question
stringlengths 3
301
| answer
stringlengths 9
7.04k
| context
listlengths 7
7
|
|---|---|---|
the concept of "hanging on" or "fighting" when you're dying from a disease like cancer
|
It's less from a medical standpoint and more a matter of will. Someone hanging on or fighting means they still want to live. Once someone decides they don't want to live anymore, or they give in to death, a survival part of the brain shuts down and the illness takes over. When someone "hangs on" or "fights to survive" they are still battling their illness mentally. While not everything can be overcome this way, if someone decides they just give up and want to die, it's hard to turn it around. You can't force someone to live who just gives up.
|
[
"Battle with cancer is a term used by the media when referring to people suffering from cancer. Those who have died are said to have \"lost their battle with cancer\", while the living are described as \"fighting cancer\". It has been argued that words such as \"battle\" and \"fight\" are inappropriate, as they suggest that cancer can be defeated if one fights hard enough.\n",
"\"At the end of the story, the person simultaneously dies and is saved,\" Dailor said. \"It's about going through cancer, going through chemotherapy and all the things associated with that. I didn't want to be literal about it. But it's all in there. You can read between the lines.\"\n",
"It has been used, albeit off the original definition, to describe one's own knowledge that we will die. Writers in the 1990s involved with the grunge music scene often used the term to describe self-awareness of mortality.\n",
"Suicide refers to someone taking their own lives. Opponents feel that this term is appropriate to describe assisted death, because of the social and personal dynamics that can pressure someone into choosing death. Opponents also cite the fact that oncologists and other non-psychiatric physicians responsible for referring patients for counseling are not trained to detect complex, potentially invisible disorders like clinical depression.\n",
"\"Illness as Metaphor\" was a response to Sontag’s experiences as a cancer patient, as she noticed that the cultural myths surrounding cancer negatively impacted her as a patient. She finds that, a decade later, cancer is no longer swathed in secrecy and shame, but has been replaced by AIDS as the disease most demonized by society. She finds that the metaphors that we associate with disease contribute not only to stigmatizing the disease, but also stigmatizing those who are ill. She believes that the distractions of metaphors and myths ultimately cause more fatalities from this disease.\n",
"Proponents feel that \"medical aid in dying\" differs from suicide because a patient must be confirmed by two physicians to be terminally ill with a prognosis of 6 months or less to live and must also be confirmed by two physicians to be mentally capable to make medical decisions. That is why proponents support death certificates that list their underlying condition as the cause of death. According to the proponents, suicide is a solitary, unregulated act whereas aid in dying is medically authorized and is intended to allow for the presence of loved ones. Proponents define \"suicide\" as an irrational act committed in the throws of mental illness. They assert that the latter act is fundamentally distinct from the practice that they are advocating, as it is intended to be a measured act.\n",
"In the United States and some other cultures, cancer is regarded as a disease that must be \"fought\" to end the \"civil insurrection\"; a War on Cancer was declared in the US. Military metaphors are particularly common in descriptions of cancer's human effects, and they emphasize both the state of the patient's health and the need to take immediate, decisive actions himself rather than to delay, to ignore or to rely entirely on others. The military metaphors also help rationalize radical, destructive treatments. \n"
] |
what's wrong with the word 'negro'? how is 'black' politically more correct than 'negro'?
|
Apparently words that have a neutral definition can become slurs if they are constantly used to describe someone we don't like. Negro, just as a word outside of any context, is completly neutral; it's the Spanish word for black. However, because it was previously used to name people that we oppresed, the word is now bad. Just like Chinaman or Jap. Chinaman is bad but Englishman is good, and Jap is bad but Brit is good. These words are bad because at some point in time, they were used negatively. If there was a big war, and the word "person" was used to describe the enemy in propaganda, you would not be allowed to call anyone a "person" afterwards.
|
[
"However, during the 1950s and 1960s, some black American leaders, notably Malcolm X, objected to the word \"Negro\" because they associated it with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse. Malcolm X preferred \"Black\" to \"Negro\", but also started using the term \"Afro-American\" after leaving the Nation of Islam.\n",
"Critics use the word \"Negro\" because it is considered archaic, and usually offensive, in modern English. This underlines their message that a \"magical black character\" who goes around selflessly helping white people is a throwback to stereotypes such as the \"Sambo\" or \"noble savage\".\n",
"\"Negro\" superseded \"colored\" as the most polite word for African Americans at a time when \"black\" was considered more offensive. In Colonial America during the 17th century the term Negro was, according to one historian, also used to describe Native Americans. John Belton O'Neall's The Negro Law of South Carolina (1848) stipulated that \"the term negro is confined to slave Africans, (the ancient Berbers) and their descendants. It does not embrace the free inhabitants of Africa, such as the Egyptians, Moors, or the negro Asiatics, such as the Lascars.\" The American Negro Academy was founded in 1897, to support liberal arts education. Marcus Garvey used the word in the names of black nationalist and pan-Africanist organizations such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association (founded 1914), the \"Negro World\" (1918), the Negro Factories Corporation (1919), and the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World (1920). W. E. B. Du Bois and Dr. Carter G. Woodson used it in the titles of their non-fiction books, \"The Negro\" (1915) and \"The Mis-Education of the Negro\" (1933) respectively. \"Negro\" was accepted as normal, both as exonym and endonym, until the late 1960s, after the later Civil Rights Movement. One well-known example is the identification by Martin Luther King, Jr. of his own race as \"Negro\" in his famous \"I Have a Dream\" speech of 1963.\n",
"By the 1900s, \"nigger\" had become a pejorative word in the United States. In its stead, the term \"colored\" became the mainstream alternative to \"negro\" and its derived terms. After the civil rights movement, the terms \"colored\" and \"negro\" gave way to \"black\". \"Negro\" had superseded \"colored\" as the most polite word for African Americans at a time when \"black\" was considered more offensive. This term was accepted as normal, including by people classified as Negroes, until the later Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s. One well-known example is the identification by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. of his own race as \"Negro\" in his famous speech of 1963, I Have a Dream. During the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some African-American leaders in the United States, notably Malcolm X, objected to the word \"Negro\" because they associated it with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second-class citizens, or worse. Malcolm X preferred \"Black\" to \"Negro\", but later gradually abandoned that as well for \"Afro-American\" after leaving the Nation of Islam.\n",
"American racial categories are, since they thus do not give any positive definition of blackness, groundless and have no empirical foundation. She argues that racial designations refer to physical characteristics of individuals, which were for one inherited from their forebears but also inherent in people in a physical way. So if someone is being called “black” in common American usage, this does not only refer to the looks of the person defined but about the looks of all black people and how the person resembles them. What is perceived as typically black is what scientists now view as the mythology of race which is nowadays closely intertwined with the historical conditions under which the now-disproved scientific theories of race were formulated.\n",
"Four decades later, a similar difference of opinion remains. In 2006, one commentator suggested that the term Negro is outdated or offensive in many quarters; similarly, the word \"colored\" still appears in the name of the NAACP, or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.\n",
"In certain parts of Latin America, the usage of \"negro\" to directly address black people can be colloquial. It is important to understand that this is not similar to the use of the word \"nigga\" in English in urban hip hop subculture in the United States, given that \"negro\" is not a racist term. For example, one might say to a friend, \"\"\" (literally 'Hey, black-one, how are you doing?'). In such a case, the diminutive ' can also be used, as a term of endearment meaning 'pal'/'buddy'/'friend'. ' has thus also come to be used to refer to a person of any ethnicity or color, and also can have a sentimental or romantic connotation similar to 'sweetheart' or 'dear' in English. In other Spanish-speaking South American countries, the word \"\" can also be employed in a roughly equivalent term-of-endearment form, though it is not usually considered to be as widespread as in Argentina or Uruguay (except perhaps in a limited regional and/or social context). It is consequently occasionally encountered, due to the influence of \"nigga\", in Chicano English in the United States.\n"
] |
Do the deaf need to wear hearing protection?
|
Depends why they're deaf. If it's a neurological thing, the physical ear being in good shape, it would make sense to try and preserve your ears in case of a medical advance that could restore your hearing.
|
[
"These are generally worn by people with a hearing loss who either prefer a more cosmetic appeal of their hearing aids by being attached to their glasses or where sound cannot be passed in the normal way, via a hearing aids, perhaps due to a blockage in the ear canal. pathway or if the client suffers from continual infections in the ear.\n",
"Workers may want to wear their hearing aids under an earmuff. According to OSHA, hearing aids should not be used in areas with dangerous noise levels. However, OSHA allows for the professional(s) in charge of the hearing loss protection program to decide on a case-by-case basis if a worker can wear their hearing aids under an earmuff in high-level noise environments. Workers are not permitted to wear their hearing aids (even if they are turned off) instead of using HPD. OSHA specifies that hearing aids are not \"hearing protectors\" and do not attenuate enough sound to be used instead of HPD. Wearing hearing aids alone, without the use of earmuffs, could potentially cause additional noise-induced hearing loss. It is recommended that workers should not use their hearing aids without the use of an earmuff when exposed to sound levels over 80 dBA.\n",
"Being deaf or hard of hearing typically has little impact on the development of motor skills, fitness levels, and participation in sports. However, it is still important to accommodate students who are deaf or hard of hearing in the physical education setting.\n",
"Through this lens individuals who are deaf are considered disabled due to their inability to hear, which hearing counterparts in their surroundings have historically viewed as a disadvantage. People with disabilities affirm that the design of the environment often disables them. In more accessible environments where those that are deaf have access to language that is not only spoken they are disabled less, or not at all. Areas where hearing and deaf individuals interact, called contact zones, often leave deaf individuals at a disadvantage because of the environment being tailored to suit the needs of the hearing counterpart. The history of Martha's Vineyard, when looking specifically at Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, supports this notion. At one point in time, the deaf population on the island was so great that it was commonplace for hearing residents to know and use both signed and spoken language to communicate with their neighbors. In this environmental design, it was not \"bad\" or \"disabling\" if one was not able to hear in order to communicate. With certain disabilities, medical intervention can improve subsequent health issues. This is true to parts of the deaf population, as in some cases hearing can be gained with the assistance of medical technologies. The social model acknowledges the hard truth that medical intervention does not address societal issues that prevail - regardless of its extent or success.\n",
"Deafness is a feature of MDP syndrome as a result of the nerves not working well and people often have difficulty getting hearing aids because of the small size of their ears. Digital hearing aids can be helpful and audiometry follow up will be needed.\n",
"Dual hearing protection refers to the use of earplugs under ear muffs. This type of hearing protection is particularly recommended for workers in the Mining industry because they are exposed to extremely high noise levels, such as an 105 dBA TWA. Fortunately, there is an option of adding electronic features to dual hearing protectors. These features help with communication by making speech more clear, especially for those workers who already have hearing loss. \n",
"Not only can communication barriers between deaf and hearing people affect family relationships, work, and school, but they can also have a very significant effect on a deaf individual’s physical and mental health care. As a result of poor communication between the health care professional and the deaf or hard of hearing patient, many patients report that they are not properly informed about their disease and prognosis.\n"
] |
what are 'short-links' such as _url_1_, _url_2_, and _url_0_ used for?
|
The goal is to make URL's smaller, which is beneficial if e.g. you have a comment section or tweet you want to send and there's a character limit. It may also just look better than a medium to long size url.
An exception is that some of those URL shorteners are also used maliciously by criminals to hide the original URL which may have looked less safe.
So, keep an eye out when clicking those url's.
|
[
"The shortest possible long-term URLs were generated by NanoURL from December 2009 until about 2011, associated with the top-level \".to\" (Tonga) domain, in the form , where represents a sequence of random numbers and letters.\n",
"The company uses HTTP 301 redirects for its links. The shortcuts are intended to be permanent and cannot be changed once they are created. URLs that are shortened with the bitly service use the codice_3 domain or any other generic domain that the service offers. Information about any short bitly URL codice_4 is available at codice_5 (that is, the URL with a plus sign appended), for example codice_6.\n",
"The main advantage of a short link is that it is, in fact, short, looks neat and clean and can be easily communicated and entered without error. To a very limited extent it may obscure the destination of the URL, though easily discoverable; this may be advantageous, disadvantageous, or irrelevant. A short link which expires, or can be terminated, has some security advantages.\n",
"A permanent URL is not necessarily a good thing. There are security implications, and obsolete short URLs remain in existence and may be circulated long after they cease to point to a relevant or even extant destination. Sometimes a short URL is useful simply to give someone over a telephone conversation for a one-off access or file download, and no longer needed within a couple of minutes.\n",
"TinyURL is a URL shortening web service, which provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs. Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 as a way to post links in newsgroup postings which frequently had long, cumbersome addresses.\n",
"Short URL aliases are seen as useful because they are easier to be written down, remembered or distributed. They also fit in text boxes with a limited number of characters allowed. Some examples of limited text boxes are IRC channel topics, email signatures, microblogs, certain printed newspapers (such as \".net\" magazine or even \"Nature\"), and email clients that impose line breaks on messages at a certain length.\n",
"Some URL shorteners offer a time-limited service, which will expire after a specified period. Services available include an ordinary, easy-to-say word as the URL with a lifetime from 5 minutes up to 24 hours, creation of a URL which will expire on a specified date or after a specified period, creation of a very-short-lived URL of only 5 characters for typing into a smartphone, restriction by the creator of the total number of uses of the URL, and password protection. A Microsoft Security Brief recommends the creation of short-lived URLs, but for reasons explicitly of security rather than convenience.\n"
] |
If a planet was orbiting a star, and that star were to go supernova, would the planet continue to orbit it? would there be a delay before it stops orbiting it?
|
In our current understanding of gravity (general relativity), gravity travels at the speed of light. If you're sitting at the exploding star, any orbiting object 5 light hours away will appear to continue as normal for 10 hours (5 for the effect to reach it, 5 more for that news to make it back to you). If you're sitting on the planet, it will seem to happen immediately, as the gravitational change arrives with the light. (Simultaneity depends on your reference frame in relativity).
The orbit WILL change, though, yes. This happens with binary stars as well as planets. Since the supernova is removing mass from the primary star, there's less gravitational pull on the orbiting object after it happens. But the object is still moving at the old orbital speed. The resulting "kick" that the binary companion has (be it a planet or a star) is called the ["Blaauw kick"](_URL_0_). Looking at the [virial theorem](_URL_1_), it becomes clear that if half the mass of the binary or more is lost in the supernova ejecta, the system won't remain bound. Think of it like spinning a sling around your head and then letting go. In this case, the planet/binary companion will go flying off at high speeds.
There's a bit of extra complication, though, in that supernovae aren't necessarily symmetrical. There's an extra "kick" from a bit more mass being ejected in one direction than another. Depending on how these kicks line up with what the velocity of the orbiting object is at the time of the supernova, it's possible that supernova losing less than half the binary mass results in an unbound system, or that one losing more than half the binary mass remains bound. How big these asymmetric kicks are and how common they are, and whether they apply to black holes as well as neutron stars, is still an active subject of research.
Even if the system remains bound, the orbit will end up being highly elliptical for a while even if it was circular to start with. The supernova gives it a strong push in one direction, mucking about with the symmetry.
|
[
"Planet Nine could have been captured from outside the Solar System during a close encounter between the Sun and another star. If a planet was in a distant orbit around this star, three-body interactions during the encounter could alter the planet's path, leaving it in a stable orbit around the Sun. A planet originating in a system without Jupiter-massed planets could remain in a distant eccentric orbit for a longer time, increasing its chances of capture. The wider range of possible orbits would reduce the odds of its capture in a relatively low inclination orbit to 1–2 percent. This process could also occur with rogue planets, but the likelihood of their capture is much smaller, with only 0.05–0.10% being captured in orbits similar to that proposed for Planet Nine.\n",
"A planet could possibly get into this situation by evaporating while orbiting inside the gaseous shell of the red giant and at the same time having its orbit decay due to bow-shock friction with the gas. Tides induce on the expanded star by the planet would also cause the orbit to decay, rather than expand as might have been expected to loss of gas from the star. These possibilities have been studied because that is the expected future of the Earth. Another hypothesis is that close-in planets could have formed during the merger of two white dwarfs.\n",
"An encounter with another star could also alter the orbit of a distant planet, shifting it from a circular to an eccentric orbit. The \"in situ\" formation of a planet at this distance would require a very massive and extensive disk, or the outward drift of solids in a dissipating disk forming a narrow ring from which the planet accreted over a billion years. If a planet formed at such a great distance while the Sun was in its original cluster, the probability of it remaining bound to the Sun in a highly eccentric orbit is roughly 10%. A previous article reported that if the massive disk extended beyond 80 AU some objects scattered outward by Jupiter and Saturn would have been left in high inclination (inc 50°), low eccentricity orbits which have not been observed. An extended disk would also have been subject to gravitational disruption by passing stars and by mass loss due to photoevaporation while the Sun remained in the open cluster where it formed.\n",
"It is possible for objects orbiting a star to be ejected due to interaction with a third massive body, thereby becoming interstellar objects. Such a process was initiated in early 1980s when C/1980 E1, initially gravitationally bound to the Sun, passed near Jupiter and was accelerated sufficiently to reach escape velocity from the Solar System. This changed its orbit from elliptical to hyperbolic and made it the most eccentric known object at the time, with an eccentricity of 1.057. It is headed for interstellar space.\n",
"When the O-type star goes supernova any planets that had formed would become free-floating due to the loss of stellar mass unless the natal kick of the resulting remnant pushes it in the same direction as an escaping planet.\n",
"On November 1, 2010, a super-earth was announced orbiting the star along with Gliese 785 b as part of the NASA-UC Eta-Earth program. The planet orbits in just under 9.5 days and was originally thought to have a minimum mass of 8.2 ± 1.2 M. Spurred by the possibility of transits, additional data was acquired for less than a year which found a lower mass for the star and hence reduced the minimum mass of the planet to 6.4 ± 0.7 M, and improved certainty on the time of possible transit. Transits of the planet were apparently detected and announced on September 12, 2011; this would make HD 97658 the second-to-brightest star with a transiting planet after 55 Cancri and indicating a low-density planet like Gliese 1214 b. However, the occurrence of transits was quietly retracted on April 11, 2012, and three days later it was announced that observations by the MOST space telescope could not confirm transits. Transits of radii larger than 1.87 R were ruled out.\n",
"Comets are thought to orbit the Sun at great distances, but then be perturbed by passing stars and the galactic tides. As they come into or leave the inner Solar System they may have their orbit changed by the planets, or alternatively be ejected from the Solar System. It is also possible they may collide with the Sun or a planet.\n"
] |
Why did the KPD, SPD and Members of the Many Socialist and Communist Militias and Originations Not Offer Any Significant Resistance to the Nazis in 1933? With Not Even a Real Attempt at a General Strike like During the Kappputsch?
|
I have read many different takes on this question. A decent if incomplete explanation is that these forces were (a) demoralized and (b) split against each other.
(B) is the less complex explanation, so I'll briefly address this. To the KPD, the SPD was a "fascist" political party that had ruined the promise of the 1918 revolution. In 1932, the KPD joined the Nazis in a transit strike in Berlin. In other words, the KPD had no interest in maintaining democratic institutions. We can assume, also, that the Reichswehr would have moved with alacrity against any uprising on the part of the KPD or associated militias.
(a) Requires us to backtrack to the events of summer 1932. Franz von Papen is Chancellor. Eager to break the power of the SPD, he deposes the SPD government of Prussia by force. The Prussian state government was the last bastion of SPD power. Prussian Premier Otto Braun and Minister of the Interior Carl Severing, whose powers extended over Prussia's large and well-armed police force, would have been the ones in a position of sufficient authority to call a strike together. But contrast their position to that of Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Noske when these men called their strike in 1920. They were, respectively, President and Minister of Defense. They spoke with the authority of the nation in some sense, while those launching the coup were of the widely hated and discredited forces of monarchy and militarism. And while much of the military was on the fence in 1920, Reichswehr leader von Seect was, for instance, unwilling to take a positive move before an outcome was decided. In 1932, on the other hand, the Reichswehr stood with Minister of Defense Kurt von Schleicher. An outright strike could well have precipitated a violent reaction from the national government, and may indeed have reinforced their narrative of Communist/Socialist troublemaking requiring more authoritarian government. In sum - Unlike in 1920, Braun and Severing, and by extension the SPD, were in the position of illegitimacy. As Erich Eyck writes, "large numbers of Germans, many of them quite influential, were jubilant at the prospect of getting rid of the Socialists and, if possible, of the unions as well." Finally, if the SPD had poor prospects of launching such a strike in 1932 their prospects were even more grim in 1933, after months of electoral drubbing and the loss of almost every position of power they had once held.
Yet, if they had truly believed in the Republic, wasn't it worth a last ditch effort? Probably not. It is doubtful that the mass of workers could have been called to an effective strike. Not only had many millions of them defected to the KPD and NSDAP, but the unemployment rate would have made such a tactic ineffective. Eych observes: "For how could the trade unions call the workers from their posts when they knew that millions of unemployed were waiting the moment when these places might become vacant?"
A final point. I wrote [here] (_URL_0_) several weeks ago that Schleicher reached several labor union ministers and persuaded them that they would be granted positions of power in the new order, thus keeping them from launching a coup. I have to admit, I may have been seduced by good story-telling. While it's plausible, I haven't seen the evidence for it.
Cited:
Erich Eych, *History of the Weimar Republic, Vol. II*
John Wheeler-Bennett, *Nemesis of Power*
|
[
"Among circles of the workers' parties KPD and SPD there were different interpretations of the reasons for the rise of the Nazis and their electoral success. A portion of the Social Democrats blamed the devastating role of Communists in the final phase of the Weimar Republic. The Communist Party, in turn, insulted the Social Democrats as \"social fascists\" (\"Sozialfaschisten\"). Others believed that the splitting of the labour movement into the SPD and KPD prevented them effectively opposing the power of the Nazis, made possible by the First World War.\n",
"Subsequently, the Social Democratic Party and the newly founded Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which consisted mostly of former members of the SPD, became bitter rivals, not least because of the legacy of the German Revolution. Under Defense Minister of Germany Gustav Noske, the party aided in putting down the Communist and left wing Spartacist uprising throughout Germany in early 1919 with the use of the Freikorps, a morally questionable decision that has remained the source of much controversy amongst historians to this day. While the KPD remained in staunch opposition to the newly established parliamentary system, the SPD became a part of the so-called Weimar Coalition, one of the pillars of the struggling republic, leading several of the short-lived interwar cabinets. The threat of the Communists put the SPD in a difficult position. The party had a choice between becoming more radical (which could weaken the Communists but lose its base among the middle class) or stay moderate, which would damage its base among the working class. Splinter groups formed: In 1928, a small group calling itself Neu Beginnen, in the autumn of 1931, the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, and in December 1931 the Iron Front.\n",
"During the years following its formation, the FVdG began to adopt increasingly radical positions. During the German socialist movement's debate over the use of mass strikes, the FVdG advanced the view that the general strike must be a weapon in the hands of the working class. The federation believed the mass strike was the last step before a socialist revolution and became increasingly critical of parliamentary action. Disputes with the mainstream labor movement finally led to the expulsion of FVdG members from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1908 and the complete severing of relations between the two organizations. Anarchist and especially syndicalist positions became increasingly popular within the FVdG. During World War I, the FVdG rejected the SPD's and mainstream labor movement's cooperation with the German state—known as the \"Burgfrieden\"—but was unable to organize any significant resistance to or continue its regular activities during the war. Immediately after the November Revolution, the FVdG very quickly became a mass organization. It was particularly attractive to miners from the Ruhr area opposed to the mainstream unions' reformist policies. In December 1919, the federation merged with several minor left communist unions to become the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD).\n",
"Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to a revolution in Germany, and during 1919 and 1920 attempts to seize control of the government continued. Germany's Social Democratic government, which had come to power after the fall of the Monarchy, was vehemently opposed to the KPD's idea of socialism. With the new regime terrified of a Bolshevik Revolution in Germany, Defense Minister Gustav Noske formed a series of anti-communist paramilitary groups, dubbed \"Freikorps\", out of demobilized World War I veterans. During the failed Spartacist uprising in Berlin of January 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had not initiated the uprising but joined once it had begun, were captured by the Freikorps and murdered. The Party split a few months later into two factions, the KPD and the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD).\n",
"In Germany, the left communists were expelled from the Communist Party of Germany and formed the Communist Workers Party (KAPD). Similar parties were formed in the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Britain. The KAPD rapidly lost most of its members and it eventually dissolved. However, some of its militants had been instrumental in organising factory-based unions like the AAUD and AAUD-E, the latter being opposed to separate party organisation (see syndicalism).\n",
"The rise of fascism in Nazi Germany and the failure of the communist and social democratic left to unite against the common danger created a situation where certain radical parties throughout the world reexamined their priorities and sought a mechanism for building united action. As early as December 1933, a Trotskyist splinter group called the Communist League of Struggle (CLS), headed by former Socialist Party youth section leader Albert Weisbord and his wife Vera Buch, approached Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party of America seeking a united front hunger march of the two organizations followed by a general strike. This suggestion was dismissed as \"poppycock\" by SP Executive Secretary Clarence Senior, but the seed of the idea of joint action had been planted.\n",
"In December 1918, the Spartakusbund formally renamed itself the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In January 1919, the KPD, along with the Independent Socialists, launched the Spartacist uprising. This included staging massive street demonstrations intended to destabilize the Weimar government, led by the centrists of the SPD under Chancellor Friedrich Ebert. The government accused the opposition of planning a general strike and communist revolution in Berlin. With the aid of the Freikorps (Free corps), Ebert's administration quickly crushed the uprising. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were taken prisoner and killed in custody.\n"
] |
How were the letters written by Apostle Paul delivered?
|
First off, Saint Paul never knew Jesus. This is a very common misconception. He was not one of the original 12 apostles. He was a Jewish/Roman military man of the Roman Empire who at first persecuted Christians, then later converted, became a missionary and became arguably the key founder of Christianity. He was from Tarsus, Cilicia. He lived from 5-67 a.d.
Anyway, I'll try to answer the question as best I can, I'm no expert.
The Roman's postal system was incredibly sophisticated and advanced for the time period. It was very simple for one to send a letter almost anywhere in the empire as long as it had an address. Paul's letters were often addressed to cities he or other missionaries had started Christian followings in. Often they were written to answer theological questions that arose in these congregations from a lack of a central or canon Christian law. The beginning of Christianity saw much debate and disagreement with different interpretations of the different gospels and the reality/divinity of Jesus. The letters would often be sent from Paul to the known Christian leaders of specific towns. These letters were to be read aloud to the following of Christians during their time of worship and congregation together. During the infancy of the Church it was common for letters to be sent out, there were always questions that needed to be clarified by one who they believed had an authority on the matter.
|
[
"Most New Testament scholars believe Paul the Apostle wrote this letter from Corinth, although information appended to this work in many early manuscripts (e.g., Codices Alexandrinus, Mosquensis, and Angelicus) state that Paul wrote it in Athens after Timothy had returned from Macedonia with news of the state of the church in Thessalonica (; ). For the most part, the letter is personal in nature, with only the final two chapters spent addressing issues of doctrine, almost as an aside. Paul's main purpose in writing is to encourage and reassure the Christians there. Paul urges them to go on working quietly while waiting in hope for the return of Christ.\n",
"BULLET::::- First, they have found a difference in these letters' vocabulary, style, and theology from Paul's acknowledged writings. Defenders of the authenticity say that they were probably written in the name and with the authority of the Apostle by one of his companions, to whom he distinctly explained what had to be written, or to whom he gave a written summary of the points to be developed, and that when the letters were finished, Paul read them through, approved them, and signed them.\n",
"The first verse in the letter identifies Paul as its author. While early lists of New Testament books, including Marcion's canon and the Muratorian fragment, attribute the letter to Paul, more recently there have been challenges to Pauline authorship on the basis of the letter's characteristically non-Pauline syntax, terminology, and eschatology.\n",
"If Paul was the author of the letter, then it was probably written from Rome during Paul's first imprisonment (; ; ), and probably soon after his arrival there in the year 62, four years after he had parted with the Ephesian elders at Miletus. However, scholars who dispute Paul's authorship date the letter to between 70–80 AD. In the latter case, the possible location of the authorship could have been within the church of Ephesus itself. Ignatius of Antioch himself seemed to be very well versed in the epistle to the Ephesians, and mirrors many of his own thoughts in his own epistle to the Ephesians.\n",
"By comparing Acts of the Apostles and mentions of Ephesus in the Corinthian correspondence, scholars suggest that the letter was written during Paul's stay in Ephesus, which is usually dated as being in the range of AD 53–57.\n",
"David Trobisch argues that comparison of the oldest manuscripts of Paul’s letters show evidence that several epistles had been previously assembled as an anthology and published separate from the New Testament, and this anthology as a whole was then incorporated into the New Testament. Trobisch further argues for Paul as the assembler of his own letters for publication.\n",
"Martin Luther described Paul's letter to the Romans as \"the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian's while not only to memorize it word for word but also to occupy himself with it daily, as though it were the daily bread of the soul\".\n"
] |
Why did 1960s Communist China engage in so many territorial conflicts over tiniest bits of land with such major powers as India and as the USSR?
|
It wasn't necessarily "Mao" that was responsible for these actions. If anything, Zhou Enlai played a bigger part, having been China's foreign minister up until the 1960s.
