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why i should not be scared shitless on commercial flights. | Pilot here.
Some people have an irrational fear of flying. If that's you, I could describe in as much detail as I like how safe flying is, and it probably wouldn't help you. There are "fear of flying" courses you can attend which *can* help. They typically involve spending some time understanding some of the technical aspects of what's happening, talking to pilots and air traffic controllers, and then going on a short flight, with *incredibly* understanding flight attendants who will help explain what's happening, what all the noises mean, and so on.
Since you specifically asked why you should trust the mechanics, it may be that in your case, your fear isn't totally irrational, but is based on a lack of understanding of flight and aeroplanes, in which case the following will help:
First of all, understand that aeroplanes naturally *want* to fly. The wings are designed to keep the aircraft in the air. The tail is designed to keep the aircraft going straight. The engines aren't even needed for flying - they're just needed to get into the air, and to maintain speed and height. If all the engines stopped, however unlikely that may be, you'd be left with a big glider. One of the few examples of this was the US Airways flight which landed safely in the Hudson after both engines stopped, resulting in zero injuries. The crew did a brilliant job, but the aeroplane was designed to fly, and that's why it was able to fly to a safe splash-down.
Having said that, there are certain items which are important in aeroplanes, and yes, engines are one of them. So are flight control systems. And autopilots. All airliners have duplicates of these systems, so that if there is a problem with one, the others can carry on working. A typical airliner will have two engines, three hydraulic systems that are used for moving the control surfaces, and three autopilots. If anything does fail, there will be a backup system to take over.
Finally, there's the safety culture that exists within aviation. We all make mistakes from time to time. If we make a mistake driving, we usually forget about it and move on. If the mistake results in an accident, we deny it. In aviation, the opposite is true. When mistakes occur, pilots, engineers, and everyone else in aviation is actively encouraged to report it. Reports are regularly published so that everyone else can learn from them. That means that flying gets safer and safer as we all learn from previous mistakes, and change our procedures to ensure we don't repeat them.
It's because of all these things that commercial flying is consistently the safest way, statistically, to get around.
I hope that helps, but please do ask if there's anything else you want to know.
Edit - wow, reddit gold! Thank you, kind redditor. There are few things I enjoy as much as flying, or talking about flying, so to get reddit gold for doing something I enjoy has made my day! | [
"People with fear of flying experience intense, persistent fear or anxiety when they consider flying, as well as during flying. They will avoid flying if they can, and the fear, anxiety, and avoidance cause significant distress and impair their ability to function. Take-off, bad weather, and turbulence appear to be... |
What would be the least painful way to die? | If someone is in this thread for the wrong reasons, *please* go here instead: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) | [
"Severe pain may last for 2–4 weeks. Locally, it may persist depending on the level of tissue damage. Often, local swelling peaks within 48–72 hours, involving both the affected limb and the trunk. If swelling up to the trunk occurs within 1–2 hours, massive envenomation is likely. Discoloration may occur throughou... |
how cold blooded animals manage their body temperature when external environment temperature is in minus, eg -1,-2 or so? | Cold-blooded animals don't typically live in environments that drop below freezing. When they do, they typically go underground where it's warmer and/or hibernate for the winter. | [
"By numerous observations upon humans and other animals, John Hunter showed that the essential difference between the so-called warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals lies in observed constancy of the temperature of the former, and the observed variability of the temperature of the latter. Almost all birds and mamma... |
Can someone please explain to me what this is on the weather map and how it formed like this? | I see the radar site!
Weather radar sometimes misbehaves with cloud formations too close to the system. I'd bet good money this station's radar data comes from a site in Aberdeen. | [
"When analyzing a weather map, a station model is plotted at each point of observation. Within the station model, the temperature, dewpoint, wind speed and direction, atmospheric pressure, pressure tendency, and ongoing weather are plotted. The circle in the middle represents cloud cover; fraction it is filled in r... |
Given that an Alcubierre warp drive is physically possible, how would the crew experience time in relation to others? | Just to focus on the start of your question - current physics doesn't tell us that the Alcubierre Drive is possible. Current physics just doesn't explicitly *forbid* the Alcubierre Drive. These are very, very different things.
There are all sorts of things that aren't forbidden by modern physics but also can't/don't exist, and the Alcubierre Drive is probably one of them. It relies on a form of matter that we have no evidence for, and no reason to suspect it exists anywhere in the universe, and no reason to suspect it can be created.
To answer your question, there is no significant time dilation involved, although you instead have to deal with the implications of faster-than-light travel, including implied time travel and causation paradoxes. | [
"Three years later, in the episode \"\", \"Voyager\" discovered a stranded spaceship with a Coaxial Warp Drive. This also used spatial folding for locomotion. But the system was very unstable and if there is a fault in the drive it could cause a tear in the space-time continuum. A replica of the drive was only test... |
why vehicles aren't built more like bumper cars. | Cars are designed with crumple zones. Even a fairly gentle crash will crumple the car, meaning that the car doesn't stop quite as suddenly. It's still very sudden, but not quite as much, and this can make crashes much more survivable for the people in the car.
Building cars with solid bumpers like bumper cars would result in more injuries and death in the case of accidents.
Conversely, building bumper cars like street cars would result in cars that would be no use after their first "bump". | [
"In most jurisdictions, bumpers are legally required on all vehicles. Regulations for automobile bumpers have been implemented for two reasons – to allow the car to sustain a low-speed impact without damage to the vehicle's safety systems, and to protect pedestrians from injury. These requirements are in conflict: ... |
Is the species to species relationship seen between humans and dogs seen among other animals as well? | Many species of ants are highly interactive with other species (mostly other insects). For example, some species have aphid "farms" - basically the aphids eat plant sap, and ants eat their poop. The ants, in order to maintain their supply of aphid poop, protect the aphids from predators. Occasionally they'll eat the aphids but most of the time they just eat their poop.
_URL_0_
Although this isn't necessarily "social" in the sense of the word as we think between humans and domesticated animals, ants are really interesting. | [
"Both humans and dogs are characterized by complex social lives with rich communication systems, but it is also possible that dogs, perhaps because of their reliance on humans for food, have evolved specialized skills for recognizing and interpreting human social-communicative signals. Four basic hypotheses have be... |
white ceilings | It reflects light which helps the room to be brighter.
This helps the room feel bigger and less opressive. | [
"The second floor of the building is decorated in strong reds, blues and purples in the style. Some of the \"shōji\" screens on the second floor feature glass panes imported from the Netherlands, allowing snow viewing in wintertime without opening the screens.\n",
"In the upper, restored, room, the walls are cove... |
why are us primaries so expensive? candidates rely on heavy donations, what do they spend that money on besides air fare/accommodation? | Advertising... Mailers, yard signs, flyers, bill boards, and the biggest of all, TV spots. All those things, done in multiple states simultaneously, cost a huge amount of money.
Staff... Not everyone working for the campaigns is doing it for free, plenty of the people working for the candidates need to feed their families. The same goes for the security hired for events.
Events... Those rallies and stuff cost a lot, and that money's got to come from the candidates. Venues, traffic control, programing, etc...
Website... It's not a huge expense, but running a professional website that can handle heavy traffic isn't free. | [
"There were many reasons why candidates invested much time and money in canvassing. As in the previous tradition of sounding out supporters before announcing, many candidates would use the canvass to determine their level of support, and would drop out before election day if it proved insufficient. Part of the conc... |
can you keep an amputated limb? | I am pretty sure they get incinerated and I am sure it depends on why it was amputated. If it was due to an infectious disease from bacteria I doubt they would let you keep it from fear of the disease spreading. If it was for another reason you might be able to keep it. | [
"People who have a limb amputated may still have a confused sense of that limb's existence on their body, known as phantom limb syndrome. Phantom sensations can occur as passive proprioceptive sensations of the limb's presence, or more active sensations such as perceived movement, pressure, pain, itching, or temper... |
how is a game made from a totally new engine (like overwatch)? | Likely your first step is going to be how to display something, so you would code an interface to the graphics systems (we're going broad here) that tells it you want a square on the screen. Then you want to apply a specific color. Then you may want to be able to put a specific design on it. You slowly (and painfully) build up the different things you can do.
Add the option to click on it with your mouse, resize it, transform it (move one or more corners so it isn't a perfect square anymore). Have it pass through another square, slowly change it's color. Each of these are incremental steps, and takes time and effort, but once done you have an engine.
At this point you have some basic display components. But when it comes to building a full engine there are so many different components that it is a very complicated job.
The next step is actually to figure out the rules you want to live by, and there is almost always some give and take. The decisions are usually made with a thought to processing power.
Do you want to have 20,000 moderately detailed objects on screen or do you want to have 1,000 very detailed objects?
Do you want to be able to interact (shoot/see/hear) objects from miles away or just the closer ones?
How realistic do you want your lighting? Should light reflect of different surfaces based on the material of that object? Do you want some items to be fully or even partially transparent?
Are sounds limited in volume by distance only or does architecture and walls make a difference? Just like lighting, do you have certain materials muffle noise more or less than others?
Do you want realistic physics or a more relaxed system? For example do you want objects to have terminal velocity at different rates due to air resistance/mass restrictions or just assume they all reach the same terminal velocity.
Do you want weather effects? Curved surfaces? line of effect or just line of sight?
Each decision adjusts both the processing power needed and the complexity of the code.
For many games the type of game (as mentioned by FuzzyCats) can help with these decisions. A racing game will probably need better physics modelling than a platformer.
Once these are decided, it boils down to programming, you have a series of problems and you find solutions to them. | [
"Game engine recreation is a type of video game engine remastering process whereby a new game engine is written from scratch as a clone of the original with the ability to load the original game's data files such as music, textures, scripts, shaders, levels, and more. The new engine should read these data files and... |
I'm a basic infantry soldier stationed in the Western front in WWI. What are some things I can do to enhance my chances of survival? | Not getting promoted would be a very good idea. Not getting promoted to a high risk arm would be even better.
For the British, 1 officer casualty would be sustained for the following proportion of men for different arms
* Tank Corps - 5.5
* Cavalry - 9.4
* Artillery - 12.3
* Engineers - 16.4
* Infantry - 23.9
Getting yourself a commission in the tanks or in a cavalry unit was therefore not particularly healthy.
Learning Italian would be a fairly good idea. The overall battle casualty rate for the western front was 55% compared to
* 23% for the Dardenelles
* 15% for Mesopotamia,
* 8.5% for east Africa,
* and only 4.76% for Italy.
Getting yourself transferred to the Isonzo would therefore be good for your long term prospects.
Source: *Statistics of the military effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914-1920* | [
"On the Western Front during World War I, an American battalion advances to the French town of Nevremont, where it is outflanked. Sergeant Bill Thatcher (Bill Boyd) is left in charge of a small rear guard of four men to cover the battalion's retreat before it is cut off. During heavy shelling, Bill tries to comfort... |
what can someone really do if they find your ssn and dob? | With that (and perhaps a few other, publically accessible information, like your name) they can apply for credit cards in your name, max them out, and never pay them back, ruining your credit. They may also be able to access your bank account and other private information. It could be quite bad. | [
"Hiding the network name may prevent less technically inclined people from connecting to the network, but will not deter a determined adversary. Use of WPA or WPA2 is recommended instead. Hiding the SSID removes it from beacon frames, but this is only one of several ways an SSID can be discovered. When one chooses ... |
why does depth of field become more narrow with an increase in format? | The relevant factor to depth of field is the actual focal length, not the equivalent focal length.
To shoot on a larger format, you need a longer focal length to get the equivalent framing.
(eg. 100mm lens on a FF still camera matches the field of view of a 50mm lens on a micro 4/3 camera. So in common photography usage you might call the 50mm m4/3 lens "100mm equivalent,' comparing it to the standard of full frame).
But the way the optics work, the equation for depth-of-field uses the actual focal length measurement in mm, not the 'equivalent'.
So if you shot a head-and-shoulders portrait with both cameras from the same distance, with your 50mm FF lens on your 5D and a 100mm m4/3 lens on your GH4, both at f/2.8 and at ISO 200, your 5D's picture would have almost exactly half the depth-of-field of your GH4's picture.
I say 'almost exactly' because the actual full equation that incorporates the frame size on the imaging plane very slightly attenuates the effect. For practical purposes it is half. | [
"The same factors that determine depth of field also determine depth of focus, but these factors can have different effects than they have in depth of field. Both depth of field and depth of focus increase with smaller apertures. For distant subjects (beyond macro range), depth of focus is relatively insensitive to... |
What did Frankenstein's monster look like before Boris Karloff (from the 1931 film) made everyone get the same image in their head? | Fun question!
