryotes, more so than Bacteria. Whatever paths they took are somehow inhibitory or exclusive to pathogenic development. Due to early evolutionary commitments, they are forever excluded from independently developing the pathogenic lifestyle.
Maybe it's just because the development of this complex system of mobile gene elements takes a lot of evolutionary steps, and Archaea just never have done the correct combination. (Implying that they could, but they've been around eukaryotes just as long as bacteria have. If they can, have had enough time to, yet haven't, why haven't they?)
Maybe it's because there aren't as many Archaean commensals as there are Bacterial, and any putative Archaean pathogenogenic phage that gets in has a hard time finding the Archaean needle in the Bacterial haystack to carry it's genes.
Or, maybe it's a combination of those things (this is where I'd put my money).
EXCELLENT question, though.
(edited for some typos...got a little excited while typing and accidently a fw lttrs words) | [
"The well-characterized interactions between archaea and other organisms are either mutual or commensal. There are no clear examples of known archaeal pathogens or parasites, but some species of methanogens have been suggested to be involved in infections in the mouth, and \"Nanoarchaeum equitans\" may be a parasit... |
How long does a lobster live? | It's hypothesized that they have the biological capacity to live somewhat indefinitely, barring bodily damage, predation, or disease. This is due to something called having a negligible rate of senescence, which is essentially aging. They're placed in the same league as tortoises, rockfish, Quahog clam, and bristlecone pine. The bristlecone pine has been known to live to ~5000 years. They expect this is the case due to growth calculations, aging methods, and because they are large bodied and still fertile at those ages. They can weigh up to 20kg and measure 1m in length from claws to tail.
In terms of the lobster, it does a very good job of DNA repair because of [telomorase](_URL_1_), by molting to get fresh structures, using stem cells to renew tissues, regenerate appendages, antioxidant usages, they're very good at detoxifying themselves of pollutants, and have pretty good immune systems.
They've been found at 76 years [New perspectives on the growth and longevity of the European lobster (Homarus gammarus)](_URL_3_)
And the oldest known decapod was 176 years.
There has been no American lobster found to be 100 years old, but they are thought to be capable due to their very slow senescence.
The first paper, a review paper, is an excellent source if you're interested.
* [Ageing and longevity in the Decapoda (Crustacea): A review](_URL_4_)
* [History and prospects: symposium on organisms with slow aging]
(_URL_2_)
* [Emerging area of aging research: long-lived animals with "negligible senescence](_URL_0_) | [
"Female California spiny lobsters reach sexual maturity at a length of , which is typically at an age of 5–9 years; males are sexually mature after 3–6 years. Because all the hard parts are lost at each molt, the life span of mature spiny lobsters is uncertain; they are thought to live for 50 years or more.\n",
"... |
our defense system in the united states if nuclear missiles were to be launched at us by another country | Honestly? Not super great.
We have some [missile intercept systems](_URL_0_) but mostly the US relies on its ability to say "If you don't terminate your missile right now... we'll fucking destroy your entire country in one swing". | [
"The argument for a national missile defense system in the United States was traditionally to protect the country from a Soviet missile attack. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, proponents of a missile defense shield began instead to focus on the risk posed by rogue states developing ballistic missiles cap... |
Is there an upper limit of rotation for a pulsar? Also, is that upper limit uniform across all objects? | > Is there a limit to how fast something can spin, or does it just work on the same priciple as movement through space?
If you are talking about the relativistic limit, this is [Ehrenfest's paradox](_URL_0_). | [
"The shapes of a subcollection of only \"D\" summand-sets determine the bound on the distance between the \"average set\" and its convex hull; thus, as the number of summands increases to infinity, the bound decreases to zero (for summand-sets of uniformly bounded size). In fact, Starr's bound on the non-convexity ... |
why do storm troopers wear armor if it doesn't actually protect them from anything? it also apparently interferes with their ability to shoot accurately. | Psychological edge. A phalanx of faceless, white-clad, cold, armored soldiers advancing will make you shit yourself. It's a powerful image. | [
"Most military vehicles, ships, and fighters are equipped with invisible energy shields. They deflect incoming attacks, though their protection is based on their flicker rate. Shields cannot run continuously, so instead they cycle on and off many times a second. A fixed percentage of attacks are rendered harmless d... |
Is the water ice present in the solar system the same as ice on earth, just much colder, or is it in a different phase? | The short answer is that they aren't quite sure. Depending on the formation mechanism they have different predictions for which of the ice phases it might be in, not all of which are kinetically accessible. It turns out that theres a good chance that depending on how the water got there, rather than being crystalline it might be amorphous based on some spectroscopy they've done.
From what I've heard, their goal is to experimentally do some of the formation methods in the lab and compare to spectroscopic data to see if they can do some mix and matching. | [
"Water has a much lower condensation temperature than other materials that compose the terrestrial planets in the Solar System, such as iron and silicates. The region of the protoplanetary disk closest to the Sun was very hot early in the history of the Solar System, and it is not feasible that oceans of water cond... |
Why is the DNA replication process imperfect? | Because of the complexity of the protein engines at work. All told, there are a considerable number of steps necessary to correctly replicate DNA, and the process is different for the leading and lagging strands. However, I think on average there's only one error for every 10,000 replications. Most of these "mutations" are harmless. Some are bad and apoptosis signals cell death by suicide. Some are bad and don't initiate apoptosis and could possible lead to cancer. However, some are beneficial. And therein lies the rub.
But be glad, because without that error, evolution wouldn't occur.
This video gives you a sense of how complicated it all is.
_URL_0_
/biochemist | [
"DNA replication past an un-repaired damage can give rise to a mutation because of inaccurate translesion synthesis. In addition, during repair of DNA double-strand breaks, or repair of other DNA damages, incompletely cleared sites of repair can lead to epigenetic gene silencing.\n",
"DNA replication is a natural... |
how did we find out that there are 365.25 days in a year? | Observation, and knowing when the sun should be where through relative position.
When you chart the sun’s course every day of the year a pattern emerges (Note the position and degree of the light at the exact same time every day). That pattern is slightly off by a few degrees the following year, on a four your cyclical. This ellipsis is the foundation of time as we know it. | [
"The Hindu cosmological time cycles explained in the \"Surya Siddhanta\", give the average length of the sidereal year (the length of the Earth's revolution around the Sun) as 365.2563627 days, which is only 1.4 seconds longer than the modern value of 365.256363004 days. This remains the most accurate estimate for ... |
3 days underwater. | In short, they haven't come up with a good answer yet.
The key problem more than anything is hypothermia. He was trapped in freezing water, and found naked and alert. After three days in freezing water you'd expect someone to have drowned, let alone be naked and able to determine that someone was rescuing them.