Before we get to the Chola incident and the 1963 Sino-Pakistan agreement, you should understand that the Chola incident was a result of the Sino-Indian War of 1962. This was due to a border conflict between China and India. India was concerned about seeming weak due to territorial conflicts with Pakistan, while China was concerned that India was allying with the Soviets to surround China, as well as subverting Chinese rule in recently annexed Tibet. Indian Prime Minister Nehru instituted the Forward Policy, which authorized Indian troops to move into disputed regions held by Chinese troops. As they moved deeper into these regions, they came into conflict with PRC troops, eventually resulting in several firefights. The Chinese were incensed as they believed this was part of a plan to destabilize Tibet, so they elected to attack India to punish them. The resulting treaty resulted in a peace that more or less demarcates the current borders, although there were still border disputes for years after the war. As a result of this incident, China courted Pakistan as an ally against India, to help offset the Soviet Union's courting of India.
On a similar note, the Sino-Soviet split had already been in motion for a long time. China had significant territorial claims on Russia, who had signed one of the "unequal treaties" in the 1800s to claim Outer Manchuria, or Primorye, as well as the annexation of the area known as Tannu Tava in the West, as well as border incidents in Mongolia and Xinjiang. As a result, to satisfy Chinese revanchism, China attempted to negotiate with the Soviet Union to "revise" these treaties which the Soviet Union found to be unacceptable. As a result, Chinese troops attacked Russian forces in a series of border skirmishes over the island and various other territories.
Sources:
Maxwell, India's China War
Luthi, the Sino-Soviet Split
|
[
"Relations between the Soviet Union and Japan between the Communist takeover in 1917 and the collapse of Communism in 1991 tended to be hostile. Japan had sent troops to counter the Bolshevik presence in Russia's Far East during the Russian Civil War, and both countries had been in opposite camps during World War II and the Cold War. In addition, territorial conflicts over the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin were a constant source of tension. These, with a number of smaller conflicts, prevented both countries from signing a peace treaty after World War II, and even today matters remain unresolved.\n",
"In 1931, the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria and created the puppet state of Manchukuo (1932), which signalled the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1937, a month after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Soviet Union established a non-aggression pact with the Republic of China. During the World War II-period, the two countries suffered more losses than any other country, with China (in the Second Sino-Japanese war) losing over 35 million and the Soviet Union 27 million people.\n",
"In the 1960s, tensions between two communist nations had emerged into a [[Sino-Soviet border conflict|border conflict]], in which almost resulted with Soviet Union attempt to use nuclear bombs to nuke China. The conflict would only last at 1989 and ended at 1991 with the collapse of USSR, however there is still a modern sense of resentment against Russia by a minority of Chinese, who see Russia as the perpetrator for crimes within the country.\n",
"China and the USSR were rivals after the Sino-Soviet split in 1961, competing for control of the worldwide Communist movement. There was a serious possibility of a major war in the early 1960s; a brief border war took place in 1969. This enmity began to lessen after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, but relations were poor until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.\n",
"China's relations with the USSR remained sour after the conflict, despite the border talks, which began in 1969 and continued inconclusively for a decade. Domestically, the threat of war caused by the border clashes inaugurated a new stage in the Cultural Revolution; that of China's thorough militarization. The 9th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, held in the aftermath of the Zhenbao Island incident, confirmed Defense Minister Lin Biao as Mao's heir apparent. Following the events of 1969, the Soviet Union further increased its forces along the Sino-Soviet border, and in the Mongolian People's Republic.\n",
"Another issue that fueled the split in the Communist Party of India was parting of the ways between the USSR and China. Though the conflict had a long history, it came out in open in 1959, Khrushchev sought to appease the West during a period of the Cold War known as 'The Thaw', by holding a summit meeting with U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. Two other reasons were USSR's unwillingness to support Chinese nuclear program and their neutrality in the initial days of Sino-Indian border conflict. These events greatly offended Mao Zedong and the other Chinese Communist leaders.\n",
"Sino–Soviet diplomatic ties had been cut following the Sino-Soviet conflict (1929). At the time the Soviet Union was undergoing a country wide program of mass industrialization in preparation for a potential war on two fronts (with Germany and Japan respectively). The establishment of Manchukuo complicated the situation as its territory now housed a colony of 40,000 Soviet citizens working on the Chinese Eastern Railway. Although the Soviets refused to officially recognize the new state, they sold the railway to the Japanese in March 1935, at a cut-rate following a series of Japanese provocations. The Soviets felt unready for a new confrontation with Japan, opting to improve relations with China as a temporary countermeasure. The League of Nations remained silent on the issue of Japanese imperialism, pushing China to reactivate its unofficial communication channels with its only remaining potential ally. The Anti-Comintern Pact, signed on 25 November 1936, erased the last doubts held by both sides regarding the ongoing reconciliation efforts. On 7 July 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. On 21 August, China and the Soviet Union signed a non–aggression pact. Although the pact made no mention of Soviet military support, it de facto established a tacit understanding that the Soviets would provide both military and material aid.\n"
] |
i have terrible vision, but sometimes if i blink hard enough, my vision goes crystal clear til i blink again. why?
|
As someone who's spent 4 years studying, researching and working clinically with eyeballs, here's my guess:
You're likely forcing your focusing system to focus through as much blur as it possibly can, assuming that while you "blink enough" you're concentrating your gaze, at a single object or direction. Both your cornea and your crystalline lens will change shape in order for you to be able to focus; younger people, especially kids, have a much greater dynamic range for focusing then do older folks, so if you're young, that's probably most of it. If you know you have terrible vision, meaning a high prescription in one and or both eyes, you definitely should not do this. In that case, you'll probably get headaches if you do it enough. Just use glasses.
|
[
"Blinking results in blurred and incomplete image of the fundus. It is imperative to instruct the patient not to blink when the fundus photo is taken.The patient may blink normally at any other time to prevent the excessive drying of the eye. A dry eye may also lead to a blurred fundus photo. When dry eye is suspected, ask the patient to blink several times to lubricate the eye before continuing.\n",
"When his vision starts to blur, he goes to see a doctor (Halliwell Hobbes), who gives him a grim prognosis: as a result of his old war injury, he will go blind, in a year if he avoids strain, \"not very long\" if he does not.\n",
"Patients who suffer from nutritional optic neuropathy may notice that colors are not as vivid or bright as before and that the color red is washed out. This normally occurs in both eyes at the same time and is not associated with any eye pain. They might initially notice a blur or fog, followed by a drop in vision. While vision loss may be rapid, progression to blindness is unusual. These patients tend to have blind spots in the center of their vision with preserved peripheral vision. In most cases, the pupils continue to respond normally to light.\n",
"Another symptom includes the fading of visual clarity. This symptom makes the eye create an image commonly described to appear as though looking through a waterfall. If the lens becomes completely opaque the individual will become blind, even though the photoreceptors are completely functional. Other common symptoms include;\n",
"BULLET::::3. When a blurry stimulus is presented to a region of the visual field away from where we are fixating, and we keep our eyes still, that stimulus will disappear even though it is still physically presented. This is called Troxler's fading. It occurs because although our eyes move a little when we are fixating on a point, away from that point (in \"peripheral vision\") the movements are not large enough to shift the lilac discs to new neurons of the visual system. Their afterimages essentially cancel the original images, so that all one sees of the lilac discs is grey, except for the gap where the green afterimage appears.\n",
"When the eyes dry out or become fatigued due to reading on a computer screen, it can be an indication of Computer Vision Syndrome. Computer Vision Syndrome can be prevented by taking regular breaks, focusing on objects far from the screen, having a well-lit workplace, or using a blink reminder application such as EyeLeo or VisionProtect. Studies suggest that adults can learn to maintain a healthy blinking rate while reading or looking at a computer screen using biofeedback.\n",
"Nutritional deficiency may be the cause of a genuine optic neuropathy, sometimes associated with involvement of the peripheral nervous system, called peripheral neuropathy. Loss of vision is usually bilateral, painless, chronic, insidious and slowly progressive. Most often, they present as a non-specific retrobulbar optic neuropathy. Patients may notice that colors are not as vivid or bright as before and that the color red is washed out. This normally occurs in both eyes at the same time and is not associated with any eye pain. They might initially notice a blur or fog, followed by a drop in vision. While vision loss may be rapid, progression to blindness is unusual. These patients tend to have blind spots in the center of their vision with preserved peripheral vision. In most cases, the pupils continue to respond normally to light.\n"
] |
to anybody who has used nesquik milkshake powder, why is it that the chocolate powder never mixes in with the milk fully, yet the banana powder does?
|
The primary ingredients in the banana powder are cane sugar and maltodextrin (which is a white powder made from flour starch and used as a food additive). Both are very soluble in water (or milk), so it dissolves easily.
The chocolate powder, the primary ingredients are cane sugar (dissolves easily) and cocoa powder. Cocoa powder is about 22% fat, which is insoluble (doesn't dissolve well in water or milk). So the bits that don't dissolve are the cocoa powder, due largely to the fat.
It will dissolve better using hot water, and vigorous stirring, but may not do it perfectly even then.
|
[
"Powdered milk is frequently used in the manufacture of infant formula, confectionery such as chocolate and caramel candy, and in recipes for baked goods where adding liquid milk would render the product too thin. Powdered milk is also widely used in various sweets such as the famous Indian milk balls known as gulab jamun and a popular Indian sweet delicacy (sprinkled with desiccated coconut) known as chum chum (made with skim milk powder). Many no-cook recipes that use nut butters use powdered milk to prevent the nut butter from turning liquid by absorbing the oil. \n",
"Makers produce the effect by drizzling melted chocolate into plain milk ice cream towards the end of the churning process; chocolate solidifies immediately coming in contact with the cold ice cream, and is then broken up and incorporated into the ice cream with a spatula. This process creates the shreds of chocolate that give stracciatella its name. (\"Straciatella\" in Italian means \"little shred\".) While straciatella ice cream traditionally involves milk ice cream and milk chocolate, modern variations can also be made with vanilla and dark chocolate.\n",
"Flavonoids exist naturally in cocoa, but because they can be bitter, they are often removed from chocolate, even dark chocolate. Although flavonoids are present in milk chocolate, milk may interfere with their absorption; however this conclusion has been questioned.\n",
"The ad for Nesquik chocolate milkshake stated: \"You know, kids only grow up once, which is why they pack their days full of the good stuff. So start theirs with a tasty glass of Nesquik at breakfast. It has essential vitamins and minerals to help them grow and develop because all this laughing and playing can be hard work.\" An animation showed the ingredients \"Vitamins D, B & C\", \"Iron\", and \"Magnesium\" adjacent to a glass of the product, mixed with milk. On-screen text during the ad read, \"Enjoy Nesquik as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle\".\n",
"Milk often has flavoring added to it for better taste or as a means of improving sales. Chocolate milk has been sold for many years and has been followed more recently by strawberry milk and others. Some nutritionists have criticized flavored milk for adding sugar, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, to the diets of children who are already commonly obese in the U.S.\n",
"The cream is made by whipping egg yolks and sugar together until the yolk is almost white, and then slowly adding hot milk, while whisking. Vanilla beans (seeds) may be added for extra flavour and visual appeal. The sauce is then cooked over low heat (excessive heating may cause the yolks to cook, resulting in scrambled eggs) and stirred constantly with a spoon until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, and then removed from the heat. It is also possible to set the sauce into custard cups and bake in a bain-marie until the egg yolks set. If the sauce reaches too high a temperature, it will curdle, although it can be salvaged by straining into a container placed in an ice bath. Cooking temperature should be between 70 °C (156 °F) and 83 °C (180 °F); the higher the temperature, the thicker the resulting cream, as long as the yolks are fully incorporated into the mixture.\n",
"Hot milk cake gets its distinctive flavor from the scalded milk that is the liquid component of the batter. It differs from traditional sponge cakes in that it contains baking powder as leavening, and the eggs are beaten together whole instead of whipped as yolks and whites separately.\n"
] |
why does a scientific calculator show "0" as a result if i add 1 to a really high number and then substract said high number although it should show "1"?
|
Your calculator doesn't store all of the digits for 2^50, so the 1 at the very end gets removed from the memory. How many digits a calculator actually holds depends from calculator to calculator.
|
[
"Most calculators and many computer programs present very large and very small results in scientific notation, typically invoked by a key labelled (for \"exponent\"), (for \"enter exponent\"), , , , or depending on vendor and model. Because superscripted exponents like 10 cannot always be conveniently displayed, the letter \"E\" (or \"e\") is often used to represent \"times ten raised to the power of\" (which would be written as \"× 10\") and is followed by the value of the exponent; in other words, for any two real numbers \"m\" and \"n\", the usage of \"\"m\"E\"n\"\" would indicate a value of \"m\" × 10. In this usage the character \"e\" is not related to the mathematical constant \"e\" or the exponential function \"e\" (a confusion that is unlikely if scientific notation is represented by a capital \"E\"). Although the \"E\" stands for \"exponent\", the notation is usually referred to as \"(scientific) E-notation\" rather than \"(scientific) exponential notation\". The use of E-notation facilitates data entry and readability in textual communication since it minimizes keystrokes, avoids reduced font sizes and provides a simpler and more concise display, but it is not encouraged in some publications.\n",
"As well as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, it had reciprocal and square-root functions, and the ability to multiply by a fixed constant. With an eight-digit display, the calculator could display positive numbers between 0.0000001 and 99,999,999, and negative numbers between -0.000001 and -9,999,999. Calculators of the time tended to have displays of between 3 and 12 digits, as reducing the number of digits was an effective way of reducing the cost of the calculator. A number outside that range leads to an overflow, and the screen flashes and all keys except the clear key are rendered inoperable to inform the user of the error. A independent memory register could read information from the screen, and information could only be taken from the memory onto the screen. Five keys were used for memory operations.\n",
"The same process applies for numbers between 0 and 1. For example, 0.045 would be written as 4.5 × 10. The only difference is that b is now negative, so when adding you are really subtracting. This would yield the result 0.653 − 2, or −1.347.\n",
"where \"a\" is a bias for adjusting the approximation errors. For example, with \"a\" = 0 the results are accurate for even powers of 2 (e.g., 1.0), but for other numbers the results will be slightly too big (e.g.,1.5 for 2.0 instead of 1.414... with 6% error). With \"a\" = -0x4B0D2, the maximum relative error is minimized to ±3.5%.\n",
"Thus the result of the subtraction is 1001 1001 0010 0101 (−925). To confirm the result, note that the first digit is 9, which means negative. This seems to be correct, since 357 − 432 should result in a negative number. The remaining nibbles are BCD, so 1001 0010 0101 is 925. The ten's complement of 925 is 1000 − 925 = 75, so the calculated answer is −75.\n",
"For example, the expression \"5 mod 2\" would evaluate to 1 because 5 divided by 2 has a quotient of 2 and a remainder of 1, while \"9 mod 3\" would evaluate to 0 because the division of 9 by 3 has a quotient of 3 and leaves a remainder of 0; there is nothing to subtract from 9 after multiplying 3 times 3. (Doing the division with a calculator will not show the result referred to here by this operation; the quotient will be expressed as a decimal fraction.)\n",
"For \"x\"′s that are not simple powers of 2, a noticeable error in can occur even when \"x\" is quite large. For example, if \"x\" = 1/1000, then = 9.9999999999989 × 10, an error in the 13-th significant figure. In this case, if Excel simply added and subtracted the decimal numbers, avoiding the conversion to binary and back again to decimal, no round-off error would occur and accuracy actually would be better. Excel has the option to \"Set precision as displayed\". With this option, depending upon circumstance, accuracy may turn out to be better or worse, but you will know exactly what Excel is doing. (It should be noted, however, that only the selected precision is retained, and one cannot recover extra digits by reversing this option.) Some similar examples can be found at this link.\n"
] |
how does regenerative brakes work ?
|
Electrical induction.
You have probably made an electromagnet out of a coil of wire around a nail and a battery in school. Electricity flowing through a conductor will form a magnetic field around the conductor, and the reverse is true as well. A magnetic field moving around a conductor will cause an electrical current within it.
An electrical motor and an electrical generator are basically the same device, the difference being the input and the output. A generator takes the physical turning of magnets past wires to make electricity and a motor takes electricity moving through wires to make a magnetic field to turn the magnets.
Regenerative braking is using the momentum of a moving car to turn the magnets and create electricity. This slows the car down, and the most effective use of that captured electricity is to turn around and use it to accelerate the car again through the reverse process.
|
[
"Regenerative braking is an energy recovery mechanism which slows a vehicle or object by converting its kinetic energy into a form which can be either used immediately or stored until needed. In this mechanism, the electric motor uses the vehicle's momentum to recover energy that would be otherwise lost to the brake discs as heat. This contrasts with conventional braking systems, where the excess kinetic energy is converted to unwanted and wasted heat by friction in the brakes, or with dynamic brakes, where energy is recovered by using electric motors as generators but is immediately dissipated as heat in resistors. In addition to improving the overall efficiency of the vehicle, regeneration can greatly extend the life of the braking system as its parts do not wear as quickly.\n",
"The most common form of regenerative brake involves an electric motor as an electric generator. In electric railways the electricity generated is fed back into the supply system. In battery electric and hybrid electric vehicles, the energy is stored chemically in a battery, electrically in a bank of capacitors, or mechanically in a rotating flywheel. Hydraulic hybrid vehicles use hydraulic motors to store energy in the form of compressed air. In a fuel cell powered vehicle, the electric energy generated by the motor is used to break waste water down into oxygen, and hydrogen which goes back into the fuel cell for later reuse.\n",
"Conventional brakes dissipate kinetic energy as heat, which is irrecoverable. Regenerative braking, used by hybrid/electric vehicles, recovers some of the kinetic energy, but some energy is lost in the conversion, and the braking power is limited by the battery's maximum charge rate and efficiency.\n",
"The regenerative brake concept was further developed in the early 1980s by David Arthurs, an electrical engineer, using off-the shelf components, military surplus, and an Opel GT. The voltage controller to link the batteries, motor (a jet-engine starter motor), and DC generator was Arthurs'. The vehicle exhibited fuel efficiency, and plans for it were marketed by Mother Earth News.\n",
"Most brakes commonly use friction between two surfaces pressed together to convert the kinetic energy of the moving object into heat, though other methods of energy conversion may be employed. For example, regenerative braking converts much of the energy to electrical energy, which may be stored for later use. Other methods convert kinetic energy into potential energy in such stored forms as pressurized air or pressurized oil. Eddy current brakes use magnetic fields to convert kinetic energy into electric current in the brake disc, fin, or rail, which is converted into heat. Still other braking methods even transform kinetic energy into different forms, for example by transferring the energy to a rotating flywheel.\n",
"BULLET::::- gradual braking: Regenerative brakes re-use the energy of braking, but cannot absorb energy as fast as conventional brakes. Gradual braking recovers energy for re-use, boosting mileage; hard braking wastes the energy as heat, just as for a conventional car. Use of the \"B\" (braking) selector on the transmission control is useful on long downhill runs to reduce heat and wear on the conventional brakes, but it does not recover additional energy. Constant use of \"B\" is discouraged by Toyota as it \"may cause decreased fuel economy\" compared to driving in \"D\".\n",
"Brake fade is caused by a buildup of heat in the braking surfaces and the subsequent changes and reactions in the brake system components and can be experienced with both drum brakes and disc brakes. Loss of stopping power, or fade, can be caused by friction fade, mechanical fade, or fluid fade. Brake fade can be significantly reduced by appropriate equipment and materials design and selection, as well as good cooling.\n"
] |
why do some tv shows have a sign language interpreter on the screen? why can't they just use subtitles?
|
As far as the interpreter goes, though, some deaf people may prefer it because they're accessing information in their own language (one that is readily accessible)... English is usually the second language learned for deaf people, so that may be a secondary choice.
|
[
"There have also been a few local stations that have broadcast programming in American Sign Language, accompanied by English closed captioning. Prior to the development of closed captioning, it was not uncommon for some public television programs to incorporate ASL translations by an on-screen interpreter. An interpreter may still be utilized for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community for on-air emergency broadcasts (such as severe weather alerts given by local governments) as well as televised press conferences by local and state government officials accompanied by closed captioning.\n",
"In television, subtitles are used for \"clarification, translation, services for the deaf, as well as identifying places or people in the news.\" In movies, subtitles are mainly used for translations from foreign languages. \n",
"Sometimes, mainly at film festivals, subtitles may be shown on a separate display below the screen, thus saving the film-maker from creating a subtitled copy for perhaps just one showing. Television subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing is also referred to as closed captioning in some countries.\n",
"The producers Andrew Form and Bradley Fuller said they initially planned not to provide on-screen subtitles for sign-language dialogue with \"context clues,\" but realized that for the scene in which the deaf daughter and her hearing father argue about the modified hearing aid, subtitles were necessary. The producers subsequently added subtitles for all sign-language dialogue in the film. Producer Brad Fuller said, \"And I think once you put one subtitle in, you subtitle the whole movie. You don't take liberties like, 'Oh they probably know what I love you is, but we don't subtitle it.' It's just gonna live everywhere and that's the world we live by.\"\n",
"In the 1980s, supertitles (sometimes called surtitles) began to appear. Although supertitles were first almost universally condemned as a distraction, today many opera houses provide either supertitles, generally projected above the theatre's proscenium arch, or individual seat screens where spectators can choose from more than one language. TV broadcasts typically include subtitles even if intended for an audience who knows well the language (for example, a RAI broadcast of an Italian opera). These subtitles target not only the hard of hearing but the audience generally, since a sung discourse is much harder to understand than a spoken one—even in the ears of native speakers. Subtitles in one or more languages have become standard in opera broadcasts, simulcasts, and DVD editions.\n",
"In the Netherlands, Flanders, Nordic countries, Estonia and Portugal, films and television programmes are shown in the original language (usually English) with subtitles, and only cartoons and children's movies and programs are dubbed, such as the \"Harry Potter\" series, \"Finding Nemo\", \"Shrek\", \"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory\" and others. Cinemas usually show both a dubbed version and one with subtitles for this kind of movie, with the subtitled version shown later in the evening.\n",
"In the United States, the National Captioning Institute noted that English as a foreign or second language (ESL) learners were the largest group buying decoders in the late 1980s and early 1990s before built-in decoders became a standard feature of US television sets. This suggested that the largest audience of closed captioning was people whose native language was not English. In the United Kingdom, of 7.5 million people using TV subtitles (closed captioning), 6 million have no hearing impairment.\n"
] |
"the core of the planet earth is made of iron and nickel": how scientists can determine that if no one has been in the core of the earth?
|
We have a pretty good idea about what's on the inside of the Earth, based on the geologist's equivalent of a CAT scan or an MRI -- earthquake data. When an earthquake happens, it sends waves bouncing around the inside of the planet. These waves change direction and speed based on the kinds of materials they pass through. Geologists can detect the movement of these waves by taking measurements at different locations all across the planet, and in so doing, build a picture of how the inside of the planet is constructed.
That's how we know that the interior of the Earth is separated into four layers, that the innermost is made of something solid, and that at least one of them is an actual liquid. From here, scientists can use other information to get an idea of what elements the interior is actually composed of.
Based on the estimated density of the solid inner core, we can guess that it's probably made of iron. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that iron appears to be exceedingly plentiful in the solar system. Given how plentiful it is, and given that we know it's a very dense element, and given what we know about how a dense metal like iron would behave in a still-molten Earth when it was forming, it makes sense that Iron is probably what our core is made of.
We can guess a few more things about how the inner and outer cores behave, based on the fact that the Earth has a magnetic field. We know that the inner core must be rotating, and that the outer core must be convecting, because without those two things, the Earth would not have a magnetic field. So the existence of some external factors can tell us a lot about the internal factors of our planet.
|
[
"Earth's core is believed to be mostly an alloy of iron and nickel. The density indicates that it also contains a significant amount of lighter elements. Elements such as hydrogen would be stable in the Earth's core, however the conditions at the formation of the core would not be suitable for its inclusion. Carbon is a very likely constituent of the core. Preferential partitioning of the carbon isotopeC into the metallic core, during its formation, may explain why there seems to be more C on the surface and mantle of the Earth compared to other solar system bodies (−5‰ compared to -20‰). The difference can also help to predict the value of the carbon proportion of the core.\n",
"BULLET::::- A radical new theory of the composition of the Earth's core is published. It proposes that the shape of the solid iron core is determined by the atomic structure of the different forms of iron of which it consists.\n",
"Herndon suggested that the composition of the inner core of Earth is nickel silicide; the conventional view is that it is iron–nickel alloy More recently, he has suggested \"georeactor\" planetocentric nuclear fission reactors as energy sources for the gas giant outer planets. \n",
"There are no samples of the Earth's core available for direct measurement, as there are for the Earth's mantle. The information that we have about it mostly comes from analysis of seismic waves and the magnetic field. The inner core is believed to be composed of an iron–nickel alloy with some other elements. The temperature at the inner core's surface is estimated to be approximately or 9806 °F, which is about the temperature at the surface of the Sun.\n",
"Theories about the age of the core are necessarily part of theories of the history of Earth as a whole. This has been a long debated topic and is still under discussion at the present time. It is widely believed that the Earth's solid inner core formed out of an initially completely liquid core as the Earth cooled down. However, there is still no firm evidence about the time when this process started.\n",
"The Earth was discovered to have a solid inner core distinct from its molten outer core in 1936, by the Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann, who deduced its presence by studying seismograms from earthquakes in New Zealand. She observed that the seismic waves reflect off the boundary of the inner core and can be detected by sensitive seismographs on the Earth's surface. She inferred a radius of 1400 km for the inner core, not very far from the currently accepted value of 1221 km. In 1938, B. Gutenberg and C. Richter analyzed a more extensive set of data and estimated the thickness of the outer core as 1950 km with a steep but continuous 300 km thick transition to the inner core; implying a radius between 1230 and 1530 km for the inner core.\n",
"Although the presence of carbon in the Earth's core is well-constrained, recent studies suggest large inventories of carbon could be stored in this region. Shear (S) waves moving through the inner core travel at about fifty percent of the velocity expected for most iron-rich alloys. Because the core's composition is believed to be an alloy of crystalline iron and a small amount of nickel, this seismic anomaly indicates the presence of light elements, including carbon, in the core. In fact, studies using diamond anvil cells to replicate the conditions in the Earth's core indicate that iron carbide (FeC) matches the inner core's wave speed and density. Therefore, the iron carbide model could serve as an evidence that the core holds as much as 67% of the Earth's carbon. Furthermore, another study found that in the pressure and temperature condition of the Earth's inner core, carbon dissolved in iron and formed a stable phase with the same FeC composition—albeit with a different structure from the one previously mentioned. In summary, although the amount of carbon potentially stored in the Earth's core is not known, recent studies indicate that the presence of iron carbides can explain some of the geophysical observations.\n"
] |
Iberian Peninsula in Medieval times
|
I'm so happy you asked this. I've been reading a book called Spain: [The Root and the Flower by John A. Crow](_URL_0_) that has been extremely interesting to me. I've really learned a lot and I'd highly suggest his work.
& #x200B;
In short, Iberia was fundamentally different from the rest of Europe because, during the time of the artistic and intellectual renaissance in Italy, Flanders, and the rest of Europe, the kingdom of Castille (the closest thing to "Spain" there was back then) was still busily reconquering the Iberian peninsula from the "Moorish invaders." I put that in quotes because by the time Spain reconquered Moorish cities like Seville, Granada, and Cadiz, the moors had been there for 600+ years, and had seriously better art, science, and math than the Spanish, who had spent the majority of the years 700-1400 in a constant state of conflict against the Moors. (okay- under some rulers, Moors, Jews, and Christians lived harmoniously, but for the most part of Spanish history, rulers used religion to unify the country and if you weren't Christian, you were taxed, tortured, and kicked out of the country once the Spanish Inquisition started.)
& #x200B;
The "re-birth" Spain experienced wasn't a rebirth of art and culture like that of Italy, but rather, a re-harnessing of the conquistador spirit that suddenly had no more Spanish land to conquer. In 1492, Isabelle of Castille banned the Jews and Moors thus unifying Spain under the Catholic cross. Simultaneously, Christopher Columbus "discovered" America, a land full of gold and natives to convert. The decision to invade for Spain was an obvious one. The Royals were most concerned with spreading their influence and increasing their wealth than creating art and re-discovering the human experience. They weren't exactly a country of romantics.
& #x200B;
However, I want to point out to you that during the golden age of Spain, (which will be defined by different times depending on who you ask, for these purposes, we'll say 1492-1650) there were several of the worlds first, and most significant dramatic written stories. I'm sure you've heard of Don Quijote by Miguel Cervantes, published in 1615 (often called the first novel), but that story was actually preceded by an even older written story called "La Celestina" was written in dramatic dialogue, however, never was intended to be performed or told, but rather, read.
& #x200B;
Also, you should check out El Greco and Diego Velazquez for paintings, they were both amazing artists who worked in the Spanish Courts.