The original 1818 edition, to my knowledge, had no illustrations, nor did its 1823 reprint; I can't find a digitized version of the 1821 French translation. That leaves the first trackable depiction of Frankenstein's creature to an 1823 play. Shelley did not like the play overall, but praised T. P. Cooke's performance as the creature (or ----- as his role was printed). [She described him in the role](_URL_1_) as "unearthly & monstrous."
I can find two renditions from the 1823 play, [the cover of a play print](_URL_4_) and [this lithograph](_URL_5_). If either of those is accurate, we can imagine Shelley's praise had more to do with Cooke's acting than the depiction. Nevertheless, the impression created by the semi-bare chest in both, by the wild hair in Wageman's engraving, and the torn clothing on the cover illustration is of the creature as *wild man.*
The 1831 edition did receive [an illustration,](_URL_2_) and the bare-chested (....possibly more than just the chest), unkempt-haired creature maintains wild man status.
In all three of these, Herr Doktor Frankenstein himself is contrasted to the monster (and to our modern, post-Einstein/Strangelove mad scientist stereotype) in his own nice clothing and well-groomed-ness.
The monster and the contrast continues when Hollyweed gets its hands on The Modern Prometheus--and oh, it does, almost from the beginning. In [this clip](_URL_3_) from the 1910 (!) edition, you can see the contrast between the refined Frankstein and his wildman monster even more clearly. Here's [a still of the creature.](_URL_0_)
The other interesting thing about this particular rendition is that this seems to be the first, maybe only, time (in illustration, at least--who knows what the stage acting looked like) that the creature as hunched/twisted/deformed enters the visual iconography. This is interesting because, of course, after a couple of now-lost film versions (including a 1920 Italian production where *baldness* is the marker of monstrosity), Frankenstein's physically-twisted assistant will enter the legend and its extended universe. Frankenstein's creature becomes the sewn-together corpse we know and love, but by way of linking evil to disability, we get Fritz in 1931, Ygor in 1939, Daniel in 1944. | [
"Frankenstein's monster became iconic in popular culture, and has been featured in various forms of media, like films, television series, merchandise and video games. His most iconic version is his portrayal by Boris Karloff in the 1931 film \"Frankenstein.\"\n",
"Frankenstein's monster appears in the Konami vide... |
why do most video players have a notification when switching to full screen mode to allow or exit full screen mode at the top? | It's to stop sneaky hacking that creates a full screen version of your desktop so that they can fiddle around with it and steal information without you knowing. It's not the video player, by the way, it's the browser (chrome for example). | [
"Video can be seen in windowed mode or full screen mode; it is possible to switch the mode during the viewing of any video without reloading it because of the full-screen function of Adobe Systems Flash Player 9.\n",
"A panel at the bottom of the screen is used to display text. At the sides of the panel are short... |
why can't we all just get along? | Because people have fundamentally different values and principles based on how they were raised and what their life status is. Possibly also their genetics. Sometimes the principles are contradictory, and that creates conflict. | [
"But once a relationship is established, and the lines of communication are open, it is undeniably easier to have others on your side and others who are willing to help you out, both professionally and personally. Pfeffer (2010) acknowledges the dynamic relationship among trust, relationships, and power when he say... |
What is happening at a molecular level when pH levels change? | pH is a measurement of _hydronium_ ion (H3O^+ ) concentrations - not "hydrogen ions".
All acids and bases have two "states" - a protonated form (the acid) and a deprotonated form (base). Note that when I say "acid" and "base", it has a slightly different meaning than the common usage. For example, sulfuric acid (H2SO4) is a common "acid", but the deprotonated form, the sulfate ion (SO4^2- ), is a base - the conjugate base to sulfuric acid. These conjugate acids and bases act exactly like the [Bronsted-Lowry](_URL_0_) acids and bases you are familiar with.
The addition caveat here is that _in water_, the strongest acid that can exist is H3O^+ , and the strongest base that can exist is OH^- . When you add an acid that is technically "stronger" (with a higher acid dissociation constant, Ka), it ends up protonating water. That's why when you add HCl in water, it immediately undergoes dissociation via this reaction equation:
HCl + H2O - > H3O^+ + Cl^-
When you add a base to this aqueous acidic solution, you have neutralization - either by the base _deprotonating_ water, or deprotonating the acid directly.
A strong base, NaOH for example, dissociates in water before neutralization occurs:
NaOH - > Na^+ + OH^-
OH^- + H3O^+ - > 2H2O
The _solution_ becomes more basic, since we're turning some hydronium ions into water. The "acidic substance" or "basic substance" does not become more basic or acidic.
Technically you can measure pH in a non-aqueous solution, but the figure is more often than not meaningless, and pKa is a more useful figure to know.
Edit: Grammar. Elaborated on neutralization. | [
"The pH at which a significant structural change in how the molecules are arranged is observed. This structural change does not involve breaking bonds, but rather a change in conformation. For example, a swelling/deswelling transition would constitute a reversible conformational change. The value of the pH critical... |
why does gta still continue to use fake names for vehicles yet games like gran turismo, forza, and need for speed have been using manufacturers names/vehicles for years? | > Real car companies don't want their brand associated with things like running over hookers and what not.
That is actually untrue.. Rockstar has stated several times that they had no problems whatsoever with car companies allowing their names to be used. They even went further on to say that several car companies actually wished that Sony/Rockstar would use their names due to the massive following of the GTA franchise and would be an easy way to establish brand recognition.
The real reason (according to Rockstar) is that almost the entire game is based on some form of satire and to them it was just another way to keep the game satirical and original. | [
"Subsequent games that follow this formula of driving and shooting have been called \"\"Grand Theft Auto\" clones\". Some reviewers even extended this label to the \"Driver\" series, even though this series began years before the release of \"Grand Theft Auto III\".\n",
"The game does not feature any Toyota and L... |
Saturn's Rings and Gravity - Why do the particles rotate so uniform? | The phenomenon is called accretion disc and is based on the same effect as the frequent spiral form of galaxies.Imagine several macroscopic bodies orbiting a mass. If there is a finite number of bodies, and there isnt perfect rotational symmetry, an gravitational force towards the angular pendant of the baryzentrum will be exerted. As an major part of the rings are formed by bigger rocks, this effect is way stronger than it would be if it only were dust. | [
"Until 1980, the structure of the rings of Saturn was explained as being caused exclusively by the action of gravitational forces. Then images from the Voyager spacecraft showed radial features in the B Ring, known as \"spokes\", which could not be explained in this manner, as their persistence and rotation around ... |
Why there are not animals with wheels? | The only human civilizations that really benefitted from wheels were ones in relatively flat areas, often with roads (a major technology of trade/empire), and often with draft animals. In any place where the terrain was really difficult they either hoofed it with just loads of human power (e.g. the pre-Contact Americas), or did the "pile everything onto an animal" approach, despite the fact that these cultures demonstrably knew about wheels (e.g., they had wheeled toys).
We live in a society that is today almost exclusively wired up for wheeled transport so it is easy to forget that this is was not only the natural state of the world, it wasn't even the natural state of humanity outside of the last couple millennia (and a lot sooner in most cases — the automobile-centric society is about a century old, and yet in many places, like the United States, it is almost impossible to imagine cities _not_ being planned around automobiles).
Which is to just say: wheels _are_ useful _in the right circumstances_. Nature generally does not provide those circumstances (and there are much more useful, generalizable forms of locomotion available); certainly they are not dominant in most places. (And while I would not want to second-guess nature's creativity, wheels are kind of a pain in the ass, as anyone who has owned a bike in tricky terrain knows. Yes, they let you go very fast on the right kinds of surfaces, but they usually need a lot of maintenance and repair, and they can be made rather useless very easily.) There are "wheels" at the microbiological level, however — the [bacterial flagellum](_URL_0_) does have complete rotational motion. | [
"Wheels incur mechanical and other disadvantages in certain environments and situations that would represent a decreased fitness when compared with limbed locomotion. These disadvantages suggest that, even barring the biological constraints discussed above, the absence of wheels in multicellular life may not be the... |
When did the calendar as the West knows it become practice? At what point did people start using the same years as we do now? | hi! the calendar you're referring to is called the [*Gregorian Calendar*](_URL_0_). There's lots of room for more information here regarding its adoption of this to various cultures, but you can get a good start on this topic in the FAQ
* [How did the world agree on what year it is?](_URL_1_) - check out the first link to the AskHistorians Podcast episode | [
"The modern Western calendar is a refinement of the Julian calendar, which was introduced by Julius Caesar. The calendar of the Roman Empire began with the months Ianuarius (January), Februarius (February), and Martius (March). The common tradition to begin the year on 1 January was a convention established in anci... |
which industrial processes can not be done with electricity as power-source? | The industry of generating electrical power itself does not have to rely on electricity to start the generation of electricity, but it does help.
This methods vary but can be a number of means such as mechanical, chemical, or nuclear.
Electricity can be used to help such as providing lights for workers working on the equipment, or powering a heater warming kit on a diesel generator in a cold environment but in and of itself is not necessary to function in a basic system. | [
"1) to develop the materials and systems for energy conversion without using external power supply and no combustible fules. The production of electricity is aimed to feed ultra-low and low-power consumption electronics.\n",
"Electric machines, in the form of generators, produce virtually all electric power on Ea... |
How common and severe were abuses committed against civilians during the American Revolutionary War? | In the course of my research, I have found a frightening number of instances of rape, though I haven't had the opportunity to comb through court martial records to get more specific than "they happened more often than they should have."
The most famous anecdote to this effect was Lord Francis Rawdon's letter from New York in 1776, in which he stated that his men were "as riotous as satyrs" and that American women could hardly "step into the bushes to pick a rose without running the most imminent risk of being ravished, and they are so little accustomed to these vigorous methods that they don’t bear them with the proper resignation, and of consequence we have most entertaining courts-martial every day." Some historians have argued that Rawdon was trying to be humorous here, but his neglect of American women's complaints was typical of too many British officers of the day. In writing to Thomas Jefferson, one American complained that sexual violence was so common in his colony that "there is scarce a virgin to be found in the part of the country [the British army] have passed through."
Destruction of property was also fairly common. Some of these were out of military necessity. When the British attacked Breed's Hill, American snipers harassed them from the homes of Charlestown. Unable to weed out the partisans, the British Navy instead fired heated shot into the dwellings and businesses there, burning the town.
Throughout the war, the far Northern theater was also exposed to constant destruction. The Mohawk Valley in particular was the subject of severe raids in the final years of the war, such as the Burning of the Valleys and Carleton's Raid, each of which destroyed tons upon tons of foodstuffs and destroyed production there. Similar actions occurred in the Southern back country, and earlier in the war by Dunmore's fleet throughout the Chesapeake.
Interestingly enough, churches were targeted in the Southern back country as well. Walter B. Edgar in his book *Partisans and Redcoats* suggests that this may have been a war measure by the British, who viewed the churches as something more akin to town halls, than the spiritual dwelling place of God. Though I'm not always convinced by his other ideas, I find this one intriguing. Having said that, there is no evidence for the British burning anybody *inside* the churches like in the film *The Patriot.*
Targeting of civilians in massacres was not widespread and even more rarely between white combatants. American militia methodically murdered over one hundred Christian Native Americans at the [Gnadenhutten Massacre](_URL_0_) in 1782. Most massacres involved a racial aspect of one degree or another, and were almost always on the outskirts of the colonies.