The other problem is oxygen. While bubbles can trap oxygen under water, the oxygen will eventually dissipate into the water around it and be replaced with Nitrogen. Diving Bell spiders have been able to keep oxygen bubbles going for 37 at most. 72 hours has never been observed before, and this is from an insect that uses a tiny fraction of the oxygen of a human and wasn't experiencing hypothermia, which in respiratory terms is as intense as a heavy workout for how much oxygen you use. | [
"Diversnight is a gathering of Scuba divers and those interested in diving, and is made possible thanks to voluntary work and helpful sponsors. As the name implies, this event occurs after dark. The festival attempts to get as many divers as possible in the water at the same time, all over the world. The record fro... |
Why are there bubbles in prince Rupert's drops? | First off, you really don't need a turkey fryer oil quench make PRD. The whole point of the drops is that they are skin stress resistant, and should hold up to a fast quench. Most people make them in a tub of lukewarm water.
The bubbles are most likely trapped atmospheric gasses during the melting proceedure. This is commonly encountered when the frit is too coarse, leaving air bubbles between the particles. Finer grinding will reduce this, or leaving the melt to let the bubbles rise to the top (and adding viscosity lowering elements like Cao or other alkaline oxides) will help get rid of these. You may not originally notice the bubbles as they start off very small and then coalesce.
A more specific composition or procedure can help narrow down where you are going wrong.
Thanks to Shelby (the classic text) and my super awesome glass engineer SO.
| [
"Prince Rupert's drops (also known as Dutch or Batavian tears) are toughened glass beads created by dripping molten glass into cold water, which causes it to solidify into a tadpole-shaped droplet with a long, thin tail. These droplets are characterized internally by very high residual stresses, which give rise to ... |
why does fruit taste different after its dried? | the flavor is concentrated since there is less water, it would be like making a cup of coffee with just a little bit of water so you had a thick mud... it would taste different. | [
"Dried fruits have been consumed historically due to their high sugar content and sweet taste, and a longer shelf-life from drying. Fruits may be used differently when dried. The plum becomes a prune, the grape a raisin. Figs and dates may be transformed into different products that can either be eaten as they are,... |
exactly how are manual eye exams conducted (without modern digital equipment) and how can a doctor measure your eyesight through looking at your eye? | Before the fancy digital eye scanner... They had you look through lens and ask if it was better or worse.... | [
"The doctor will perform a neurological examination to assess nerve function and motor and sensory skills. The tests are designed to determine any functional limitations, such as difficulty with handwriting or the ability to hold a utensil or cup. The patient may be asked to place a finger on the tip of her or his ... |
Why was the USSR so interested in space flight? What started the USSR space program? Was NASA created only as an answer to Sputnik, or was it already in the works before hand? | The sputnik programme was introduced by Koroliov (previously doing rocketry) due to fears his team would "lose the priority" if the USA launched an artificial sattelite first (as they were planning to do for the international geophysical year).
source: [S.P.Korolëv quoted on _URL_1_](_URL_0_). | [
"After the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957, the U.S. was in a panic over how to quickly catch up with the Soviets in what appeared to be a \"Space Race\". One idea quickly gained currency – the formation of a civilian space agency that would evolve into NASA. The Army had already lost interest in the developmen... |
when and why did we switch from saying liberal/conservative to progressive/regressive in us politics? | A lot of politics comes down to terminology. Communists were difficult to argue with because they came up with they own bourgeois/proletariat jargon, giving them a home field advantage in any discussion.
In the 1980s, Republicans were successful in making liberal into a bad word, making Democrats shy away from it and becoming more moderate. Much of the sentiment remains, so liberal Democrats have reinvented them themselves as progressives.
As for the use of regressive, that is just childish name calling and word games. It is no different than pro-lifers calling their opponents pro-death. If you can't address your opponents with neutral terms or the terms they choose for themselves, you lack the maturity to carry on serious political discussion. | [
"Although much has changed in American politics since 1970, especially the meanings of important (but constantly changing) terms like \"conservative\" and \"liberal\", his book on that ideologically-charged subject remains a classic articulation (along with Louis Hartz's \"The Liberal Tradition in America\") of the... |
Epigenetics, Methyl Groups, and Expression | I watched some of the video, but it was too long to finish, so please ask more questions if I've missed anything.
I wouldn't say that a "nature/nurture debate" really exists anymore. It's now more like a "nature-nurture interaction exploration", because (as you've seen) both the fluctuating environment and the static properties of genetic units affect expression. Epigenetics, however, is not just the study of how the environment affects expression; it describes how *all* expression occurs.
Let's do a quick overview of what epigenetics is and does. First of all, you have your traditional genetics encoded in the DNA. The As, Ts, Cs, and Gs form intricate patterns that can directly influence proteins (like transcription factors or RNA polymerases) or that can be transcribed into RNA and then sometimes translated into protein. Though the DNA is chock-full of this information, it alone cannot *use* that information to effect expression. This is where the myriad of proteins, enzymes, chemical groups like methyls, RNAs, and more come in: these extra players coat the DNA, interacting with precisely the correct DNA sequences in precise the correct ways. Certain proteins attach to the DNA and help wind and compact it so that RNA polymerases could never access the actual code (shutting off a gene), or other proteins attach and unwind the DNA, exposing a portion of the code to expression-inducing proteins (turning on a gene). The conglomeration of all these non-DNA bits *is* epigenetics.
Does the environment influence those non-DNA bits, causing differences in expression based on differences in environment? Absolutely. Does the DNA itself also interact with the non-DNA bits to cause differences in expression? You betcha. Can a person pass on some of their epigenetic code to their children? It is possible in some circumstances and for some genes, but not in as strong a way as Lamarck suggested. Was Mendel wrong? Not about how single diallelic genes are inherited, which (in my opinion) is all he was *really* gunning for.
edit: Said Darwin, meant Mendel*... | [
"Epigenetics is the study of the regulation of gene expression through chemical, non-mutational changes in DNA structure. The theory of epigenetics in cancer pathogenesis is that non-mutational changes to DNA can lead to alterations in gene expression. Normally, oncogenes are silent, for example, because of DNA met... |
sunk costs | A sunk cost is a past cost that is not recoverable and specifically should not influence future decisions. For example if a company spends money on a consultant then that money would be sunk. Also money spent on employee training is a sunk cost. In contrast to money spent on a truck or a computer of which some money would be recoverable. | [
"Sunk costs may cause cost overrun. In business, an example of sunk costs may be investment into a factory or research that now has a lower value or no value whatsoever. For example, $20 million has been spent on building a power plant; the value at present is zero because it is incomplete (and no sale or recovery ... |
why do some people silently mouth the words you're speaking along with you as you talk to them? | Probably improves understanding. At least you know they're paying attention to what you're saying.