& #x200B;
Source: Spain: [The Root and the Flower: An Interpretation of Spain and the Spanish People Third Edition](_URL_0_) by John A. Crow
|
[
"Much of the Iberian peninsula had been occupied by the Moors after 711, although the northernmost portion was divided between several Christian states. In the 11th century, and again in the thirteenth, the Christian kingdoms of the north gradually drove the Muslims from central and most of southern Iberia.\n",
"The medieval Iberian Peninsula was the scene of episodic warfare among Muslims and Christians (although sometimes Muslims and Christians were allies). Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and people. For example, in a raid on Lisbon in 1189 the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, and his governor of Córdoba took 3,000 Christian slaves in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191; an offensive by Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1182 brought him over two-thousand Muslim slaves.\n",
"The Visigothic Kingdom conquered all of Hispania and ruled it until the early 8th century, when the peninsula fell to the Muslim conquests. The Muslim state in Iberia came to be known as Al-Andalus. After a period of Muslim dominance, the medieval history of Spain is dominated by the long Christian \"Reconquista\" or \"reconquest\" of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rule. The Reconquista gathered momentum during the 12th century, leading to the establishment of the Christian kingdoms of Portugal, Aragon, Castile and Navarre and by 1250, had reduced Muslim control to the Emirate of Granada in the south-east of the peninsula. Muslim rule in Granada survived until 1492, when it fell to the Catholic Monarchs.\n",
"BULLET::::- In the Iberian Peninsula, the remnants of the Visigothic Kingdom, the petty kingdoms of Asturias and Pamplona, expanded into the kingdom of Portugal, the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon with the ongoing Reconquista.\n",
"The Moors ruled southern and eastern Spain until the 11th century \"reconquista\" (reconquest). Alicante was finally taken in 1246 by the Castilian king Alfonso X, but it passed soon and definitely to the Kingdom of Valencia in 1298 with the Catalan King James II of Aragon. It gained the status of Royal Village (\"Vila Reial\") with representation in the medieval Valencian Parliament.\n",
"Between 711–718 the Iberian peninsula had been conquered by Muslims in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania; between 722 and 1492 the Christian kingdoms that later would become Spain and Portugal reconquered it from the Moorish states of Al-Ándalus.\n",
"In the early eighth century the Visigothic Kingdom fell to the Moors of the Umayyad Islamic Caliphate, who arrived to rule most of the peninsula in the year 726, leaving only a handful of small Christian realms in the north and lasting up to seven centuries in the Kingdom of Granada. This led to many wars during a long reconquering period across the Iberian Peninsula, which led to the creation of Kingdom of Leon, Kingdom of Castille, Kingdom of Aragon and Kingdom of Navarre as the main Christian kingdoms to face the invasion. Following the Moorish conquest, Europeans began a gradual process of retaking the region known as the Reconquista, which by the late 15th century culminated in the emergence of Spain as a unified country under the Catholic Monarchs.\n"
] |
Were the British involved in instigating the 19th century revolutions against Spain in Latin America?
|
Sorry for the long delay in getting to this, unfortunately it has been a hectic week. The British were definitely involved in the Latin American revolutions to a greater or lesser extent. It is worth noting that the British were fighting Napoleon during the early 19th century and had a giant army all ready to go and get involved in the Western hemisphere. Not only that, but following the American Revolution, the British adopted a trade policy that allowed them to trade with countries that they would not formally recognize. Furthermore, many of the leaders of the Revolutions were anglophiles who actively sought British aid and support. Simon Bolivar, of obvious fame, wanted the British to get involved and even suggested placing the newly free countries under the British wing, though not their direct control. Though it wasn't a revolution, the British pressure on King Joao was the direct cause of his declaring Brazil a sovereign kingdom, equal to Portugal and any other country, for that matter.
So that's the prelude, on the ground, The British Legion, which consisted of 800 soldiers on five ships, were sent to aid Bolivar in his revolution, those these were not official troops. Meaning that the government was not willing to officially endorse the Revolution, but were willing to help out of they could. Not all of those troops made it to Venezuela, and they were not particularly helpful, but they were sent.
After the Revolutions, the British were very big on nation building, sending tons of ships to trade with the new nations. especially British manufactured goods for the various export goods of Latin America. Whether or not this was a good thing has been a huge debate in Latin American history, since some, building on extraction theory, have said that is simply changed them from a de jure colony to a de facto colony, but nevertheless, they were welcomed at the time. For a while the British was the largest shipping country in the western hemisphere, outdoing even the United States.
Sources: John Chasteen, *Americanos*, Leon Fink, *Sweatshops at Sea*
|
[
"Multiple revolutions in Latin America allowed the region to break free of the mother country. Repeated attempts to regain control failed, as Spain had no help from European powers. Indeed, Britain and the United States worked against Spain, enforcing the Monroe Doctrine. British merchants and bankers took a dominant role in Latin America. In 1824, the armies of generals José de San Martín of Argentina and Simón Bolívar of Venezuela defeated the last Spanish forces; the final defeat came at the Battle of Ayacucho in southern Peru. After the loss of its colonies, Spain played a minor role in international affairs. Spain kept Cuba, which repeatedly revolted in three wars of independence, culminating in the Cuban War of Independence. The United States demanded reforms from Spain, which Spain refused. The U.S. intervened by war in 1898. Winning easily, the U.S. took Cuba and gave it independence. The U.S. also took the Spanish colonies of the Philippines and Guam. Though it still had small colonial holdings in North Africa, Spain's role in international affairs was essentially over.\n",
"Great Britain's trade with Latin America greatly expanded during the revolutionary period, which until then was restricted due to Spanish mercantilist trade policies. British pressure was sufficient to prevent Spain from attempting any serious reassertion of its control over its lost colonies.\n",
"The British had a strong interest in ensuring the demise of Spanish colonialism, as the Spanish followed a mercantilist policy that imposed restrictions on trade between Spanish colonies and foreign powers. In October 1823, Ambassador Rush informed Secretary of State Adams that Foreign Secretary George Canning desired a joint declaration to deter any other power from intervening in Central and South America. Canning was motivated in part by the restoration of King Ferdinand VII of Spain by France. Britain feared that either France or the \"Holy Alliance\" of Austria, Prussia, and Russia would help Spain regain control of its colonies, and sought American cooperation in opposing such an intervention. Monroe and Adams deliberated the British proposal extensively, and Monroe conferred with former presidents Jefferson and Madison.\n",
"The British had a strong interest in ensuring the demise of Spanish colonialism, as the Spanish followed a mercantilist policy that imposed restrictions on trade between Spanish colonies and foreign powers. In October 1823, Ambassador Rush informed Secretary of State Adams that Foreign Secretary George Canning desired a joint declaration to deter any other power from intervening in Central and South America. Canning was motivated in part by the restoration of King Ferdinand VII of Spain by France. Britain feared that either France or the \"Holy Alliance\" of Austria, Prussia, and Russia would help Spain regain control of its colonies, and sought American cooperation in opposing such an intervention. Monroe and Adams deliberated the British proposal extensively, and Monroe conferred with former presidents Jefferson and Madison.\n",
"The colonial status quo seemed to be guaranteed in 1809, when a pact was signed between the Spanish government and the United Kingdom, which established aid against the French invasion. This agreement was ambiguous with regard to South America, since the efforts of Bonaparte they felt they didn't need to invade Spanish territory there. A weakened Spain distracted and virtually cut off from her colonies, meant that insurrections there would flare up. The Royal Navy nevertheless were allowed to reach Spanish ports of both hemispheres. Thus, while the American revolutionaries rejected the French commissioners, and their adhesion to Napoleonic Spain, the British improved their own colonial interests.\n",
"Some issues were eventually resolved in the 1750 Treaty of Madrid, but illegal British trade with the Spanish colonies continued to flourish. The Spanish Empire in the Caribbean remained intact and victorious despite several English attempts to seize some of its heavily defended and fortified colonies. Spain would later use its trading routes and resources to help the rebels' cause in the American Revolution. \n",
"Britain had a strong interest in ensuring the demise of Spanish colonialism, and to open the newly independent Latin American colonies to its trade. The Latin Americans received a certain amount of unofficial aid – arms and volunteers – from outside, but no outside official help at any stage from Britain or any other power. Britain refused to aid Spain and opposed any outside intervention on behalf of Spain by other powers. The Royal Navy was a decisive factor in the struggle for independence of certain Latin American countries.\n"
] |
the event horizon of a black hole
|
Because any direction past the event horizon points inward. Space itself is warped so massively beyond the horizon that nothing can get out not only because the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light, but there is literally no direction that is "out".
|
[
"The event horizon of a black hole may be thought of as a surface moving outward at the local speed of light and is just on the edge between escaping and falling back. The event horizon of a white hole is a surface moving inward at the local speed of light and is just on the edge between being swept outward and succeeding in reaching the center. They are two different kinds of horizons—the horizon of a white hole is like the horizon of a black hole turned inside-out.\n",
"The event horizons bounding the black hole and white hole interior regions are also a pair of straight lines at 45 degrees, reflecting the fact that a light ray emitted at the horizon in a radial direction (aimed outward in the case of the black hole, inward in the case of the white hole) would remain on the horizon forever. Thus the two black hole horizons coincide with the boundaries of the future light cone of an event at the center of the diagram (at \"T\"=\"X\"=0), while the two white hole horizons coincide with the boundaries of the past light cone of this same event. Any event inside the black hole interior region will have a future light cone that remains in this region (such that any world line within the event's future light cone will eventually hit the black hole singularity, which appears as a hyperbola bounded by the two black hole horizons), and any event inside the white hole interior region will have a past light cone that remains in this region (such that any world line within this past light cone must have originated in the white hole singularity, a hyperbola bounded by the two white hole horizons). Note that although the horizon looks as though it is an outward expanding cone, the area of this surface, given by \"r\" is just formula_46, a constant. I.e., these coordinates can be deceptive if care is not exercised.\n",
"The location of the event horizon is determined by the larger root of formula_58. When formula_59 (i.e. formula_60), there are no (real valued) solutions to this equation, and there is no event horizon. With no event horizons to hide it from the rest of the universe, the black hole ceases to be a black hole and will instead be a naked singularity.\n",
"The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon—a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can only pass inward towards the mass of the black hole. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine if such an event occurred.\n",
"One of the best-known examples of an event horizon derives from general relativity's description of a black hole, a celestial object so massive that no nearby matter or radiation can escape its gravitational field. Often, this is described as the boundary within which the black hole's escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. However, a more accurate description is that within this horizon, all lightlike paths (paths that light could take) and hence all paths in the forward light cones of particles within the horizon, are warped so as to fall farther into the hole. Once a particle is inside the horizon, moving into the hole is as inevitable as moving forward in time, and can actually be thought of as equivalent to doing so, depending on the spacetime coordinate system used.\n",
"The black hole event horizon is teleological in nature, meaning that we need to know the entire future space-time of the universe to determine the current location of the horizon, which is essentially impossible. Because of the purely theoretical nature of the event horizon boundary, the traveling object does not necessarily experience strange effects and does, in fact, pass through the calculatory boundary in a finite amount of proper time.\n",
"In astrophysics, an event horizon is a boundary beyond which events cannot affect an observer on the opposite side of it. An event horizon is most commonly associated with black holes, where gravitational forces are so strong that light cannot escape.\n"
] |
what does it mean when a wound gets "infected?"
|
It means that bacteria or fungus has set in the wound and has begun to grow off of the tissue in that area.
|
[
"The symptoms of an infection depends on the type of disease. Some signs of infection affect the whole body generally, such as fatigue, loss of appetite, weight loss, fevers, night sweats, chills, aches and pains. Others are specific to individual body parts, such as skin rashes, coughing, or a runny nose.\n",
"Infection will complicate healing of surgical wounds and is commonly observed. Most infections are present within the first 30 days after surgery. Surgical wounds can become infected by bacteria, regardless if the bacteria is already present on the patient's skin or if the bacteria is spread to the patient due to contact with infected individuals. Wound infections can be superficial (skin only), deep (muscle and tissue), or spread to the organ or space where the surgery occurred.\n",
"Several complications may occur. Usually, the infection slowly spreads to the surrounding tissue while still remaining localized to the area around the original wound. However, sometimes the fungi may spread through the blood vessels or lymph vessels, producing metastatic lesions at distant sites. Another possibility is secondary infection with bacteria. This may lead to lymph stasis (obstruction of the lymph vessels) and elephantiasis. The nodules may become ulcerated, or multiple nodules may grow and coalesce, affecting a large area of a limb.\n",
"Infection results when the wound’s micro-organisms overcome the immune system’s natural defense to fight off replicating micro-organisms. Chronic wounds that persist for more than 12 weeks should be evaluated for delayed healing, increase exudate, foul odor, additional areas of skin breakdown or slough on the wound bed, and bright red discoloration of granulation tissue, which may be indicative of infection.\n",
"Wound colonization refers to nonreplicating microorganisms within the wound, while in infected wounds, replicating organisms exist and tissue is injured. All multicellular organisms are colonized to some degree by extrinsic organisms, and the vast majority of these exist in either a mutualistic or commensal relationship with the host. An example of the former is the anaerobic bacteria species, which colonizes the mammalian colon, and an example of the latter are the various species of staphylococcus that exist on human skin. Neither of these colonizations are considered infections. The difference between an infection and a colonization is often only a matter of circumstance. Non-pathogenic organisms can become pathogenic given specific conditions, and even the most virulent organism requires certain circumstances to cause a compromising infection. Some colonizing bacteria, such as \"Corynebacteria sp.\" and \"viridans streptococci\", prevent the adhesion and colonization of pathogenic bacteria and thus have a symbiotic relationship with the host, preventing infection and speeding wound healing.\n",
"A hospital-acquired infection (HAI), also known as a nosocomial infection, is an infection that is acquired in a hospital or other health care facility. To emphasize both hospital and nonhospital settings, it is sometimes instead called a health care–associated infection (HAI or HCAI). Such an infection can be acquired in hospital, nursing home, rehabilitation facility, outpatient clinic, or other clinical settings. Infection is spread to the susceptible patient in the clinical setting by various means. Health care staff also spread infection, in addition to contaminated equipment, bed linens, or air droplets. The infection can originate from the outside environment, another infected patient, staff that may be infected, or in some cases, the source of the infection cannot be determined. In some cases the microorganism originates from the patient's own skin microbiota, becoming opportunistic after surgery or other procedures that compromise the protective skin barrier. Though the patient may have contracted the infection from their own skin, the infection is still considered nosocomial since it develops in the health care setting.\n",
"Infection first presents with severe abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and weakness, which gradually lessens and progresses to fever, and then to central nervous system (CNS) symptoms and severe headache and stiffness of the neck.\n"
] |
do painkillers (advil, tylenol, etc) reduce pain in the specific area that is hurting or do they affect the whole body but you only notice it woking on the area that is in pain?
|
The pain killers you listed reduce inflammation in different ways so they would help calm down a throbbing injury where inflammatory response is strongest -- they act at the site of the pain. However, the effective anti-inflammation molecules are in your blood so its not like they can't affect more than one region. If you took Tylenol for a sore back and later stubbed your toe you wouldn't have to take more Tylenol for the new injury.
Pain killers like Vicodin act in the central nervous system and lower your emotional response to pain. These don't affect the inflamed area at all -- they just make your perception of pain less unpleasant.
|
[
"Oral and topical pain killers are effective to treat the pain caused by otitis media. Oral agents include ibuprofen, paracetamol (acetaminophen), and opiates. Evidence for the combination over single agents is lacking. Topical agents shown to be effective include antipyrine and benzocaine ear drops. Decongestants and antihistamines, either nasal or oral, are not recommended due to the lack of benefit and concerns regarding side effects. Half of cases of ear pain in children resolve without treatment in three days and 90% resolve in seven or eight days. The use of steroids is not supported by the evidence for acute otitis media. \n",
"Psychoactive drugs are often prescribed to manage pain. The subjective experience of pain is primarily regulated by endogenous opioid peptides. Thus, pain can often be managed using psychoactives that operate on this neurotransmitter system, also known as opioid receptor agonists. This class of drugs can be highly addictive, and includes opiate narcotics, like morphine and codeine. NSAIDs, such as aspirin and ibuprofen, are also analgesics. These agents also reduce eicosanoid-mediated inflammation by inhibiting the enzyme cyclooxygenase.\n",
"Various analgesics (painkillers) may be used in controlling the headaches of intracranial hypertension. In addition to conventional agents such as paracetamol, a low dose of the antidepressant amitriptyline or the anticonvulsant topiramate have shown some additional benefit for pain relief.\n",
"The approach to acute pain should take into account the severity of the pain. Non-opioid analgesics, such as acetaminophen and NSAIDs, can be used alone to treat mild pain. For moderate to severe pain, it is optimal to use a combination of multiple agents, including opioid and non-opioid agents. \n",
"Management of pain often requires intravenous administration of NSAIDs or opioids. NSAIDs appear somewhat better than opioids or paracetamol in those with normal kidney function. Medications by mouth are often effective for less severe discomfort. The use of antispasmodics does not have further benefit.\n",
"Such action extends the duration of enkephalin effect where the natural pain killers are released physiologically in response to specific potentially painful stimuli, in contrast with administration of narcotics, which floods the entire body and causes many undesirable adverse reactions, including addiction liability and constipation.\n",
"The pain is not harmful and does not signify the presence of disease. No treatment is usually necessary. Pain relievers (analgesics) such as NSAIDS (Non-steroidal anti inflammatories) may be needed in cases of prolonged or intense pain.\n"
] |
What benefits would the addition of a third eye bring?
|
Eyes (and cameras) are basically devices for taking in a bunch of light, and sorting it out by angle. If you see something in one eye, you know that it's somewhere along a ray starting at your eye and going out in a particular direction, but you don't know where along the ray it is.
Adding a second eye gives you another ray, starting in a different place, and pointing in a different direction. The intersection of these rays is a *unique* point in space; there's no more ambiguity.
The best way to improve depth perception (I'll be a bit more specific and define "improve depth perception" as "reduce the uncertainty in range") is to move the eyes further apart.
A third camera can improve estimated positions of points in 3D space just by providing an additional measurement, but I don't think this is much of a problem for animals. The main benefit of a third eye would be, as pointed out in *300*, having another spare.
|
[
"While the cornea contributes most of the eye's focusing power, its focus is fixed. Accommodation (the refocusing of light to better view near objects) is accomplished by changing the geometry of the lens. Medical terms related to the cornea often start with the prefix \"\"kerat-\"\" from the Greek word κέρας, \"horn\".\n",
"The work of Weihhs and Moser (1981) showed that the eye's elliptical shape allows a stylophthalmine to dramatically enlarge its field of view through rotation on the stalk, giving a much larger effective pupil size.\n",
"During the accommodation reflex, the pupil constricts to increase the depth of focus of the eye by blocking the light scattered by the periphery of the cornea. The lens then increases its curvature to become more biconvex, thus increasing refractive power. The ciliary muscles are responsible for the lens accommodation response.\n",
"In humans, the total optical power of the relaxed eye is approximately 60 dioptres. The cornea accounts for approximately two-thirds of this refractive power (about 40 dioptres) and the crystalline lens contributes the remaining one-third (about 20 dioptres). In focusing, the ciliary muscle contracts to reduce the tension or stress transferred to the lens by the suspensory ligaments. This results in increased convexity of the lens which in turn increases the optical power of the eye. The amplitude of accommodation is about 15 to 20 dioptres in the very young, decreasing to about 10 dioptres at age 25, and to around 1 dioptre above age 50.\n",
"Adjustable focus eyeglasses are eyeglasses with an adjustable focal length. They compensate for refractive errors (such as presbyopia) by providing variable focusing, allowing users to adjust them for desired distance or prescription, or both.\n",
"The lens is metabolically active and requires nourishment in order to maintain its growth and transparency. Compared to other tissues in the eye, however, the lens has considerably lower energy demands.\n",
"The reduced eye is an idealized model of the optics of the human eye. Introduced by Franciscus Donders, the reduced eye model replaces the several refracting bodies of the eye (the cornea, lens, aqueous humor, and vitreous humor) are replaced by an ideal air/water interface surface that is located 20 mm from a model retina. This, converts a system with six cardinal points (two focal points, two principal points and two nodal points) into one with three cardinal points (two focal points and one nodal point).\n"
] |
difference of chinese dialects and written languages
|
**Spoken**
There are (I hate this word) actually many, many more dialects of Chinese than just Mandarin and Cantonese, although it's true that those are the two largest and most influential. Mandarin in particular enjoys a strong legal status as the official language of the People's Republic of China, including as the language of instruction in schools.
If you go anywhere in China, then it is likely that the local people where you live will have their own language, whether it is the language of the province, that area within the province, or even just a particular village. Some of these dialects are basically just Mandarin with an accent; others are completely mutually unintelligible with Mandarin.
Nevertheless, because of the strong legal status of Mandarin, with the notable exception of the elderly, the very poor, and those living in very far-flung regions (particularly areas of Tibet and Xinjiang, China's far northwestern province) virtually everyone can at a bare minimum understand Mandarin and (in my experience) definitely over 90% can speak it. If you're talking about young, educated people in an urban center then it's > 99%, although (not totally dissimilar to Britain) there's a certain preoccupation with accents and a rich and often self-deprecating humor that surrounds less-than-standard pronunciation. In general (including in Guangzhou) people will respond to you in whatever language you use to speak to them.
Comparing Mandarin and Cantonese specifically, the two are not really mutually intelligible. There is a limited amount of vocabulary that you might be able to guess at from one or the other and/or go "oh!" if it were explained to you, but overall the tones, vocab, and even to a certain extent grammar are different.
People in Guangdong are nevertheless quite proud of Cantonese, which also enjoys a degree of cachet as a commonly-used language in relatively wealthy and culturally influential Hong Kong and among overseas Chinese, many of whom have family origins in southeast China. Because of this there's also definitely a corresponding degree of language politics that takes place in China and particularly Hong Kong about the official statuses of the two languages that can occasionally become heated.
**Written**
Today in Chinese there are "simplified" characters and "traditional" characters. Simplified characters are used throughout the PRC, "traditional" characters mostly in Taiwan. The idea of simplifying the writing system goes back a long way, and the work to create the current set of simplified characters was (somewhat ironically) begun by the Chinese Nationalist Party who (after going through a lot of changes) eventually moved to Taiwan and stuck with traditional characters.
You can think of the two writing systems as basically being different fonts (albeit sometimes *very* different) in the sense that there's a one-to-one correspondence between the two sets. It's easy with software to transcribe the one into the other.
Either set of characters can be used to write almost all dialects of Chinese, although you will find the odd word in dialect for which there simply is no character, and this or that dialect might commonly use a character that is rare in other dialects.
There's a lot more to Chinese than that and the history of the language is pretty interesting, but that's a broad overview of the questions you were asking.
|
[
"Chinese languages and dialects vary by not only pronunciation, but also, to a lesser extent, vocabulary and grammar. Modern written Chinese, which replaced Classical Chinese as the written standard as an indirect result of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, is not technically bound to any single variety; however, it most nearly represents the vocabulary and syntax of Mandarin, by far the most widespread Chinese dialectal family in terms of both geographical area and number of speakers. This version of written Chinese is called Vernacular Chinese, or 白話/白话 \"báihuà\" (literally, \"plain speech\"). Despite its ties to the dominant Mandarin language, Vernacular Chinese also permits some communication between people of different dialects, limited by the fact that Vernacular Chinese expressions are often ungrammatical or unidiomatic in non-Mandarin dialects. This role may not differ substantially from the role of other linguae francae, such as Latin: For those trained in written Chinese, it serves as a common medium; for those untrained in it, the graphic nature of the characters is in general no aid to common understanding (characters such as \"one\" notwithstanding). In this regard, Chinese characters may be considered a large and inefficient phonetic script. However, Ghil'ad Zuckermann’s exploration of phono-semantic matching in Standard Chinese concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional, conveying both semantic and phonetic content.\n",
"The varieties of Chinese are a diverse group encompassing many regional varieties, most of which are mutually unintelligible and often divided up into several larger dialect groups, such as Wu (including Shanghainese and Suzhounese), Min Nan (of which Taiwanese is a notable dialect), and Cantonese. In regions that speak non-Mandarin languages or regional Mandarin dialects, the Vernacular Chinese standard largely corresponding to Standard Chinese is nevertheless used exclusively as the Chinese written standard; this written standard differs sharply from the local dialects in vocabulary and grammar, and is often read in local pronunciation but preserving the vocabulary and grammar of Standard Chinese. After the founding of Wikipedia, many users of non-Mandarin Chinese varieties began to ask for the right to have Wikipedia editions in non-Mandarin varieties as well. However, they also met with significant opposition, based on the fact that Mandarin-based Vernacular Chinese is the only form used in scholarly or academic contexts. Some also proposed the implementation of an similar to that between Simplified and Traditional Chinese; however, others pointed out that although conversion between Simplified and Traditional Chinese consists mainly of glyph and sometimes vocabulary substitutions, different regional varieties of Chinese differ so sharply in grammar, syntax, and semantics that it was unrealistic to implement an automatic conversion program.\n",
"The varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, but may be even more varied. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin (about 800 million, e.g. Southwestern Mandarin), followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese), Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese), etc. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, and even dialect groups within Min Chinese may not be mutually intelligible. Some, however, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and a certain degree of intelligibility. All varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic.\n",
"During the early 20th century, written vernacular Chinese based on Mandarin dialects, which had been developing for several centuries, was standardized and adopted to replace literary Chinese. While written vernacular forms of other varieties of Chinese exist, such as written Cantonese, written Chinese based on Mandarin is widely understood by speakers of all varieties and has taken up the dominant position among written forms, formerly occupied by literary Chinese. Thus, although residents of different regions would not necessarily understand each other's speech, they generally share a common written language, Standard Written Chinese and Literary Chinese (these two writing styles can merge into a 半白半文 writing style). \n",
"The languages of China are the languages that are spoken in China. The predominant language in China, which is divided into seven major language groups (classified as dialects by the Chinese government for political reasons), is known as \"Hanyu\" () and its study is considered a distinct academic discipline in China. \"Hanyu\", or Han language, spans eight primary varieties, that differ from each other morphologically and phonetically to such a degree that they will often be mutually unintelligible, similarly to English and German or Danish. The languages most studied and supported by the state include Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Zhuang. China has 302 living languages listed at Ethnologue. According to the 2010 edition of the \"Nationalencyklopedin\", 955 million out of China's then-population of 1.34 billion spoke some variety of Mandarin Chinese as their first language, accounting for 71% of the country's population.\n",
"The hundreds of modern local varieties of Chinese developed from regional variants of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese. Traditionally, seven major groups of dialects have been recognized. Aside from Mandarin, the other six are Wu, Gan, and Xiang in central China, and Min, Hakka, and Yue on the southeast coast. The \"Language Atlas of China\" (1987) distinguishes three further groups: Jin (split from Mandarin), Huizhou in the Huizhou region of Anhui and Zhejiang, and Pinghua in Guangxi and Yunnan.\n",
"The grammar of Standard Chinese or Mandarin shares many features with other varieties of Chinese. The language almost entirely lacks inflection, so that words typically have only one grammatical form. Categories such as number (singular or plural) and verb tense are frequently not expressed by any grammatical means, although there are several particles that serve to express verbal aspect, and to some extent mood.\n"
] |
Rules Roundtable VI: No Historical "What-If?" Questions or Counterfactuals
|
What Ifs are *really* popular questions sometimes, but the thing is, with a little work most 'what if' questions can actually be turned into really good, really interesting questions that match the rules. It's all about the angle and perspective you have when asking the question. If you never need a bit of help phrasing things, let us know!
|
[
"Counterfactuals refer to things that are contrary to the actual situation. In English, counterfactuals can be expressed implicitly in \"if\"-clauses by using a tense form that normally refers to a time prior to the time actually semantically referred to in the \"if\"-clause. For example, \"If I knew that, I wouldn't have to ask\" contains the counterfactual \"If I knew\", which refers to the present tense despite the form of the verb, and which denies the proposition \"I know that\". This contrasts with the construction \"If I know that...\", which is not a counterfactual because it means that maybe I know it and maybe I don't (or maybe I will know it, and maybe I will not). Likewise, \"If I had known that, I would have gone there\" contains the counterfactual \"If I had known\", denying the proposition that I had known.\n",
"In probabilistic logic, the Fréchet inequalities, also known as the Boole–Fréchet inequalities, are rules implicit in the work of George Boole and explicitly derived by Maurice Fréchet that govern the combination of probabilities about logical propositions or events logically linked together in conjunctions (AND operations) or disjunctions (OR operations) as in Boolean expressions or fault or event trees common in risk assessments, engineering design and artificial intelligence. These inequalities can be considered rules about how to bound calculations involving probabilities without assuming independence or, indeed, without making any dependence assumptions whatsoever. The Fréchet inequalities are closely related to the Boole–Bonferroni–Fréchet inequalities, and to Fréchet bounds.\n",
"A counterfactual conditional (abbreviated ), is a conditional with a false if-clause. The term \"counterfactual conditional\" was coined by Nelson Goodman in 1947, extending Roderick Chisholm's (1946) notion of a \"contrary-to-fact conditional\". The study of counterfactual speculation has increasingly engaged the interest of scholars in a wide range of domains such as philosophy, human geography, psychology, cognitive psychology, history, political science, economics, social psychology, law, organizational theory, marketing, and epidemiology.\n",
"Lindley's paradox is a counterintuitive situation in statistics in which the Bayesian and frequentist approaches to a hypothesis testing problem give different results for certain choices of the prior distribution. The problem of the disagreement between the two approaches was discussed in Harold Jeffreys' 1939 textbook; it became known as Lindley's paradox after Dennis Lindley called the disagreement a paradox in a 1957 paper.\n",
"\"The term \"Counterfactual\"\" is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as contrary to the facts. A counterfactual thought occurs when a person modifies a factual prior event and then assesses the consequences of that change. A person may imagine how an outcome could have turned out differently, if the antecedents that led to that event were different. For example, a person may reflect upon how a car accident could have turned out by imagining how some of the factors could have been different, for example, \"If only I hadn't been speeding...\". These alternatives can be better or worse than the actual situation, and in turn give improved or more disastrous possible outcomes, \"If only I hadn't been speeding, my car wouldn't have been wrecked\" or \"If I hadn't been wearing a seatbelt, I would have been killed\".\n",
"Berkson's paradox also known as Berkson's bias or Berkson's fallacy is a result in conditional probability and statistics which is often found to be counterintuitive, and hence a veridical paradox. It is a complicating factor arising in statistical tests of proportions. Specifically, it arises when there is an ascertainment bias inherent in a study design. The effect is related to the explaining away phenomenon in Bayesian networks.\n",
"Finally, as in English, counterfactual conditions in the past are expressed by backshifting the apparent time reference. In English this backshifted form is called the pluperfect subjunctive, and unless it is expressed in inverted form it is identical in form to the pluperfect indicative; it is called subjunctive because of the change in implied time of action. In French, however, there is a distinction in form between the seldom used pluperfect subjunctive and the pluperfect indicative, which is used in this situation. For example,\n"
] |
Are all sperm Clones? It doesn't matter Which sperm got to the egg, i was going to be me no matter what correct? (contemplating the miracle of my existence)
|
No, they are not clones at all.