War is never pretty. The Revolution has been whitewashed time and again, but it, like all wars before and since, was brutal. | [
"In 1884, outrage over a manslaughter verdict in what many observers thought was a clear case of murder triggered the Courthouse riots, one of the most destructive riots in American history. Over the course of three days, 56 people were killed and over 300 were injured. The riots ended the regime of political bosse... |
why does striped clothes seems to "blink" when you look at them for a moment? | When your eyes scan something they move in small jumps called saccades, not smoothly. For something with stripes, this can get confusing, by locking onto one then jumping to the next, but that seems like the first so it's not clear that whether you've moved to a different one or not.
| [
"In the laboratory, this is typically studied by presenting a striped pattern that moves too fast to be seen, so that, when the eyes do not move, it appears as a homogeneous surface. But when the participant makes an eye movement in the same direction as the pattern movement, the velocity of the eye movement briefl... |
Did ancient people understand the concept of extinction? | This isn't exactly answering your question because the focus is not on ancient peoples, but in [this answer I spent some time charting the development of an awareness of the concept of extinction](_URL_0_) in the Western scientific tradition. Hope that helps! | [
"The Holocene extinction is mainly caused by human activity. Extinction of animals, plants, and other organisms caused by human actions may go as far back as the late Pleistocene, over 12,000 years ago. There is a correlation between megafaunal extinction and the arrival of humans, and human overpopulation and huma... |
why do ordinary cars not have those useful, black "heating stripes" in their windshields? | Because ford own the patent of having this in the windscreen. You will see them on their high end cars. Even carried along into jaguar when they used to own that | [
"Hubcaps and grille were painted; buyers paid extra for a basic recirculating heater for the passenger compartment. Interiors were fitted with painted cardboard panels—gray vinyl being the single standard for upholstery. Rubberized floor coverings replaced carpeting. The only chrome plating was on the front and rea... |
why can't you see pixels on a phone screen as easily as you can on a monitor? | Say you have a phone that is 1080p and a monitor that is also 1080p. You have the same number of pixels, but they are closer together on the smaller screen of the phone. | [
"\"to our eyes, there has never been a more detailed, clear, or viewable screen on any mobile device. Not only are the colors and blacks deep and rich, but you simply cannot see pixels on the screen…webpages that would be line after line of pixelated content when zoomed out on a 3GS are completely readable on the i... |
Has a tyrant in the likes of Hitler or Saddam
Hussein ever had a change of heart in their later
years to become a benevolent ruler? | Not really as important as the ones you mentioned but there is, of course, General Butt Naked, of Liberia. He was a genocidal cannibalistic warlord during the Country's civil war who had since devoted his life to the church and being a good person. Look it up. | [
"Saddam was notable for using terror against his own people. \"The Economist\" described Saddam as \"one of the last of the 20th century's great dictators, but not the least in terms of egotism, or cruelty, or morbid will to power\". Saddam's regime brought about the deaths of at least 250,000 Iraqis and committed ... |
When a new species is found, how do you distinguish the male from the female? | "And here is the male seahorse."
"... it looks like it's having a baby."
"Um.. the male seahorse has the baby." | [
"Maximum adult length of this species is . Females tend to be slightly bigger than males, maturing around . Males typically grow to around . Their build is stocky, while the head is relatively small. The scales are smooth and both sexes have anal spurs on either side of the vent. Although males tend to have larger ... |
Why is U–Pb dating so effective in measuring the age of the Earth? Wouldn't there be decaying uranium floating around the early Solar System, or even *before* the formation of the Sun during the nebula stage? | Yes, there would. Then it all gets melted into a homogenous mess during planetary accretion. With the uranium locked in place, and the Pb unable to escape, we can measure their ratios to tell how long they've been locked in place.
Radiogenic dating tells you when the substance was last melted, not anything else. | [
"In 2007, using uranium–lead dating on zircons, the Nuvvuagittuq was dated to be a minimum of 3.7 billion years old. This measurement was made using uranium–lead dating on zircons found within granitic intrusions that cut portions of the belt, and therefore, are younger than the features it cuts. This measurement i... |
what is the, if there exists any, the science behind the human fascination with serial killers and crime shows? | Humans want to see consequences to actions that they understand are deviant and are curious to the the thinking behind their "logical" thinking (i.e., planning, motivation, efficacy, etc.) | [
"Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (2004) is a non-fiction true crime history by Peter Vronsky, a criminal justice historian. It surveys the history of serial homicide, its culture, psychopathology, and investigation from the Roman Empire to the early 2000s. The book describes the rise of serial mu... |
Do animals other than human experience infertility the way humans do? | Biologically, yes, animals can experience infertility. This is usually caused by genetic mutations, and since animals don't often have access to fertility treatments, the mutations are rarely passed down.
Some types of infertility are well documented, such as the case of **freemartins**. If a cow gives birth to mixed-sex twins, you'll see a very high percentage of cases (90%?) where the female heifer is born sterile. Sterility occurs due to chromosomal chimerism (XX/XY typing). The tl,dr on that one is the male twin's hormones corrupt the female twin's chromosomes in utero. (ref: _URL_0_)
As for the rest of your question, I'm neither equipped nor prepared to debate the extent of animal consciousness and how they view the existential dilemma presented through being the end of their genetic line. (Apologies; I haven't had breakfast.) | [
"Most affected animals have normal intelligence and mildly affected animals can, in theory, live out a normal lifespan. However, affected animals are quite accident-prone, and for this reason many animals that develop cerebellar abiotrophy, particularly horses, are euthanized for humane reasons. Horses may experien... |
AskScience AMA Series: I am a scientist currently working in a US congressional office. Ask Me Almost Anything! | As someone from outside the US (but I imagine it applies to many US citizens too!), where does being a "scientist working in a congressional office" place you within the government? Are you a government employee providing advice for the entirety of congress, or are you working more specifically for one group - or maybe even just advising a single member of congress?
(I appreciate it may be hard to answer with great detail given your position of anonymity!) | [
"The office is the predominant U.S. federal government sponsor for research in the physical sciences, including physics, chemistry, computer science, applied mathematics, materials science, nanoscience, and engineering, as well as systems biology and environmental sciences. The Office of Science makes extensive use... |
I've heard E. coli referred to as a human symbiont. Are there any other GI beasties that are known to be essential to human survival? | Mammals could be accurately described as a walking home for bacteria - some of them could exist perfectly well in the external environment, but you have no chance of surviving without them inside of you.
[Your gut houses microorganisms which regulate a large number of your bodily functions in some way](_URL_1_):
> Major functions of the gut microflora include metabolic activities that result in salvage of energy and absorbable nutrients, important trophic effects on intestinal epithelia and on immune structure and function, and protection of the colonised host against invasion by alien microbes.
The community of organisms on which we rely is so large and diverse that we have not fully characterized it. The gut flora performs so many complex functions it has been characterized as [a virtual organ](_URL_0_).
[Microbes inside of the human organism outnumber somatic cells by a factor of 10](_URL_2_). E. coli is just one of these organisms, to say that we could not live without that one in particular is a slight mischaracterization of how the community of microbiota functions - there would be issues, but so long as you have a sufficiently diverse community you could likely survive without any single member. | [
"There are different types of \"E. coli\", some of which are found in humans and are harmless. Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is a type found to cause illness in humans, possessing gene that allows it to manufacture a substance toxic to humans. Cattle are immune to its effects but when people eat food cont... |
difference between wma and mp3 | Never heard of people being into wma files... but I'll answer anyways.
> Whats the difference?
wma and mp3 were competing formats in the 90s and early 2000s. Mp3 was the standard, and wma (made by Microsoft) was being pushed as a better format. MS claimed wma was superior to mp3 and produced CD quality audio at as low as 64 kbit/s (bitrate). Mp3 format "cd quality" was at the time 128, so being able to cut the harddrive space needed in half was huge, storage was expensive. But basically this was BS, wma format did not produce cd quality audio at that low bitrate and it never caught on.
> Is it really a big difference?
Mostly No. Let me explain.
While wma doesn't produce cd quality at low bitrates, it does better than mp3 when below 128. At 128 or above there is no reason not to use mp3 as mp3 can be made superior. As storage space is now cheap and available, we no longer care about lower quality music to save space.
128 or above use mp3, below use wma. But for music you should not be under 192 anyways, so wma is worthless.
There is a WMA lossless format as well, but it is inferior to other alternatives as well.
If you're wondering, many tests have show the optimal music rate is 192 VBR mp3 encoded with LAME (aka alt preset standard). Anything more is almost always indistinguishable, less is sub-par quality.
As for format usability, everything plays mp3, most stuff also plays wma, but why the hell do you even take a chance with wma when you can just make a better mp3 file?
| [
"MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio. Originally defined as the third audio format of the MPEG-1 standard, it was retained and further extended—defining additional bit-rates and support for more audio channels—as the third audio format of the subseque... |
Which alternative medicines/therapies are most backed up by science? | If it is backed up by evidence, then it's is medicine, not alternative medicine. Asking for "alternative medicine" backed up by evidence is self contradictory.
Look into ethnopharmacology, it's a field which takes folk remedies finds the actual basis for them working and then develops drugs based on that. | [
"Complementary medicine (CM) or integrative medicine (IM) is when alternative medicine is used together with functional medical treatment, in a belief that it improves the effect of treatments. For example, acupuncture (piercing the body with needles to influence the flow of a supernatural energy) might be believed... |
why do frisbees fly better spinning than not? | The spin stabilizes its direction (prevent it from flipping over) due to *angular momentum,* which means that spinning things are harder to throw off course than non-spinning things.
By staying at the right angle, it can fly better. Unlike a helicopter, the spin itself doesn't cause the Frisbee to fly. | [
"Flight is a key weapon of spin bowlers. A common objective of spin bowling is to beat the batsman \"in the flight\". This implies that the bowler has deliberately varied the trajectory of the ball in order to deceive the batsman as to the exact location it will land. This may result in the batsman missing or mis-h... |
the process of getting a book published | First, the author writes some or all of a book. The author submits the work to various publishing companies looking for one that likes it and will buy it.
If a publisher likes the book, they will make an offer to the author to buy the book and pay royalties on sales of the book. Once an agreement is reached, the author must finish writing and editing the book if it's not done yet. Then, an editor who usually works for the publisher will also read through the book and suggest corrections and changes.
Once the book is completely edited and finished, the publishing company will begin preparing the book to be printed and sold. This includes typesetting (arranging words, pictures, page numbers etc. on the pages), deciding on a catchy title, hiring someone to design a cover, writing the summary that goes on the back, and getting the book reviewed by critics so they can have quotes about what a great book it is.
At some point, the publisher starts contacting bookstores to let them know about the new book and ask how many copies the bookstore will buy. If the book has been marketed and hyped up, or is by a famous author, bookstores might buy a LOT of copies, assuming that they'll be able to sell them all. It's possible this way for a book to be a "best seller" in the newspaper the same day it comes out, because that's based on how many copies the bookstore buys, not the customers.
Finally, the books are printed and shipped to the bookstores. Sometimes this is handled by a separate printing and distribution company or multiple such companies. Now it's up to readers to notice the book and purchase it! | [
"BULLET::::- True self-publishing. The author controls the entire publishing process from start to finish, and can hire freelancers to help with wherever the author requires, such as cover designers, copy editors, and story editors. It is necessary for the author to think like an entrepreneur and take charge of all... |
Do different body parts perceive heat differently? | Yes, the human body has different densities of nerve endings at different locations. Fingertips are intended for manipulating things, so they are more sensitive than say, your knee. This is also why a paper cut hurts like none other, but a similar size cut somewhere else is barely noticeable. | [
"According to the laws of thermodynamics, all particles of matter are in constant random motion as long as the temperature is above absolute zero. Thus the molecules and atoms which make up the human body are vibrating, colliding, and moving. This motion can be detected as temperature; higher temperatures, which re... |
Can you numerically analyze non-linear differential equations? | I am a bit confused by your question, particular this part:
> if you want to numerically analyze a non-linear differential equation, you mostly can't.
Actually, the non-linearity of the equation makes analysis so generally difficult, that numerical methods are often the only way to solve the equations. There are plenty of canonical non-linear PDEs that show up in many fields of math and physics.
* hyperbolic conservation laws
* convection-diffusion equations (e.g., compressible Navier-Stokes)
* eikonal equation, minimal surface equation, etc.
There is a whole plethora of texts and resources that describe various numerical methods to solve these equations. A particular method is often chosen specifically to the equation. The classification of the PDE (elliptic, parabolic, hyperbolic) is often a key factor in determining good algorithms. For instance, a hyperbolic conservation law will likely exhibit shocks and sharp changes in the solution value. So a numerical method that is able to approximate derivatives in the presence of sharp changes is required (e.g., WENO-type methods).
How the equation arises is also important in determining a numerical method. For example, the eikonal equation and minimal surface equation can be derived from a variational principle, and so a numerical method may take advantage of that by attempting to find the minimizer directly. A numerical method for a conservation law may attempt to exploit a global conservation to force the numerical solution to satisfy the conservation exactly.