Some people have a hard time focusing, their minds wander. | [
"BULLET::::6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. People do not like listening to us boast, they enjoy doing the talking themselves. Let them rationalize and talk about the idea, because it will taste much sweeter to them in their own mouth.\n",
"In a crowded room, people find it easy to focus on... |
What is the latest known instance of serfdom in Western Europe? | Define Western Europe. | [
"In Eastern Europe the institution persisted until the mid-19th century. In the Austrian Empire serfdom was abolished by the 1781 Serfdom Patent; corvée continued to exist until 1848. Serfdom was abolished in Russia in the 1860s. In Finland, Norway and Sweden, feudalism was never fully established, and serfdom did ... |
why does everything computerised need regular software updates now opposed to older models? e.g. my xbox one needs to update monthly(ish) while my xbox original never did (or could). | Security is taken more seriously than it used to, particularly on consoles that are now much more online than they used to be (online multiplayer was a much newer thing for consoles during the xbox classic generation of consoles), and that are much closer to the computers we use every day. It was unlikely that your xbox would be an infection vector for viruses onto your home network, since it was a pretty shitty computer to run anything but games on; but your xbox one is more than capable, and it's probably connected to your network constantly as well.
Threats are also constantly evolving; as more of the world becomes more computerized, there's more money to be made in cybercrime, and so organized crime and even some street-level gangs are making a move into digital theft and ransomware coding to get money. And no Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo-level company wants headlines about the latest ransomware that's exclusive to their console, so they keep a stream of updates that keep everything running.
The new and improved hardware also demands more complex software; more complex software means more bugs just by the very nature of coding, so bugfixes are near constant now. | [
"While System Software updates can be used with consoles from any region, Sony recommends only downloading updates released for the model's region. System Software updates have added many features, including a web browser, Adobe Flash support, additional codecs for various media, PlayStation 3 (PS3) connectivity, a... |
What will happen when Pope Benedict when he dies, since he will not be Pope at the time? | The way you've phrased the question, it's about current events/the future, which isn't appropriate for this subreddit. I'll have to delete this one, but you could resubmit with something like "What happened to Popes who didn't die in office?" | [
"Benedict responded by asking: “If I have sinned, have mercy on me”. The council then proceeded to confirm Leo as the true canonically appointed pope, and announced that Benedict was deposed as pope. On this sentence, Leo cut Benedict’s pallium into two pieces and broke his pastoral staff, before tearing off his po... |
how can bernie sanders an independent be the democrats presidential nominee? | He's not. He's seeking to be democratic presidential nominee. ELyou're5: he's hoping democrats will let him be leader of their club. | [
"In the 2016 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders sought the Democratic Party's nomination in a field of six major candidates and was the runner up with 46% of the pledged delegates behind Hillary Clinton, who won the contest with 54%. Sanders, the junior United States Senator and former Representative from Vermon... |
how do screenshots work from a software perspective? | The software just saves the state of all the pixels that the hardware is sending to the display and puts it into a standard image format that other programs can then open. How the software actually gets the pixel data is platform dependent. | [
"Screenshot is an application for capturing screenshots of the screen. Although this can be done manually by pressing (the Print Screen key), by using the screenshot application the user can take advantage of other features that are unavailable when only using the key method. With the application the user may choos... |
Why do boats often leave paths of calm water (wakes) behind them? | Waves on water surface are dependent on both wind speed and the amount of exposure the water has had to the wind (IIRC this is called 'fetch'). Essentially, even a fairly strong wind needs a pretty good amount of distance acting on the water to kick up waves on the surface. This is one reason why waves are bigger in the ocean and in big lakes vs. in ponds or smaller bodies of water. When a ship or boat passes by, directly behind it is a highly turbulent zone, which you correctly identified as a turbulent regime. Turbulent flows are full of chaotic motion like eddies and vortices, but somewhat contradictorily are really stable, i.e. it takes a lot of energy to change the water's tendency to stay in those wonky vortices. They also are peculiar in that they turn the surface very flat.
Let's look at what we have. We have a boat going through the water that kicks it around into a really stable pattern that takes a lot of energy to change direction or motion, and leaves the surface flat. The wind is the only other external force that can remove that turbulence and impart those choppy waves on the surface again. But as we said, it takes a good amount of distance for the wind to act to gain enough strength to get the waves back.
TL;DR boat swirls up the water, and wind needs time to get it back to wavy | [
"Parts of the pattern may be obscured by the effects of propeller wash, and tail eddies behind the boat's stern, and by the boat being a large object and not a point source. The water need not be stationary, but may be moving as in a large river, and the important consideration then is the velocity of the water rel... |
How come when you and a friend get out of a loud venue such as a concert and you can't hear as well your friend and you yell at each other when talking, instead of talking in your normal voice. ? | Your ears have a mechanism to [temporarily lower their sensitivity](_URL_0_) in response to loud sounds. In that paper, they showed that if you knock out the gene responsible for this in mice, they exhibit less temporary hearing loss but more long term hearing loss. So it seems to be a mechanism to protect your hearing in the long term. | [
"To place this problem in more common terms, imagine you are talking to someone 6 meters away. If the two of you are in a quiet, empty room then a conversation is quite easy to hold at normal voice levels. In a loud, crowded bar, it would be impossible to hear the same voice level, and the only solution (for that d... |
Do we know anything about a planet past Pluto? | Better calculations have removed the disparity. But that's a boring answer. There certainly are more dwarf planets past Pluto in the Kuiper belt. Makemake is of significant size, about 2/3 as big as Pluto. Eris, even farther out, is roughly the same size as Pluto. Here's a great diagram of their crazy orbits.
_URL_1_
Are there any more large planets out there? The WISE telescope rules that out. There are no planets on the scale of Neptune in the Kuiper belt. And there are no stars, not even brown dwarves, in the Oort cloud. To the best of my knowledge, we can't rule out Neptune sized objects in the Oort Cloud, but the odds are incredibly slim.
Here's an article from NASA about the results of WISE's survey.
_URL_0_ | [
"BULLET::::- The planets of the solar system and their moons were closely observed via numerous space probes. Pluto was discovered in 1930 on the edge of the solar system, although in the early 21st century, it was reclassified as a plutoid instead of a planet proper, leaving eight planets.\n",
"BULLET::::- The p... |
How was Italy governed by the Roman Empire? Was it treated like a province with its own proconsul? | I'm working on this right now, so this won't be a complete answer because I haven't finished my research yet, but I can get things started (and maybe learn something from other contributors!).
First thing to ask is what the hell is "Italy"? In early Greek sources Italy seems to mean the Greek-inhabited southern coast. Herodotus I think has 8 references to "Italy" and all of them refer to Greek colonies. Over time the term "Italy" expanded to encompass the peninsula up to the Arno-Rubicon line, and finally in 42 BC Augustus extended it to the Alps.
The second thing to ask is what time period are you curious about? Rome had an empire from the 3rd century BC down to the collapse whenever you want to place that, and there were different governing arrangements in different times.