Each sperm represents a completely different shuffled assortment of your dad's genetic material.
Because of recombination, there are millions and millions of possible sperm and eggs that your parents can create.
IT IS NOT TRUE that your parents are giving you a set of fully intact chromosomes, as suggested by hobo & abbe ("Chromosome 1, 3, 9, 10, 20, etc. could be from your dad's dad, but the rest could be from your dad's mom") These answers are ignoring the process of recombination.
It is possible to sometimes share a chromosome with only one grandparent or the other, but the most likely outcome is that the child will inherit a recombined chromosome containing DNA from both the child's paternal grandfather and paternal grandmother (or maternal grandfather and maternal grandmother if we're talking about the egg rather than the sperm).
[Graph One](_URL_3_) All of this child's maternal chromosomes contain both grandparents' DNA -- she shares some of her DNA with her grandfather (segments shown in green) and some with her grandmother (not pictured but her DNA would fill in the grey gaps). For example, on chromosome 10, she shares roughly the first half of the chromosome with her grandfather, but then a recombination event took place and she shares the second half with her grandmother.
[Graph Two](_URL_1_) This child is a bit different, she does have several chromosomes that she shares only with one grandparent. She shares no DNA with her maternal grandmother (pictured in blue) on chromosomes 5, 15, 16, 18, and 22, meaning she inherited those chromosomes entirely from the maternal grandfather.
The places in the genome where these recombination events occur are not fixed (although it's true that [recombination does occur more often](_URL_2_) in certain spots). This is why there are sooooo many possible combinations of sperm that your dad can make -- [there are roughly 27.6 recombinations per paternal meoisis](_URL_0_) and the location/size etc. of these recombination events is highly variable from one gamete to another.
TL;DR Genetically, you really are a unique little snowflake.
|
[
"A human egg contains only one set of chromosomes (23) and is said to be haploid. Sperm also have only one set of 23 chromosomes and are therefore haploid. When an egg and sperm fuse at fertilization, the two sets of chromosomes come together to form a unique \"diploid\" individual with 46 chromosomes.\n",
"The belief in intrinsic dignity, nonetheless, leads the Christians who hold this belief to also argue that if the soul enters the body at the moment when the sperm and the egg unite, producing cloned zygotes that are unlikely to survive is equivalent to murder. Therefore, if one believes, as Catholics do, that the zygotes have souls and are therefore human, in the words of John Paul II, \"regardless of the objective for which it was done, human embryonic cloning conflicts with the international legal norms that protect human dignity.\" Some Christian conservatives even express concern that cloned embryos would have no soul, since it is, in their view, born outside of God's parameters, as its creation is in a laboratory setting rather than natural conception.\n",
"In the case where the sperm is the genetic cause of 48, XXXY syndrome, the sperm would have to contain two X chromosomes and one Y chromosome. This would be caused by two non-disjunction events in spermatogenesis, both meosis I and meiosis II. The duplicated X chromosome in the sperm would have to fail to separate in both meiosis I and meiosis II for a sperm as well as the X and Y chromosomes would have to be in the same sperm. Then the XXY sperm would fertilize a normal oocyte to make a XXXY zygote.\n",
"Since the gonad tissue develops into testes rather than ovaries, they are thus unable to create ova but may be able to create sperm. Male fertility can still be possible if viable sperm is present in the testes and is able to be extracted. In general, individuals with 5-ARD are capable of producing viable sperm.\n",
"Sperm undergoes a process of natural selection when millions of sperm enter vagina but only few reach the egg cell and then only one is usually allowed to fertilize it. The sperm is selected not only by its highest motility but also by other factors such as DNA integrity, production of reactive oxygen species and viability. This selection is largely circumvented in case of in-vitro fertilization which leads to higher incidence of birth defects associated with assisted reproductive techniques. Egg cells are often fertilized by sperm which would have low chance of fertilizing it in natural conditions. Sperm sorting could thus be used to decrease risks associated with assisted reproduction. Additionally, there is ongoing debate about using sperm sorting for choosing the child's sex.\n",
"Contrary to some assertions by medical professionals, if the human sperm penetrates the hamster egg, a hybrid embryo is indeed created. The resulting hamster-hybrid is known as a humster. These embryos are typically destroyed before they divide into two cells and are never known to have been implanted in either a hamster or human uterus to develop.\n",
"Since the late 1980s, scientists have explored how to produce sperm where all of the chromosomes come from a female donor. In the late 1990s, this concept became a partial reality when scientists in Japan developed chicken female sperm by injecting bone marrow stem cells from a female chicken into a rooster's testicles. This technique proved to fall below expectations, however, and has not yet been successfully adapted for use on humans.\n"
] |
Why do people seem to make mistakes more often when in front of people?
|
If you're longboarding and showing people (or not, I guess), it's likely that you start (subconsciously or not) focusing on doing it "properly" by thinking through the steps you take one by one, instead of focusing on the whole--which would be the same reason most sports coaches become worse at their sport when they start teaching.
That, or self-consciousness.
|
[
"Mistakes in conversation occur when participants in the conversation are operating with different implicit rules and expectations for the SPEAKING model. Mistakes often results from disagreements about inclusion of participants, mismatched ends, unexpected act sequences, keys or instrumentalities. In general mistakes and conflicts arise when there is a deviation in the conversation from the norm. In some genres, such as gossip, rapid turn-taking and interrupting is not only accepted, but expected. If one participant is not active in this type of speech they may come across as ambivalent to the conversation; this would be an example of a mistake.\n",
"People base their decisions and contribution based on their own point of view. When there is a lack of common ground in the points of views of individuals within a team, misunderstandings occur. Sometimes these misunderstandings remain undetected, which means that decisions would be made based on ignorant or misinformed point of views, which in turn lead to multiple ignorances. The team may not be able to find the right solution because it does not have a correct representation of the problem.\n",
"BULLET::::2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly. No one likes to make mistakes, especially in front of others. Scolding and blaming only serve to humiliate. If we subtly and indirectly show people mistakes, they will appreciate us and be more likely to improve.\n",
"Human error is inevitable and everyone makes mistakes at some time. The consequences of these errors are varied and depend on many factors. Most errors are minor and do not cause significant harm, but others can have catastrophic consequences. Examples of human error leading to accidents are available in vast numbers, as it is the direct cause of 60% to 80% of all accidents.\n",
"In any education environment, careless mistakes are those errors that occur in areas within which the student has had training. Careless mistakes are common occurrences for students both within and outside of the learning environment. They are often associated with a lapse in judgment or what are known as mind slips because the students had know-how to have avoided making the mistakes, but did not for undeterminable reasons. Given that students that are competent of the subject and focused are most likely to make careless mistakes, concerns for students exhibiting careless mistakes often turn toward neurological disorders as the cause.\n",
"People often make poor choices – and look back at them with bafflement! We do this because as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself.\n",
"Speech errors are made on an occasional basis by all speakers. They occur more often when speakers are nervous, tired, anxious or intoxicated. During live broadcasts on TV or on the radio, for example, nonprofessional speakers and even hosts often make speech errors because they are under stress. Some speakers seem to be more prone to speech errors than others. For example, there is a certain connection between stuttering and speech errors. Charles F. Hockett explains that \"whenever a speaker feels some anxiety about possible lapse, he will be led to focus attention more than normally on what he has just said and on what he is just about to say. These are ideal breeding grounds for stuttering.\" Another example of a \"chronic sufferer\" is Reverend William Archibald Spooner, whose peculiar speech may be caused by a cerebral dysfunction, but there is much evidence that he invented his famous speech errors (spoonerisms).\n"
] |
why isn't the night sky just one big light?
|
Two things:
1) Regardless of how big the universe is, light still takes time to get places. The universe is 13.77 billion years old, so light has only had 13.77 billion years to get here. Because the universe is expanding, we can see stuff from much farther away than that, but there's still a limit on how far away stars can be and still have had time for the light to get to us.
2) As the universe expands, it stretches light passing through it, causing the light to be redshifted, which means it lowers in wavelength. Visible light from the very edges of the visible universe can get redshifted out of the visible spectrum and into infrared or radio waves. That's why the Cosmic Microwave Background is, well, microwaves. It used to include a *lot* of visible light, but it's so old and it's been shifted so much that it's all microwaves, now.
|
[
"The term night sky refers to the sky as seen at night. The term is usually associated with skygazing and astronomy, with reference to views of celestial bodies such as stars, the Moon, and planets that become visible on a clear night after the Sun has set. Natural light sources in a night sky include moonlight, starlight, and airglow, depending on location and timing. The fact that the sky is not completely dark at night can be easily observed. Were the sky (in the absence of moon and city lights) absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.\n",
"The fact that the sky is not completely dark at night, even in the absence of moonlight and city lights, can be easily observed, since if the sky were absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.\n",
"Jennifer Barlow states, \"The night sky is a gift of such tremendous beauty that should not be hidden under a blanket of wasted light. It should be visible so that future generations do not lose touch with the wonder of our universe.\" Barlow explains, \"It is my wish that people see the night sky in all of its glory, without excess light in the sky as our ancestors saw it hundreds of years ago.\"\n",
"Sky brightness refers to the visual perception of the sky and how it scatters and diffuses light. The fact that the sky is not completely dark at night is easily visible. If light sources (e.g. the Moon and light pollution) were removed from the night sky, only direct starlight would be visible. \n",
"During daylight, the sky appears to be blue because air scatters more blue sunlight than red. At night, the sky appears to be a mostly dark surface or region spangled with stars. During the day, the Sun can be seen in the sky unless obscured by clouds. In the night sky (and to some extent during the day) the Moon, planets and stars are visible in the sky. Some of the natural phenomena seen in the sky are clouds, rainbows, and aurorae. Lightning and precipitation can also be seen in the sky during storms. Birds, insects, aircraft, and kites are often considered to fly in the sky. Due to human activities, smog during the day and light pollution during the night are often seen above large cities.\n",
"However, in other places, especially those with skyglow, astronomical twilight may be almost indistinguishable from night. In the evening, even when astronomical twilight has yet to end and in the morning when astronomical twilight has already begun, most casual observers would consider the entire sky fully dark. Because of light pollution, observers in some localities, generally in large cities, may never have the opportunity to view even fourth-magnitude stars, irrespective of the presence of any twilight at all, and to experience truly dark skies.\n",
"The term night sky, usually associated with astronomy from Earth, refers to the nighttime appearance of celestial objects like stars, planets, and the Moon, which are visible in a clear sky between sunset and sunrise, when the Sun is below the horizon.\n"
] |
Why does northern Canada look so strange on Google Maps?
|
What you are seing here are features left by the passage of the last continental glaciation. Most of Canada was under 2-3 km of ice a mere 12 000 years ago. That ice sheet flowed, and then melted, leaving behind all kinds of features.
In this one, I note a prominent group of elongated hills trending NW-SE, probably [drumlins](_URL_2_) or perhaps some kind of [moraine](_URL_1_). There are a few N-S trending [eskers](_URL_0_) (essentially sand and gravel infilling of meltwater channels in the decaying glacier).
|
[
"Northerns are similar to westerns but are set in the frozen north of North America; that is, Canada or Alaska. Of the two, Canada was the most common setting, although many tropes could apply to both. Popular locations within Canada are the Yukon, the Barren Grounds, and area around Hudson Bay. Generic names used for this general setting included the \"Far North\", the \"Northlands\", the \"North Woods\", and the \"Great Woods\".\n",
"The territories situated within Northern Canada in particular have been technologically divided compared to the rest of the country due to economic and geographical obstacles creating challenges regarding having high speed internet connections set up between distant and sparsely populated towns, along with the low digital literacy rates and lack of access to technology that some northern residents possess.\n",
"While Canada, like other jurisdictions, has raised the issue of privacy concerns regarding Google Street View, the presence of Google cameras in one Canadian city in March 2009 gave rise to a different complaint. Les MacPherson, a columnist with the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, complained in a March 28, 2009, column that the timing of the imaging, at the end of a protracted winter season and before the true onset of spring would cast an unfavourable image of Saskatoon and other cities. \"What worries me more than any loss of privacy is the prospect of presenting to the world a highly unflattering impression of Canadian cities. With the possible exception of Victoria, they do not show off well in the spring. Google could not have picked a more inauspicious time to do its scanning. Saskatoon is unfortunately typical. For Google to record its images of the city at this most visually unappealing time of year is like photographing a beautiful woman who has just awakened from a six-month coma,\" he wrote. In early October 2009, the first Canadian cities began to appear on Street View; several, including Saskatoon, were not included in the initial roll-out. One city that was included, Calgary, included images taken in both summer and winter. Images of Saskatoon were rolled out on December 2, 2009.\n",
"While Canada, like other jurisdictions, has raised the issue of privacy concerns regarding Google Street View, the presence of Google cameras in one Canadian city in March 2009 gave rise to a different complaint. Les MacPherson, a columnist with the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, complained in a March 28, 2009, column that the timing of the imaging, at the end of a protracted winter season and before the true onset of spring would cast an unfavourable image of Saskatoon and other cities. \"What worries me more than any loss of privacy is the prospect of presenting to the world a highly unflattering impression of Canadian cities. With the possible exception of Victoria, they do not show off well in the spring. Google could not have picked a more inauspicious time to do its scanning. Saskatoon is unfortunately typical. For Google to record its images of the city at this most visually unappealing time of year is like photographing a beautiful woman who has just awakened from a six-month coma,\" he wrote. In early October 2009, the first Canadian cities began to appear on Street View; several, including Saskatoon, were not included in the initial roll-out. One city that was included, Calgary, included images taken in both summer and winter. Images of Saskatoon were rolled out on December 2, 2009.\n",
"Northern Canada, colloquially the North, is the vast northernmost region of Canada variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to three territories of Canada: Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Similarly, \"the Far North\" (when contrasted to \"the North\") may refer to the Canadian Arctic: the portion of Canada that lies north of the Arctic Circle, east of Alaska and west of Greenland. This area covers about 39% of Canada's total land area, but has less than 1% of Canada's population.\n",
"The Canadian Arctic tundra is a biogeographic designation for Northern Canada's terrain generally lying north of the tree line or boreal forest, that corresponds with the Scandinavian Alpine tundra to the east and the Siberian Arctic tundra to the west inside the circumpolar tundra belt of the Northern Hemisphere.\n",
"The term is used by the Canadian government that has a set system for measuring nordicity. This system is used for determining a number of regulations in fields such as environmental protection, infrastructure, and many others. Northern Canada, apropos, is normally divided into three areas. The \"Middle North\" covering the northern parts of most provinces, as well as parts of the territories is largely populated by those of European descent and has significant resource extraction if a low population. The \"Far North\" covers the northern part of the continent and the southern Arctic Archipelago. The \"Extreme North\" covers the northernmost islands and is largely uninhabitable. Other countries have their own systems of measuring nordicity.\n"
] |
Why did the United States use images of Native Americans on its' coins during an era of Indian persecution?
|
**Tl;dr** It does seem counter-intuitive to honor Native Americans on coins while denying their humanity and the right to their own language, religion, culture and customs, but this simply didn't slow America down. Phil Deloria does a great job of showing how the *idea* of Native Americans has pretty much always been divorced from the realities of Native American life or U.S.-Indian policy. Indeed, as he puts it when writing of the early 19th century organization [The Improved Order of Red Men](_URL_0_), "They desired Indianness, not Indians." (The Wiki here notes that membership was restricted to whites until the 1970s.) It's the same type of appropriation of cultural motifs and generic imagery that /u/Brickie78 is referring to and still exists today in the form of many professional, collegiate, and high school athletic mascots.
As /u/ggarcimer15 suggests, read Vine Deloria (his most famous work being *Custer Died for Your Sins*) and his son Phil's *Playing Indian*. Phil especially goes into how Native Americans were a convenient "other" for Euro-Americans. They were variously portrayed as savage; noble; epitomes of freedom; enemies of the United States; threats to Christian civilization; or the last vestiges of a pre-modern society, tragically fading away under the superior technology and lifestyle of white Americans.
So how did Indian head coins come about? In the abstract, especially in the early days of the United States, Native Americans were symbols of freedom and liberty - think of early [personifications of Colombia](_URL_3_) or the U.S. Capitol's [Statue of Freedom](_URL_2_), with their vaguely Native American headdresses and attire, or more explicitly, the Boston Tea Party disguising themselves as Native Americans because of their popular association with freedom. As a perception that predates America, it was influential enough to survive the demonization of Native Americans during the 19th century "Indian Wars," and afterwards the idea of Indians as paragons of virility and ruggedness (compared to the effete, urbanized late 19th century American) came back in full force - this time frame also saw the rise of organizations like the [Camp Fire Girls](_URL_1_) and the Boy Scouts, which co-founder Ernest Thompson Seton explicitly linked to Native Americans: "Indian teachings in the fields of art, handicraft, woodcraft, agriculture, social life, health, and joy need no argument beyond presentation; they speak for themselves. The Red Man is the apostle of outdoor life, his example and precept are what young America needs today above any other teaching of which I have knowledge." Putting "his" face (the designer of the "Buffalo nickel" claimed not to have drawn a portrait, but a "type") on coinage was another way of using the image of Native Americans to reinforce the idea of American uniqueness and freedom, just like the "Mohawks" in Boston Harbor.
Also see Jared Farmer's *On Zion's Mount* for more on the late 19th/early 20th century obsession with the declining virility of the American male and how embracing certain aspects of Native American lifestyle (albeit a heavily idealized lifestyle) was seen as a remedy.
|
[
"The Library of Congress acquired these images as copyright deposits from about 1900 through 1930. The dates on them are dates of registration, not the dates when the photographs were taken. About two-thirds (1,608) of these images were not published in \"The North American Indian\" and therefore offer a different glimpse into Curtis's work with indigenous cultures. The original glass plate negatives, which had been stored and nearly forgotten in the basement of the Morgan Library, in New York, were dispersed during World War II. Many others were destroyed and some were sold as junk.\n",
"Portrayals of Native Americans in film have historically tended to be based in inaccurate stereotypes, notably caricatures of the Plains Indians, depicted in Hollywood Westerns. But throughout Hollywood history, images of Native Americans have alternated between violent, uncivilized villains along with positive, romantic portrayals. Early short one- and two-reel movies tended to show diverse portrayals of positive and negative images and occasionally featured stories of Indian/white interracial marriages. Negative images dominated the mid- to late-1930s until the watershed movie Broken Arrow (1950 film) appeared that many credit as the first postwar Western to depict Native American sympathetically. Starting in the 1990s, authentic films by Native American filmmakers and often independent films have focused on portraying Indigenous Peoples from their own Native American point of view.\n",
"They depict the people, places, and practices of Native Americans and their communities from at least 34 States, plus Canada and Mexico in the period from 1909-1953. The majority of the images were taken by G. E. E. Lindquist (1886-1967), an itinerant representative of the ecumenical Home Missions Council of the Federal Council of Churches.\n",
"Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, in \"Portraits of a People,\" has argued that the usage of props, such as the American flag and books, helped to provide context for Northern viewers, and also to emphasize that the purpose of the photos was to raise money for education of former slaves and schools in Louisiana. She also noted that the use of \"white\" children to illustrate the damage caused by institutional slavery, whose victims were overwhelmingly visibly people of color, demonstrated the contemporary racism of both southern and northern societies.\n",
"Art historian Cornelius Vermeule, in his volume on American coinage, pointed out that some people liked the Lewis and Clark Exposition dollar as it depicted historic figures who affected the course of American history, rather than a bust intended to be Liberty, and that Barber's coin presaged the 1909 Lincoln cent and the 1932 Washington quarter. Nevertheless, Vermeule deprecated the piece, as well as the earlier American gold commemorative, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition dollar. \"The lack of spark in these coins, as in so many designs by Barber or Assistant Engraver (later Chief Engraver) Morgan, stems from the fact that the faces, hair and drapery are flat and the lettering is small, crowded, and even.\" According to Vermeule, when the two engravers collaborated on a design, such as the 1916 McKinley Birthplace Memorial dollar, \"the results were almost oppressive\".\n",
"Since American Indians were erroneously thought to be going extinct, white American anthropologists did not trust them to preserve their own traditions within their communities and began an effort in the late nineteenth century to dispossess communities of spiritual and other items, which would be transplanted into museums. As Euro-Americans removed sacred objects from their communities, they placed spiritual items into an educational context. Although the collectors believed they were using these objects to showcase the memory of a “vanishing” people, the objects were taken from actual people, many of whom believed that public display was disrespectful and potentially harmful to viewers. Many American Indians also believed that exhibiting sacred objects stripped the items of their spiritual power. By creating new meanings for the objects on display, in attempts to externally preserve a culture, anthropologists and collectors diminished the meaning that items held for the people who had created them.\n",
"Early photographers captured many images of African piebalds used as a form of amusement, and George Catlin is believed to have painted several portraits of Native Americans of the Mandan tribe who were affected by piebaldism. \n"
] |
How would bread have been cut/served prior to the invention of the sandwich?
|
This isn't perhaps the cutting techniques you're looking for, but stale bread often used to be cut into a square shape and used as a plate, in what was called a 'trencher'. A 'good trencherman' would be one who ate a lot of food. These bits of bread would be given out as alms after a nobleman's meal if those eating didn't want them.
|
[
"The modern concept of a sandwich using slices of bread as found within the West can arguably be traced to 18th-century Europe. However, the use of some kind of bread or bread-like substance to lie under (or under \"and\" over) some other food, or used to scoop up and enclose or wrap some other type of food, long predates the eighteenth century, and is found in numerous much older cultures worldwide.\n",
"Sliced bread is a loaf of bread that has been sliced with a machine and packaged for convenience. It was first sold in 1928, advertised as \"the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped\". This led to the popular idiom \"greatest thing since sliced bread\".\n",
"In 1927 Rohwedder successfully designed a machine that not only sliced the bread but wrapped it. He applied for patents to protect his invention and sold the first machine to a friend and baker Frank Bench, who installed it at the Chillicothe Baking Company, in Chillicothe, Missouri, in 1928. The first loaf of sliced bread was sold commercially on July 7, 1928. Sales of the machine to other bakeries increased and sliced bread became available across the country.\n",
"That is, the patent described a sandwich with a layer of filling in between two pieces of bread which are crimped shut and have their crust removed. The other nine claims of the patent elaborate the idea further, including the coating of two sides of the bread with peanut butter first before putting the jelly in the middle, so that the jelly would not seep into the bread—the layers of filling \"are engaged to one another to form a reservoir for retaining the second filling in between\".\n",
"In 1930 Continental Baking Company introduced Wonder Bread as a sliced bread. It was followed by other major companies when they saw how the bread was received. By 1932 the availability of standardized slices had boosted sales of automatic, pop-up toasters, an invention of 1926 by Charles Strite. In 1933 American bakeries for the first time produced more sliced than unsliced bread loaves.\n",
"Before the development of the electric toaster, sliced bread was toasted by placing it in a metal frame or on a long-handled toasting-fork and holding it near a fire or over a kitchen grill. Utensils for toasting bread over open flames appeared in the early 19th century, including decorative implements made from wrought iron.\n",
"About 1939 or 1940 Antonio Rodilla opened a confectionery shop in Callao Square in downtown Madrid. After some years he decided to sell a new line of products, cold meat (\"fiambre\") sandwiches. Since it was difficult at the time to find a good bread supplier he decided to make his own sliced bread as well, called \"English bread\", or \"pan de molde\" (as opposed to the more traditional baguette-like bread).\n"
] |
how has the economy managed to compensate for a majority of women entering the workforce in the past several decades, along with a rise in unmarried households - essentially doubling the demand for high paying jobs in a short period of time?
|
The economy hasn't doubled high-paying jobs. An interesting book on the subject is called "The Two-Income Trap" by Elizabeth Warren.
The simple answer is that women entering the workforce made quality housing more expensive and made it so unmarried mothers have almost no chance to move up in social classes - most unmarried mothers have low-paying jobs. In general terms, the highest paying jobs are held by men and women who are married, have college degrees, and they combine incomes. To move up in life you really need both incomes.
Our economy in the past fifty years has seen an explosion of low-paying service jobs like retail and customer service and an explosion in creative jobs like computer programming. There is very little in the middle.
|
[
"A prolonged period of unemployment can lead to what economists call the discouraged worker effect, where workers drop out of the labor supply. The wives of discouraged workers do not behave as secondary workers, altering their labor supply in response to their spouses' transitory bouts with unemployment, but rather, these wives become breadwinners (Maloney, p. 183). Between 2007 and 2009, the United States saw a large increase in women's contribution to family income, resulting from a decrease in husband's earnings because three out of four eliminated jobs had belonged to men (Mattingly & Smith, p. 344). Working wives also worked more hours if their spouses stopped working (Mattingly & Smith, p. 355).\n",
"Despite many improvements in women's economic status over the past three decades, employment discrimination and unfairness in the workplace are still a fact of life for many women. On average, women make only 80 cents for every dollar a man makes, and can lose an immense amount of wages over a lifetime due to the wage gap which persists despite education level. A disproportionate number of women are clustered in low-paying, part-time jobs, often without benefits or dependable hours.\n",
"But the income disparity is not the only form of disadvantage that women face in the labor market. Many women are unable to obtain a full time job not just due to gender discrimination, but also because of unavailable, expensive, or inadequate day care. This problem is only amplified when considering the issue of the segregation of women into underpaid work, limiting possibilities of economic growth.\n",
"Women in the workforce earning wages or salary are part of a modern phenomenon, one that developed at the same time as the growth of paid employment for men, but women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce. Until modern times, legal and cultural practices, combined with the inertia of longstanding religious and educational conventions, restricted women's entry and participation in the workforce. Economic dependency upon men, and consequently the poor socio-economic status of women, have had the same impact, particularly as occupations have become professionalized over the 19th and 20th centuries.\n",
"Women, in contrast, are still expected to fulfill the caretaker role and take time off for domestic needs such as pregnancy and ill family members, preventing them from conforming to the \"ideal-worker norm\". With the current norm in place, women are forced to juggle full-time jobs and family care at home. Others believe that this difference in wage earnings is likely due to the supply and demand for women in the market because of family obligations. Eber and Weichselbaumer argue that \"over time, raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially. Most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females\".\n",
"Unemployment, underemployment, differences in wages and occupational segregation are the four main factors in the economy that impact women’s level of labor. In terms of unemployment, 15% of men are unemployed while 25% of women are unemployed and 82% of young women ages 15–29 are unemployed. Women are underemployed as they tend to be hired less than men with lesser education because large sections of the Jordanian economy are and have traditionally been closed off to women. Less educated men often hold more jobs while women are often better educated, leading to many women settling for jobs requiring lesser education than they have. Wage discrimination in Jordan is no different from anywhere else in the world, but in combination with traditional and cultural factors – like being responsible for the private sphere (the family and the home) – women are driven away from the workforce. Jordanian law suggests that wives should be obedient to their husbands because the men financially support the family, and if she is disobedient her husband can discontinue financial support. In addition, men have assumed the power to forbid their wives from working, and the Jordanian courts have upheld these laws. Furthermore, as honor killings consistently occur and are currently on the rise, women are less motivated to leave the safety of their homes. Laws in Jordan regarding honor killings continue to make it possible for courts to deal with perpetrators leniently.\n",
"\"The past two decades have witnessed a sharp decline in men's provider role, caused in part by growing female labor participation and in part by the weakening of men's absolute power due to increased rates of unemployment and underemployment,\" states sociologist Jiping Zuo. She continues, \"Women's growing earning power and commitment to the paid workforce together with the stagnation of men's social mobility make some families more financially dependent on women. As a result, the foundations of the male dominance structure have been eroded.\"\n"
] |
what does the president of france do as co-prince of andorra?
|
The coprinses have, like most heads of state of modern monarchies, more of a ceremonial function than a political one. The don't even have the right to veto governmental decisions. They are also have representatives in place so the President of France will normally not directly concern Andorran affairs that often.