Relevant numerical methods are rather general though, as you will often find such methods divided roughly into several categories (e.g., finite difference, finite element, finite volume, and spectral). The theory and analysis of these methods is rich and not limited to narrow sets of equations. So for someone to say that "you mostly can't" numerically analyze a non-linear differential equation is rather bizarre. Unless you just misunderstood your professor.
| [
"Many differential equations cannot be solved using symbolic computation (\"analysis\"). For practical purposes, however – such as in engineering – a numeric approximation to the solution is often sufficient. The algorithms studied here can be used to compute such an approximation. An alternative method is to use t... |
why does it seem democrats support higher taxes, but republicans support lower taxes? | That's a fundamental difference between fiscal left (Democrats) and right (Republicans, Libertarians). Left = bigger government, more regulation, more services, more taxes required. Right = lower taxes, lower regulation, requiring smaller government and fewer services. | [
"Democrats and Republicans mean very different things when they talk about tax reform. Democrats argue for the wealthy to pay more via higher income tax rates, while Republicans focus on lowering income tax rates. While both parties discuss reducing tax expenditures (i.e., exemptions and deductions), Republicans fo... |
How did the moon landing spacesuits survive the ridiculous temperatures? | The short answer is that astronauts survive the cold with layers upon layers of insulation and survive the heat by reflecting most of the light that they come into contact with. That's why spacesuits are bulky and also white. | [
"Two types of space suits are featured in the film. During the story's main events, which take place in the 1890s, the film's Victorian-era astronauts are outfitted in space suits adapted from deep sea diving suits. Each is fitted with a 1960s-type aqualung cylinder worn as a backpack. Their space suits are neither... |
why universal theme park has marvel rides if disney owns marvel | Because those rides and characters were purchased by Universal before Disney made deals with Marvel. Disney did not get the rights to those things when they got Marvel. | [
"Years after Disney purchased Marvel in late 2009, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts plans on creating original Marvel attractions at their theme parks, with Hong Kong Disneyland becoming the first Disney theme park to feature a Marvel attraction. Due to the licensing agreement with Universal Studios, signed prior to D... |
Is it true that women couldn't buy property in the US prior to 1974? | Goodness gracious no. And the Equal Credit Opportunity Act referenced in that post, while it does indeed prevent discrimination on the basis of marital status, is about the extension of credit (loans), not possession of property.
That said, the inclusion of marital status in the act (Title VII of the Consumer Credit Protection Act) was part of the final death of *coverture* in the US.
America was a British colony and thus derives its law code in large part from English common law, including the doctrine of coverture. Under coverture, married women were not actually legal persons--they were essentially treated like legal minors under their husbands' authority. All property was joint property (including any wages earned) and husbands had final say; women could not sue in court, make contracts, or buy and hold their own property.
Note that in America as in England, this applied to *married* women, or feme couvert ("covered" women). Widows and single adult women were classified as feme sole, full legal persons who could independently buy, own, and sell property, make contracts, and represent themselves in court.
The practical realities, enforcement, and effects of coverture are a contentious question in scholarship whether you're talking about the fifteenth century or the nineteenth. However, from the mid-ish 19th century to the 1970s we see a gradual ebbing away at coverture on a *legislative* level--on a state by state basis. (You'll notice that these two periods correspond to periods of flourishing women's rights activity. Not a coincidence.)
In the 1970s, some degree of coverture laws continued to apply in U.S. states like Louisiana, although very few of them. A series of Supreme Court decisions extended equal protection laws to marital status, which feminist legal scholars have considered to mark the final death of coverture. (I think this is why the AskReddit user's source picked out the 1974 law as significant, although not the significance that the post claims). Louisiana's "head and master" law, which legally placed the husband in control of the marriage and marital assets, was finally abolished by the Supreme Court in 1981 in Kirchberg v. Feenstra. | [
"BULLET::::- US: Almost all U.S. states had passed some form of Sole Trader Laws, Property Laws, and Earnings Laws, granting married women the right to trade without their husbands' consent, own and/or control their own property, and control their own earnings.\n",
"Women lack ownership of productive resources. D... |
What was the Native population levels in the United States before a cocktail of diseases killed 90% of the population? Was there evidence of cities, trading routes and wars? | There were millions of American Indians in the US, though experts disagree on the exact number.
There is an abundance of evidence of cities, trade routes, and warfare both archaeologically and historically. American Indian studies is a very rich area of study.
If you have more specific questions, I will try to answer for you, though my knowledge is relatively limited to the eastern US. | [
"In the U.S., about 28% of the population became infected, and 500,000 to 675,000 died. Native American tribes were particularly hard hit. In the Four Corners area alone, 3,293 deaths were registered among Native Americans. Entire Inuit and Alaskan Native village communities died in Alaska. In Canada 50,000 died.\n... |
what is briny water, in relation to the mars discovery? | Briny is an adjective meaning highly salty. On Mars, pure water would immediately evaporate due to the really low air pressure. However, salty water is less prone to boiling away or freezing than pure water. Extremely salty water is the only water that can exist as a liquid on Mars' surface. | [
"Lujendra Ojha (b. 1990 ) is a Nepalese-American planetary scientist who, as an undergraduate under the direction of planetary geologist Alfred McEwen, discovered in the 2010s compelling evidence that water on Mars includes current, seasonal, surface liquid brine flows. He is enrolled in a graduate program in plane... |
If friction causes particles to heat up, why do we use fans to blow air against ourselves to cool down, and how does that work? | When you sweat in still air you form a layer of saturated vapor above the skin, which eventually reaches a vapor-liquid equilibrium, meaning you can not evaporate more sweat because the air around you can no longer absorb any more vapor. The fan blows this layer away replacing it with air that more sweat can evaporate into. The heat needed for the evaporation (turning liquid into a gas requires energy, which is provided by your body) then cools the body.
Of course friction takes place, but the amount of energy exchanged via friction is neglegible against this mechanism. | [
"BULLET::::- When the fan is used to speed up heat transfer, the air circulation will increase the amount of airborne dust in the heated room. This can be a problem for people with allergies. Therefore, central heating is a better source of heat for allergy sufferers. This can be avoided by not using the fan, but t... |
if a girl's body is "ready" to give birth once they start getting their period, why is it considered dangerous for people to do so at a young age? | It's 'ready' in that it is biologically possible. Pregnancy/Birth can be dangerous or even deadly even for an adult woman. Being young can increase the risk of a variety of complications for both the child and parent. | [
"These young girls, some as young as 12, are being force into sexual relationships which results to them being pregnant and becoming mothers at an early age when they should be looked after by their parents. \n",
"On the other hand, not every girl follows the typical pattern, and some girls ovulate before the fir... |
why do formula 1 drivers keep their tires warm during a safety car? | So the car can grip the road better. The tyres are constructed to work more effectively at a higher temperature. | [
"Formula One tyres bear only a superficial resemblance to a normal road tyre. Whereas the latter has a useful life of up to , the tyres used in Formula One are built to last less than one race distance. The purpose of the tyre determines the compound of the rubber to be used. In extremely wet weather, such as that ... |
Accurate fiction set in Ancient Greece/Rome/Egypt? | We have a [FAQ on the historical accuracy of certain TV series, movies and videogames](_URL_1_) including [HBO's "Rome"](_URL_0_) which featured a portrayal of my area of study (Ptolemaic Egypt) in what I can only describe as a garbage fire but otherwise did less of a bad job portraying the Roman Republic than most other things. | [
"Both works of fiction are set in ancient Egypt — the \"Legend,\" at some indeterminate time, presumably during the 19th or 20th Dynasty, when all the Ramesside pharaohs reigned; \"Pharaoh\", at the fall of the 20th Dynasty and New Kingdom in the 11th century BCE.\n",
"A less common inspiration is the ancient wor... |
microeconomics. | Say you have 20 people who like ice cream by a varying amount. Person #1 is willing to pay $1 for a cone, person #2 is willing to pay $2 a cone because he likes it a bit more, person #3 is willing to pay $3 a cone because he likes it even more, all the way up to person #10 is willing to pay $10 a cone because he loves ice cream.
This is your demand curve. If ice cream is $10, only one person will buy it. If ice cream is $9, two people will buy it. If ice cream is $8, 3 people will buy it, etc.
Now we need suppliers. Supplier #1 can make ice cream really cheap and will sell it for $1. Supplier #2 can only sell ice cream for $2 and stay in business. Etc. all the way up to supplier #10 who won't sell ice cream for less than $10. This is our supply curve. If ice cream is selling for $1, then only one person is willing to make it. If it's selling for $2, then only 2 people. If it's selling for $10, then all 10 will sell it. This is our supply curve.
Now we have to see where supply meets demand (which is $5). If the price is $6, then 6 people will be willing to make it, but only 4 will be willing to pay for it. If the price is $4, then 4 people will be willing to make it, but 6 people will be wiling to buy it. So the magic price is $5 where 5 people are willing to make it and 5 people are willing to buy it. | [
"Microeconomics is the study of the behaviour of individuals and small impacting organisations in making decisions on the allocation of limited resources. The modern field of microeconomics arose as an effort of neoclassical economics school of thought to put economic ideas into mathematical mode.\n",
"Economics ... |
why is texas so conservative compared to some other southern states? | Texas isn't that red any more, largely due to the demographic shift. For national level elections like president and senators, the state is only weakly right-leaning.
Most of the county and state level reps are Republicans because the demographic shift is concentrated in a few cities, leaving the other counties dominated by older, whiter, more conservative voters.
This is a problem the Democratic party faces in almost every state, not just Texas. | [
"Texas is perceived as exceptionally Republican due to its stereotypically conservative culture and its large stature in the presidential Electoral College. However, a 2017 Gallup poll found that it has only a 3 point gap in Democrats and Republicans. In 2018, Democrat Beto O'Rourke gained national coverage in his ... |
When exactly did we start giving names to places? | We have no way of knowing what any paleolithic tribe called anything, but all the evidence we have of the very earliest languages we can access (which are late neolithic, at best) suggests that place names were already common. In fact, some of the most common likely survivors of pre-Indo-European languages in Europe are from place names. For instance, in Greece, place names with the ending -unthos (like Olynthos) are often argued to be remnants of pre-PIE substrates.
See [here](_URL_0_) for a good discussion. | [
"Place names in the United States tend to be more easily traceable to their origins, such as towns simply named after the founder or an important politician of the time, with no alterations except a simple suffix, like -town. Carson City, for instance, was named for Kit Carson.\n",
"Place naming in 17th century E... |
why people get happy when there is water on another planet, isn't it possible that aliens could live without water? | We can divide up all possible life into two categories: life that needs water, and life that does not need water.
We know the first group exists, because we, and all other life on earth, are part of that group. The existence of the second group is pure speculation. So while no one denies the possibility of the second group, it makes a whole lot of sense to focus on looking for the type that we know CAN exist. | [
"Water is becoming a very very big problem for not only Australia but worldwide as where there are droughts occurring more often and only having limited use of the water and then there are even places that don’t have any water at all such as Africa etc, we need conserve our water for the future and get more access ... |
Could being a homosexual in anyway be a humans defense mechanism against overpopulation? | No, if for no other reason than that overcrowding has not been a strong enough issue for such a trait to have evolved and spread worldwide across largely segregated populations.
| [
"Anti-gay groups have often argued that more homosexual men are sexual abusers than heterosexuals, on the grounds that a third of abusers target boys rather than girls. This is far in excess of the proportion of gay men in the population. It is thus argued that gay men are disproportionately likely to offend.\n",
... |
if earth and every planet is falling towards our sun, and our solar system is falling towards our galactic center, where is our entire galaxy falling towards, and if it isn’t falling, what force is holding it up? | The OP is correct in using falling as relative between the two objects. The earth “falls” towards the sun, just is going too fast and so always misses. The Milky Way, as far as I understand, is falling towards andromeda galaxy, eventually to “collide” and become a big super galaxy. Any one galaxy is always attracted to a bigger one nearby, these form clusters, and clusters of galaxies are attracted towards each other, too. It gets pretty meta. | [
"The Sun's gravity is sufficiently weak at such a distance that these small galactic perturbations may be enough to dislodge some planetesimals from such distant orbits, sending them towards the Sun and planets by significantly reducing their perihelia. Such a body, being composed of a rock and ice mixture, would b... |
why are people so politically charged? | Mostly because our lives are directly impacted by who our government officials are. In America we vote to have Laws passed, therefore everyone who votes whether they are for Or against this law they are all entitled their opinion. Some political views such as abortion are extremely heated, and both sides do have valid arguments that's why there hasn't been a final law written on this subject. Hope that helped a little I'm sure there will be better answers but that's my best shot at the moment.