For the period I'm most familiar with, the Late Republic, management of "Italy" was left for the most part to magistrates in the municipia (Bispham, *From Asculum to Actium*, is the text I'm using most for this, though looking at Sherwin-White's *Roman Citizenship* can never hurt anyone), but proconsuls could be appointed to Italy, as Caesar was.
Augustus revised the administration of Italy by dividing it into 11 regions. This seems to be part of a program to suppress banditry in the countryside, and troops were stationed at various points for making travel safe (This is the interpretation of Laurence, *The Roads of Roman Italy*. The sources for this are late and ambiguous). Cassius Dio (54.8) says the roads were administered by former praetors and accompanied by lictors. We also hear of *iuridici* for specific regions in inscriptions; obviously these have some judicial function. A third kind of officer were *curatores* who seem to be involved in specifically dealing with bandits (again, this is from Laurence - he's not clear on his sources here).
I'm not too familiar with the later empire, but my understanding is Italy does lose its special status and I bet this had to do with the Emperor's court becoming more important that Rome the city (forgive me, mods!).
As I said, I'm currently researching this, so please if anyone has corrections or additions, let me know! | [
"At the beginning of the Roman imperial era, Italy was a collection of territories with different political statuses. Some cities, called \"municipia\", had some independence from Rome, while others, the \"coloniae\", were founded by the Romans themselves. Around 7 BC, Augustus divided Italy into eleven \"regiones\... |
why are black holes invisible. | We can't see black holes for a number of reasons.
They each by definition have an event horizon around them, trapping all light inside from ever escaping and making them black in appearance. But as you pointed out, space isn't black.
One problem with seeing black holes is their distance. The nearest black hole is the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. Whilst it is a supermassive black hole (basically just a really, really big one) it is still many billions upon billions of miles away, and there are billions upon billions of stars between us and the black hole, which are obstructing our view of it. Even if we did have a clear line of sight to it and no light pollution, it is so far away it would be like trying to spot an individual grain of sand with your bare eyes from an airplane at cruising altitude. Even with the planet's best space telescopes they are very hard to see.
Another problem is gravitational lensing, which you mentioned. Becuase of this effect, all you would see when looking at the black hole is the image from directly behind the black hole. So instead of a pitch black spot on a close-to-black background, you would just see the star or galaxy that is behind the blackhole.
So visibly spotting a black hole is not very practical using technology available today. But how do we 'see' them?
Whilst gravitational lensing means we can't spot a black hole directly, it does let us spot them indirectly. If a star of constant brightness suddenly appears to get brighter and stretch or change shape, before quickly returning back to its orignal form, we can conclude a massive object passed in front of it and caused gravitational lensing. Using various calculations we can work out just how massive that object was in each case, and if the mass is great enough we can assume it was a black hole that passed by.
Another method for detecting black holes is by looking at objects in space that seem to be orbiting around nothing. A star cannot be in orbit around empty space, there must be some form of gravitational source the star is orbiting around. Again, through certain calculations we can work out the mass of the gravitational source the star is orbiting around and see if it is heavy enough to class as a black hole. | [
"Black holes are talked about in this chapter. Black holes are stars that have collapsed into one very small point. This small point is called a \"singularity\". Black holes suck things into their center because they have very strong gravity. Some of the things it can suck in are light and stars. Only very large st... |
In warfare through history, why isn't there a severity of causalities compared to the unit size deployed? | This is a big question, so I can only really answer in generalities. Still, I'll do what I can.
> Or is the "fight to the death" mentality not really true.
Armies are big, expensive things, to say nothing of the human cost of combat. To fully commit to attacking or defending a place means that the outcome of that battle must be absolutely decisive - something that will win the war. Such instances are pretty rare. What one battle could an army win to conquer the Frankish Empire? Or subdue the thirteen rebelling American colonies? Without the ability to win a clear decision, it's often better to keep the army together and wait for a better opportunity. In instances where one side does commit to a position - Thermopylae, the Alamo, Verdun- casualties can be extreme.
Also, remember that, in Western history at least, a lot of the more famous conventional military campaigns have been pretty symmetrical; both sides have similar weapons and capabilities. In most melee battles, the winner will take almost as many casualties as the loser (barring something weird, like Cannae) until the losing side breaks, runs, and is cut down in pursuit. During the age of muzzleloaders, professional military units engaging in an open-field shootout would both send about three rounds per minute into the enemy formation, resulting in similar casualties no matter how many people were involved.
For a discussion on the difficulties of achieving a decisive battle, check out Russ Wiegley, *The Age of Battles*. | [
"\"Many collective human activities, including violence, have been shown to exhibit universal patterns. The size distributions of casualties both in whole wars from 1816 to 1980 and terrorist attacks have separately been shown to follow approximate power-law distributions. However, the possibility of universal patt... |
what causes people to hallucinate when they get a very high fever, and is it the body trying to protect itself in some way? | when you have a high fever, enzymatic action all over your body begins to slow and in the brain, this causes an unbalanced level of certain neurotransmitters and other psychoactive compounds. when this occurs, hallucinations, stroke, and other odd feelings begin to surface | [
"In addition, some people may, in conjunction with a high fever, experience more intense and overt hallucinations, seeing things that are not there and misinterpreting events and situations. Less frequent symptoms sometimes described in Alice in Wonderland syndrome patients include loss of limb control and dis-coor... |
after suffering an injury, why are we told to elevate that part of our body over our heart? doesn't blood help heal the injured area and bring cells that heal it? | Depends on how much blood we are talking about. Elevating the injury basically uses gravity to help overcome the blood pressure of that area, decreasing blood loss. I recall the story of a woman who cut her big toe - not a really horrible cut, but enough to produce a good amount of bleeding. Fearing the staining on her kitchen floor, she proceeded to wipe up the blood. As she moved backwards, wiping up the blood from her toe, she continued to bleed, so she continued to wipe. Being bent over and constantly moving, she eventually bled to death cleaning up her own blood. Had she just applied pressure and elevated her foot, she would have been fine. | [
"Various organ systems respond to injury to restore homeostasis by maintaining perfusion to the heart and brain. Inflammation after injury occurs to protect against further damage and starts the healing process. Prolonged inflammation may cause multiple organ dysfunction syndrome or systemic inflammatory response s... |
Alexander the Great founded dozens of cities and towns over his life. How was a town just "founded?" | Hi, not discouraging other contributors, but meanwhile, check these out
* /u/ikahjalmr in [In ancient times I've heard that historical figures "built cities" like Alexander did at Bucephala in honor of his horse. How did a ruler in Greco times go about establishing a city? What did that at a minimum constitute?](_URL_1_)
* /u/Daeres in [Who populated the cities founded by Alexander the Great?](_URL_2_)
* /u/theskyisnotthelimit in [How were cities founded by traveling armies in antiquity?](_URL_0_) | [
"The city was established by Alexander the Great in 324, replacing a small Persian settlement, Durine. This was one of Alexander's last cities before his death in 323 BC. Here he established a quarter (dēmē) of the port called Pella, named after Alexander’s own town of birth, where he settled Macedonian veterans.\n... |
Are we made more of microbes than our own cells, or does the smaller size of bacteria mean that by mass, we're larger? | Here's some images that can give you a comparison between the size of human / animal cells vs. bacteria.