The real power lies with the parliament and their head of government, Antoni Martí. So not much difference there compared to other democracies.
|
[
"Official diplomatic relations between Andorra and France were established after the signing of a joint \"Treaty of Good Neighborhood, Friendship and Cooperation\" between Andorra, France and Spain; after Andorra adopted a new constitution establishing them as a parliamentary democracy. The President of France acts as a co-Prince (along with the Spanish Bishop of Urgell) in Andorra. In 1993, France opened a resident embassy in Andorra la Vella. In October 1967, French President (and co-Prince) Charles de Gaulle paid a visit to Andorra. It was the first visit by a French President to the nation. President de Gaulle paid a second visit in 1969. Since then, there have been several bilateral visits between leaders of both nations.\n",
"BULLET::::- October 23 – Charles de Gaulle becomes the first French Co-Prince of Andorra to visit his Andorran subjects. In addition to being President of France, de Gaulle is a joint ruler (along with Spain's Bishop of Urgel of the tiny nation located in the mountains between France and Spain, pursuant to the 1278 agreement creating the nation.\n",
"François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who served as President of the French Republic and \"ex officio\" Co-Prince of Andorra from 2012 to 2017. He was previously the First Secretary of the Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008, Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008, and President of the Corrèze General Council from 2008 to 2012. Hollande also served in the National Assembly of France twice for the department of Corrèze's 1st constituency from 1988 to 1993, and again from 1997 to 2012.\n",
"Under the 1993 constitution, the co-princes continue as heads of state, but the head of government retains executive power. The two co-princes serve coequally with limited powers that do not include veto over government acts. Both are represented in Andorra by a delegate, although since 1993, both France and Spain have their own embassies. As co-princes of Andorra, the President of France and the Bishop of Urgell maintain supreme authority in approval of all international treaties with France and Spain, as well as all those that deal with internal security, defense, Andorran territory, diplomatic representation, and judicial or penal cooperation. Although the institution of the co-princes is viewed by some as an anachronism, the majority sees them as both a link with Andorra's traditions and a way to balance the power of Andorra's two much larger neighbors.\n",
"Under the 1993 constitution, the co-princes continue as heads of state, but the head of government retains executive power. The two co-princes serve coequally with limited powers that do not include veto over government acts. Both are represented in Andorra by a delegate, although since 1993, both France and Spain have their own embassies. As co-princes of Andorra, the President of France and the Bishop of Urgell maintain supreme authority in approval of all international treaties with France and Spain, as well as all those that deal with internal security, defense, Andorran territory, diplomatic representation, and judicial or penal cooperation. Although the institution of the co-princes is viewed by some as an anachronism, the majority sees them as both a link with Andorra's traditions and a way to balance the power of Andorra's two much larger neighbors.\n",
"The way the two co-princes are chosen makes Andorra one of the most politically distinct nations on Earth. One co-prince is the current sitting President of France, currently Emmanuel Macron (it has historically been any head of state of France, including kings and emperors of the French). The other is the current Roman Catholic bishop of the Catalan city of La Seu d'Urgell, currently Joan Enric Vives i Sicilia. As neither prince lives in Andorra, their role is almost entirely ceremonial.\n",
"Jacques René Chirac (; born 29 November 1932) is a French politician who served as President of the French Republic and \"ex officio\" Co-Prince of Andorra from 1995 to 2007. Chirac previously was Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.\n"
] |
What do most people not understand or realize about WWI?
|
The toll that it took on the British aristocracy in terms of casualties and the impact that had on the loosening of the class system in subsequent decades. In terms of proportion of aristocratic males killed it was a greater rate than the English Civil war of the 17th c. This changed the social fabric in unexpected ways, it ended dynasties, caused many women to have to marry 'below' them, eradicated many of the serving jobs, brought much land out of private ownership.
It was WWI that gutted the landed gentry that had existed since time immemorial, they had been in decline for centuries but WWI was a blow from which they would never recover, there are a few remnants today but nothing the like the pre-war generation.
|
[
"World War I had a lasting impact on social memory. It was seen by many in Britain as signalling the end of an era of stability stretching back to the Victorian period, and across Europe many regarded it as a watershed. Historian Samuel Hynes explained:\n",
"These beliefs did not become widely shared because they offered the only accurate interpretation of wartime events. In every respect, the war was much more complicated than they suggest. In recent years, historians have argued persuasively against almost every popular cliché of World War I. It has been pointed out that, although the losses were devastating, their greatest impact was socially and geographically limited. The many emotions other than horror experienced by soldiers in and out of the front line, including comradeship, boredom, and even enjoyment, have been recognised. The war is not now seen as a 'fight about nothing', but as a war of ideals, a struggle between aggressive militarism and more or less liberal democracy. It has been acknowledged that British generals were often capable men facing difficult challenges, and that it was under their command that the British army played a major part in the defeat of the Germans in 1918: a great forgotten victory.\n",
"the truth about the causes of the World War is one of the livest and most important practical issues of the present day. It is basic to the whole matter of the present European and world situation, resting as it does upon an unfair and unjust Peace Treaty, which was itself erected upon a most uncritical and complete acceptance of the grossest forms of war-time illusions concerning war guilt.\n",
"Sociological historian Holger Herwig found in studying German explanations for the origins of World War I, \"Those events that are most important are hardest to understand because they attract the greatest attention from myth makers and charlatans.\"\n",
"BULLET::::- Rising nationalism and increasing national awareness were among the many causes of World War I (1914–1918), the first of two wars to involve many major world powers including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia/USSR, the British Empire and the United States. World War I led to the creation of many new countries, especially in Eastern Europe. At the time, it was said by many to be the \"war to end all wars\".\n",
"Also, I was very interested in the Great War, as it was called then, because it was the initial twentieth-century shock to European culture. By the time we got to the Second World War, everybody was more or less used to Europe being badly treated and people being killed in multitudes. The Great War introduced those themes to Western culture, and therefore it was an immense intellectual and cultural and social shock.\n",
"The experiences of the war in the west are commonly assumed to have led to a sort of collective national trauma afterward for all of the participating countries. The optimism of 1900 was entirely gone and those who fought became what is known as \"the Lost Generation\" because they never fully recovered from their suffering. For the next few years, much of Europe mourned privately and publicly; memorials were erected in thousands of villages and towns.\n"
] |
Grover Cleveland met his wife when she was born and he was 27. He took care of her after her father died and married her when she turned 21. How was this relationship viewed by the public?
|
More input is always welcome; in the meantime, this exact question came up last month, and you may be interested in what u/WovenCoverlet and u/sunagainstgold [had to say on the topic](_URL_0_).
|
[
"Cleveland's fifth son, Grover Cleveland, became the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, the only president to serve non-consecutive terms. He was 16 years old at the time of his father's death and reputedly learned of the event from a boy hawking newspapers. Grover Cleveland spoke highly of his father in later life, praising his godliness and devotion to family, and named one of his sons (Richard F. Cleveland) after him. His sister Rose (the family's youngest child) acted as First Lady for the first year or so of his presidency, before his marriage to Frances Folsom.\n",
"Douglas suggested she had what she referred to as \"blank periods\" before and during her marriage, but they were brief. She connected these lapses to her mother's insanity. She eventually quit the newspaper, but after her father's death in 1941 she suffered a third and final breakdown, when her neighbors found her roaming the neighborhood one night screaming. She realized she had a \"father complex\", explaining it by saying, \"Having been brought up without him all those years, and then coming back and finding him so sympathetic had a powerful effect\".\n",
"Cleveland was born in Princeton, New Jersey, the eldest son of Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, and Frances Folsom. He was born nearly eight months after the end of his father's second term, and was named for his grandfather, Richard Falley Cleveland. He was the next to youngest of five siblings: sisters Ruth (1891–1904), Esther (1893–1980), and Marion (1895–1977), and brother Francis Grover (1903–1995).\n",
"Ruth Cleveland (October 3, 1891 – January 7, 1904), popularly known as Baby Ruth, was the eldest of five children born to United States President Grover Cleveland and First Lady Frances Cleveland. Her birth between Cleveland's two terms of office caused a national sensation. Interest in her continued even after her father's second presidential term was over. A sickly child, Ruth Cleveland contracted diphtheria on January 2, 1904. Doctors thought her case was mild, but she died five days after her diagnoses. She is buried in Princeton Cemetery.\n",
"Cleveland entered the White House as a bachelor, and his sister Rose Cleveland acted as hostess for the first two years of his administration. On June 2, 1886, Cleveland married Frances Folsom in the Blue Room at the White House. He was the second president to wed while in office, after John Tyler. Though Cleveland had supervised Frances's upbringing after her father's death, the public took no exception to the match. At 21 years, Frances Folsom Cleveland was the youngest First Lady in history, and the public soon warmed to her beauty and warm personality.\n",
"Cleveland was born in 1903 in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, a part of the Town of Bourne. His father, Grover Cleveland, was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States; his mother, Frances Folsom, was First Lady. He had a brother, Richard, and three sisters, Ruth, Marion and Esther \n",
"After her husband's death in 1908, Cleveland remained in Princeton, New Jersey. On February 10, 1913, at the age of 48, she married Thomas J. Preston, Jr., a professor of archaeology at her alma mater, Wells College. She was the first presidential widow to remarry. She was vacationing at St. Moritz, Switzerland, with her daughters Marion and Esther and her son Francis when World War I started in August 1914. They returned to the United States via Genoa on October 1, 1914. Soon afterwards, she became a member of the pro-war National Security League, becoming its director of the Speaker's Bureau and the \"Committee on Patriotism through Education\" in November 1918.\n"
] |
how do criminal defendants end up with charges like "four counts of murder" when only two people are killed?
|
Sometimes it is hard to prove that an accused murderer had all the requirements of a crime. With 1st degree murder, the prosecution needs to prove everything in 2nd degree murder, PLUS the act/s were premeditated.
If the jury agreed that he was reacting, and not making specific plans, that would eliminate 1 st degree. If the jury found at any point the defendant was in fear, using self-defense of life, or local versions of 'stand your ground, and 'castle doctrine', they could nullify any of the murder charges.
Each States laws are a little different, some would call them 'included offenses'. In this case, if you prove murder 1, you have to also prove murder 2- even though the same act . Technically, that act could also be murder 3, manslaughter, and aggravated assault.
But our system only punishes the highest crime of the inclusive 'stack' - for each separate action.
The jury instructions are [here](_URL_0_). Thee jury was asked to determine if the facts met all 4possible crimes, jury says yes.
Unless there is something I missed that makes these 2crimes x2victims, the sentencing will only show a conviction and penalty for the most heinous criminal act.
If these other charges were not given to the jury now, they could not choose to convict, and the defendant might be protected under double jeopardy. Many times a criminal will be charged with lesser versions of the same crime, just to avoid letting them walk on a paperwork issue .
|
[
"If a person committing a predicate felony directly contributed to the death of the victim then the person will be charged with murder in the first degree - felony murder which is a capital felony. The only two sentences available for that statute are life in prison and the death penalty. \n",
"A count of murder may be joined with a count charging another offence of murder, or a count charging a different offence. A count of conspiracy to murder may be joined with a count of aiding and abetting murder.\n",
"An example of this are the charges of \"conspiring to commit murder\" and \"murder\". Both charges typically have facts distinct from each other. A person can be charged with \"conspiring to commit murder\" even if the murder never actually takes place if all facts necessary to support the charge can be demonstrated through evidence. Further, a person convicted or acquitted of murder can, additionally, be tried on conspiracy as well if it has been determined after the conviction or acquittal that a conspiracy did, in fact, take place.\n",
"Where multiple offences are tried together, the greatest number applicable is used (i.e., in an offence involving first-degree murder and armed robbery, the accused and the prosecutor are each entitled to twenty peremptory challenges) [s. 634 (3), Criminal Code of Canada]. \n",
"The court further distinguishes that if a defendant intends to kill a target and also kills others in the kill zone, then they are guilty of the murder of each person killed, i.e., is guilty of multiple counts of murder. However, if the defendant by the same act fails to kill anyone, defendant is only guilty of a single count of attempted murder by the act.\n",
"If a person commits a predicate felony, but was not the direct contributor to the death of the victim then the person will be charged with murder in the second degree - felony murder which is a felony of the first degree. The maximum prison term is life.\n",
"When multiple accused are tried together, each accused is entitled to the same number that they would receive if tried separately, while the prosecutor has as many challenges as the total number available to all of the accused (i.e., in a case wherein two co-accused are charged with first-degree murder, each receives twenty peremptory challenges, and the prosecutor receives forty) [s. 634 (4), Criminal Code of Canada].\n"
] |
How far did the KGB infiltrate the American government?
|
As a follow-up, would the handling of foreign spies for the USSR generally be the responsibility of GRU, KGB, or a different agency? Or all three?
|
[
"Aldrich Ames, a CIA counterintelligence agent working in the SE Division, approached the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. on April 16, 1985, and within a month received $50,000 from the KGB in exchange for espionage service. Meeting with Soviet official and go-between Sergey Dmitriyevich Chuvakhin on June 13, Ames passed him copied documents identifying over ten Soviet agents working for the CIA and FBI. As a CIA review related, the Soviets began arresting and sometimes executing U.S. operatives later in 1985, and the CIA realized that it \"was faced with a major CI problem.\" Suspicions initially fell on Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA officer who also compromised CIA operations in 1985 and defected to the Soviet Union on September 21. However, the CIA realized by fall 1985 that Howard was not responsible for all of the damage. Three agents arrested in fall 1985 and later executed, some of the CIA's most valuable sources, had been betrayed by Ames, not Howard. By December, six SE agents had vanished, a trend which continued into 1986; according to a congressional report, the over 20 operations Ames revealed \"amounted to a virtual collapse of the CIA's Soviet operations.\" Ames, who stated that he spied for the KGB due to his financial debt, gave thousands of pages of classified documents to the Soviets and later admitted to disclosing over 100 CIA, FBI, military, and allied operations; he was deemed responsible for the arrests and executions of ten U.S. sources.\n",
"The KGB also begin to take action to retrieve the two rogue agents and send Major Grishina - a darkly attractive female officer - to the United Kingdom in order to bring them back to the Soviet Union. Her arrival alerts the CIA and MI5 that something big must be happening for the KGB to send such a high-ranking officer to Britain. Her arrival also shakes up the Soviet representatives in the UK. The chief KGB officer in the UK is more decadent than the locals and is originally discovered watching an American baseball game on the TV.\n",
"During the 1980s, he was Chief of the First (American) Department within the KGB's Second Chief Directorate, which placed him in charge of investigating and disrupting the operations of the American Central Intelligence Agency in the Soviet Union's capital of Moscow. Prior to that he headed up the Second Department of the SCD, which targeted the intelligence operations of the United Kingdom.\n",
"In 1985, Aldrich Ames gave the KGB a significant amount of information on CIA agents, and the Soviet government swiftly moved to arrest these individuals. Soviet intelligence feared this rapid action would alert the CIA that Ames was a spy. In order to reduce the chances the CIA would discover Ames's duplicity, the KGB manufactured disinformation as to the reasoning behind the arrests of U.S. intelligence agents. During summer 1985, a KGB officer who was a double agent working for the CIA on a mission in Africa traveled to a dead drop in Moscow on his way home but never reported in. The CIA heard from a European KGB source that their agent was arrested. Simultaneously the FBI and CIA learned from a second KGB source of their agent's arrest. Only after Ames had been outed as a spy for the KGB did it become apparent that the KGB had known all along that both of these agents were double agents for the U.S. government, and had played them as pawns to send disinformation to the CIA in order to protect Ames.\n",
"The operation began in 1959 when U.S. Army First Sergeant Joseph Edward Cassidy (1920-2011), assigned to the Army's nuclear power office near Washington, D.C., was approached (with Army permission) by the FBI. Cassidy, despite having no previous training, was able to make contact with a Soviet naval attache believed to be a spy, and set up an arrangement where he would provide information to the Soviets in exchange for money. Soviet requests for information were passed to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and various classified information provided as a result. \n",
"In October 1979 Stanislav Levchenko, head of the Active Measures Line of the KGB Rezidentura in Tokyo, contacted American officials and was granted political asylum in the United States. Levchenko explained the workings of the Soviet apparatus and how it was carried out, under his direction, in Japan. Levchenko's information, combined with that of Ladislav Bittman, who had been the deputy head of the Czechoslovakian Intelligence Service's Disinformation Department, was instrumental in helping the CIA understand many of the operations that were being carried out against the United States. This information was also reported to policy makers and Congress.\n",
"In return for money, they gave the KGB the names of officers of the KGB residency in Washington, DC, and other places, who cooperated with the FBI and/or the CIA. Line KR officers immediately arrested a number of people, including Major General Dmitri Polyakov, a high-ranking military intelligence officer (GRU). He was cooperating with the CIA and FBI. Ames reported that Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, London resident, had spied for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). Line KR officers arrested many others, whom they sent to Moscow. There they were passed into the hands of the KGB Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence).\n"
] |
Why do quasars emit so much light?
|
Essentially, because there is a lot of material falling into the black hole. When things fall down a gravity well, they lose gravitational potential energy. Drop something off a cliff, and gravitational energy gets transformed into kinetic energy, which upon hitting the ground will partly turn into thermal energy. Of course, if you drop something off a cliff, then even ignoring air resistance it will probably only be going tens of meters per second. If you drop something into a black hole from very far away, then as it approaches the event horizon, its speed will approach the speed of light. Now, typically things don't just fall in on a single trajectory, it's usually a longer process of orbital decay and tidal forces that eventually usher the particles to their ultimate fate, but nevertheless they gain a tremendous amount of kinetic energy, and much of that gets transformed into radiation. That's why quasars are so bright.
The specifics of how energy gets turned into light (and particle jets) in an Active Galactic Nucleus is more complicated. First of all, you've got a rapidly spinning [accretion disk](_URL_0_) of matter around the black hole. As you get closer to the inner edge of this disk, it gets hotter and denser, so that the inner edge is radiating mainly in the X-ray regime. Since this material is a plasma, you've got magnetohydrodynamical effects that come into play. That's a fancy term for a combination of fluid dynamics and electromagnetism. We don't yet have a precise understanding of the process, but basically the disk creates powerful electromagnetic fields which shoot some of the infalling particles out in jets rather than letting them fall toward the event horizon.
|
[
"Quasars (/ˈkweɪzɑr/) or quasi-stellar radio sources are the most energetic and distant members of active galactic nuclei. Quasars are extremely luminous and were first identified as being high redshift sources of electromagnetic energy, including radio waves and visible light, that appeared to be similar to stars, rather than extended sources similar to galaxies. Their luminosity can be 100 times greater than that of the Milky Way.\n",
"Radiation from quasars is partially 'nonthermal' (i.e., not due to black body radiation), and approximately 10 percent are observed to also have jets and lobes like those of radio galaxies that also carry significant (but poorly understood) amounts of energy in the form of particles moving at relativistic speeds. Extremely high energies might be explained by several mechanisms (see Fermi acceleration and Centrifugal mechanism of acceleration). Quasars can be detected over the entire observable electromagnetic spectrum including radio, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray and even gamma rays. Most quasars are brightest in their rest-frame near-ultraviolet wavelength of 121.6 nm Lyman-alpha emission line of hydrogen, but due to the tremendous redshifts of these sources, that peak luminosity has been observed as far to the red as 900.0 nm, in the near infrared. A minority of quasars show strong radio emission, which is generated by jets of matter moving close to the speed of light. When viewed downward, these appear as blazars and often have regions that seem to move away from the center faster than the speed of light (superluminal expansion). This is an optical illusion due to the properties of special relativity.\n",
"Quasars inhabit the center of active galaxies, and are among the most luminous, powerful, and energetic objects known in the universe, emitting up to a thousand times the energy output of the Milky Way, which contains 200–400 billion stars. This radiation is emitted across the electromagnetic spectrum, almost uniformly, from X-rays to the far-infrared with a peak in the ultraviolet-optical bands, with some quasars also being strong sources of radio emission and of gamma-rays. With high-resolution imaging from ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope, the \"host galaxies\" surrounding the quasars have been detected in some cases. These galaxies are normally too dim to be seen against the glare of the quasar, except with special techniques. Most quasars, with the exception of 3C 273 whose average apparent magnitude is 12.9, cannot be seen with small telescopes.\n",
"A quasar () (also known as a quasi-stellar object abbreviated QSO) is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN), in which a supermassive black hole with mass ranging from millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun is surrounded by a gaseous accretion disk. As gas in the disk falls towards the black hole, energy is released in the form of electromagnetic radiation, which can be observed across the electromagnetic spectrum. The power radiated by quasars is enormous: the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than a galaxy such as the Milky Way.\n",
"This also explains why quasars were more common in the early universe, as this energy production ends when the supermassive black hole consumes all of the gas and dust near it. This means that it is possible that most galaxies, including the Milky Way, have gone through an active stage, appearing as a quasar or some other class of active galaxy that depended on the black hole mass and the accretion rate, and are now quiescent because they lack a supply of matter to feed into their central black holes to generate radiation.\n",
"Quasars, a class of active galactic nuclei (AGN), were considered a good candidate source because they are highly efficient at converting mass to energy, and emit a great deal of light above the threshold for ionizing hydrogen. It is unknown, however, how many quasars existed prior to reionization. Only the brightest of quasars present during reionization can be detected, which means there is no direct information about dimmer quasars that existed. However, by looking at the more easily observed quasars in the nearby universe, and assuming that the luminosity function (number of quasars as a function of luminosity) during reionization will be approximately the same as it is today, it is possible to make estimates of the quasar populations at earlier times. Such studies have found that quasars do not exist in high enough numbers to reionize the IGM alone, saying that \"only if the ionizing background is dominated by low-luminosity AGNs can the quasar luminosity function provide enough ionizing photons.\"\n",
"Quasars are believed—and in many cases confirmed—to be powered by accretion of material into supermassive black holes in the nuclei of distant galaxies, as suggested in 1964 by Edwin Salpeter and Yakov Zel'dovich. Light and other radiation cannot escape from within the event horizon of a black hole, but the energy produced by a quasar is generated \"outside\" the black hole, by gravitational stresses and immense friction within the material nearest to the black hole, as it orbits and falls inward. The huge luminosity of quasars results from the accretion discs of central supermassive black holes, which can convert between 6% and 32% of the mass of an object into energy, compared to just 0.7% for the p-p chain nuclear fusion process that dominates the energy production in Sun-like stars. Central masses of 10 to 10 solar masses have been measured in quasars by using reverberation mapping. Several dozen nearby large galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy, that do not have an active center and do not show any activity similar to a quasar, are confirmed to contain a similar supermassive black hole in their nuclei (galactic center). Thus it is now thought that all large galaxies have a black hole of this kind, but only a small fraction have sufficient matter in the right kind of orbit at their center to become active and power radiation in such a way as to be seen as quasars.\n"
] |
why is it that "time flies when you're having fun"?
|
I think because you focus much harder on the task at hand you stop thinking about the time so much.
|
[
"\"Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)\" is the seventh and final single from American R&B singer Janet Jackson's third studio album, \"Control\" (1986). While \"Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)\" was officially released in the United Kingdom and Australia, it was released solely for airplay in the United States in 1987. The song was written by Jackson and collaborators/producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. It performed poorly on the UK Singles Chart, only reaching number fifty-nine but peaked at #24 on the Irish Singles Chart. In the U.S., though it never charted, it became a famed quiet storm staple on adult R&B and soul radio stations. No music video was filmed for the single. Jazz musician Stanley Clarke covered the song for his 1988 album \"If This Bass Could Only Talk\". The song was also sampled on The Lost Boyz's \"Renee\" and on Camp Lo's \"Coolie High\", both from 1996. In 2014, it was sampled on Tinashe's \"How Many Times\" from her debut album \"Aquarius\". Two years later, it was sampled on SWV's MCE (Man Crush Everyday). The song's main melody (excluding the verses and the French speaking introductions), bears resemblance to the melody of her brother's 1982 hit \"The Lady In My Life\" released four years earlier.\n",
"According to Johan Huizinga, fun is \"an absolutely primary category of life, familiar to everybody at a glance right down to the animal level.\" Psychological studies reveal both the importance of fun and its effect on the perception of time, which is sometimes said to be shortened when one is having fun. As the adage states: \"Time flies when you're having fun\".\n",
"\"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana\" is a humorous saying that is used in linguistics as an example of a garden path sentence or syntactic ambiguity, and in word play as an example of punning, double entendre, and antanaclasis.\n",
"It has been suggested that games, toys, and activities perceived as fun are often challenging in some way. When a person is challenged to think consciously, overcome challenge and learn something new, they are more likely to enjoy a new experience and view it as fun. A change from routine activities appears to be at the core of this perception, since people spend much of a typical day engaged in activities that are routine and require limited conscious thinking. Routine information is processed by the brain as a \"chunked pattern\": \"We rarely look at the real world\", according to game designer Raph Koster, \"we instead recognize something we have chunked, and leave it at that. [...] One might argue that the essence of much of art is in forcing us to see things as they really are rather than as we assume them to be\". Since it helps people to relax, fun is sometimes regarded as a \"social lubricant\", important in adding \"to one's pleasure in life\" and helping to \"act as a buffer against stress\".\n",
"The words \"happy\" and \"hour\" have appeared together for centuries when describing pleasant times. In act I, scene 2 of William Shakespeare's King Henry V, he says, \"Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour/That may give furtherance to our expedition...\" The use of the phrase \"happy hour,\" to refer to a scheduled period of entertainment is, however, of much more recent vintage.\n",
"\"It's About Time\" is a 1960s typical \"silly\" comedy of the times (in the style of \"Gilligan's Island\", also created by Sherwood Schwartz) about two astronauts who accidentally break the speed of light with their spacecraft and travel back in time to prehistoric Earth, replete with cavemen (and cavewomen) and, anachronistically, dinosaurs. Unable to return to the future, they make friends with the \"natives\", usually through humorous interactions, misunderstandings, and dilemmas. Eventually, they do return to \"modern day\" Earth, taking some of the cavepeople back with them, who must then adjust to living in 1960s Los Angeles.\n",
"Some people behave like the fly because one day at random they will find the way out. Some behave like the trapped fish: the more they move the more they are entangled. Others behave like those lost in a maze: they try to escape using the faculties of mind.\n"
] |
what are the grey areas that we can see in the moon from down here?
|
They're called mares. It means "sea," but these are actually more like patches of the surface that had melted and re-hardened in the distant past.
|
[
"The lunar landscape used in the film is Vasquez Rocks, a popular television and feature film shooting location near Los Angeles. A red camera filter was used to make the blue sky photograph very dark on the black-and-white film, but the result is still far from the ideal starry black. Bits of scrubby vegetation can be seen in the background of some shots. No attempt is made to convince the viewer that the Moon is an airless void where humans would weigh one-sixth their normal Earth weight. When one of the space-suited astronauts is forced into direct sunlight, unshielded from its intensity, he bursts into flames, despite the lack of an external oxygen atmosphere; in seconds he is reduced to a skeleton.\n",
"The dark areas visible on Earth's moon, the lunar maria, are plains of flood basaltic lava flows. These rocks were sampled by the manned American Apollo program, the robotic Russian Luna program, and are represented among the lunar meteorites.\n",
"White is a lunar impact crater. It lies on the far side of the Moon from the Earth, to the southwest of the huge walled plain Apollo. About one crater diameter to the south-southwest is the small crater Hendrix.\n",
"Unlike the Earth, whose umbral shadow appears black, as the Moon has no atmosphere, the surface appears not just black but red and brown, according to the Danjon scale. This is because the only sunlight available is refracted through the Earth's atmosphere on the edges of the Earth, forming an atmospheric ring.\n",
"The following simulation shows the approximate appearance of the Moon passing through the Earth's shadow. The Moon's brightness is exaggerated within the umbral shadow. The northern portion of the Moon was closest to the center of the shadow, making it darkest, and most red in appearance.\n",
"Earth's Moon is a grey disc in the sky with cratering visible to the naked eye. It spans, depending on its exact location, 29-33 arcminutes - which is about the size of a thumbnail at arm's length, and is readily identified. Over 27.3 days, the moon goes through a full cycle of lunar phases. People can generally identify phases within a few days by looking at the moon. Unlike stars and most planets, the light reflected from the moon is bright enough to be seen during the day. (Venus can sometimes be seen even after sunrise.)\n",
"The following simulation shows the approximate appearance of the Moon passing through Earth's shadow. The Moon's brightness is exaggerated within the umbral shadow. The northern portion of the Moon was closest to the center of the shadow, making it darkest, and most red in appearance.\n"
] |
since blue whales have aortas large enough to swim in, do they have fewer issues with blood clots?