Edit: Also to hit the point on racial issues. Sometimes when people openly say racist things some people have the urge to give them their own opinion as well. If you are going to post something offensive and it happen to be taken racially. I feel like most people try to give that person a point of view that will perhaps make them not feel so hateful. The wrong way to handle this is to just let that person get you angry and fall in their trap. | [
"\"Criminalization of politics\" is a political buzzword in the United States used in the media, by commentators, bloggers as well as by defenders of high-ranking government officials who have been indicted or have faced criminal or ethical investigations.\n",
"They also share a counterproductive tendency to labe... |
why does it hurt more to drink cold water after having menthol of some kind? can it actually hurt the throat? | Menthol actually activates the same receptors in your mouth and throat that sense cold, and it sticks to these receptors for a while. So everything cold that you drink or eat afterwards seems even colder. When things are very cold the cold sensation becomes painful. So a drink that is normally pleasantly cold may feel uncomfortably cold if you've just had some menthol before drinking it. | [
"There is an old wives tale that having a hot drink can help with common cold and influenza symptoms, including sore throat, but there is only limited evidence to support this idea. If the sore throat is unrelated to a cold and is caused by for example tonsillitis, a cold drink may be helpful.\n",
"Alcohol consum... |
Why does water become vapor at room temperature and 1 atm when the phase diagram for water does not allow for it? | Under normal ambient conditions, liquid water exists in a thermodynamic equilibrium with its vapour state; some molecules will escape the surface into the atmosphere. The pressure of the vapour over the liquid at equilibrium is called the (vapour pressure)[_URL_0_], and scales (non-linearly) with the temperature. The temperature at which the liquid's vapour pressure equals the ambient pressure is the liquid's boiling point. | [
"The phase of a substance is invariably determined by its energy and the energy of its surroundings. When the intermolecular forces of a substance are such that the energy of the surroundings is not sufficient to overcome them, it occurs in a more ordered phase like liquid or solid as is the case with water (HO); a... |
headphone specs often include impedance and sensitivity. what do they mean, and how much does it affect my listening experience? | Sensitivity tells you how much sound they'll develop for a given amount of power from the source. If you're plugging into a mains powered amp that has plenty of power, poor sensitivity won't affect your listening experience. You can just turn the volume up. But if you're plugging into a miniaturized battery powered device, sensitive headphones will let you keep the volume down to preserve battery life, and still have plenty of volume.
Impedance has to do with how much current they draw from the amp. Or, in other terms, how much power they draw from the amp for a given volume setting. High impedance headphones will draw less power - and be proportionately less loud - than their low impedance counterparts. Given equal sensitivities, you can turn low impedance phones up louder before the volume control tops out. | [
"Sensitivity is a measure of how effectively an earpiece converts an incoming electrical signal into an audible sound. It thus indicates how loud the headphones are for a given electrical drive level. It can be measured in decibels of sound pressure level per milliwatt (dB (SPL)/mW) or decibels of sound pressure le... |
diff between having an engine at the front or the back? | While there is more to it than just engine position, such as drive train, weight distribution, power to weight ration, etc I will try to make it super easy to understand
Picture yourself pushing a cart through a supermarket. When you are pushing it from behind, you get great amount of force on the back wheels, but often if you push to hard, you can lift the front wheels up, causes you to not be able to turn.. This would be an example of an RR setup, or Rear engine, Real wheel drive configuration. This would be found in something like a VW Bug
Now imaging that same cart, being pulled from the front, most of the weight is on the front wheels. This provides greater traction, but also has issues. Such as: if you lose traction on the front wheels, you lose power.. This is an FF setup. or Front engine, Front wheel drive. Such as a Honda Civic.
A bike, for example would be an example of Mid engine, Rear wheel drive. Where the engine, you, is in the center, Your power is pushing through the rear wheel. you have good traction up front for navigation and good traction in rear for power. Cars like the Porsche 911 or MR2 are examples of an MR configuration. While they have a great weight an power distribution, they still deal with slippage. If you lose traction in the front, you cannot navigate as well, if you lose traction in the rear, you lose power.
A FR or front engine rear wheel drive setup like that in a Mustang or AE86 have the engine in the front, with the rear wheels propelling the car. This allows for good traction in the front, while pushing the car. To prevent traction from leaving the back of the car, you will often see race cars with wings or spoilers in the rear to help push the back wheels down.
Lastly there are 4wd and Awd. These typically ten to have a front engine design, but can also use any variation from above. These setups allow power to all wheels at all time (4WD) or alternate between the wheels, providing power where there is more traction (AWD). An example of a 4wd would be that of a Ford F150, where an AWD would be an Impreza or Lancer Evo (or GTR ).While this provides the best traction and powering through turns, it puts more stress on the engine to turn all 4 wheels and more weight on the car with the added equipment.
Speed is usually determined more by horsepower and weight ration rather than engine position. A 300hp car that is RWD will usually have the same speed as a 300hp AWD car. The difference is off the start. A RWD or FWD car will usually burn out, or spin their wheels before they gain traction, while a AWD car will usually gain traction right away and shoot off the line. The RWD or FWD car, however, could weigh less than the AWD car and actually be much faster. Power to Weight is really what determines speed. More weight = better traction but less speed. Less weight = Better speed but less traction.
I know this is wordy, but I hope it helps! | [
"In automobile design, a rear-engine design layout places the engine at the rear of the vehicle. The center of gravity of the engine itself is behind the rear axle. This is not to be confused with the center of gravity of the whole vehicle, as an imbalance of such proportions would make it impossible to keep the fr... |
why children will sometimes intentionally aggravate their parents to the point where they lose their temper. | Three reasons in combination: young kids can become frustrated at their lack of control, they haven't developed the ability to analyze the longer-term impact of their actions, and they are still learning how to use and handle emotions rather than have those emotions use and handle them.
So younger ones can get really wound up until they essentially have a meltdown - a temper tantrum - where they lose control of their emotions entirely.
When they get older, rebellious kids can shut down when they perceive an injustice or an unfair situation, taking this frustration out on their parents either as the authority figure that's imposing the unfairness, or as the closest person that the kid can lash out at to expend some of their emotional energy. Sometimes it's outright belligerence, sometimes it's more subtle and manifests as goading or pestering as in your case.
The kid feels they "win" if they manage to make someone else unhappy, even if they "lose" in the longer term. | [
"Children that live in a household with a parent that suffers from morbid jealousy may suffer emotional and/or physical abuse as a direct result of the actions made by the parent. Children may also accidentally overhear arguments or witness physical violence between their parents. They could even be potentially acc... |
Why does diabetes cause the build up of ketone bodies? | Diabetes is either caused by a decreased amount of insulin (Type I) or that cells have a decreased sensitivity for insulin (Type II). The reason glucose levels are so high in diabetes is because insulin is needed for cells to uptake glucose and use it as energy. When your bodies cells are deprived of energy because glucose cannot be utilized for energy, fatty acids are utilized by the liver to form ketones, which then a lot of the body uses for energy in place of glucose. | [
"Individuals with diabetes mellitus can experience overproduction of ketone bodies due to a lack of insulin. Without insulin to help extract glucose from the blood, tissues the levels of malonyl-CoA are reduced, and it becomes easier for fatty acids to be transported into mitochondria, causing the accumulation of e... |
do historians mean something different then normal people when they use the word "racism"? | I'm not a historian, so I'm not really familiar with what their literature would say, but coming from an anthropological background I'd say that neither really fits. "Racism" certainly has elements of power and power differentials (I'd say that is a big part, yes), but really racism is about saying that a certain "race" is somehow inferior or less worthy than another one. That necessarily implies that each "race" must have specific characteristics unique to it (as in, people believe that they do, not that there actually are any), but it also involves the power differentials. So it's sort of both, if that makes any sense.
Now, I put "race" in scare quotes because [anthropologists don't believe that race is actually a real thing](_URL_0_). *Racism* very much exists, but *race* itself is entirely a social construct. | [
"As its history indicates, the popular use of the word \"racism\" is relatively recent. The word came into widespread usage in the Western world in the 1930s, when it was used to describe the social and political ideology of Nazism, which saw \"race\" as a naturally given political unit. It is commonly agreed that ... |
are there any other countries similar to north korea in terms of seclusion and secrecy? | Turkmenistan is pretty bad, especially under their old leader Niyazov. He did really crazy stuff like renaming the months after his family members, writing a book and forcing everyone to memorize it (as well as forcing all mosques in the country to place it next to the Koran), totally cutting off pensions to the elderly for no reason (Turkmenistan should be super rich because of oil and gas, but he kept the money for himself and his crazy projects) , closing down all the libraries, basically banning the Internet and the list goes on and on. And he created a repressive spy state which did such wonderful things as boil people alive. Things have gotten better since he died in 2006 but it's still hardly a model democracy.... | [
"In North Korea, any perceived criticism of the country's political leaders is seen as a grave offense. Treason is also taken very seriously; traitorous behaviour may include attempting to escape to South Korea, or simply praising any aspect of South Korean culture. Crossing the northern border into China or Russia... |
To what extent was the Bundeswehr a successor to the wehrmacht? What changes were made to the culture, structure and organization? | The Bundeswehr to this day is very much somewhere between haunted and inspired by its predecessor, the German Wehrmacht of 1935-1945.
---
Context block ahead, just skip if you're decently knowledgable about German history between 1945-1955.
To give a bit of context to the reader, the Bundeswehr was created in 1955 as the army of West Germany. Germany at that point had been divided into two separate states for six years, with the West German FRG (Federal Republic of Germany, Grmn.: *"Bundesrepublik Deutschland"*, BRD) and the East German GDR (German Democratic Republic, Grmn.: *"Deutsche Demokratische Republik"*, DDR) both being set up as demilitarized countries in 1949. The BRD (I will use the German abbreviations from here on) was created on the grounds of the American, British and French occupation zones and became a western-style democracy with capitalistic economic programs, whereas the DDR was created on the Soviet occupation zone to the west of the rivers Oder and Neiße, became an authoritarian one-party state with a planned economic system under a so-called "real socialist" system.
Now, in 1955, the Cold War was still in full swing ever since events like the Berlin Airlift, the Greek Civil War and the Korean War put the former Anti-Hitler-Coalition firmly into two camps: The Soviets and their eastern European puppets on one side, everybody else on the other. Both sides were armed with atom bombs, the U.S. since 1945, the USSR since 1949 and most recently the UK in 1952. The two sides really needed more manpower for the case of conflict, and policy also got in the way on the democratic side. Continuing German occupation without German assistance was unpopular, and Konrad Adenauer, West German chancellor since 1949, had proven himself to be a valuable ally and partner, especially to France, even though the true birth of Franco-German friendship would not come around until the Suez Crisis of 1956 would create a rift between France on one side and the U.S. and the UK on the other.
---
So the West Germans were called up to create an armed service. I could also provide parallel information about the East German Nationale Volksarmee in a follow-up if asked, but your question was specifically about the Bundeswehr. The Bundeswehr was created into being on November 12th, 1955, ten years, six months and four days after the Wehrmacht's surrender on May 8th, 1945.
Even the name itself is already a Wehrmacht artifact in multiple ways. You will notice that the term "Wehr" appears in both. It means *defense* or *protection*. The "Wehrmacht" is literally the *protective force*, whereas the "Bundeswehr" is the *federal protection*. The third name one has to mention is the "Reichswehr", the *imperial protection* or *realm protection*, the army of the Weimar Republic until its renaming by Hitler in 1935.
So one might argue that Bundeswehr is named after its proud grandpa the Reichswehr, correct? Nothing to do with its disgraced dad, the Wehrmacht? Well, no. Because the man who was leading among those who suggested the name "Bundeswehr" was one Hasso von Manteuffel, commander of the 5th Panzer Army as well as the Panzer Division "Greater Germany". So that's just a straight-up Wehrmacht man. He also was convicted of war crimes, but in his case it was because of executing deserters, so that's at least less awful than what some of his buddies were doing.
The Bundeswehr was in the early days looking desperately for role models from the war. Who would be discarded? Who was too nazi? Hitler, obviously. The Bundeswehr was instrumental in creating a myth of Hitler's military incompetence pushed by the former Wehrmacht commanders to make themselves innocent of military or logistical failure. Next up, the Bundeswehr was also rather quick in discarding the SS, with generals like Paul Hausser and of course SS political leaders like Heinrich Himmler never getting the chance to fall out of favor because no one had favor with them to begin with.
But heroic figures were needed, and heroic figures were found. The first one was of course Erwin Rommel. He had committed suicide under nazi threats in 1944 following the failed assassination attempt against Hitler by the group of Stauffenberg and Canaris. Rommel was a compromise candidate, as he appealed both to the anti-nazis as he was killed by the nazis and to the pro-nazis as he never actually provably participated in the plot.
But Rommel alone wasn't enough. The Bundeswehr chose to elevate one man specifically who I as a historian am fascinated by: Erich von Manstein. Manstein, the genius behind the "sickle cut" against France in 1940, had survived the war and had written a book about it, "Verlorene Siege", *Lost Victories*. That book was released in 1955, shortly before the Bundeswehr's founding, and it became a sensation. I have read the book in the German original several times now, and each time I am impressed with just how impressed Manstein apparantly was by himself. If Hitler wasn't to blame, then he found a way to blame people like Von Bock, Von Reichenau and especially a man who was apparantly his nemesis in the force, Franz Halder. From what I've read about the book from others, Manstein actively lies about his involvement especially on the Eastern Front, criticizing Operation Citadel as a Führer mistakes even though he was one Citadel's leading planners, something he conveniently fails to mention.