* [The yellow rods are bacteria](_URL_0_) and the green blob is a whole cell
* [The smaller spheres are bacteria](_URL_1_) compared to a red and white blood cell
* [Here's a chart showing the relative sizes of things](_URL_4_). The [average size](_URL_2_) of bacteria is around 1 - 3 μm (micrometers), where as the average size of a [human cell](_URL_3_) is 10 μm. That's 10 times larger for most bacteria. | [
"A workshop on the limitations of size of microbes in 1999 found that though modern nanobacteria can't be smaller in volume than the interior of a sphere of diameter 250 ± 50 nm, primitive microorganisms based on a single-polymer system could be. They cite the example of RNA based life, with ribozymes (catalytic RN... |
If we upgraded Hubble with modern tech/optics, how much better would it get? | That is the plan, the James Webb Space Telescope is about six times the size of Hubble and should go up in about three years. | [
"The completion of all the major objectives, as well as some that were not considered vital, upgraded the telescope to its most technologically advanced state since its launch nineteen years ago, and made it more powerful than ever. The upgrades will also help Hubble to see deeper into the universe, and farther int... |
What do wild animals do in inclement weather? | Get wet.
Feel miserable.
Start to smell.
Possibly be injured and/or die if they can't find shelter and the storm is really bad, just like you would without your house. | [
"These animals are found in coniferous, deciduous, and mixed forests, often near wetlands. They use runways through the surface growth in warm weather and tunnel through the snow in winter. They are omnivorous feeding on green plants, underground fungi, seeds, nuts, roots, also insects, snails, and berries. They st... |
usa mcdonald's franchise owners, operators or managers: what is the purpose of two drive through ordering points for one drive though window? | Data proves you wrong. Typically the slowest part of the average drive-thru is the ordering process. Customers unsure of what they want, large orders, etc. Years worth of data taken has proven this, that's why they have multiple ordering lanes. It's all about the number of cars they can get through, and having a backup lane maximizes that. | [
"Most standalone McDonald's restaurants offer both counter service and drive-through service, with indoor and sometimes outdoor seating. Drive-Thru, Auto-Mac, Pay and Drive, or \"McDrive\" as it is known in many countries, often has separate stations for placing, paying for, and picking up orders, though the latter... |
Would taking cooked meat out of the fridge, warming it, and then putting it immediately back in the fridge make it go bad? | Meat in your fridge contains pathogenic microorganisms. They divide very slowly (if at all) in the cold fridge, but much more rapidly at room temperature. Air in your kitchen also contains pathogenic microorganisms, some of which would grow rapidly on nutrients they can extract from meat.
These pathogenic microorganisms can hard you in two different ways. Some of them, when ingested, will divide in your body and make you sick. These are typically killed by proper cooking. Some of them secrete toxins that make you sick, and those toxins can persist long after the microorganisms stop dividing or die. These toxins may or may not be destroyed by cooking.
So, every time you warm meat up, you give the pathogens in it — as well as any that might land on it — a bigger opportunity to grow and secrete toxins that might harm you or kill you.
On the other hand, most of the risk of those pathogens and toxins is mitigated by properly preparing the meat.
So if you re-heat the meat to a proper meat cooking temperature later, you will probably be OK. But if you just re-thaw it and eat it, you are putting yourself at higher risk of food poisoning. How high that risk depends on a variety of things, including whether the meat was properly prepared to start with, how long it was left out before being initially refrigerated, as well as how long it was out before being subsequently refrigerated.
In short: you mom isn't wrong, but you might be OK. I definitely wouldn't make a habit of it. | [
"In general, in either case, the meat is removed from the heat before it has finished cooking and left to sit for a few minutes, while the inside cooks further from the residual heat content, known as carry over cooking.\n",
"Untreated meat decomposes rapidly if it is not preserved, at a speed that depends on sev... |
By 1571 how secure was Elizabeth I's hold on the throne? | Not a historian, but I'll give this my best shot
* Strong hold on government and country, she still commanded respect of her council and country
* One could argue that her moderate religious settlements, "pacified" the extreme catholics (many preachers were arrested/executed)
* The pope issued a papal bull much later, demanding the Catholics to overthrow the 'illegitimate' and Protestant Queen, but it came too late and nothing really happens
* Although there was a plot to replace her with a Catholic successor (Ridophi plot), Mary Queen of Scots was dealt with (House Arrest), however she still was a 'rally point' for foreign catholics who wish to overthrow Elizabeth
This is in contrast to 90s onwards which some Historians call the Late Elizabethan crisis, when her ministers (such as Burghley) start dying off, and replaced with more ambitious ones, expeditions/wars (esp. Irish nine years war), and tax burdens (book of rates not updated resulting in insufficient funds), as well as bad harvests and economy created lots of problems for her. | [
"After the death of her husband in 1483, Elizabeth remained politically influential even after her son, briefly proclaimed King Edward V of England, was deposed by her brother-in-law, Richard III. Edward and his younger brother Richard both disappeared soon afterwards and are presumed to have been murdered on Richa... |
when you're trying to sleep and you hear something, a flash or some tick in your eye that goes with the sound? | Chances are you were transitioning into sleep. During this time, many people are prone to a phenomenon called "hypnogogia". This can range anywhere from auditory hallucinations such as hearing voices or phones ringing, to visual hallucinations involving dancing blobs or waves of color to seemingly bright flashes.
If you'd like to know more, check out [this link](_URL_0_)
Personally, I hear conversations and see color waves mostly. The conversations don't usually make sense. One time I heard a song I really like while my favorite professor passionately lectured while a bunch of demons flew around the room screaming. It can be quite strange, but if you go along, it can be quite a ride.
Edit: Fixed link. | [
"The deaf and hard of hearing are often unable to perceive auditory alarms when asleep. They may use specialized alarms, including alarms with flashing lights instead of or in addition to noise. Alarms which can connect to vibrating devices (small ones inserted into pillows, or larger ones placed under bedposts to ... |
the barn-pole relativity paradox | Lorentz contraction is always "real", but the point is that it's *relative*. The farmer sees the entire pole in the barn, while the runner doesn't (how could he, since for him it's *the barn* that's contacting).