|
considering they have an extremely active lifestyle (swimming constantly all the time) and a relatively low cholesterol diet (mostly plankton and krill iirc) they are presumably at very low risk for blood clots in the first place.
|
[
"All squamates and turtles have a three-chambered heart consisting of two atria, one variably partitioned ventricle, and two aortas that lead to the systemic circulation. The degree of mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood in the three-chambered heart varies depending on the species and physiological state. Under different conditions, deoxygenated blood can be shunted back to the body or oxygenated blood can be shunted back to the lungs. This variation in blood flow has been hypothesized to allow more effective thermoregulation and longer diving times for aquatic species, but has not been shown to be a fitness advantage.\n",
"The aorta is relatively short, and soon divides into two main vessels, one supplying the visceral mass, and the other supplying the head and foot. In some groups, these two vessels arise directly from the heart, so that the animal may be said to have two aortas. These two vessels in turn divide into many finer vessels throughout the body, and deliver haemolymph to open arterial sinuses where it bathes and oxygenates the tissues. \n",
"Along with its presence in avian egg shells, other studies have also shown that biliverdin is present in the blue-green blood of many marine fish, the blood of tobacco hornworm, the wings of moth and butterfly, the serum and eggs of frogs, and the placenta of dogs. With dogs this can lead, in extremely rare cases, to the birth of puppies with green fur; however, the green colour fades out soon after birth. In the garfish (\"Belone belone\") and related species, the bones are bright green because of biliverdin.\n",
"The placenta for a rock cavy is similar to other hystricomorph rodents. They have several lobes that are lined with blood vessels and undergo a counter-current blood flow. There are blood vessels running from the mother along the placenta and then vessels running from the fetus back over the mothers vessels. This allows for a better flow of oxygen between the mother and the fetus.\n",
"The mare has two ovaries, usually in length and thick, that generally tend to decrease in size as the mare ages. In equine ovaries, unlike in humans, the vascular tissue is cortical to follicular tissue, so ovulation can only occur at an ovulation fossa near the infundibulum. The ovaries connect to the fallopian tubes (oviducts), which serve to move the ovum from the ovary to the uterus. To do so, the oviducts are lined with a layer of cilia, which produce a current that flows toward the uterus. Each oviduct attaches to one of the two horns of the uterus, which are approximately in length. These horns attach to the body of the uterus ( long). The equine uterus is bipartite, meaning the two uterine horns fuse into a relatively large uterine body (resembling a shortened bicornuate uterus or a stretched simplex uterus). Caudal to the uterus is the cervix, about long, which separates the uterus from the vagina. Usually in diameter with longitudinal folds on the interior surface, it can expand to allow the passage of the foal. The vagina of the mare is long, and is quite elastic, allowing it to expand. The vulva is the external opening of the vagina, and consists of the clitoris and two labia. It lies ventral to the rectum. The mare has two mammary glands, which are smaller in maiden mares. They have two ducts each, which open externally.\n",
"Some mares have natural alloantibodies, usually to the Ca blood group, without ever having a known exposure to that blood group. This is seen in 10% of Thoroughbred mares and 20% of Standardbred mares. In this case, Ca alloantibodies are thought to actually suppress a response against Aa blood groups, and therefore these mares do not make Aa alloantibodies if the foal has both Ca positive and Aa positive blood. These natural alloantibodies have not been shown to produce isoerythrolysis in foals, and are actually thought to help prevent NI by desensitization of the immune system and preventing the more harmful Aa alloantibodies from forming.\n",
"Crocodilians have a completely separated ventricle with deoxygenated blood from the body, or systemic circulation, in the right ventricle and oxygenated blood from the lungs, or pulmonary circulation, in the left ventricle, as in birds and mammals. Two vessels, the left aorta and the pulmonary artery, exit the right ventricle. Blood from the right ventricle goes to the lungs through the pulmonary artery, as in mammals and birds. However, when a unique active valve leading to the pulmonary artery contracts, pressure in the right ventricle can increase and blood can leave the right ventricle, enter the left aortic arch, and therefore bypass the pulmonary circulation. The foramen of Panizza connects the left and right aorta. Deoxygenated blood from the right ventricle, sitting in the left aorta, can flow into the right aorta through the foramen of Panizza. When the heart is relaxed, some oxygenated blood from the left ventricle, sitting in the right aorta, can flow into the left aorta across the foramen of Panizza. However, some species of Crocodilians have regulatory sphincters that prevent unwanted flow of blood through the foramen of Panizza during non-diving.\n"
] |
When heating something to high temperatures it becomes “red hot” and then continues to change color to orange, yellow, and then white; why doesn’t the hot object start to glow green or blue after yellow?
|
The "red hot" appearance of an object is due to its thermal radiation. This is EM radiation emitted by every object and the spectrum of which is determined by the temperature. Objects at room temperature emit thermal radiation in the infrared part of the spectrum, but once objects get hotter, the spectrum of thermal radiation shifts more towards the visible part.
However, this radiation is a broader spectrum, not a single line. So a red hot object will emit red visible light along with plenty of IR light. Since the red light is the only thing visible to us, we see the object as red. If you heat up the object further, shorter wavelength visible light gets added to the mixture, making the combined color shift towards orange.
If you heat the object enough, the thermal radiation will cover the entire visible light part of the spectrum, making the combined radiation appear white. At no point does the object only emit green or blue light. By the time it's hot enough to emit green or blue, it's also emitting plenty of light in other colors (with longer wavelengths) and what we see is the mixture of all visible light that is emitted.
|
[
"It is true that objects at specific temperatures do radiate visible light. Objects whose surface is at a temperature above approximately will glow, emitting light at a color that indicates the temperature of that surface. See the section on red heat for more about this effect. It is a misconception that one can judge the temperature of a fire by the color of its flames or the sparks in the flames. For many reasons, chemically and optically, these colors may not match the red/orange/yellow/white heat temperatures on the chart. Barium nitrate burns a bright green, for instance, and this is not present on the heat chart.\n",
"The colder part of a diffusion (incomplete combustion) flame will be red, transitioning to orange, yellow, and white as the temperature increases as evidenced by changes in the black-body radiation spectrum. For a given flame's region, the closer to white on this scale, the hotter that section of the flame is. The transitions are often apparent in fires, in which the color emitted closest to the fuel is white, with an orange section above it, and reddish flames the highest of all. A blue-colored flame only emerges when the amount of soot decreases and the blue emissions from excited molecular radicals become dominant, though the blue can often be seen near the base of candles where airborne soot is less concentrated.\n",
"BULLET::::- A piece of metal heated by a blow torch first becomes \"red hot\" as the very longest visible wavelengths appear red, then becomes more orange-red as the temperature is increased, and at very high temperatures would be described as \"white hot\" as shorter and shorter wavelengths come to predominate the black body emission spectrum. Before it had even reached the red hot temperature, the thermal emission was mainly at longer infrared wavelengths, which are not visible; nevertheless, that radiation could be felt as it warms one's nearby skin.\n",
"Warm colors (red, orange, and yellow) are signs of warmness and can increase the temperature in a confined area. These colors are associated with danger, threat, warning, and movement and the way they affect the brain they increase metabolism and heat in the body and put it on alert which from Iranian traditional medicine point of view are sign of excessive heat.\n",
"The flame is yellow because of its temperature. To produce enough soot to be luminous, the flame is operated at a lower temperature than its efficient heating flame (see Bunsen burner). The colour of simple incandescence is due to black-body radiation. By Planck's law, as the temperature decreases, the peak of the black-body radiation curve moves to longer wavelengths, i.e. from the blue to the yellow. However, the blue light from a gas burner's premixed flame is primarily a product of molecular emission (Swan bands) rather than black-body radiation.\n",
"Getchellite turns darker red when heated, becoming black by the time it reaches its melting point. Close to this temperature it sublimes (changes directly from a solid to a vapor) and recrystallizes on cooler surfaces as minute acicular black crystals.Melting point: 340 °C to 355 °C. Boiling point: near 470 °C.\n",
"The hottest part of a candle flame is just above the very dull blue part to one side of the flame, at the base. At this point, the flame is about . However note that this part of the flame is very small and releases little heat energy. The blue color is due to chemiluminescence, while the visible yellow color is due to radiative emission from hot soot particles. The soot is formed through a series of complex chemical reactions, leading from the fuel molecule through molecular growth, until multi-carbon ring compounds are formed. The thermal structure of a flame is complex, hundreds of degrees over very short distances leading to extremely steep temperature gradients. On average, the flame temperature is about . The color temperature is approximately 1000 K.\n"
] |
why does fabric (temporally) change colour when it gets wet?
|
First of all, you have to look at how colour works. When light hits something, most of the light is absorbed by whatever is there, in your case, the backpack. What you see is only the light that isn't absorbed, it's reflected back at you. So, when you add water (rain) the reflection back is different because the water has changed how the reflection works. When you see something white, you see everything reflected back, when you see something black, thats because no light is reflected back.
|
[
"Linen fabrics have a high natural luster; their natural color ranges between shades of ivory, ecru, tan, or grey. Pure white linen is created by heavy bleaching. Linen fabric typically varies somewhat in thickness and is crisp and textured, but it can in some cases feel stiff and rough, and in other cases feel soft and smooth. When properly prepared, linen fabric has the ability to absorb and lose water rapidly. Linen can absorb a fair amount of moisture without feeling unpleasantly damp to the skin, unlike cotton.\n",
"Linen fabric feels cool to touch, a phenomenon which indicates its higher conductivity (the same principle that makes metals feel \"cold\"). It is smooth, making the finished fabric lint-free, and gets softer the more it is washed. However, constant creasing in the same place in sharp folds will tend to break the linen threads. This wear can show up in collars, hems, and any area that is iron creased during laundering. Linen has poor elasticity and does not spring back readily, explaining why it wrinkles so easily.\n",
"A side effect of textile optical whitening is to make the treated fabrics more visible with Night Vision Devices than non-treated ones. This may or may not be desirable for military or other applications. Optically brightened paper is often not useful in exacting photographic or art applications, since the whiteness decreases with time.\n",
"White was the universal color of both men and women's underwear and of sheets in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was unthinkable to have sheets or underwear of any other color. The reason was simple; the manner of washing linen in boiling water caused colors to fade. When linen was worn out, it was collected and turned into high-quality paper.\n",
"American researcher Alan D. Adler, confirming the presence of bilirubin on the fabric, noted that it is not light-stable and may change the color under any light. According to Adler, since the image fibers are at or near saturation while the surrounding cloth is not, the latter will gradually get darker until the image first becomes a silhouette and later finally vanishes.\n",
"Though many materials can be used to make form-fitting garments, the thinner materials, such as synthetic fibers, are the most commonly used, because of the smooth line that can be produced as well as their extra strength when pulled tight. Some fabrics cling to the skin or do so when wet, giving a form-fitting effect.\n",
"The transfer sheet is placed ink side down (usually) onto a t-shirt or fabric and ironed (without steam) onto the cloth. Some transfer sheets change color to signal that the transfer is finished. To create a glossy effect with adhesive based transfers, the transfer sheet is removed after it has been cooled down. To create a matte effect, it is peeled off while still hot.\n"
] |
what will happen if a republican president is elected in 2016 and signs the obamacare repeal bill?
|
Yes, it could be repealed, and what would happen depends on what exactly is in the bill repealing it.
While the Affordable Care Act is one discrete public law, it is codified by inserting provisions into various titles and sections of the U.S. Code (statutes) that deal with health care and insurance. So whatever act repeals it needs either to show what part of the current code needs to be repealed or it can repeal all of the provisions of the ACA at once and leave [someone else](_URL_0_) to do the dirty work of tracking it all down and updating the Code.
Then I suppose _URL_1_ goes down, no one gets insurance subsidies anymore, you can get jacked out of qualifying for insurance based on health condition, and premiums could be underwritten again. You might have to pay for preventive care, you might have a lifetime maximum benefit again, and there's no guarantee that the plans you do qualify for will offer decent coverage. A lot of poor people would get kicked off Medicaid.
It would be like 2008 again.
|
[
"In January 2017, at the beginning of the Congress, Collins voted in favor of a bill to begin the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (\"Obamacare\"). However, with four other Republican senators, Collins is leading an effort to slow down the ACA repeal in the Senate. Collins and fellow Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana have proposed legislation that permits states to either keep the ACA or move to a replacement program to be funded in part by the federal government. In January 2017, Collins \"was the only Republican to vote for a defeated amendment...that would have prevented the Senate from adopting legislation cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.\"\n",
"After President Trump took office in January 2017, Senate Republicans, under McConnell's leadership, began to work on a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. They faced opposition from both Democrats and moderate Republicans, who claimed that the bill would leave too many people uninsured, and more conservative Republicans, who protested that the bill kept too many of the ACA's regulation and spending increases, and was thus not a full repeal. Numerous attempts at repeal failed. On June 27, after a meeting with President Trump at the White House, McConnell signaled improvements for the repeal and replacement: \"We're not quite there. But I think we've got a really good chance of getting there. It'll just take us a little bit longer.\" During a Rotary Club lunch on July 6, McConnell said, \"If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur.\"\n",
"In July 2017 Thune said that Republicans would continue trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act regardless of whether that month's effort collapsed: \"We are going to vote to repeal and replace Obamacare. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.\"\n",
"In 2014, Republicans recaptured the Senate; two years later, Donald Trump won was elected President on the Republican line. For the first time since the ACA had passed, Republicans had the political power to repeal it, legislation Trump had promised to sign while campaigning. But, in March 2017, two months after Trump took office and seven years after \"Waterloo\", House Republicans' effort to \"repeal and replace\" Obamacare, the American Health Care Act of 2017 (AHCA) appeared to have foundered due to a lack of consensus among Republicans as to what form a replacement should take. A month earlier, \"The Washington Monthly\" had recalled \"Waterloo\" and said that Frum was \"[t]he one conservative who saw this coming.\"\n",
"President Trump's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not pass a Republican-controlled Senate during the summer of 2017, although they did pass the more conservative House of Representatives. The proposals were highly unpopular, as they were expected to reduce insurance coverage and increase insurance premium costs on the ACA exchanges. However, a variety of efforts to hinder the implementation of the ACA were implemented through executive order or by other means. These actions also were expected to reduce coverage and increase costs relative to the current law baseline. These efforts were mainly an appeal to the conservative Republican base, which favors repealing and replacing the ACA.\n",
"On March 24, 2017, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the House Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, was withdrawn by Republican House speaker Paul Ryan because it lacked the votes to pass, due in large part to opposition from Freedom Caucus Republicans.\n",
"On January 12, 2017, the Senate voted 51 to 48 to pass an FY2017 budget resolution, S.Con.Res. 3, that contained language allowing the repeal of the Affordable Care Act through the budget reconciliation process, which disallows a filibuster in the Senate. In spite of efforts during the vote-a-rama (a proceeding in which each amendment was considered and voted upon for about 10 minutes each until all 160 were completed) that continued into the early hours of the morning, Democrats could not prevent \"the GOP from following through on its repeal plans.\"\n"
] |
why there is no radio function in iphones (not sure about androids) radio was avaliable in almost all old phones
|
Because you need to add yet another chip which can receive the right wavelength, which adds complexity, costs, and takes away space for things you'd rather put in.
|
[
"Some previous iPhone models contained a chip capable of receiving radio signals; however, Apple has the FM radio feature switched off because there was no antenna connected to the chip. Later iterations of the iPhone (starting with the iPhone 7), however, do not contain radio chips at all. A campaign called \"Free Radio On My Phone\" was started to encourage cellphone manufacturers such as Apple to enable the radio on the phones they manufacture, reasons cited were that radio drains less power and is useful in an emergency such as the 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfire.\n",
"There were no mobile phones in the 1970s but simple HF radio sets were fitted to the 4WD vehicle fleet and some bulky handheld portables were available. The technology was primitive and the reception poor unless the user was on a high point somewhere. The radio signal was \"line-of-sight\" and bounced between fire towers and relay transmitters across the mountains back to the district offices. Safety became a real concern if someone was injured or stuck in a remote valley somewhere in a radio \"dead spot\". Nokia the largest worldwide developer and producer of hand-held mobile phones in the early 1980s, was initially a Finnish forestry company.\n",
"The device's main non-phone features are flashlight at the top of the device, and an FM radio. The radio requires a headset or headphones in lieu of an antenna to function, and can work in the background, thereby providing access to other phone tasks without having to turn it off.\n",
"The second generation mobile phones (circa 1978 through 1990) could be easily monitored by anyone with a 'scanning all-band receiver' because the system used an analog transmission system-like an ordinary radio transmitter. The third generation digital phones are harder to monitor because they use digitally encoded and compressed transmission. However the government can tap mobile phones with the cooperation of the phone company. It is also possible for organizations with the correct technical equipment to monitor mobile phone communications and decrypt the audio.\n",
"Recently, Sony Ericsson released a remote control car that could be controlled by any Bluetooth cell phone. Radio is the most popular because it does not require the vehicle to be limited by the length of the cable or in a direct line of sight with the controller (as with the infrared set-up). These also include remote controlled helicopters.\n",
"The original inventors of radio, from Guglielmo Marconi's time on, expected it to be used for one-on-one wireless communication tasks where telephones and telegraphs could not be used because of the problems involved in stringing copper wires from one point to another, such as in ship-to-shore communications. Those inventors had no expectations whatever that radio would become a major mass media entertainment and information medium earning many millions of dollars in revenues annually through radio advertising commercials or sponsorship. These latter uses were brought about after 1920 by business entrepreneurs such as David Sarnoff, who created the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and William S. Paley, who built Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). These broadcasting (as opposed to narrowcasting) business organizations began to be called network affiliates, because they consisted of loose chains of individual stations located in various cities, all transmitting the standard overall-system supplied fare, often at synchronized agreed-upon times. Some of these radio network stations were owned and operated by the networks, while others were independent radio owned by entrepreneurs allied with the respective networks. By selling blocks of time to advertisers, the medium was able to quickly become profitable and offer its products to listeners for free, provided they invested in a radio receiver set.\n",
"43–50 MHz cordless phones had a large installed base by the early 1990s, and featured shorter flexible antennas and automatic channel selection. Due to their popularity, an overcrowding of the band led to an allocation of additional frequencies; thus manufacturers were able to sell models with 25 channels instead of just 10 channels. Although less susceptible to interference than previous AM units, these models are no longer in production and are considered obsolete because their frequencies are easily heard on practically any radio scanner. Advanced models began to use voice inversion as a basic form of scrambling to help limit unauthorized eavesdropping. These phones share the 49.8 MHz band (49.830 - 49.890) with some wireless baby monitors.\n"
] |
why are australia's vast empty planes simply not covered in solar panels to help with their power productions crisis?
|
A couple of reasons:
* it's expensive as fuck
* you lose a lot of the power having to transfer it across lines to where it is useful.
* despite it being fairly inhospitable to people, there's still a great deal of wildlife there that would be impacted by such a huge construction project.
I mean yeah put a solar plant or two as close as you can to civilization, but don't cover the land with them.
|
[
"Solar Ship Inc. is a company based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada in order to develop hybrid aircraft to deliver critical cargo to cut-off places. The solarship gains lift from both buoyant gas and aerodynamics and uses power from solar panels. The aircraft is a new concept of transport that does not rely on fossil fuels or ground infrastructure.\n",
"Derry Newman, chief executive of Solarcentury, argues that the UK's \"famously overcast weather does not make it an unsuitable place for solar power, as solar panels work on daylight, not necessarily direct sunlight.\" Some solar cells work better in direct sunlight, others can use more diffuse light. While insolation rates are lower in England than France and Spain, they are still usable. Many of the solar panels can be monitored on the internet, such as the Slepe Farm in Dorset, a 492 kW solar field.\n",
"An offer to clean Hangar One and coat its outsides with solar panels to recoup the costs of cleaning was floated by a private company, but the plan never saw fruition because it was too costly and the orientation of the hangar for solar collection was less than ideal.\n",
"In 2006, an offer to clean the hangar and coat its outsides with solar panels to recoup the costs of cleaning was floated by a private company, but the plan never saw fruition because it was too costly.\n",
"The project generated controversy because of the decision to build it on ecologically intact desert habitat. The Ivanpah installation was estimated, before operations started, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 400,000 tons annually. It was designed to minimize impacts on the natural environment compared to some photovoltaic solar facilities because the use of heliostats does not require as much grading of the land. The facility was fenced off to keep out some terrestrial wildlife. However, birds faced the risk of collision with the heliostat mirrors or from burning in solar flux created by the mirror field.\n",
"In addition, land availability has a large effect on the available solar energy because solar panels can only be set up on land that is otherwise unused and suitable for solar panels. Roofs have been found to be a suitable place for solar cells, as many people have discovered that they can collect energy directly from their homes this way. Other areas that are suitable for solar cells are lands that are not being used for businesses where solar plants can be established.\n",
"In 2015, Wood told the ABC that the environmental benefits achieved by Australia's take-up of solar photovoltaic panels had come at great cost to Australian taxpayers- a net cost of \"about $9 billion\". He said \"in the time that we had could have done a lot better, with that money, or we could have actually reduced greenhouse gas emissions a lot more cheaply... and then we could have been moving onto a different future for solar.\" \"Solar with batteries in the future might be a much better way.\" John Grimes responded in defence of solar panel deployment, stating that the report Wood was referring to was \"cherry-picking\", and was \"designed to cast solar PV in the worst possible light.\" \n"
] |
why is it recommended to cook with cold water instead of hot water?
|
Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:
1. [ELI5: Why is it better to start with cold water and boil it when making pasta or coffee, rather than starting with hot water? ](_URL_3_) ^(_30 comments_)
1. [ELI5: When I boil water, why am i supposed to use cold water? ](_URL_2_) ^(_29 comments_)
1. [When cooking, why do we not boil hot water from the faucet? Won't it be faster and doesn't the heat kill any bacteria anyway? ](_URL_1_) ^(_4 comments_)
1. [ELI5: Why do packages often say bring cold water to a boil? ](_URL_0_) ^(_11 comments_)
|
[
"Since cooking foods at high temperatures in order to kill bacteria and pathogens is required, cautionary measures need to be taken into consideration. One of these precautions is the use of water and other solutions around deep fryers because water or ice that meets hot oils is likely to gurgle, splash, and bubble onto nearby surfaces or objects. In fact, the use of water or ice with hot oil can cause the water to evaporate at that high temperature leading to severe bodily injury or heated explosions. This is commonly referred to as the flash point and should always be avoided. It is always best to use a chemical agent like a fire extinguisher or cover the oil with a non-porous object like a metal lid or platter instead of liquids like water. Another precaution to consider when using a deep fat fryer to make sure that the oil does not overflow when food items are placed into the fryer and that the food item can be completely submerged to ensure even cooking, especially for large objects like a turkey. If the oil meets flames, from stove top burners and other sources, the results can be life threatening like heated or gaseous oils that can explode nearby workstations while causing wall and ceiling fires. Another factor that can cause oil fires is the environment surrounding the deep fryer such as keeping the work area clear of objects and placing hot oil containers/fryers on smooth surfaces so that they do not spill. Furthermore, carbon monoxide can be created from deep-frying and little ventilation/air flow can cause people in the area to be poisoned, which is especially dangerous, so carbon monoxide detectors should be maintained in working order.\n",
"Depending on the needs and on the water temperature, couple heating and cooling can be considered. For example, heat could first be extracted from the water (making it colder); and, secondly, that same water could cycle to a refrigerating unit to be used for even more effective cold production.\n",
"Water heating is a heat transfer process that uses an energy source to heat water above its initial temperature. Typical domestic uses of hot water include cooking, cleaning, bathing, and space heating. In industry, hot water and water heated to steam have many uses.\n",
"Two conflicting safety issues affect water heater temperature—the risk of scalding from excessively hot water greater than , and the risk of incubating bacteria colonies, particularly \"Legionella\", in water that is not hot enough to kill them. Both risks are potentially life-threatening and are balanced by setting the water heater's thermostat to . The European Guidelines for Control and Prevention of Travel Associated Legionnaires’ Disease recommend that hot water should be stored at and distributed so that a temperature of at least and preferably is achieved within one minute at points of use.\n",
"With the aim of decreasing net efficiency, some brands of laundry detergent have been reformulated for use with cold water. By allowing the consumer to use cold water rather than hot, each load cuts back significantly on energy costs.\n",
"Cold brewing has some disadvantages compared to hot steeping. If the leaves or source water contain unwanted bacteria, they may flourish, whereas using hot water has the benefit of killing most bacteria. This is less of a concern in modern times and developed regions. Cold brewing may also allow for less caffeine to be extracted.\n",
"Since some hot tubs are not drained after each use it is necessary to treat the water to keep it attractive and safe. It must be neither too alkaline nor too acidic, and must be sanitised to stay free of harmful microorganisms. Partly due to their high water temperatures, hot tubs can pose particular health risks if not regularly maintained: outbreaks of Legionnaires' Disease have been traced to poorly sanitized hot tubs. Typically chlorine or bromine are used as sanitizers, but salt water chlorination is starting to become more common. Hot tubs should also be periodically shocked, which means oxidizing or breaking down organic material left behind from the sanitizer, as well as non-filterable material such as soap films and perspiration.\n"
] |
What properties make an object heat faster in a microwave?
|
You are observing the dielectric properties of the various materials. Some materials like dry ice are transparent to microwaves and will not heat up in a microwave because it has low dielectric loss. Some ceramic plates and bowls have higher dielectric loss than others meaning they couple with the microwaves and begin to vibrate generating heat.
Metals reflect most of the microwaves but the surface layer can build a considerable charge creating sparks if the voltage is high enough to arc through air.
|
[
"Different compounds convert microwave radiation to heat by different amounts. This selectivity allows some parts of the object being heated to heat more quickly or more slowly than others (particularly the reaction vessel).\n",
"Microwave heating can cause localized thermal runaways in some materials with low thermal conductivity which also have dielectric constants that increase with temperature. An example is glass, which can exhibit thermal runaway in a microwave to the point of melting if preheated. Additionally, microwaves can melt certain types of rocks, producing small quantities of molten rock. Some ceramics can also be melted, and may even become clear upon cooling. Thermal runaway is more typical of electrically conductive liquids such as salty water.\n",
"Because microwaves transfer electromagnetic energy at a molecular level, and the vibration of the molecules creates heat through friction, it is difficult to properly check for this highly localized 'micro'-thermal effect or create conditions where study of the putative 'athermal' effect is possible.\n",
"Microwaves are used for heating of various materials in cooking and various industrial processes. The rate of heating of the material depends on the energy absorption, which depends on the dielectric constant of the material. The dependence of dielectric constant on temperature varies for different materials; some materials display significant increase with increasing temperature. This behavior, when the material gets exposed to microwaves, leads to selective local overheating, as the warmer areas are better able to accept further energy than the colder areas—potentially dangerous especially for thermal insulators, where the heat exchange between the hot spots and the rest of the material is slow. These materials are called \"thermal runaway materials\". This phenomenon occurs in some ceramics.\n",
"BULLET::::- Any hot object ultimately returns to thermal equilibrium with its environment, due to heat loss from conduction, convection and radiation. Efficiency (the proportion of heat energy retained for a predefined time period) is directly related to heat loss from the collector surface. Convection and radiation are the most important sources of heat loss. Thermal insulation is used to slow heat loss from a hot object. This follows the Second law of thermodynamics (the 'equilibrium effect').\n",
"Acting as internal heat source, microwave absorption is able to heat the target compounds without heating the entire furnace or oil bath, which saves time and energy. It is also able to heat sufficiently thin objects throughout their volume (instead of through its outer surface), in theory producing more uniform heating. However, due to the design of most microwave ovens and to uneven absorption by the object being heated, the microwave field is usually non-uniform and localized superheating occurs. Microwave volumetric heating (MVH) overcomes the uneven absorption by applying an intense, uniform microwave field.\n",
"At very high frequencies, the wavelength of the electromagnetic field becomes shorter than the distance between the metal walls of the heating cavity, or than the dimensions of the walls themselves. This is the case inside a microwave oven. In such cases, conventional far-field electromagnetic waves form (the cavity no longer acts as a pure capacitor, but rather as an antenna), and are absorbed to cause heating, but the dipole-rotation mechanism of heat deposition remains the same. However, microwaves are not efficient at causing the heating effects of low frequency fields that depend on slower molecular motion, such as those caused by ion-drag.\n"
] |
how is it possible that we encounter plateaus when losing weight even if we continue to operate at a caloric deficit?
|
There are a lot of possible explanations. One big thing to keep in mind is water weight.
What are the physical things that make up your weight? Bones... Fat... Muscles... Organ tissues........ and Water! You're actually mostly water, by the way. And the amount of water sitting inside of you can vary DRAMATICALLY.
You ever really, really have to pee? A full bladder can potentially fill multiple bottles of water when emptied. There's a significant weight difference right there, especially since urine is a little bit heavier than plain water.
But when you pee, you're not peeing out all of the water inside of you. Your body actually really wants to keep a certain amount of water most of the time.
We depend on a water-to-salt balance. If you eat A LOT OF SALT one day, your body decides it needs A LOT MORE WATER to compensate. So the water that you drink, or eat in the form of fruit, etc., will just STAY there inside of you.