Well, back from my short detour into this book (which I by the way still recommend to the interested reader, even though I have heard the English translation cuts down on Manstein's tangents and personal stories, which were among the most fascinating and insightful parts of the book in the German original for me). The *Mansteinkult*, the cult of Manstein, was born. The Bundeswehr had its hero, a clean, honorable general just like Rommel, but one who actually was still alive at the time.
So that much regarding the change of culture that you asked for in your question.
Next you ask about structure. Well, military logistics are not my main concern when reading history so I am open to be expanded on by other interested historians, but that much I can tell you: The Bundeswehr was far smaller than the Wehrmacht, but even a small army needs officers. When in 1955 the Bundeswehr was founded and the first volunteers (conscription would start on January 1st, 1957) entered their barracks and began basic training, no time had been taken to train new young officers as that in itself would already have been a military act - and also, people needed for officer status are typically older, at least in their 30s, and of intellectual backgrounds. Well, in 1955 30-year-olds would have been born in 1925 and would surely have been drafted into World War 2 because they would have been 18 in 1943. So that's not great.
So what I am getting is that obviously, to even preserve any structure in the first place, the Bundeswehr would need to re-enlist Wehrmacht officers. Wehrmacht Officers and Sergeants were thus given priority when forming the first cadres of the Bundeswehr, because that allowed the BRD to both gain military expertise from veteran fighters and avoid the politically sensitive topic of re-enlisting generals. Even though re-enlist generals they also did. Adolf Heusinger, the first Bundeswehr inspector-general (highest-ranking soldier) had served in four separate German armies from 1915 onwards until being called back up to lead the Bundeswehr in 1957. He actually ended up presiding over the NATO Military Committee, the highest military office of the alliance. Isn't that fascinating? A nazi general who also served in the Kaiser's army ending up presiding over the alliance of freedom. Truly, a curious story. Another Wehrmacht general who was among the first Bundeswehr generals was Hans Speidel, Erwin Rommel's chief-of-staff in Army Group B - although his elevation was also a clear political move, as he was one of the few who participated in the Stauffenberg conspiracy and survived the war. Speidel was chosen to please the anti-nazis who did not want to see to great "old Wehrmacht" influence in the new army.
That said, your question of structure and organization could also refer to things like ranks. And actually, there are a few differences. The Bundeswehr never had an OF-10 (five star general) rank, with its OF-9 rank being called simply "General", whereas the Wehrmacht had "Generalfeldmarschall" at OF-10, "Generaloberst" at OF-9, with "General" being OF-8, which in the Bundeswehr is the "Generalleutnant" (Lieutenant General), which in the Wehrmacht was OF-7. The Wehrmacht had "Generalmajor" (Major General) at OF-6, whereas the Bundeswehr had that at OF-7. Finally, the Bundeswehr fills the gap at OF-6 with the new rank "Brigadegeneral" (Brigadier General), which didn't exist at all in the Wehrmacht. From there one, it looks kind of simlar, with OF-5 through OF-3 all being the same, at "Oberst" (Colonel), "Oberstleutnant" (Lieutenant Colonel) and "Major". At OF-2, the Bundeswehr has bureaucratic complications between "Stabshauptmann" and "Hauptmann", both the same rank for various careers; a distinction that did not exist in the Wehrmacht. From there you have a few more distinctions in the soldier ranks, with "Oberstabsfeldwebel" (OR-9) and "Oberstabsgefreiter" (OR-4) not existing in the Wehrmacht, but in general, it can be said that the Bundeswehr took the Wehrmacht's ranking system, which in turn was based on Weimar Republican, German Imperial and Prussian systems. The Bundeswehr had however to make several changes to fit the NATO standard. Of course, note that the comparative rankings I used in this segment (OF-X and OR-X) are NATO terminology that would be anachronistic to the Wehrmacht directly, but nonetheless useful for comparison.
I am running out of characters here, but I'd be glad to answer any follow-up questions. | [
"When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he instructed the Truppenamt/General Staff to ignore the Versailles restrictions, he would create a greatly expanded Wehrmacht from the army, navy, and air-force. A new War Academy (\"Kriegsakademie\") was established in 1935. The General Staff advised Hitler that the G... |
Why wasn't there more than one "Library of Alexandria" | There were plenty of libraries around the ancient Mediterranean. One of the most famous other Hellenophone ones was [the Athenaion at Pergamon.](_URL_0_) (In fact legend has it that the use of parchment was popularised at Pergamon when export of ~~parchment~~ papyrus from Egypt was restricted: hence the name, from Greek *pergamena*.)
But there were plenty of other Hellenophone libraries too: the Macedonian library at Pella, various libraries in Athens, and so on. It's just that there had to be one that was the richest and biggest of them all; and that happened to be the Alexandrian one. For further examples, see if you can get access to the *New Pauly* (hardcopy, or online via library subscription) and look up "library". | [
"The Library of Alexandria was one of the largest and most prestigious libraries of the ancient world, but it was far from the only one. By the end of the Hellenistic Period, almost every city in the Eastern Mediterranean had a public library and so did many medium-sized towns. During the Roman Period, the number o... |
Is our galaxy on a stable axis? | although I can't give a definite answer on whether it would have an unstable axis or not, the so-called tennis racket theorem demonstrated in the above video only applies to rigid objects, while the Milky Way is fluid and rotating inconsistently. As a result, I don't think that it applies to our galaxy. | [
"The rotational/orbital speeds of galaxies/stars do not follow the rules found in other orbital systems such as stars/planets and planets/moons that have most of their mass at the centre. Stars revolve around their galaxy's centre at equal or increasing speed over a large range of distances. In contrast, the orbita... |
Did ancient Rome have a rodent problem? | Great question, and it's a matter of historical, archaeological, and epidemiological importance. Until recently, the prevailing view was that rats were introduced after the Roman Empire, but that view is changing.
> Until recently, there were no Roman rats. As disease, ecological change, and their economic implications push their way to the top of the historian's agenda, ancient rodents have triggered controversy and new research, some of it in the pages of this journal. Rats are crucial to epidemics of bubonic plague, a disease that has been linked to the massive demographic changes that ushered medieval Europe into the modern age. Some historians implicate rodent-borne plague in the end of the ancient world. Today archaeology and zoology draw a picture of rats and their history that differs from even a decade ago. Tiny bones and DNA are yielding glimpses of the rat's migration from southeast Asia into the Roman empire and medieval Europe. The diffusion of the rat across Europe looks increasingly like an integral part of the Roman conquest. Its movements illuminate patterns of eco- nomic organization, communications, and urbanism, and carry significant implications for the history of disease and the ecology. The history of rats is tightly interwoven with the economic rise and fall of the ancient world, as well as the expansion of the medieval economy.
>
> {snip}
>
> Aside from isolated, and therefore controversial, archaeological evidence for rats in the Roman world \[emerged\] only during the last two decades. It comes in different gnawing marks on bones; owl or other predator remains preserved in situ. Why it was so scarce before simple: Archaeologists were not looking for it, bones easily escape the troweler's naked eye. Only laborious procedures can detect them.
>
> [Rats, Communications, and Plague: Toward an Ecological History](_URL_0_)
So now folks are looking for rat bones, and they're finding them.
There are some obvious mechanisms for the migration of rats from Asia to the Mediterranean. Roman Egypt traded to the East, and enormous grain fleets traveled from Egypt to Italy, nothing like a boatful of grain to make a nice home for a traveling rat.
How did Romans deal with pests? We don't have a sense of the rat burden at the time of the Republic or the Caesars, and the Romans used a latin word *mus --* which doesn't tell us whether they're talking about a rat or a mouse. The Romans had household pets: dogs a great favorite, cats not so common as in Egypt, and even snakes. 20 centuries later, a cat, and some breeds of dog, are efficient remedies for a rodent problem. But the most frequently mentioned Roman household rodent killer is the weasel (*mustela*); these are often mentioned for killing *mus,* whether these might be rats or mice we don't know.
Sources:
[Greek and Roman Household Pets](_URL_4_)
[The Grain Trade under the Roman Empire](_URL_1_)
[The Domestic Cat as a Factor in Urban Ecology](_URL_2_)
[The Origin of Latin Mustela](_URL_3_)
& #x200B; | [
"In an urban area of Rome, a 2-year-old boy was also infected by \"H. diminuta\". However, in this instance, investigators found no evidence of rodent or other possible sources of infection in the places habitually occupied by the affected boy.\n",
"Sanitation in ancient Rome was quite extensive. These systems co... |
at fast food drive thru places where they have multiple lanes for ordering, how do they know which car is which when they get to pay/collect food? | Generally, the order in which the orders are placed will be the same as the order the cars pull up to the window. As soon as your order is complete, you'll be pulling forward, and therefore next in line. If two finish at the same time, there is a camera that can identify which car pulled forward first. | [
"While fast food restaurants usually have a seating area in which customers can eat the food on the premises, orders are designed to be taken away, and traditional table service is rare. Orders are generally taken and paid for at a wide counter, with the customer waiting by the counter for a tray or container for t... |
Sabotage in America during WWII? | The major attempt was Operation Pastorious. When the continuously and possibly intentionally inept German Abwehr Intelligence Agency sent 8 Saboteurs aboard 2 U-Boats to the US to bomb rail lines, dams, and power plants in June 1942.
It was a failure, the leader of the ring went to the FBI, along with a member who had spent time in a Concentration Camp and had no love of the Nazis. All 8 were rounded up, the 2 leaks got Life in Prison, the other 6 the electric char after a military tribunal.
All the men were German nationals, but had spent time in the US and were fluent in English, 2 also held US Citizenship. | [
"They Came to Blow Up America, also known as School for Sabotage and School for Saboteurs, is a 1943 American war spy film directed by Edward Ludwig and starring George Sanders and Anna Sten. It is based on the World War II Operation Pastorius.\n",
"American entry into the First World War in 1917 led to a patriot... |
Would Koko, the sign-language speaking gorilla, have been able to translate what a different, non-signing gorilla was saying? | Define 'saying'. Koko may be able to sign that another gorilla is angry, but gorilla interpersonal communication consists mainly of body language, and getting a *gorilla* to interpret that for a *human* is probably a hundred times more difficult than to just ask a human to interpret it. | [
"Whether the gorillas actually learned language is debated. Some researchers and linguists have said that most of the signs they used were used chaotically in order to meet a goal, without regard for sentence structure, making them not true language. However, the differences between sign languages and spoken langua... |
how do people raise money by walking across a country/cycling around the world/ climbing mount something / go q month without eating chocolate for charity | They use it as a publicity stunt to get people to donate to their cause. It’s rarely very effective compared to say, just working your actual job and donating the money yourself. | [
"In March 2016 Knight joined British adventurer Laura Bingham’s South America expedition for a section, cycling across Bolivia with no money. The pair relied on resourcefulness to find food and shelter every day for free, camping under bridges, behind cemeteries and in gas stations, and foraging for discarded food ... |
Why is Mandarin so different from other Chinese languages? | Let's start by addressing what exactly are the features that are being preserved. The most common trope, which goes something like "*X is older than Mandarin so read the poetry in that"*, comes about from the preservation of two main features.
The first is the entering tone (入聲), specifically with a preserved final stop consonant at the end (-p, -t, -k in Cantonese and Hakka, also -l in Korean, also -ʔ in Wu, etc). There are a few problems with the premise, though. The first is that people almost exclusively look at Modern Standard Mandarin to compare to anything else, and MSM is by far the least conservative variety on almost all counts (the exception being NW Mandarin which in many cases has a 3-tone system, not a 4-tone system, or SE Mandarin which has famously lost retroflex distinctions on sibilants). But that's like looking at Shanghainese and saying it's representative of all of Wu, which does a great injustice to the massive variety found in Wu by looking at what is probably the least conservative and most reduced variety.
The reason that's a problem is because Mandarin actually *does* preserve these things in certain areas. There are places like Jiangsu where both the entering-tone is preserved as well as the segmental coda that marks it. The reason looking at Standard Mandarin isn't helpful is because it was intentionally designed to be inclusive of everyone and in that effort became, in a way, inclusive to none. In the early 20th century, the Ministry of Education (MOE) sought to establish a single standard for Mandarin speakers. They basically took the previous standard (which was not at all standard) of Qing court Mandarin (hence the name 官話) which was itself an amalgam of various other dialects of Mandarin as people came from all over the area. The MOE went a step further and intentionally added features that would better represent minority speakers in China. One of these features was the entering tone, which by then wasn't a thing anymore in the court speech. The problem was that no one spoke this new standard natively, so it was being taught very inconsistently from place to place. Most teachers taught the entering tone as it was in their own personal dialect.