The resolution of the "paradox" comes from carefully considering what we mean when we say "the pole fits in the barn". This is shorthand for saying "the front of the pole exits the back of the barn *after* the back of the pole enters the front of the barn". So really, when we talk about fitting the pole in the barn, we're taking about the space-time interval between two events. The paradox is resolved because relativity also dictates that the different observers will not agree on the relative timing of the events.
TLDR; Relativity requires us to rethink simultaneity | [
"This apparent paradox results from the mistaken assumption of absolute simultaneity. The ladder is said to fit into the garage if both of its ends can be made to be simultaneously inside the garage. The paradox is resolved when it is considered that in relativity, simultaneity is relative to each observer, making ... |
Do humans have a vestigial tail wagging response? Is it detectable? | Not really, no. Animals wag their tails for a variety of reasons, but the happy=tail wagging response in dogs is unique to them. (Interestingly, foxes that were domesticated as part of an experiment also began [wagging their tails in greeting](_URL_0_) after several generations of breeding for tameness. So the potential for tail-wagging in excitement and happiness when bred for juvenile traits is present through a lot of the canine family tree.) A cat wagging its tail is most likely annoyed or agitated, or at least overstimulated. There is no hardwired environmental or behavioral reason for tail wagging that all animals share. (EDIT: And yes, a dog can also wag its tail when it isn't happy; I was specifically referring to the common, stereotypical behavior of the happy tail-wagging doggo.)
Apes 'lost' their tails at least 14 million years ago, well before the human branch of the family tree had even begun to split. Human responses that involve butt-wiggling (for lack of a more specific term) like dancing or squirming are coming from a different behavioral source that has nothing to do with tails. | [
"The tail flick assay or tail flick test uses a high-intensity beam of light aimed at a rodent's tail to detect nociception. In normal rodents, the noxious heat sensation induced by the beam of light causes a prototypical movement of the tail via the flexor withdrawal reflex. An investigator normally measures the t... |
How, when and why was the label "made in [country]" invented? When was it first used and to what purpose? | [Made in Germany](_URL_0_), introduced by the British to mark the inferior quality and plagiarising German goods being imported. Quickly turned out to be a boon to Germany instead of a hindrance as originally intended. | [
"The label was originally introduced in Britain by the \"Merchandise Marks Act 1887\", to mark foreign produce more obviously, as foreign manufactures had been falsely marking inferior goods with the marks of renowned British manufacturing companies and importing them into the United Kingdom. Most of these were fou... |
did the musical notes we all know (d,f,g,f-sharp etc.) basically *have* to be or was this just one person's selection that ended up working well? | Sound is vibrations and we attribute the frequency of those vibrations a pitch. When certain combinations of frequencies are combined, they may blend together well or not.
For example, if you have a note with vibration of 256 Hz, and you play a 2nd note with a frequency of 512 Hz, then you get a 1:2 ratio of vibrations, and the two go together really nicely. In general, people call them the same note, but at a different "octave"; in this case, 256 Hz is by convention called "middle C", and 512 Hz is C one octave above middle C.
But what about the other notes? Where did they come from?
It turns out that 1:2 isn't the only ratio that works nicely. 2:3, or 3:4 or 4:5 or 3:5 something similar give pleasing sounds when played together.
So, if you combined 256 Hz with 320 Hz, that's a nice combination; or 256 combined with 320 and 384 Hz in a 3 note chord is also a nice combiation.
So, how could you define lots of different notes which made up all these different ratios? One way, would just be to have a 4:5 ratio (320), a 3:2 (384) and so on - and then repeat everything after doubling or halving (640, 768 - or 160, 192). The problem with this, is that the "gaps" between the notes are all different - so you can't just take a piece of music and shift it a little bit lower, or a little bit higher.
Eventually people worked out, that if you divided the doubling interval into 12 equal steps (each note is 1.06 * the one before - so 256, 271, 287, 304, 322, 341, 362, 384, 406, 431, 456, 483, 512) - you could get close to lots of nice ratios (you can see the 322 which is very close 4:5, 384 which is exactly 3:2, 287 which is very close to 3:4, 431 which is close to 3:5).
This gives you 12 equally spaced notes with a ton of really nice ratios which can be combined together in nice chords, while at the same time being easy to use with equal notes.
If you dig down into the ratios - you'll see that starting from "C", the white keys on the piano correspond to the nicest ratios - D is 7:8, E is 4:5, F is 3:4, G is 2:3, A is 3:5, B is 8:15; the black keys are in between ratios for example D# is 16:19.
So it all comes down to discovering that dividing an octave into 12 equal steps results in a lots of nice combinations that "just work". People realised that the nicest ratios weren't equally spaced (for example F is next after E, but D has a note between in and C), and that's why there's no E#.
As to why 256 Hz might be used - there's no real reason. You can choose any reference you want. In fact, people often tune to concert A (440 Hz) which requires a slightly different tuning.
Just one final point: modern tuning normally tunes instruments so that the spacing between the notes is exactly equal. But, as I pointed out above, this doesn't exactly match the nice round number ratios. Historically, instruments were often tuned to give the exact ratios; the tuner would listen to the two notes together, and they'd be in tune when you got the nicest sounding chord. This type of tuning would give nice pure sounding chords and harmony - but this lead to the gaps between the notes not being quite even, and resulted in certain combinations of notes having completely off ratios and sounding weird and clashing (called a Wolf interval) | [
"In everyday language, these notes are located between two semitones and they are essentially heard in Arab and Greek music throughout Europe and Eastern countries, in Turkey, Persia, as well as in Africa and in Asia. They were also used in tempered scales by certain European microtonal composers during the 19th ce... |
Is it possible to harvest gravity (or, more correctly, gravitational waves)? | Without reading the article I can assure you that hydroelectric power is a much more efficient way of harvesting gravity. | [
"Direct observation of gravitational waves was not possible for the many decades after they were predicted due to the minuscule effect that would need to be detected and separated from the background of vibrations present everywhere on Earth. A technique called interferometry was suggested in the 1960s and eventual... |
Artificial sun by throwing fusion bomb in hydrogen cloud? | To sustain a fusion reaction, the combination of temperature and pressure need to be sufficiently high. That's why there is fusion in the sun, but not in Jupiter, which, like the sun, consists of largely hydrogen and helium.
When an object like Jupiter doesn't have sufficient density for fusion to sustain itself, a hydrogen cloud won't even come close. Detonating a fusion bomb inside the cloud won't do anything but push the cloud further outward. Just like in the sun, where the fusion reaction exerts an outward pressure. However, in the case of the sun, its gravity is sufficient to counteract the outward force generated by the fusion reaction and the sun doesn't disperse. In a hydrogen cloud, there's no gravity strong enough to keep it from dispersing when sufficient outward pressure is applied (because if there was, the cloud would've collapsed in on itself and potentially formed a star). | [
"This is discussed below. It is notable that although most stars, including the Sun, generate energy over most of their lives by fusing hydrogen into heavier elements, such fusion of light hydrogen (protium) has never been successful in the conditions attainable on Earth. Thus, all artificial fusion, including the ... |
why is direct democracy not a viable system as opposed to what we have? would it result in massive indecisiveness, if implemented? | Two main problems with direct democracy I can think of off the top of my head:
- stability: the will of the masses tends to change quickly. News report on minor being raped and killed? Let's introduce death penalty. Mass shooting? Let's forbid guns. Note I'm not taking a stand towards either death penalty nor gun control; just pointing out that recent events will have a major influence on policy in a direct democracy, and that's rarely a good thing.