If you eat HARDLY ANY salt, and especially if you drink A LOT more water than usual, your body says hey! We can dump all this OLD water in place of the NEW water! And you'll pee a lot.
Yes, that's right. The more water you drink, the less water you retain. Putting MORE of something into your body can actually make you LIGHTER (temporarily). Weird.
The difference between a "LOTS OF SALT" day and a "NO SALT, lots of water" day can be HUGE. Many pounds.
But the most important thing to remember is that this is all TEMPORARY. You're NOT gaining and losing fat. It's an ILLUSION.
For example, you can't do the "no salt, lots of water" trick multiple days in a row and expect to lose 5 pounds every day. It doesn't work. Your body only stores so much water. It's best not to think of this as contributing to your "real weight" at all.
It's more like, say, on Tuesday morning Bob steps on the scale, and it reads 205 lbs. Bob has no idea how close this number is to his real weight. His real weight is a total mystery. Bob figures 205 must be pretty close, so that's the number he writes down. (There are actually only 200 pounds of average-day-Bob, but his water stores allow plus-or-minus 5 pounds based on water retention, but Bob doesn't really need to know this.)
Basically, this is the reason it's really kind of silly to record your weight every day. Every week is a little better. But even then, don't take every number for gospel. Come back a month or two later and take a look at the trend line. You'll probably see plateaus, maybe even ups and downs, even if you've been super consistent in caloric intake and exercise. If you eat a lot of salt the day before a weigh-in, you'll "balloon up" - who cares? You're still getting skinnier, and your pants are falling down. You've still lost "real weight". The scale is just guesstimating.
One really common thing is to lose weight REALLY, REALLY QUICKLY at the start of a diet. You're eating less than usual, so you're probably eating less salt than usual, so you lose a lot of that "fake" water weight RIGHT AWAY and feel super good about yourself. In the first month, maybe the scale says you've lost 10 pounds!... Hooray!... but actually no. You've probably lost like 5 pounds. A week later, the scale hasn't moved. A week after that, the scale still hasn't moved. You think you're plateauing....... You're probably not. You're probably still losing like 1 pound a week. Your water levels are just fluctuating and hiding your progress.
**tl;dr - your scale is lying to you, water weight can fluctuate up and down like crazy, don't trust day-to-day numbers, just look at the trend line over a period of multiple months**
|
[
"A practical application of the plateau principle is that most people have experienced \"plateauing\" during regimens for weight management or training for sports. After a few weeks of progress, one seems unable to continue gaining in ability or losing weight. This outcome results from the same underlying quantitative model. This entry will describe the popular concepts as well as development of the plateau principle as a scientific, mathematical model.\n",
"In the sciences, the broadest application of the plateau principle is creating realistic time signatures for change in kinetic models (see Mathematical model). One example of this principle is the long time required to effectively change human body composition. Theoretical studies have shown that many months of consistent physical training and food restriction are needed to bring about permanent weight stability in people who were previously overweight.\n",
"When a bodily constituent adjusts exponentially over time, it usually attains a new stable level as a result of the plateau principle. The new level may be higher than the initial level (hypertrophy) in the case of strength training or lower in the case of dieting or disuse atrophy. This adjustment contributes to homeostasis but does not require feedback regulation. Gradual, asymptotic approach to a new balance between synthesis and degradation produces a stable level. Because of this, the plateau principle is sometimes called the stability principle. Mathematically, the result is linear dynamics despite the fact that most biological processes are non-linear (see Nonlinear system) if considered over a very broad range of inputs.\n",
"It is especially common for people who are trying to lose weight to experience plateaus after several weeks of successful weight reduction. The plateau principle suggests that this leveling off is a sign of success. Basically, as one loses weight, less food energy is required to maintain the resting metabolic rate, which makes the initial regimen less effective. The idea of weight plateaus has been discussed for subjects who are participating in a calorie restriction experiment Food energy is expended largely through work done against gravity (see Joule), so weight reduction lessens the effectiveness of a given workout. In addition, a trained person has greater skill and therefore greater efficiency during a workout. Remedies include increasing the workout intensity or length and reducing portion sizes of meals more than may have been done initially.\n",
"Hypermetabolism is the physiological state of increased rate of metabolic activity and is characterized by an abnormal increase in the body’s basal metabolic rate. Hypermetabolism is accompanied by a variety of internal and external symptoms, most notably extreme weight loss, and can also be a symptom in itself. This state of increased metabolic activity can signal underlying issues, especially hyperthyroidism. Patients with Fatal familial insomnia, an extremely rare and strictly hereditary disorder, also presents with hypermetabolism; however, this universally fatal disorder is exceedingly rare, with only a few known cases worldwide. The drastic impact of the hypermetabolic state on patient nutritional requirements is often understated or overlooked as well.\n",
"The plateau principle is a mathematical model or scientific law originally developed to explain the time course of drug action (pharmacokinetics). The principle has wide applicability in pharmacology, physiology, nutrition, biochemistry, and system dynamics. It applies whenever a drug or nutrient is infused or ingested at a relatively constant rate and when a constant fraction is eliminated during each time interval. Under these conditions, any change in the rate of infusion leads to an exponential increase or decrease until a new level is achieved. This behavior is also called an approach to steady state because rather than causing an indefinite increase or decrease, a natural balance is achieved when the rate of infusion or production is balanced by the rate of loss.\n",
"The plateau effect is a force of nature that lessens the effectiveness of once effective measures over time. An example of the plateau effect is when someone's exercise fails to be as effective as in the past, similar to the concept of diminishing returns. A person enters into a period where there is no improvement or a decrease in performance.\n"
] |
How does our body keep track of time? And how might this effect space travel?
|
On your question about the role of the sun and the implications for space travel, there were a series of interesting studies a while back that provides part of the answer. The goal of these studies was to determine if our normal [circadian rhythm](_URL_3_) (as measured by physiological markers like the body temperature) as well the sleep/wake cycle was set by some kind of an internal clock or by external factors such as sunlight and other temporal cues. To answer this question researchers placed a group of individuals in a controlled environment e.g. in bunkers), where at first they gave them temporal cues (by providing access to TV, radio, etc) about the time of day.
During this adaptation period, both the circadian rhythm and the sleep/wake cycle remained matched to the 24 hour cycle. But then, the researchers removed these cues to see how the individuals would adapt.
Interestingly what happened is that the [sleep cycle of many of the individuals gradually lengthened](_URL_4_) ([source](_URL_1_)). In fact further studies have a shown that the sleep/wake cycles can vary significantly among individuals. In contrast, when the circadian rhythm was monitored by measuring physiological markers (such as the core body temperature), [researchers found that individuals maintained a circadian rhythm of about 24 hours (on average 24.18hrs)](_URL_0_), with much less variation. These results suggest that while external cues and stimuli can cause the activity cycle (or sleep/wake cycle) to change dramatically, the internal clock that sets the circadian rhythm is much more stable and in most people is tightly aligned with the 24 hour daily cycle. Nevertheless, this fact does not mean that external stimuli do not matter as far as the circadian rhythm is concerned. In fact over time the circadian rhythm can respond to match external stimuli such as the light/dark cycle in a process called [entrainment](_URL_2_). This fact makes it possible to gradually shift the circadian rhythm (within a certain range) from the normal 24 hour cycle by changing the external conditions.
Edit: Added in the original sources of the studies referenced, and made a key correction as pointed out by /u/whatthefat
|
[
"Time is discretized into time steps. This discretization in both space and time results in a cellular automaton. One can think of a cell as being a few car lengths long and the maximum velocity as being the speed limit on the road. The time step is then the time taken for a car at the speed limit to travel around 10 car lengths. However, the model can also be thought as just a way to understand or to model features of traffic jams by showing how interactions between nearby cars cause the cars to slow down. In each time step, the procedure is as follows.\n",
"Time has historically been closely related with space, the two together merging into spacetime in Einstein's special relativity and general relativity. According to these theories, the concept of time depends on the spatial reference frame of the observer, and the human perception as well as the measurement by instruments such as clocks are different for observers in relative motion. For example, if a spaceship carrying a clock flies through space at (very nearly) the speed of light, its crew does not notice a change in the speed of time on board their vessel because everything traveling at the same speed slows down at the same rate (including the clock, the crew's thought processes, and the functions of their bodies). However, to a stationary observer watching the spaceship fly by, the spaceship appears flattened in the direction it is traveling and the clock on board the spaceship appears to move very slowly.\n",
"Thus the duration of the clock cycle of a moving clock is found to be increased: it is measured to be \"running slow\". The range of such variances in ordinary life, where even considering space travel, are not great enough to produce easily detectable time dilation effects and such vanishingly small effects can be safely ignored for most purposes. It is only when an object approaches speeds on the order of 30,000 km/s (1/10 the speed of light) that time dilation becomes important.\n",
"One more important step being left out of the standard model, Wiltshire claimed, was the fact that as proven by observation, gravity slows time. Thus, a clock will move faster in empty space, which possesses low gravitation, than inside a galaxy, which has much more gravity, and he argued that as large as a 38% difference between the time on clocks in the Milky Way and those in a galaxy floating in a void exists. Thus, unless we can correct for that—timescapes each with different times—our observations of the expansion of space will be, and are, incorrect. Wiltshire claims that the 1998 supernovae observations that led to the conclusion of an expanding universe and dark energy can instead be explained by Buchert's equations if certain strange aspects of general relativity are taken into account.\n",
"BULLET::::2. The rhythms are entrainable. The rhythm can be reset by exposure to external stimuli (such as light and heat), a process called entrainment. The external stimulus used to entrain a rhythm is called the Zeitgeber, or \"time giver\". Travel across time zones illustrates the ability of the human biological clock to adjust to the local time; a person will usually experience jet lag before entrainment of their circadian clock has brought it into sync with local time.\n",
"Einstein showed in his thought experiments that people travelling at different speeds, while agreeing on cause and effect, measure different time separations between events, and can even observe different chronological orderings between non-causally related events. Though these effects are typically minute in the human experience, the effect becomes much more pronounced for objects moving at speeds approaching the speed of light. Subatomic particles exist for a well known average fraction of a second in a lab relatively at rest, but when travelling close to the speed of light they are measured to travel farther and exist for much longer than when at rest. According to the special theory of relativity, in the high-speed particle's frame of reference, it exists, on the average, for a standard amount of time known as its mean lifetime, and the distance it travels in that time is zero, because its velocity is zero. Relative to a frame of reference at rest, time seems to \"slow down\" for the particle. Relative to the high-speed particle, distances seem to shorten. Einstein showed how both temporal and spatial dimensions can be altered (or \"warped\") by high-speed motion.\n",
"Physically, traversed space and elapsed time are linked by velocity. It is logical, then, to consider that the tau effect occurs as a consequence of the brain's assumption regarding stimulus velocity. Indeed, different theories regarding the brain's expectations about stimulus velocity have been put forward in an effort to explain the tau effect.\n"
] |
How does graphite bind to paper, and how does an eraser remove it?
|
[So this is what paper looks like close up](_URL_0_)
[This is what graphite might look like close up](_URL_1_)
When you write, the graphite becomes all dusty and lands on the paper, and into the holes of the paper and all over it. But it isn't bonded to it. This is why, after long periods of time, lots of things like books and papers and letters fade and become harder to read, because this dust that is on the paper flies off.
An eraser rubs right on the paper, and pulls some of the dust off. This is why the eraser leaves little rolled up rubber side-effects, with graphite on them, because they got stuck to the sticky rubber.
There is no bonding, just being stuck in the holes of the paper and all around it, and so on. Also, pressing a pencil on the paper makes nice little indents for the graphite to stick into, so it's not just like you can shake your paper and have the graphite fall off!
|
[
"The ability to leave marks on paper and other objects gave graphite its name, given in 1789 by German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner. It stems from \"graphein\", meaning \"to write\" or \"draw\" in Ancient Greek.\n",
"An ink eraser is an instrument used to remove ink from a writing surface, more difficult than removing pencil markings. Older types are a metal scraper, which scrapes the ink off the surface, and an eraser similar to a rubber pencil eraser, but with additional abrasives, such as sand, incorporated. Fibreglass erasers also work by abrasion. These erasers physically remove the ink from the paper. There is some unavoidable damage with most types of paper and ink, where the paper absorbs some ink, but not all.\n",
"Kneaded erasers are also useful for making impromptu sculptures to sketch from. Kneaded erasers are mostly used for slightly, but not fully, erasing the content of graphite. It has great plasticity and can be molded and shaped into desired forms for ease of usage.\n",
"While graphite is claimed to be a hazardous material in space because it burns and conducts electricity, two facts mitigate the risks: 1) the graphite in pencils is mixed with clay during fabrication of the \"lead\" to help hold its shape, and would only burn at greater than ; 2) the quantity of graphite particles actually produced during occasional writing would be too small to constitute an electrical hazard.\n",
"A fibreglass eraser, a bundle of very fine glass fibres, can be used for erasing and other tasks requiring abrasion. Typically the eraser is a pen-shaped device with a replaceable insert with glass fibres, which wear down in use. The fibres are very hard; in addition to removing pencil and pen markings, such erasers are used for cleaning traces on electronic circuit boards to facilitate soldering, removing rust, and many other applications. As an example of an unusual use, a fibreglass eraser was used for preparing an archaeological fossil embedded in a very hard and massive limestone.\n",
"Eaton's Corrasable Bond is a trademarked name for a brand of erasable typing paper. Erasable paper has a glazed or coated surface which is almost invisible, is easily removed by friction, and accepts typewriter ink fairly well. Removing the coating removes the ink on top of it, so mistakes can be easily erased once. After erasure, the correction is typed onto an unprotected paper surface and cannot be easily erased a second time.\n",
"When a large number of crystallographic defects(physical) bind these planes together, graphite loses its lubrication properties and becomes what is known as pyrolytic carbon, a useful material in blood-contacting implants such as prosthetic heart valves.\n"
] |
Royal chefs in Middle Ages
|
The first German language cookbook was written by a woman named Sabina Welserin in 1553 (you can read it [here](_URL_0_)). Not much is known about her life but she mentioned in one recipe that the cook for Count of Leuchtenberg instructed her to cook fish a certain way hinting she is a professional cook of some kind. From the recipes she wrote (many recipes ask for large quantities of spices and sugar and some recipes were clearly for fancy banquets) it suggests she cooks for a very wealthy (if not downright aristocrat) household.
|
[
"The most well known French chef of the Middle Ages was Guillaume Tirel, also known as Taillevent. Taillevent worked in numerous royal kitchens during the 14th century. His first position was as a kitchen boy in 1326. He was chef to Philip VI, then the Dauphin who was son of John II. The Dauphin became King Charles V of France in 1364, with Taillevent as his chief cook. His career spanned sixty-six years, and upon his death he was buried in grand style between his two wives. His tombstone represents him in armor, holding a shield with three cooking pots, \"marmites\", on it.\n",
"A type of refined cooking developed in the late Middle Ages that set the standard among the nobility all over Europe. Common seasonings in the highly spiced sweet-sour repertory typical of upper-class medieval food included verjuice, wine and vinegar in combination with spices such as black pepper, saffron and ginger. These, along with the widespread use of sugar or honey, gave many dishes a sweet-sour flavor. Almonds were very popular as a thickener in soups, stews, and sauces, particularly as almond milk.\n",
"BULLET::::- Martino da Como (c. 1430–late 15th century), \"Prince of cooks\", considered the western world's first celebrity chef. His book \"Libro de Arte Coquinaria\" (1465) was a benchmark for Italian cuisine and laid the ground for European gastronomic tradition\n",
"During the 15th century haute cuisine began to emerge, largely limited to the aristocracy. Cookery books from this period are aimed at the upper class. The first Dutch-language cook book printed in Brussels is called \"Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen\" (\"A notable book of cookery\"). It offers medieval recipes for festivities, such as sauces, game, jellies, fish, meat, pies, tarts, eggs, dairy products, candied quinces and ginger. The recipes come from various sources, many of them French. Historically, Dutch cuisine was closely related to northern French cuisine, since the two countries have nearby borders and the Low Countries and Northern France have been historically ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy. This is still visible in traditional Dutch restaurants and the Southern regional cuisine, that is still colloquially referred to as \"Bourgondisch\".\n",
"In the medieval cuisine of Northern Europe, pastry chefs were able to produce nice, stiff pastries because they cooked with shortening and butter. Some incomplete lists of ingredients have been found in medieval cookbooks, but no full, detailed versions. There were stiff, empty pastries called coffins or 'huff paste', that were eaten by servants only and included an egg yolk glaze to help make them more enjoyable to consume. Medieval pastries also included small tarts to add richness.\n",
"The Bors Hede Inne is a dinner theater restaurant, open year round by reservation. The food is prepared from recipes found in historical medieval cookbooks, and served by in-character interpreters. The Bors Hede is patterned after an actual late medieval inn, which would expect to serve the well-to-do. Guests are provided with Borde knives and spoons, and genteel lavering (handwashing) before being presented with a trencher, a flat half of bread, which serves as a plate. Throughout the meal they are periodically visited by a minstrel who plays songs appropriate to the period.\n",
"At the end of the Middle Ages, the level of refinement among the noble and royal courts of Europe had increased considerably, and the demands of powerful hosts and their rich dinner guests resulted in ever more complicated and elaborate creations. Chiquart, cook to Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, described an entremets entitled \"Castle of Love\" in his 15th-century culinary treatise \"Du fait de cuisine\" (\"On cookery\"). It consisted of a giant castle model with four towers, carried in by four men. The castle contained, among other things, a roast piglet, a swan cooked and redressed in its own plumage, a roast boar's head and a pike cooked and sauced in three different ways without having been cut into pieces, all of them breathing fire. The battlements of the castle were adorned with the banners of the Duke and his guests, manned by miniature archers, and inside the castle there was a fountain that gushed rosewater and spiced wine. Noteworthy for its entertainment value to the assembled nobles of the time, the 17th century provided a memorable banquet event courtesy of the host, the Duke of Buckingham. In honor of his royal guests, Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, a pie was prepared concealing a human being — famous dwarf of the era, Jeffrey Hudson. \n"
] |
why would human poop be white?
|
White stool is not normal and should be evaluated promptly by a doctor. White stool is caused by a lack of bile, which may indicate a serious underlying problem.
Bile is a digestive fluid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. Stool gets its normal brownish color from bile, which is excreted from the liver into the small intestine during the digestive process. If the liver doesn't produce bile or if bile is obstructed from leaving the liver, stool will be light colored or white.
Liver diseases, such as hepatitis and cirrhosis, can cause white stool. In some cases, the problem lies not in the liver but in the tube (duct) that delivers the bile to the intestines. This tube can be squeezed shut or blocked — for example, by a tumor or a gallstone — which prevents the bile from entering the intestines. Some babies are born with constricted bile ducts.
mayo clinic
|
[
"Sometimes food may make an appearance in the feces. Common undigested foods found in human feces are seeds, nuts, corn, and beans, mainly because of their high dietary fiber content. Beets may turn feces different hues of red. Artificial food coloring in some processed foods, such as highly colorful packaged breakfast cereals, can cause unusual coloring of feces if eaten in sufficient quantities.\n",
"The appearance of human fecal matter varies according to diet and health. Normally it is semisolid, with a mucus coating. A combination of bile and bilirubin, which comes from dead red blood cells, gives feces the typical brown color.\n",
"White adipose tissue, also known as white fat, is one of the 2 types of adipose tissue in mammals. White adipose tissue stores energy in form of fatty acids that are broken down from triglycerides. Its normal function is to store free fatty acids within the tissue. However, when the glucose level of in the cell drops in situations like fasting, white adipose tissue generates glycerol 3-phosphate. The presence of glyceroneogenesis in white adipose tissues is proven by an experiment with mouse. Since glycerol 3-phosphate is usually generated from glucose through glycolysis, level of triglyceride content was compared with normal mouse and mouse which cannot intake glucose in to their cells. Glucose transporter 4, also known as GLUT 4 (Figure 6) is the transporter protein of glucose which intakes extracellular glucose to intracellular environment. In order to examine the presence of glyceroneogenesis in mouse, genes expressing GLUT4 were deleted and triglyceride content of adipose tissue was compared with normal mouse. Since glucose cannot enter the cell, synthesis of glycerol 3-phosphate was expected to decrease. However, the result showed no change in triglyceride concentration. This experiment proved the presence of an alternate metabolic pathway to synthesize triglyceride in adipose tissues of mouse. Furthermore, an additional experiment was performed in order to examine the relation of the alternate glycerol 3-phosphate synthesizing pathway and PEPC-K. Triglyceride content in white adipose tissue of mouse with mutated gene which expresses PEPC-K was observed. Sine PEPC-K is the essential regulatory enzyme for glyceroneogenesis, mutation in PEPC-K genes would lower the activity of glyceroneogenesis. The result showed no production of triglyceride in white adipose tissues as expected. Hence, glyceroneogenesis was present in white adipose tissues because it was able to generate triglycerides without glucose and it was unable to synthesize when PEPC-K was mutated. Therefore, during fasting or low carbohydrate diet, white adipose tissues generate glycerol 3-phosphate using glyceroneogenesis.\n",
"Not all the effects of pigmentation are advantageous. Pigmentation increases the heat load in hot climates, and black people absorb 30% more heat from sunlight than do white people, although this factor may be offset by more profuse sweating. In cold climates black skin entails more heat loss by radiation. Pigmentation also hinders synthesis of vitamin D, so that in areas of poor nutrition black children are more liable to rickets than white children. Since pigmentation appears to be not entirely advantageous to life in the tropics, other hypotheses about its biological significance have been advanced, for example a secondary phenomenon induced by adaptation to parasites and tropical diseases.\n",
"Bilirubin is excreted in bile and urine, and elevated levels may indicate certain diseases. It is responsible for the yellow color of bruises and the yellow discoloration in jaundice. Its subsequent breakdown products, such as stercobilin, cause the brown color of faeces. A different breakdown product, urobilin, is the main component of the straw-yellow color in urine.\n",
"\"According to the Venezuela census the definition of White is: People whose skin tone is clear and that is why it is usually associated with populations of European origin. Although literally implies external issues such as clear skin, shape and color of hair and eyes, among others, \"white\" has been used in different ways in different historical periods and places. Like other common words for human ethnicities, its precise definition is somewhat confusing\"\n",
"White roll is the white line that borders the top of the upper lip. It's an adnexal mass of specialized glands and fat. White roll occurs naturally for nearly everyone, although it can be not white and less visible for dark skinned individuals. Well defined white roll indicates youthfulness and is considered aesthetically pleasing.\n"
] |
what is actually in contraband (cheap) cigarettes and why are they so cheap and illegal?
|
Because some states like New York tax cigarettes heavily. Contraband cigarettes are purchased out of state to avoid the taxes and sold at a discounted rate.
|
[
"The ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) warns counterfeit cigarettes were found to contain unsanitary ingredients (such as human feces, dead flies and mold), as well as a higher dosage of lethal substances in excess of legitimate cigarettes. Illicit cigarettes seized in Canada and the United Kingdom were found to contain five times more cadmium, six times as much lead, 160% more tar, and 133% more carbon dioxide. Consumers are warned to take caution and avoid the temptation to save money by purchasing illegal cigarettes as it poses greater health risks compared to legal cigarettes.\n",
"Since 2003 it is illegal to label a tobacco product as \"light\", \"mild\", \"low-tar” or any other misleading form of advertisement which could cause the impression that the product causes less damage than other tobacco products.\n",
"The illicit trade of tobacco is both supply and demand driven, as consumers look to save money by evading taxes on tobacco; and suppliers want to take advantage of easy border entry, high profit margins, and weak repercussions if caught. Illegal cigarettes are priced much cheaper than legal cigarettes, and do not undergo stringent regulation in the form of health warnings, product checks, or age verification. Studies highlight that increased tobacco taxes do not dissuade consumers from smoking, rather, consumers turn to cheaper brands and illegal cigarettes. Low costs of production and high levels of demand make illicit cigarettes one of the world's most trafficked illegal goods (Allen 2011). In London alone, 85% of smuggled cigarettes were found to be counterfeit, while the UK Border Agency averages more than 1 million counterfeit cigarette seizures per day (ICC 2007). Similarly, South Africa reports the incidence of illicit cigarettes has doubled the past 3 years, accounting for 25% of the total market in 2012. Public tolerance and acceptance of illegal cigarettes as a norm also factors into the continued purchase behavior among consumers, as they believe legitimate cigarettes are over-taxed and too expensive.\n",
"A federal law passed in the United States in 2009 has made it illegal for tobacco shops and stores to carry cigarettes that contain flavors other than menthol. The law affects the Djarum Black cigarette brand, and has made it unavailable for purchase within the United States.\n",
"The lawsuit claimed that Altria's marketing of \"light\" and \"low tar\" cigarettes constituted fraudulent misrepresentations under the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act (MUTPA) because it deceived smokers into thinking the products are safer than regular cigarettes.\n",
"Vending machines, individually sold single cigarettes, and product displays near schools, next to candy and sweet drinks, and at the eye-level of young children are all used around the world to sell nicotine-containing products. Even large brands are frequently advertised in ways that break local regulations. In many countries, such marketing methods are not illegal. Where they are illegal, enforcement is often a problem. For instance, Dr. Suresh Kumar Arora, New Delhi's chief tobacco control officer, said: \"We were wasting our time fining cigarette vendors and distributors. They had no idea of the law. Most are illiterate. Our teams would tear down posters and in no time, they would be up again because the real culprits were the big tobacco companies – ITC, Philip Morris (now Altria), Godfrey Phillip. I told them to stop giving posters to their dealers otherwise I would drag them through the courts. Since last May, Delhi has been free of tobacco posters, 100% free\". He has, however, been unable to keep mobile vendors from illegally selling cigarettes next to schools.\n",
"Costs of illicit trade also go beyond purely financial measures, with repercussions such as encouraging youth uptake of smoking, and increasing health risks for consumers, as illegal cigarettes are not bound by product and ingredient checks. Despite industry and government efforts to implement ID checks for tobacco sales to regulate availability, the prominence of illicit cigarette trade facilitates cigarette affordability for youth; with its lower-than-market price, and provision of easy channels for purchase in the form of small retailers and online. Internet sites have since become a core channel of distribution as it allows the selling and shipping of small quantities of cigarettes undetected by Customs Officials. Numerous studies also draw a direct link between the availability of cheap illicit cigarettes and the high youth smoking rates. In Canada, illegal cigarettes accounted for 17.5% of all cigarettes smoked by adolescents (Callaghan et al. 2009), with greater prevalence in Toronto and Quebec, where 22% of Canadian high school students regularly smoke illegal cigarettes (Callaghan et al. 2009). The study adds illegal cigarettes were responsible for providing an accessible alternative to quitting, and for youth in particular, encourages initiation and continuation of smoking over the long term.\n"
] |
Winston Churchill often spoke about his "little black dog" (i.e. depression) that constantly followed him around. Did any Nazi leaders suffer from depression or other clinical mental disorders?
|
Suicidal tendencies were a sufficient problem in the SS that Himmler made a point of saying that funerals shouldn't be given for officers who committed it for "trivial" reasons. Between July and September of 1942, 30 members of the SS committed it. One particular case was a SS Brigadier named Fritsch who killed himself in 1944 because he cheated on his wife and felt guilty. Himmler ordered the SS insignia removed from his headstone.