The shift to Beijing that Mandarin learners hear about all the time now happened in the 1930s, but it wasn't actually a shift to Beijing dialect. Modern Standard Mandarin isn't really based on Beijing dialect like you might have heard. Instead, it was based on the way educated Beijing elites spoke Mandarin, which, surprise, was influenced by that invented standard. This is one reason why Modern Standard Mandarin today differs so greatly from other Mandarins. In the case of tones, it makes perfect sense that MSM lacks the entering tone category and the final stop that goes with it because MSM is based on a history where there was no clear way of handling this, and people just went with what they wanted, and then had to adapt to a common ground later.
So that's the first feature, the stop consonant thing.
The other is the preservation of traditional tone system, but a post-Middle Chinese version of it. This then includes potential preservation of the voicing distinction on onset non-sonorant consonants (b vs p vs pʰ for example). However this second bit, the voicing distinction, is usually ignored by most people who don't speak Wu (your post included) because Wu is actually the *most* conservative here and actually as a whole the only language within Sinitic that does retain it. Some Xiang dialects around Changsha do as well, but they're outliers in an otherwise innovative system.
Some quick history: Back in the day Middle Chinese had 4 tones. These were called level, rising, departing and entering. Entering I've already touched on above. From these four tones, we then had a split into 8 tones based on whether the first letter was voiced or not. Almost immediately, in all dialects, this then merged down into a 7 tone system. The exceptions to this are places around Suzhou which still have 8 and, in some cases, have 12 or more, but this is because another split based on aspiration happened.
We can basically take this 8 tone system as our starting point for everything coming from Middle Chinese today. This is then one of the ways people say Cantonese is more conservative. There's a long long argument that's still going on about how many tones Cantonese has, be it 6, 9 or 11. The reason that's a discussion at all is because it's a difference of analysis and what counts as a toneme versus a variant of another tone. As a maybe more accessible example, Mandarin has 4 tones but maybe some learners interpret the neutral tone as a fifth. It's not, and we can show that, but you could analyse it as a fifth.
So Cantonese has 6, but then maybe some splits happened and it has more. Hakka has 7 in the variety I learned, 5 in others. Wu has a bunch of variety, but 5 in the least (Shanghai) and 12 or 15 in the most (Wujiang etc). Mandarin has between 5 and 3, and that I discussed above.
The problem is that Korean retained basically 0 of these tone categories, since they had their own tone system they were dealing with at that time, and Cantonese and Hoklo have been just as innovative as Mandarin, just in different ways, so we really can't say Mandarin is the only one that's changed. It's just that Mandarin has changed in a much more easily visible way, and only if we are really looking at the standard dialect which has changed more than the rest.
There's a well-observed trend in language contact that also leads to why many people mistakenly think languages simplify over time. They don't simplify over time, but some features can, and contact is a big way this gets triggered. It's the reason Shanghai has so many fewer tonemes than Suzhou, Songjiang, Wujiang etc. It has fewer than Suzhou and Ningbo, the two most significant varieties that went into making Shanghainese what it is today.
> Korean and Japanese also seems to have preserved archaic Chinese vocabulary pretty well, though of course bearing no resemblance to old Chinese in grammar as they are from different language families altogether.
Many varieties have. The third person pronoun in Wu varieties is identical to what you find in Classical Chinese. Many of the pronoun distinctions between subject and object are also retained in modern varieties. The tone distinction between a verb and a noun (王 as wàng vs wáng) is also preserved, and in Mandarin, but in literary contexts. Japanese isn't really super helpful here, since what it's preserving is simply a snapshot of a particular point in time, but then drastically modernised through the phonological changes Japanese has gone through. In other words, Japanese _hasn't_ actually preserved these older pronunciations, but rather just has some reflex of them, the same as any Sinitic or Sinoxenic variety.
> Does the preservation of archaic Chinese in these languages have anything to do with the fact that they are not 'really' Sinitic languages? Cantonese and Hokkien are somewhat Austroasiatic,
No. 100% no. Cantonese isn't Austroasiatic. It's Sinitic. And one of the main things being preserved is coda consonants on entering-tone words, which are also preserved in a number of Mandarin dialects which also preserve entering-tone.
> Taken altogether, it seems that Mandarin Chinese is a glaring abnormality in the evolution of sinitic(-influenced) languages in East Asia, in that it has experienced such accelerated changes.
In fact, taken altogether, Mandarin is not only not an abnormality, but is actually entirely in line with the changes happening throughout the Sinosphere. It's only when we _don't_ take it altogether that it seems to stand out so glaringly.
I'm on a train right now and about to lose phone battery for my wifi hotspot so I'm going to submit this answer not but I can come back and clarify or add sources if needed later. | [
"The reason why Mandarin has been chosen among the various Chinese dialects is that it is supposedly able to unite the different dialect groups, and it is also supposedly the variety associated with ancient Chinese culture and its values.\n",
"Mandarin (; ) is a group of related varieties of Chinese spoken across... |
How do ferrite cores work? | Ferrite cores are used to make [inductors](_URL_0_). | [
"Ferrite cores are used in electronic inductors, transformers, and electromagnets where the high electrical resistance of the ferrite leads to very low eddy current losses. They are commonly seen as a lump in a computer cable, called a ferrite bead, which helps to prevent high frequency electrical noise (radio freq... |
Did medieval people celebrate their birthdays? Did they know them? | Not to discourage further discussion, but [here’s](_URL_0_) a bit by u/fancyfreecb on the European/Christian practise of “namedays”, then a seperate bit by u/DangerCosmo on pagan and Greek/Roman practises. The first covers the medieval period of part of your question at least
Thanks for asking the question, interesting stuff | [
"In medieval and later England, it was a service and feast held one month after the death of anyone in his or her memory. Bede speaks of the day as \"commemorationis dies\". These \"minding days\" were of great antiquity, and were survivals of the Norse \"minne\", or ceremonial drinking to the dead.\n",
"Various ... |
How big would the Earth be if its atoms were as compact as possible? | [Wolfram Alpha to the rescue](_URL_0_)
A black hole with the mass of the earth would have an event horizon radius of 8.87 mm. | [
"Several scientists, such as William Prout and Norman Lockyer, had suggested that atoms were built up from a more fundamental unit, but they envisioned this unit to be the size of the smallest atom, hydrogen. Thomson in 1897 was the first to suggest that one of the fundamental units was more than 1,000 times smalle... |
Is synthesizing petroleum, or a compound with similar properties, theoretically viable? Is it being researched, and if it is, what is the current status? | Yes. There's no problem synthesizing the hydrocarbons that make up gasoline.
Doing so in a manner that's cheaper than pumping out of the ground and refining it? No, we've not figured out how to do that yet.
| [
"Several firms have successfully created petroleum products in the lab using either solid catalysts or genetically modified microorganisms. As of July, 2008, such firms are producing petroleum products in very small quantities, but hope to increase production over the next few years.\n",
", little research is dir... |
how is it animals, specially predators, have such strong muscles? | Imagine how good your muscles would need to be if you had to walk for miles all day every day to possibly get food. And you had to chase your food down instead of getting it out of the refrigerator. | [
"Genera assigned to this group had relatively short limbs lacking the specializations associated with ungulates (e.g. reduced side digits, fused bones, and hoofs), and long, heavy tails. Their primitive anatomy makes it unlikely that they were able to run down prey, but with their powerful proportions, claws, and l... |
what this company actually do? _url_0_ | They are primarily a technology provider for cable/satellite TV services.
So let's say you're starting up a new cable TV service. You've got the programming deals in place, you've strung up all the cables around town, and you've contracted with hardware suppliers like Cisco and Motorola to provide the servers and set-top-boxes that will run on your network.
You still need the software that will run on those boxes. Software like the electronic program guide, security software that makes sure customers can only view the channels they have paid for, software to manage channel number allocations, software to report which channels the customer is watching (for ratings purposes), etc. That's what you go to a company like NDS for.
Their biggest business is in the security software that prevents you from watching channels you haven't paid for. That platform, called VideoGuard, is used on a number of cable and satellite TV platforms around the world, including Cablevision (NY, NJ, CT), DirecTV (North and South America), Sky TV (British Isles, Germany, Italy, New Zealand), Star TV (pretty much all of Asia) and a bunch of others.
If you are on one of those services, chances are your cable box requires a smart card to view channels. NDS makes that smart card. | [
"EnterpriseAlumni is a US-based multinational software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage corporate Alumni & Retirees of large organizations. The company was co-founded in 2016 by Emma Sinclair and James Sinclair and includes customers such as P&G, Pearson, SAP, Nestle, HSBC & Lufthansa\n",
"Ken... |
why is isis so hard to find and defeat? | You can launch as many air strikes as you want, eventually you're going to need a ground army to go in and flush them out. The ground forces that have been battling ISIS for the last four years are a combination of other revel groups, Kurdish militias, and the Iraqi and Syrian Armies. The Syrian Army is the only one in that group that even resembles a legitimate fighting force with armored units, artillery, and well trained officers. Even then they've been weakened by years of fighting, and they weren't a first rate military to begin with. ISIS has never had to deal with a first world Army like the US, Russia, China, the UK etc. | [
"\"Defeating ISIS\" argues that the group ISIS does not belong to the faith of Islam, and should instead be thought of as a separate destructive extremist group. The work is organized into four sections. The author provides historical context for the evolution of ISIS over time. The book emphasizes that the majorit... |
How do birds keep themselves clean ? | When you spend time birdwatching, you realise most of them spend an huge amount of time cleaning themselves or each other.
They pick parasite with their beak, organise their feathers with beak and saliva, and some of them (mostly water birds) have some kind of wax to cover themselves with (it comes from a gland at the tail usually)
They also use water and scratch themselves with the claws, dog like!
Depending on species, they will change their entire feather set about every year or couple years (in rotations, one at a time)
That being said, not all birds are clean, and many have parasites on their skin. | [
"A bird bath requires regular maintenance. A variety of methods and substances may be used to clean a bird bath, including small quantities of bleach, oregano or olive oil, or commercially available, non-toxic cleaning products. Maintenance for some bird baths may be as simple as a daily quick wash and refill, but ... |
why does a passing vehicle's sound go from a high to a low note | Doppler effect.
The sound waves pile up in front of the car. Because the waves are so close together, the frequency is higher. Thus, as the car approaches, the pitch is higher.
The sound waves are spread joy behind the car. Because the waves are further apart, the frequency is lower. Thus, as the car leaves, the pitch is lower.
Imagine dragging something across the surface of water. The water in front is higher than the water in the back. Sound waves do the same thing.
_URL_0_ | [
"\"The engine is by no means silent. Exhaust and tappet noise with a continuous if subdued howl of pinions all merge with other unidentifiable sounds but there is no suggestion these noises may not be maintained so long as the driver wishes with unflagging regularity for hour after hour. The seat puts the driver up... |
What is the most efficient/powerful movement the human body can perform? | Cycling is generally the best way to harness sustained power from a person. An average value for sustained power this way is 125 W (1/6 hp), but obviously there is a large variation in people's power capacity.
[Here](_URL_0_) is a page with a couple useful graphs that show how much power you can actually harness cycling. A professional cyclist can produce about .8 hp, but a recreational cyclist can only make about 1/3 hp sustained for a couple hours.
For very short duration events, weightlifters produce much more power (~3 hp), but only for a few seconds. In this case squats are generally the exercise with the highest force for this short burst.
| [
"The efficiency of human muscle has been measured (in the context of rowing and cycling) at 18% to 26%. The efficiency is defined as the ratio of mechanical work output to the total metabolic cost, as can be calculated from oxygen consumption. This low efficiency is the result of about 40% efficiency of generating ... |
In Pancreatic Islet Transplants, what is stopping the transplanted islets from being destroyed again? | After the procedure the patient is given immunosuppressive drugs to stop the immune system from doing exactly that. It's worth noting in that study they switched immunosuppressive drugs because the first one was causing the patient to lose her hair, and they noted functional decline in insulin secretion.
It seems like she was on immunosuppresive drugs for the whole 12 months they followed her (based on my reading) and I think it's fair to assume if she stopped taking those drugs all together there would be an immune response to destroy the 'foreign' cells like you said. | [
"Islet transplantation is the transplantation of isolated islets from a donor pancreas into another person. It is an experimental treatment for type 1 diabetes mellitus. Once transplanted, the islets begin to produce insulin, actively regulating the level of glucose in the blood.\n",
"Islets are usually infused i... |
what would a bank gain from putting my money in a savings account vs. a checking account with them? | You're limited by how many transactions you can make with a savings account, whereas most people are constantly adding and removing money from checking.