- power distribution: media influence plays an even higher role than it already does, pretty much for the same reason as above - it can easily sway public opinion.
This is really a question better suited for /r/askreddit. | [
"Democracy has taken a number of forms, both in theory and practice. Some varieties of democracy provide better representation and more freedom for their citizens than others. However, if any democracy is not structured so as to prohibit the government from excluding the people from the legislative process, or any ... |
Why does fission happen randomly? | Spontaneous fission is a quantum tunneling process. You have two (or more) "lobes" of nuclear matter, bound by a mutually attracting potential. In order for fission to occur, they must tunnel out of their attractive wells. Depending on how strongly deformed the nucleus is, this could be very easy (meaning small lifetime) or very hard (long lifetime).
Exactly when tunneling will occur is of course probabilistic. | [
"Fission is the process through which a nucleus splits into (typically two) smaller atoms. If fission is occurring, it is often of interest to know the asymptotic behavior of the system. A reactor is called “critical” if the chain reaction is self-sustaining and time-independent. If the system is not in equilibrium... |
How humans reached islands like Japan during the Paleolithic? | Hi! While pre-history questions are fine here, it would be worth also x-posting this one to /r/AskAnthropology | [
"The island of Timor was populated as part of the human migrations that have shaped Australasia more generally. As of 2019, the oldest traces of human settlement are 43,000 to 44,000 years old, and were found in the Laili cave in Manatuto Municipality. These early settlers had high-level maritime skills, and by imp... |
Why did Bowing die out in Europe, but persist in East Asia? | Just for some clarification do you mean archery? Or just making the bows?
Edit: I may have misread that, did you mean bowing as in the gesture? If so I appoligize. | [
"Following the collapse of the Church of the East's hierarchy in most of Asia in the 14th century, India was effectively cut off from the church's heartland in Mesopotamia and formal contact was severed. By the late 15th century India had had no metropolitan for several generations, and the authority traditionally ... |
How was Malta able to withstand the Malta blitz? | Largely this was due to bombing being much less accurate than you might think. During WWII the percentage of bombs that hit anywhere near their targets was in the single digits--at least when it came to high level strategic bombing. Tactical bombers, such as the (in)famous Stuka dive bomber, could be much more accurate but were also much more vulnerable to antiaircraft fire and opposing fighters. The result was that while it was not pleasant by any means to be a target of aerial bombardment it was also not as damaging as one might suspect, especially to individual targets.
In the case of Malta, the sources I have read point to the largest difficulty being resupply rather than aerial bombardment. Sam Moses writes about this in his book, *At All Costs: How a Crippled Ship and Two American Merchant Marines Turned the Tide of World War II.* This book describes Operation Pedestal, which took place in 1942. This was a critical supply convoy, in which only five of the original fourteen ships made it to their destination in Malta due to incessant German attempts to stop it. The threat as described by Moses was that Malta would be kept from being resupplied, not that it would be bombed into submission. Subsequent efforts would keep Malta supplied by sea.
The aerial campaigns against Malta were no doubt damaging. There is even the legendary (and slightly overhyped) story of Malta being defended by a mere three biplane fighters against the might of the Luftwaffe. While there were three such planes, they were joined by modern British fighters as well. These planes along with antiaircraft guns kept the bombing runs from being unopposed. In addition, the Germans never had a force of heavy four engined bombers that could carry heavy bomb loads to their targets. Instead, lighter two engined bombers had a limited bomb load, which certainly limited the damage they were capable of inflicting. They also had little in the way of defensive armament when compared to Allied heavy bombers. So, while they were able to inflict casualties and destroy some buildings, German bombers were unable to knock out Malta's airfields or port facilities. As such, Malta was able to withstand the German bombardment. | [
"The siege of Malta in the Second World War concluded in November 1942. During this time, Malta experienced a total of 3,000 bombing raids over a period of two years in an effort to destroy Royal Air Force defences and the ports. For enduring this, King George VI of the United Kingdom awarded the George Cross to th... |
Suppose I visited Oregon in 1000BCE and then again in AD1000. (Without asking someone) How could I tell which was which? | Note to Moderators: if I've made some mistake in the rules please let me know and I'll make an adjustment. I mostly lurk here, but I understand you're quite strict and I'd hate to have this all deleted.
Hey there,
Go ahead and cross post this to /r/askanthropology because they will have the experts you need.
Second, consider explaining why you've asked this question, because there may be some more interesting factoids if you expand your range of time a little bit. Both 1000BCE and 1000CE fall within the Late Holocene (1500BCE-1775CE).
The Northern Pacific cultures we are familiar with today (thanks Franz Boas!) were well on track by 6,000 years ago. By 1800BCE there were already simple ranked societies (as a cultural anthropologist I tend to buck the archaeological terminology such as 'simple' but I'll do my best to repeat what the textbooks tell you). Essentially because food resources like salmon were extremely seasonal, society stratified into hierarchy by necessity in order to create effective food storage and dispersion over the year.
Following 1800BCE, ranking became continually more elaborate. Households tended to be matrilineal (organized around ties to one's mother, her mother, etc) although social units were headed by men. Farther south (which I believe includes Oregon in the context of my reading) there were some episodes of patrilineal households and ranked polygamy, but generally these systems were more unstable. Boom and bust. Again, I'm no expert, but ~~I'll have to disagree with wildfire's comment below and say that you'll probably see planked cedar houses and possibly totem poles as early as 1000BCE. Their prevalence and elaboration is another matter~~(yeah, nope). On a side note, the issue with this whole area/time period is that sea levels rose dramatically and most likely destroyed the vast majority of available evidence, leaving archaeologists with shell middens and the houses of weirdos that built far away from shore.
To more directly answer your question: The more evidence you see for ranking and heirarchy, the later you probably are. One smoking gun might be the creation of burial mounds. A few of these were undertaken in the area around 1000CE, but there were none before that as far as we know. Burial mounds are large heaps of earth. It's unlikely you would catch anyone in the act of making them (they're actually quite fast to make) but you might see signs of a large mass of disturbed earth that doesn't match the geological terrain. However, I think you would be lucky to run into one because my impression is that they were quite rare. Better to just make some friends and watch for signs of heightened hierarchy (some people have more free time, specialization, accumulation of wealth, competition between groups).