Banks need a certain amount of what's called liquidity - cash on hand, available to lend or pay out. Having lots of stable savings accounts allows the bank to maintain a constant level of liquidity, which makes their business a lot safer. | [
"A savings account is a deposit account held at a retail bank that pays interest but cannot be used directly as money in the narrow sense of a medium of exchange (for example, by writing a cheque). These accounts let customers set aside a portion of their liquid assets while earning a monetary return. \n",
"BULLE... |
what actually happens to your body when you get kocked out? how does it happen? | If you get hit really hard in the head it causes your head to accelerate, and your brain along with it. Your head then hits the inside of your skull and can bounce around (not like a tennis ball obviously, it's pretty firmly attached, but enough to cause problems). The trauma to the brain causes lots of neurotransmitters to fire at once, and your brain gets overloaded and temporarily shuts down conscious information processing to make sure vital systems can keep going and to conserve energy to repair the damage later. | [
"Acute Stress Reaction - The body executes the “Fight-or-flight” reaction to get the body out of danger quickly. When the timing between the \"threat\" and the resolution of the \"threat\" are close, the “fight-or-flight\" reaction is executed, the \"threat\" is handled, and the body returns to its previous state (... |
Did Free Market Capitalism cause the great depression? | You may be interested [in this earlier comment](_URL_0_) by u/Integralds on the economics profession's view of the Friedman-Schwartz hypothesis, that the US's Federal Reserve unintentionally and unknowingly caused the Great Depression by cutting the money supply.
I'll add to that that I would be inclined to be suspicious of any text book that makes a sweeping statement about a very loosely-defined thing like "free-market capitalism" causing a Depression. Some people use capitalism to mean free-markets in the sense of Adam Smith or Milton Friedman and some people use capitalism to include things like large corporations lobbying for government subsidies and regulations and other interventions. Like most things in history, capitalism is complex. | [
"In the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression and with the rise of fascist powers, many western socialist and liberal thinkers believed that capitalism caused war. However, Keynes in his \"General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money\" in 1936, argued that this need not be so, and that the management of c... |
How come so many contemporary English words about spycraft are French words? (espionage, sabotage, reconnaissance, coup, rogue, etc...) | For a few hundred years, the English court all spoke French. Because of this, the English language absorbed thousands of French terms through this period. So, words that would have been the concern of those in power are often going to be French. For example, a Cow is an animal, Beef is food. The nobility used the French word.
The average peasant would have no need for a term regarding spycraft, so you'd find the gentry using French terms.
I see a great irony in the fact that the French are very concerned with keeping their language pure. There is literally a [French Academy](_URL_1_) responsible for introducing new words into the French language, so they aren't tainted in reverse by cultural influences of other nations.
If you really want to get into this, I can recommend:
- [The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language](_URL_0_)
- [The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way](_URL_2_)
Also, an endorsement for [The History of English Podcast](_URL_3_). The episodes can get quite dry, but I rather enjoy the detail it goes into. | [
"The French , sometimes literally translated as ruse of war, is a non-uniform term; generally what is understood by \"ruse of war\" can be separated into two groups. The first classifies the phrase purely as an act of military deception against one's opponent; the second emphasizes acts against one's opponent by cr... |
what happens to all the single-use throwaway accounts on reddit? | They don't get recycled--there would be no point and it's not worth the risk since it could be a security issue if someone used their real information to register for a throwaway. | [
"In a reloading scam, a victim is repeatedly approached by con artists, often until \"sucked dry\". This form of fraud is perpetrated on those more susceptible to pressure after the first losses, perhaps because of hopes to recover money previously invested, perhaps because of inability to say \"no\" to a con man.\... |
what does a president do all day? | Talk to congress (like a boss)
Approve VETOs (like a boss)
Lead the country (like a boss)
Remember birthdays (like a boss)
Direct senators (like a boss)
My own bathroom (like a boss)
Macro-manage (like a boss)
Promote Democracy (like a boss) | [
"The president is the unseen head of the \"Daily Days\". His office is filled with paper and the sound of ringing phones. His age is unknown due to the large mountain of papers on his desk, but he is described as having a young voice, and was seen by one of his employees who offered him a sugar cube, much to the sh... |
From Normandy to Kiev, Sicily to Ireland; Germanic settlers/Nobility assimilated to local customs & languages; Why was Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain different? | PART 1
There's a lot of debate about the exact nature of the Anglo-Saxon takeover of what is now England, so I'll present some of that and then give my take on it in the hope that it helps to answer your question.
The classic version of events that most English schoolchildren have learned is the expulsion theory, namely that war bands of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes took over the southern part of Britain, wiping out the natives wholesale and inviting their relatives and friends across the sea to settle in their place. This theory is derived primarily from the writings of people such as Gildas and Bede. However, it has fallen out of fashion nowadays, largely due to the implausibility of such a successful, organized attack, and the fact that archaeological evidence does not suggest such a complete massacre.
Another theory that seems to be gaining some ground is the warrior elite model. In this version of events, a small number of Anglo-Saxon warriors settle in Britain rather than a large-scale migration. The majority of the native Romano-Britons survive, but are forced to assimilate to the culture of the politically dominant but numerically insignificant Anglo-Saxons. This theory is, in my opinion, problematic, for reasons I will get to in a moment.
DNA tests have been done to shed further light on the issue, but they have varied wildly in their results. One study postulated that something like ninety percent of the DNA of the English comes from the invaders from northern Germany; another claimed that the Anglo-Saxons had less of a demographic impact than the Danish Vikings. One potential complicating factor is that a lot of the DNA in Northern Europe is quite similar, regardless of language. Genetic science is advancing, and might be able to give a clearer picture in the future, but as of right now it still leaves us in the dark.
But to get back to the main topic, you actually lay out a massive problem with the elite migration theory in your question. Such groups may influence the cultures of the areas they rule over, but rarely manage to affect a complete cultural transformation in the way an elite band of Anglo-Saxons would have to have done. Much more often they end up being assimilated themselves. One notable exception to this is the Romans managing to spread Latin across their empire. However, the Roman Empire was very unique at the time--it was an extremely powerful, centralized, well-ordered society with massive infrastructure. The Germanic tribes that lived on its periphery were none of those things. And, indeed, we see that upon conquering formerly Roman territories, groups such as the Lombards and the Visigoths, to name just a few, all wound up speaking Vulgar Latin and being assimilated to the populations they ruled over. Even the Franks, who were dominant enough to give their name to the region they ruled over, ended up taking on its Gallo-Romance culture and language.
Languages can tell stories that written history leaves behind. Even if something like the spread of Latin does occur, there tends to be a substrate influence from the conquered people left upon the new language spoken there. For example, it is widely agreed upon that substrate features of Gaulish exist in French, including several common words as well as grammatical features. Now, there is a school of linguists that subscribe to "the Celtic hypothesis," which is to say that there is a Brythonic Celtic substrate in the English language, but their ideas have not gained wide acceptance. It doesn't help that the majority of the things they claim to be features of such a substrate don't really start showing up until a thousand years after the Anglo-Saxons began migrating, a time gap which is, frankly, rather ludicrous. Much more logical explanations (in my opinion, at least) exist for most of these features that don't involve Celtic languages at all. There's also the fact that English has remarkably few loan words from Brythonic, and those that do exist are for the most part fairly obscure. And the fact that most "domestic words" in English do originate with the Anglo-Saxons suggests that whole families migrated, not just a few men. | [
"The Viking colonisation was not a mass phenomenon. Nevertheless, in some areas, the Scandinavians established themselves rather densely, particularly in pays de Caux and in the northern part of the Cotentin. In fact, one can qualify the Nordic settlements in Normandy as Anglo-Scandinavian, because most of the colo... |
is the fastest sperm to reach and fertilise the egg necessarily the fittest or healthiest? if not, what usually determines its success? | Mostly luck. It's not necessary fittest or healthiest of all, because most sperm cells aren't lucky by definition of luck. A group of sperm cells will move together and many of them should die out just to make path to their target easier for other cells.
But to fertilize the egg, they should be healthy enough and to complete some "checks". That is like a basic check that their DNA is not damaged badly, under the point when cells become unable to do it's job, but not enough to ensure that DNA don't have any mutation - they almost certainly will have some minor mutations. | [
"Another research study examined the parameters required for successful fertilisation of the eggs of \"Odontaster validus\" compared to similar temperate water sea stars. It was found that a density of sperm of 105 sperm per millilitre was sufficient to cause a high proportion of eggs to be fertilised and that this... |
the different kinds of bbq across the united states. how do they differ? | It's all about the meat and the sauce. There are dozens of varieties, but the four major ones are:
Carolina Style: Pork, basted with either vinegar-based sauce (North) or Mustard-based sauce (South)
Kansas City: Pork or beef, dry rubbed, sauce (tomato-based) served on the side
Memphis: Pulled pork sandwiches and ribs.
Texas: All about the beef, usually brisket. Sauce is very much optional. | [
"Competition BBQ Smoking is becoming increasingly popular among smoking enthusiasts, especially in the Southern American States, where BBQ enthusiasts come together to over a weekend to cook various cuts of meat such as a whole hog or beef brisket to become the best at BBQ.\n",
"There is a wide variety of barbecu... |
why were computers not considered commonplace in households until windows 95? | It happened to be good timing with the internet becoming more well known. You had a GUI based OS, you didn't need to know DOS. Also, that was when computers started really coming down in price.
While I had Windows 3.1 at home, I was using my unix shell account at school to get on the internet starting in 1993 since I didn't have a modem yet. At least by 95, you had Netscape 1.1 which was a big deal because you could start using JPGs for images (before that it was 64-color gifs, not the animated type, and bitmap files which were huge to download). Having an image with more color and 10% of the size of gifs were a big deal when you were on a 14.4 modem. | [
"By 1982, an estimated 621,000 home computers were in American households, at an average sales price of US$530 (). After the success of the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Commodore PET and the Apple II in 1977, almost every manufacturer of consumer electronics rushed to introduce a home computer. Large numbers of new mach... |
When you apply light pressure to your eye for an extended period of time (ex. sleeping on your face), why is your vision blurred for several minutes afterwards? | Your eye primarily focuses using either the cornea or the lens. Your cornea (which is a specialization continuous with the fibrous outer part of your eye called the sclera) does most of the refraction that brings light into focus, but it's not really adjustable so your lens does the rest of the 'fine' focusing.
I can't think of a reason why pressing your eye would temporarily cause your iris sphinctor/dilator muscles to stop functioning, so I'm guessing you're right and it's not due to problems with the lens, but the shape of your eye.
When not just a temporary condition, this is actually a major cause of near- and far-sightedness! An elongated eye means that the image passing through your lens gets brought into focus before the retina (myopia/near-sightedness) and in the case of a compressed eye shape the image gets brought into focus after the retina (hyperopia/far-sightedness). | [
"These cause permanent obstruction of aqueous outflow. In some cases, pressure may rapidly build up in the eye, causing pain and redness (symptomatic, or so-called \"acute\" angle closure). In this situation, the vision may become blurred, and halos may be seen around bright lights. Accompanying symptoms may includ... |
Between the years 1812 to 1914, how would the U.S army have fared against a stereotypical European army? | This is essentially a question of speculation and there is truly no way a historian could answer this. However, there have been users who have written comparisons between the US Army and European armies during the late 19th century. You can find them [here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_). | [
"Armies were small by European standards of the era, largely attributable, on the American side, to limitations such as lack of powder and other logistical capabilities; and, on the British side, to the difficulty of transporting troops across the Atlantic, as well as the dependence on local supplies, which the Pat... |
How did whale intermediates have an evolutionary advantage? | Fish are cold-blooded.
There are some minor exceptions; large predatory fish such as tuna are often slightly warm-blooded, but not as warm as a mammal. This is also why there are no pocket-sized whales; being big and well-insulated helps maintain body heat.
Breathing air while swimming seems somewhat awkward, but there's not actually that much oxygen dissolved in water for fish to extract. Not a problem for mammals though. Lungs are efficient for providing oxygen to that super-fast metabolism.
You don't need to be fully aquatic to get strong advantages either; look at hippos and seals. | [
"Whale morphology shows a number of examples of convergent evolution, the most obvious being the streamlined fish-like body shape. Other examples include the use of echolocation for hunting in low light conditions — which is the same hearing adaptation used by bats — and, in the rorqual whales, jaw adaptations, sim... |
I had knee surgery last year, why is it every time its about to rain, my knee aches so bad? | Your doctor should have explained to you one of the results of surgery is the joint joint sheath is broken (the medical term is, I believe synovial sheath).
As pressure goes down, the pressure in your joint changes. This causes ache or soreness. I experience the same thing due to an injury in my hand. | [
"The tear of meniscus is among the most common knee injuries. It is usually caused by torsional stress; twisting or turning of the knee too quickly with the foot planted on the ground while the knee is flexed. The feeling of a \"pop\" in the knee is usually felt when the meniscus is torn. Athletes, particularly tho... |
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