Again, try cross posting to askanthrpology because you'll be much more likely to get an expert on those date ranges in that subreddit.
Thanks!
Edit: [SOURCE.](_URL_0_)
Edit 2: Putting the moderator note on top...
Edit 3: /u/retarredroof gives a great critique of what I've said here (see below). In particular I want to draw attention to a possibly much more foolproof means of answering the question which they point out. Technology is always the archaeologists go-to, and leave it to a cultural anth guy to totally overlook this in favor of nebulous social relationships which there is less evidence for:
> The main difference I would anticipate between 3000 years ago and 1000 years ago on the Oregon coast would be the increased use of the specialized technologies for salmon and other anadromous species (e.g. salmon dams, fish nets, fish and lamprey traps, composite harpoons) and the onset and/or adoption of the classic NW Coast village with the use of large coastal towns by 1000 years ago. Lyman sees a transition from pit houses, like those that persist in interior Oregon until contact, to plank houses during the period of interest on the coast. Social stratification increases through time and it would not surprise me if slavery was in use by 1000 years ago. Also during this period there is a slow transition from flaked stone technology to ground stone use for harpoon and other points. | [
"Most scholarship ascribes the earliest known use of the name \"Oregon\" to a 1765 petition by Major Robert Rogers to the Kingdom of Great Britain, seeking money to finance an expedition in search of the Northwest Passage. The petition read \"the rout... is from the Great Lakes towards the Head of the Mississippi, ... |
how can the us government tack on extra laws to bills? | People in the US don't vote on every bill that is to/might become law. It is a Representstive Democracy so they vote for Senators and Congresmen/women who will they represent them. It is these people who then vote on the bills which are put before them. If the bill passes in both the Senate and the House of Representatives the president will sign that bill and it will become law. Each bill is not limited to one topic. It is quite often that a bill will be mostly about one topic that everyone can get on board with, and then have a line or section which covers something entirely different. Typically the subject of that provision is something one or the other parties does not particularly want. | [
" provides that whenever a bill becomes law or takes effect, it will be received by the Archivist of the United States from the President. This allows the National Archives and Records Administration to maintain records of and publish the enacted laws.\n",
"Congress may both authorize and appropriate in the same ... |
how does recycling paper work and why does it seem like every recycled paper bag is brown? | Paper is recycled by chopping it up and then cooking the bits in warm water, then mashing them back into sheets and drying it again.
Usually they bleach it, so most recycled paper is white. If they don't bleach it, the natural color is gray or brown depending on the materials. (Brown if made of cardboard boxes, gray if made of office paper or newspaper.) | [
"Bales of recycled paper (normally old corrugated containers) for unbleached (brown) packaging grades may be simply pulped, screened and cleaned. Recycling to make white papers is usually done in a deinking plant, which employs screening, cleaning, washing, bleaching and flotation. Deinked pulp is used in printing ... |
why will a whole flock of birds sit in a tree and caw/chirp/exclaim at seemingly nothing? | Birds do four very basic things: Eat, sleep, shit and fuck. If the birds have eaten and got enough rest there is nothing left for them to do but try to get with the lady birds. Birds hang out in trees and chirp and sing to show that they have done all the important things and they would be a good choice for a marathon sex session because they are such efficient hunters and sleepers, they must be better than the other birds. Trouble is, once one bird starts making noise, others join in even if they are a bit hungry. Soon all the birds are cawing and whistling outside your door. | [
"This bird feeds on fruit in the tree canopy, sometimes visiting forest verges (at which times it is easier to observe), but more often remaining elusive in the woodland interior. It is a lethargic bird usually seen singly or in pairs, but sometimes forming part of mixed flocks of fruiteaters. The fruits on which i... |
What are the horizontal bands of clouds that form during a nuclear detonation, and why do they form at those intervals? | It's called a condensation cloud, or a Wilson cloud. It only occurs in humid air. With an explosion of significant size, a shock wave develops which leaves a a low-pressure zone behind it. This leads to large-scale adiabatic cooling. This cooling of the air below the dew point allows the moisture to condense into clouds, oftentimes as rings as we see in the video you linked. Once the pressure equalizes, the clouds disappear. How the clouds appear depends on the exact nature of the shock wave as well as the temperature and humidity of the air around the blast. | [
"Mushroom clouds are formed by many sorts of large explosions under earth's gravity, but they are best known for their appearance after nuclear detonations. Without gravity, the explosive's by-product gases would remain spherical. Nuclear weapons are usually detonated above the ground (not upon impact, because some... |
When did brothels start using red lights as a sign of their presence? Why red? | Ooo!.Ooo! I know! At least, what they claim in *Brass Checks and Red Lights*, a brief study of prostitution in the late West, and some of the background of sportin' houses. They said it originally came from railroad men hanging their red-glassed lanterns outside the one-whore cribs. However, I have long wondered just how many stops those guys were making to provide that many red lights, and just how old the term actually is. This book would make it post-1830s at the earliest and more like post-Civil War. | [
"Red is still commonly associated with prostitution. Prostitutes in many cities were required to wear red to announce their profession, and houses of prostitution displayed a red light. Beginning in the early 20th century, houses of prostitution were allowed only in certain specified neighborhoods, which became kno... |
During the middle ages in Europe, how would soldiers treat and transport their weapons and armor from battle to battle? | I only feel qualified to answer one of your questions. It's not much, but I hope it helps somewhat.
Knights would typically not be armored when not expecting battle. As anyone who has walked around in chainmail can attest; that stuff is very heavy. Add plate and it gets even worse. With training, it's well possible to wear it for an extended time, but sleeping in it would be very uncomfortable and any strenuous activity such as marching would be for more exhausting than it otherwise would be. Both hot and wet weather can make wearing armor even less pleasant.
A good historic example of this can be found in the battle of Stamford Bridge. The vikings had left their armor behind in their ships, because of the hot weather and the fact that they were not expecting conflict with the English for a good while yet. They got a nasty surprise after Harold Godwinsson force-marched his army north in record time.
source: _URL_0_ | [
"BULLET::::- The plate armor of European soldiers did not stop soldiers from moving around or necessitate a crane to get them into a saddle. They would as a matter of course fight on foot and could mount and dismount without help. In fact, soldiers equipped with plate armor were more mobile than those with mail arm... |
why are there leaked pictures of almost all new non-released products? how do they get them? | 1. an insider (employee, someone in the production line / supply-chain line) sells the information to a publisher.
2. the company itself tries to mimic the hype of "leaks" by willfully creating the above for the purpose of marketing.
| [
"There is a vast body of photographs, including but not limited to publicity stills, that have no notice as to who may have created them... Without knowing where the photos came from, or what long lost parent may appear and claim the 'orphaned work,' licensing the work becomes risky business. For publishers, museum... |
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