Source: Suicide in Nazi Germany
By Christian Goeschel
_URL_0_
|
[
"The book revealed that \"Black Dog\" was the name Churchill gave to \"the prolonged fits of depression from which he suffered\", leading many later authors to suggest that throughout his life Churchill was a victim of, or at risk from, clinical depression. Formulated in this way, Churchill's mental health history contains unmistakable echoes of the seminal interpretation of Lord Moran's Black Dog revelations made in an essay by Dr Joseph Storr. In drawing so heavily on Moran for what he took to be the latter's totally reliable, first-hand clinical evidence of Churchill's lifelong struggle with \"prolonged and recurrent depression\" and its associated \"despair\", Storr produced a seemingly authoritative and persuasive diagnostic essay that, in the words of John Ramsden, \"strongly influenced all later accounts\".\n",
"Since the appearance in 1966 of Lord Moran's memoir of his years as Churchill's doctor, with its claim that \"Black Dog\" was the name Churchill gave to \"the prolonged fits of depression from which he suffered\", many authors have suggested that throughout his life Churchill was a victim of, or at risk from, clinical depression. Formulated in this way, Churchill's mental health history contains unmistakable echoes of the seminal interpretation of Lord Moran's Black Dog revelations made by Dr Anthony Storr.\n",
"Churchill himself seems, in a long life, to have written about Black Dog on one occasion only: the reference, a backward-looking one, occurs in a private handwritten letter to Clementine Churchill dated July 1911 which reports the successful treatment of a relative's depression by a doctor in Germany. His ministerial circumstances at that date, the very limited treatments available for serious depression pre-1911, the fact of the relative's being \"complete cured\", and, not least, the evident deep interest Churchill took in the fact of the complete cure, can be shown to point to Churchill's pre-1911 Black Dog depression as having been a form of mild (i.e. non-psychotic) anxiety-depression, as that term is defined by Professor Edward Shorter.\n",
"Du Bois took a trip around the world in 1936, which included visits to Nazi Germany, China and Japan. While in Germany, Du Bois remarked that he was treated with warmth and respect. After his return to the United States, he expressed his ambivalence about the Nazi regime. He admired how the Nazis had improved the German economy, but he was horrified by their treatment of the Jewish people, which he described as \"an attack on civilization, comparable only to such horrors as the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade.\"\n",
"By January 2001, she had been diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression. A memoir, \"Shoot the Damn Dog\" (2008), a partial reference to Churchill's description of his depression as a \"black dog\", recounts Brampton's experience of the condition and periods as an in-patient. The journalist Simon Garfield, writing for \"The Observer\" commented that \"her story is compelling and unflinching and she makes no claims that her descent and slow recovery will match those of others\".\n",
"Churchill spent most of his retirement at Chartwell House in Kent, two miles (3 km) south of Westerham. As Churchill's mental and physical faculties decayed, it is often suggested, he began to lose the battle he had fought for so long against the \"black dog\" of (clinical) depression. However, the biographical evidence, when carefully and comprehensively studied, suggests that \"black dog\" is more accurately interpreted as Churchill's metaphor for the temporary, non-disabling psychological reactions of worry and anxiety that he manifested throughout his career following severely adverse difficulties and setbacks. The unfailing remedy for him at such times, which he discovered in 1915, was painting; later on, he added bricklaying at Chartwell to his armamentarium. In advanced old age, his faculties too impaired to enable him to paint, he found some solace in the sunshine and colours of the Mediterranean. He took long holidays with his literary adviser Emery Reves and Emery's wife, Wendy Russell, at La Pausa, their villa on the French Riviera, seldom joined by Clementine. He also took eight cruises aboard the yacht \"Christina\" as the guest of Aristotle Onassis. Once, when the \"Christina\" had to pass through the Dardanelles, Onassis gave instructions that it was to do so during the night, so as not to disturb his guest with unhappy memories.\n",
"On 28 April 1940, three weeks after the German invasion of Denmark, \"Politiken\" ran an editorial in which Winston Churchill was called \"a dangerous man\". The editorial was written by foreign affairs editor Einard Schou after a conversation in the editor-in-chief's office with chairman of the board and soon-to-be-again Danish foreign minister Erik Scavenius. The aim is thought to have been to please the German occupation force, though no other Danish newspaper took such steps at the time. Usually, it was enough to keep within the newly introduced censorship. The article led to 15,000 readers, about 10% of subscribers, cancelling their subscriptions in protest.\n"
] |
If I unraveled the DNA in a human cell, how strong would it be?
|
What you're looking for is the tensile strength of DNA compared to the tensile strength of something like, say, nylon. It takes about 1 nN to break a strand of DNA, which at around 2nm wide and roughly circular, gives you a tensile strength of about 318 MPa. This is compared to somewhere in the neighborhood of ~100 MPa for nylon and other common polymers used in ropes. If we assume you can weave DNA strands into a cable, they would be quite strong, barring degradation and the thermodynamic nightmare that would be building such a large DNA structure.
Even though DNA is pretty rigid as a double-strand, once you get very long, thermodynamics make it want to curl up on itself, so you've got that working against you.
Source: Materials science researcher with a background in DNA nanotechnology
|
[
"Ordinarily, cellular transport mechanisms in humans and some other animals limit the amount of chromium(III) that enters a cell. Hypothetically, if an excessive amount was able to enter a cell, free radical damage to DNA might result.\n",
"Each human cell contains around two metres of DNA, which must be tightly folded to fit inside the cell nucleus. However, in order for the cell to function, proteins must be able to access the sequence information contained within the DNA, in spite of its tightly-packed nature. Hence, the cell has a number of mechanisms in place to control how DNA is organized.\n",
"The solenoid structure's most obvious function is to help package the DNA so that it is small enough to fit into the nucleus. This is a big task as the nucleus of a mammalian cell has a diameter of approximately 6 µm, whilst the DNA in one human cell would stretch to just over 2 metres long if it were unwound. The \"beads on a string\" structure can compact DNA to 7 times smaller. The solenoid structure can increase this to be 40 times smaller.\n",
"In 2015-16, a team at Ohio State University \"showed that, by carefully manipulating strands of viral DNA, an origami structure with complex folds can be created in just 10 minutes. Incredibly, these structures are only 100 nanometers across – that’s 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Small volumes of daunorubicin can be wrapped up in these minuscule pods, which can then be released into a leukemia cell-filled environment.\"\n",
"Microchromosomes are known to be gene-dense and particularly susceptible to damage, thus mega-telomeres may act specifically to protect these gene-rich but fragile chromosomes from erosion or other forms of chromosomal damage. The nearly 3MB telomeric array on the W chromosome suggests that mega-telomeres also play a role in sex-chromosome organization or distribution during, meiosis, however a mechanism is yet to be identified. It does not appear that the presence of mega-telomeres in a genome can alter the \"telomere clock\" or extend an organism’s lifespan.\n",
"Pioneering structural studies in the 1980s by Aaron Klug's group provided the first evidence that an octamer of histone proteins wraps DNA around itself in about 1.7 turns of a left-handed superhelix. In 1997 the first near atomic resolution crystal structure of the nucleosome was solved by the Richmond group, showing the most important details of the particle. The human alpha-satellite palindromic DNA critical to achieving the 1997 nucleosome crystal structure was developed by the Bunick group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The structures of over 20 different nucleosome core particles have been solved to date, including those containing histone variants and histones from different species. The structure of the nucleosome core particle is remarkably conserved, and even a change of over 100 residues between frog and yeast histones results in electron density maps with an overall root mean square deviation of only 1.6Å.\n",
"In \"B. subtilis\" the length of the transferred DNA is greater than 1271 kb (more than 1 million bases). The length transferred is likely double stranded DNA and is often more than a third of the total chromosome length of 4215 kb. It appears that about 7-9% of the recipient cells take up an entire chromosome.\n"
] |
why everyone seems to hate /r/politics.
|
Reddit as a website skews young, especially on the default subreddits. Reddit also skews liberal (which I am too).
As a result, you get a bunch of 15-18 year olds yelling about politics they have only recently started to be interested in and learn about and which they barely understand. They lack an awareness of context/historical precedents. Further, [/r/politics](/r/politics) has turned into a witchhunt for any sign of conservativism while it derides conservatives' endless debasing of liberals. The whole of the subreddit doesn't seem to grasp the irony that they're as distorted and left wing as Fox news is distorted and right wing.
|
[
"We were talking about all the bulls— on the Internet and how people just hate on stuff. We were saying, “What if we used that energy to spread positivity? Would it spread as fast as the hate does?” “All the hate and lies around us like an ember in the brush”: It just started writing itself from everything we were talking about. I think it’s a message that we all need to hear. None of us are impervious to being negative. It’s easier to complain about what’s wrong than it is to talk about what’s going right. We’re all a part of this, whether we want to believe it or not — why don’t we try shining some light in the darkness?\n",
"You're filled with hatred. Hate can destroy you, Daisy. Don't hate white people just because they're white. If you hate, make it count for something. Hate the humiliations we are living under in the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the soul of every black man and woman. Hate the insults hurled at us by white scum—and then try to do something about it, or your hate won't spell a thing.\n",
"Two private American non-profit organizations that monitor intolerance and hate groups are the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). They maintain lists of what they deem to be hate groups, supremacist groups and anti-Semitic, anti-government or extremist groups that have committed hate crimes. The SPLC's definition of a \"hate group\" includes any group with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people—particularly when the characteristics being maligned are immutable. However, at least for the SPLC, inclusion of a group in the list \"does not imply a group advocates or engages in violence or other criminal activity.\" According to \"USA Today\", their list ranges from \"white supremacists to black nationalists, neo-Nazis to neo-Confederates.\"\n",
"A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other designated sector of society. According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a hate group's \"primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization.\"\n",
"Some reports show that extreme right-wing groups take advantage of the freedom of speech guaranteed by many countries’ legislations, to post hateful comments that however do not represent full hate-speech or illegal acts. Furthermore, these groups seem to mobilize efforts on Internet and social media to convey a more acceptable public image and recruit new members who would otherwise be offended by blatantly racist or hate-based discourse.\n",
"Apathy has been socially viewed as worse than things such as hate or anger. Not caring whatsoever, in the eyes of some, is even worse than having distaste for something. Author Leo Buscaglia is quoted as saying \"I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate-it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.\" Helen Keller claimed that apathy is the \"worst of them all\" when it comes to the various evils of the world. French social commentator and political thinker Charles de Montesquieu stated that \"the tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in the democracy.\" As can be seen by these quotes and various others, the social implications of apathy are great. Many people believe that not caring at all can be worse for society than individuals who are overpowering or hateful.\n",
"There certainly were hate groups before the Internet and social media. [But with social media] it just becomes easier to organize, to spread the word, for people to know where to go. It could be to raise money, or it could be to engage in attacks on social media. Some of the activity is virtual. Some of it is in a physical place. Social media has lowered the collective-action problems that individuals who might want to be in a hate group would face. You can see that there are people out there like you. That's the dark side of social media.\n"
] |
during the cold war, how did the united states (and by extent, the soviet union) know that a nuclear missile was fired at thier respective country early enough so that they could deploy countermeasures?
|
A combination of huge long range radar stations and satellite early warning systems.
You can't really hide a rocket launch from a satellite. Large rockets like ICBMs have a *massive* thermal signature that is easy to spot. That is why the US and USSR (and now Russia) notify each other of peaceful rocket launches in advance.
|
[
"Soviet concern about the issue grew with the U.S. development of highly accurate submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) systems in the 1980s. Until then, the United States would have delivered most nuclear weapons by long-range bomber or ICBM. Earlier U.S. sub-launched missiles, such as the 1960s-vintage UGM-27 Polaris and 1970s-vintage UGM-73 Poseidon, were considered too inaccurate for a counterforce or first-strike attack, an attack against an opponent's weapons. SLBMs were reserved for attacking cities, where accuracy was of less importance. In the first case, an opponent with effective radar and satellite surveillance could expect a 30-minute warning of an attack before the first detonation. This made an effective first strike difficult, because the opponent would have time to launch on warning to reduce the risk of their forces being destroyed on the ground. The development of highly accurate SLBMs, such as the Trident C4 and, later, the D5, upset this balance. The Trident D5 is considered to be as accurate as any land-based ICBM. Therefore, US or UK Trident submarine systems could stealthily approach an enemy's coast and launch highly accurate warheads at close range, reducing the available warning to less than three minutes, making a counterforce first strike or a decapitation strike viable.\n",
"Strategies during the Cold War also dealt with nuclear attack and retaliation. The United States maintained a policy of limited first strike throughout the Cold War. In the event of a Soviet attack on the Western Front, resulting in a breakthrough, the United States would use tactical nuclear weapons to stop the attack.So, if the Warsaw Pact attacked using conventional weapons, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would use tactical nukes. The Soviet Union would respond with an all-out nuclear attack, resulting in a similar attack from the United States, with all the consequences the exchange would entail.\n",
"The first Cold War strategy against a Soviet attack on the United States was developed in 1948, made into an even firmer policy after the Soviet development of the nuclear weapon in 1949. By 1950, the United States had developed a defense plan to repel a Soviet nuclear bomber force through the use of interceptors and anti-aircraft missiles, while at the same time launching its own bomber fleet into Soviet airspace from bases in Alaska and Europe. By the end of the 1950s, both Soviet and U.S. strategy included nuclear submarines and long range nuclear missiles, both of which could strike in as little as ten to thirty minutes while bomber forces took as long as four to six hours to reach their targets. The concept thus developed of the nuclear triad where all three weapons platforms (land based, submarine, and bomber) would be coordinated in unison for a devastating first strike, followed by a counterstrike, accompanied by \"mopping up\" missions of nuclear bombers.\n",
"During the late 1970s, the Soviet Union fielded a large number of increasingly accurate MIRVed Heavy ICBMs like the SS-18. These missiles carried as many as 10 warheads along with up to 40 penetration aids, meaning that a small number of launches could present a threat to the Air Force's ICBM fleet while retaining a large force in reserve. If the Soviet Union launched a first strike and the US did not respond immediately, the majority of their missiles and strategic bombers might be caught on the ground. A credible deterrent force would remain, but such a force might not have enough warheads left to attack \"both\" the remaining Soviet fleet and cities and other military targets.\n",
"In August 1949 the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon, thereby escalating the risk of warfare. The threat of mutually assured destruction however, prevented both powers from nuclear war, and resulted in proxy wars, especially in Korea and Vietnam, in which the two sides did not directly confront each other. \n",
"During the Cold War, the primary target of saturation attacks from the Soviet Naval Aviation, were the United States Navy aircraft carriers. In response the United States adopted the doctrine of attempting to destroy the Soviet missile aircraft before they could launch their missiles, this led to the Douglas F6D Missileer, which would give rise to the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye and Grumman F-14 Tomcat/AIM-54 Phoenix pairing.\n",
"On the nuclear weapons front, the United States and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other. In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and in October they launched the first Earth satellite, Sputnik 1. The launch of Sputnik inaugurated the Space Race. This culminated in the Apollo Moon landings, which astronaut Frank Borman later described as \"just a battle in the Cold War.\"\n"
] |
Do rainbows also have sections in the infrared and/or ultraviolet spectrum?
|
Yes, definitely! You can easily see that in [this series of images](_URL_0_) taken in the ultraviolet (UV), visible, and infrared (IR) parts of the spectrum. As you can see there is a UV band below the violet edge and an IR band above the red edge, which you obviously can't see with the naked eye.
This result is exactly what we would expect. The way rainbows work is that when sunlight strikes water droplets suspended in the air, part of the light is reflected at the air/water interface at the back of each droplet, [as shown in this diagram](_URL_1_). Since water is dispersive (meaning that the rerfractive index varies by wavelength), each droplet effectively acts as a small prism spreading the white light into its spectral components. Now our eyes our only sensitive to the visible (by definition), which is why a rainbow looks like a colorful transition from violet to red. However, sunlight also contains [IR and UV components in addition to visible light](_URL_2_). While the water droplets absorb some of this light, much of it ends up reflected, as part of this extended rainbow that you can see from the IR and UV images posted above.
|
[
"Supernumerary rainbows cannot be explained using classical geometric optics. The alternating faint bands are caused by interference between rays of light following slightly different paths with slightly varying lengths within the raindrops. Some rays are in phase, reinforcing each other through constructive interference, creating a bright band; others are out of phase by up to half a wavelength, cancelling each other out through destructive interference, and creating a gap. Given the different angles of refraction for rays of different colours, the patterns of interference are slightly different for rays of different colours, so each bright band is differentiated in colour, creating a miniature rainbow. Supernumerary rainbows are clearest when raindrops are small and of uniform size. The very existence of supernumerary rainbows was historically a first indication of the wave nature of light, and the first explanation was provided by Thomas Young in 1804.\n",
"Rainbows span a continuous spectrum of colours. Any distinct bands perceived are an artefact of human colour vision, and no banding of any type is seen in a black-and-white photo of a rainbow, only a smooth gradation of intensity to a maximum, then fading towards the other side. For colours seen by the human eye, the most commonly cited and remembered sequence is Newton's sevenfold red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, remembered by the mnemonic \"Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain\" (ROYGBIV).\n",
"Like most atmospheric optical phenomena, rainbows can be caused by light from the Sun, but also from the Moon. In case of the latter, the rainbow is referred to as a lunar rainbow or moonbow. They are much dimmer and rarer than solar rainbows, requiring the Moon to be near-full in order for them to be seen. For the same reason, moonbows are often perceived as white and may be thought of as monochrome. The full spectrum is present, however, but the human eye is not normally sensitive enough to see the colours. Long exposure photographs will sometimes show the colour in this type of rainbow.\n",
"A rainbow spans a continuous spectrum of colors; the distinct bands (including the number of bands) are an artifact of human color vision, and no banding of any type is seen in a black-and-white photograph of a rainbow (only a smooth gradation of intensity to a maxima, then fading to a minima at the other side of the arc). For colors seen by a normal human eye, the most commonly cited and remembered sequence, in English, is Newton's sevenfold red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (popularly memorized by mnemonics like Roy G. Biv). However, color-blind persons will see fewer colors.\n",
"It has been suggested that rainbows might exist on Saturn's moon Titan, as it has a wet surface and humid clouds. The radius of a Titan rainbow would be about 49° instead of 42°, because the fluid in that cold environment is methane instead of water. Although visible rainbows may be rare due to Titan's hazy skies, infrared rainbows may be more common, but an observer would need infrared night vision goggles to see them.\n",
"The colour pattern of a rainbow is different from a spectrum, and the colours are less saturated. There is spectral smearing in a rainbow owing to the fact that for any particular wavelength, there is a distribution of exit angles, rather than a single unvarying angle. In addition, a rainbow is a blurred version of the bow obtained from a point source, because the disk diameter of the sun (0.5°) cannot be neglected compared to the width of a rainbow (2°). Further red of the first supplementary rainbow overlaps the violet of the primary rainbow, so rather than the final colour being a variant of spectral violet, it is actually a purple. The number of colour bands of a rainbow may therefore be different from the number of bands in a spectrum, especially if the droplets are particularly large or small. Therefore, the number of colours of a rainbow is variable. If, however, the word \"rainbow\" is used inaccurately to mean \"spectrum\", it is the number of main colours in the spectrum.\n",
"From above the earth such as in an aeroplane, it is sometimes possible to see a rainbow as a full circle. This phenomenon can be confused with the glory phenomenon, but a glory is usually much smaller, covering only 5–20°.\n"
] |
how can we identify different instruments playing at the same time if it is the same air that is vibrating?
|
Vi Hart explains it better than I ever could. Basically, it's what your ear was made to do. _URL_0_
|
[
"When each instrument of a symphony orchestra or the jazz band plays the same note, the quality of each sound is different — but the musician perceives each note as having the same pitch. The neurons of the auditory cortex of the brain are able to respond to pitch. Studies in the marmoset monkey have shown that pitch-selective neurons are located in a cortical region near the anterolateral border of the primary auditory cortex. This location of a pitch-selective area has also been identified in recent functional imaging studies in humans.\n",
"When the tuning note in an orchestra or concert band is played, the sound is a combination of 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz and so on. Each instrument in the orchestra or concert band produces a different combination of these frequencies, as well as harmonics and overtones. The sound waves of the different frequencies overlap and combine, and the balance of these amplitudes is a major factor in the characteristic sound of each instrument.\n",
"Pitch detection is often the detection of individual notes that might make up a melody in music, or the notes in a chord. When a single key is pressed upon a piano, what we hear is not just \"one\" frequency of sound vibration, but a \"composite\" of multiple sound vibrations occurring at different mathematically related frequencies. The elements of this composite of vibrations at differing frequencies are referred to as harmonics or partials.\n",
"Musical instruments like bells and xylophones, called Idiophones, are played such that their relatively stiff, non-trivial mass is excited to vibration by means of a blow. This contrasts with violins, flutes, or drums, where the vibrating medium is a light, supple string, column of air, or membrane. The overtones of the inharmonic series produced by such instruments may differ greatly from that of the rest of the orchestra, and the consonance or dissonance of the harmonic intervals as well .\n",
"There are two types of tones: pure tones and complex tones. The musical note produced by a tuning fork is called a pure tone because it consists of one tone sounding at just one frequency. Instruments get their specific sounds — their timbre — because their sound comes from many different tones all sounding together at different frequencies. A single note played on a piano, for example, actually consists of several tones all sounding together at slightly different frequencies.\n",
"For example, some percussion instruments (such as the marimba and timpani) produce an obvious fundamental pitch and can therefore play melody and serve harmonic functions in music. Other instruments (such as crash cymbals and snare drums) produce sounds with such complex overtones and a wide range of prominent frequencies that no pitch is discernible.\n",
"Whenever two different pitches are played at the same time, their sound waves interact with each other – the highs and lows in the air pressure reinforce each other to produce a different sound wave. Any repeating sound wave that is not a sine wave can be modeled by many different sine waves of the appropriate frequencies and amplitudes (a frequency spectrum). In humans the hearing apparatus (composed of the ears and brain) can usually isolate these tones and hear them distinctly. When two or more tones are played at once, a variation of air pressure at the ear \"contains\" the pitches of each, and the ear and/or brain isolate and decode them into distinct tones.\n"
] |
what is the reasoning behind above-ground power lines? germany buries them, mostly, but the usa keeps them exposed to the elements.
|
Germany only buries the low-voltage power lines between transformers and the homes. The power lines between the transformers, switching stations and power plant are above-ground lines most of the time.
|
[
"In a building with electricity it is normal for safety reasons to connect all metal objects such as pipes together to the mains earth to form an equipotential zone. This is done in the UK because many buildings are supplied with a single phase supply cable where the neutral and earth conductors are combined. Close to the electricity meter this conductor is divided into two, the \"earth\" terminal and the wire going to the neutral busbar in the consumer unit. If the ground connection to the neutral is lost, all wiring and other objects tied to the neutral will be energized at the line voltage. Examples of articles that may be bonded include metallic water piping systems, gas piping, ducts for central heating and air conditioning systems, and exposed metal parts of buildings such as hand rails, stairs, ladders, platforms and floors. \n",
"Use of the area below an overhead line is limited because objects must not come too close to the energized conductors. Overhead lines and structures may shed ice, creating a hazard. Radio reception can be impaired under a power line, due both to shielding of a receiver antenna by the overhead conductors, and by partial discharge at insulators and sharp points of the conductors which creates radio noise.\n",
"\"Equipment earthing conductors\" provide an electrical connection between the physical ground (earth) and the grounding/bonding system, which connects (bonds) the normally non-current-carrying metallic parts of equipment. According to the U.S. National Electrical Code (NEC), the reason for doing this is to limit the voltage imposed by lightning, line surges, and contact with higher voltage lines. \n",
"Electrical circuits may be connected to ground (earth) for several reasons. Exposed metal parts of electrical equipment are connected to ground, so that failures of internal insulation will trigger protective mechanisms such as fuses or circuit breakers in the circuit to remove power from the device. This ensures that exposed parts can never have a dangerous voltage with respect to ground, which could cause an electric shock if a grounded person touched them. In electric power distribution systems, a protective earth (PE) conductor is an essential part of the safety provided by the earthing system.\n",
"Because of the many different types of materials that go into manufacturing each of the different types of underground lines, different detection and location methods must be used. For metal pipes and cables, this is often done with electromagnetic equipment consisting of a transmitter and a receiver. For other types of pipe, such as plastic or concrete, other types of radiolocation or modern ground-penetrating radar must be used. Location by these technical means is necessary because maps often lack the pinpoint precision needed to ensure proper clearance. In older cities, it is especially a problem since maps may be very inaccurate, or may be missing entirely.\n",
"Five years later, all components of the electrical equipment and the second line were removed as part of reparations to the Soviet Union following World War II. Because of the division of Germany, the line lost its importance as a north-south runway during the next four decades, but remained important for the Saale valley with Saalfeld retaining a significant freight yard. The border crossing at Probstzella was one of eight lines used by interzone trains running to and from West Germany, using the Saal line. The northern section of the line to Camburg was re-electrified in 1967 and by 1981, the line had been rebuilt as a two-track line. Following German reunification in 1990, the Saale Railway has grown to be an important mainline railway connecting central Germany and southern Germany again. Its electrification was completed by 1995 and further work on its restoration was completed in 2005. New high-speed lines, due to be completed in 2017, are being built to the west of the Saale line via Erfurt: the Leipzig/Halle–Erfurt and the Erfurt–Nuremberg lines. These lines will release capacity on the Saale line for slower trains. As of 2007 an ICE takes 53 minutes to cover the 85-kilometer section between Naumburg and Saalfeld, corresponding to an average speed of 96 km/h.\n",
"During the initial period of World War I, the Royal Navy used contact mines in the English Channel and later in large areas of the North Sea to hinder patrols by German submarines. Later, the American antenna mine was widely used because submarines could be at any depth from the surface to the seabed. This type of mine had a copper wire attached to a buoy that floated above the explosive charge which was weighted to the seabed with a steel cable. If a submarine's steel hull touched the copper wire, the slight voltage change caused by contact between two dissimilar metals was amplified and detonated the explosives.\n"
] |
how do free mobile games make money when all the ads in the game are from other free mobile games?
|
Free mobile games make money primarily in three different ways:
(1) offering in-app purchases usually used by their ‘whales’ (i.e - 20% of their customers who spend a significant amount of money on the game and keep it alive for the rest of the non paying users).
Edit: Just wanted to clarify that the 20% isn’t supposed to be an exact figure, it’s a reference to the [Pareto principle](_URL_0_) also known as the law of the vital few. I’m aware that the actual amount of users who pay can be significantly fewer.
(2) Is by running ads, usually bought as a advertising package (meaning you don’t have to you choose a specific game to advertise on you can just specify which customers you aim to target and how much your company is willing to spend on it and it is accordingly shown to such users. Alternatively, if your game if quite similar to another one in the App Store, you can specifically target that app as you might find a lot of users with the same interest all conveniently in one place) and shown to you based on your past user data and preferences from the App Store. They always make sure to give you the option to remove ads with a small fee - which appeals to our human need to remove a ‘pain point’ (an inbuilt aspect in many free to play mobile games that slows down the player or tries to push them towards making paid purchases - these include things like in-game wait timers).
(3) That other major way they make money is buy selling your user data to other third parties (businesses) as user data is an extremely powerful tool for companies to have because it allows them to understand you and how to market and target you as a customer.
|
[
"Many mobile games are distributed free to the end user, but carry paid advertising: examples are \"Flappy Bird\" and \"Doodle Jump\". The latter follows the \"freemium\" model, in which the base game is free but additional items for the game can be purchased separately.\n",
"Typically, commercial mobile games use one of the following monetisation models: pay-per-download, subscription, free-to-play ('freemium') or advertising-supported. Until recently, the main option for generating revenues was a simple payment on downloading a game. Subscription business models also existed and had proven popular in some markets (notably Japan) but were rare in Europe. Today, a number of new business models have emerged which are often collectively referred to as \"freemium\". The game download itself is typically free and then revenue is generated after download either through in-app transactions or advertisements; this resulted in $34 billion spent on mobile games in 2013.\n",
"The entire game is free-to-play. There is no in-game advertising. Players can spend real-world money to purchase an in-game commodity called energy. Energy can be exchanged for other commodities and currency, to accelerate a knight's development. Real money can also buy certain costumes and promotional items.\n",
"Free-to-play games are free to install and play, but once the player enters the game, the player is able to purchase content such as items, maps, and expanded customization options. Some games, such as id Software's \"Quake Live\", also use in-game advertising to provide income for free-to-play games. In addition to making in-game items available for purchase, EA integrates in-game advertising into its games. In August 2007, EA completed a deal with Massive Incorporated, which lets Massive update and change in-game advertising in real-time within EA games. Independent game developer Edmund McMillen has claimed that he makes most of his money from sponsors by placing advertisements into the introduction of a game and the game's title screen.\n",
"In 2011, revenue from free-to-play games overtook revenue from premium games in the top 100 games in Apple's App Store. The number of people that spend money on in-game items in these games ranges from 0.5% to 6%, depending on a game's quality and mechanics. Even though this means that a large number of people will never spend money in a game, it also means that the people that do spend money could amount to a sizeable number due to the fact that the game was given away for free. Indeed a report from mobile advertising company firm SWRV stated that only 1.5 percent of players opted to pay for in-game items, and that 50 percent of the revenue for such games often came from just ten percent of players. Nevertheless \"The Washington Post\" noted that the developers of two such games, Supercell (\"Clash of Clans\") and Machine Zone (\"\"), were able to afford Super Bowl spots in 2015 featuring big-name celebrities (respectively Liam Neeson and Kate Upton). The latter, \"Game of War\", was in fact, part of a roughly $40 million campaign starring Upton.\n",
"The game is free to play, with the option of players to purchase in-game content with real money; though everything that can be bought with real money can also be gotten for free by playing longer, essentially making payment a faster way to level up, obtain items and advance in the game.\n",
"Freemium and free-to-play games are typically playable online and provide a free basic game with options for players to purchase advanced features or additional items. They operate under the theory that a gamer will pay for additional in-game features after investing enough time in the game. In freemium games like \"Farmville\", these transactions are typically one-time payments for specific in-game goods (micro-transactions). Free-to-play games like \"Age of Conan\" instead try to induce players to enter into a pay-to-play relationship for premium content. While typically generating income though these other revenue sources, freemium and free-to-play games often feature advertisements as well via splash advertisements or advertiser sponsorships of virtual-good giveaways as additional income.\n"
] |
how do man-made canals work? like the suez, erie, panama canal?
|
Their purpose is to move boats between places that don't directly connect. This saves a lot of money on shipping things, because then you don't have to steer your boat all the way around Africa or South America if you're shipping stuff from Greece to India or from New York to San Francisco. They are built, as you'd expect, by digging out the dirt between the two bodies of water.
Most canals have locks, which are doors that close and allow the water level to change by pumping, kind of like an airlock but for water. This accounts for the water level differences between bodies of water. The Panama and Erie canals both have locks because of the need for changes in elevation during the crossing. In contrast, the Suez canal has no locks because there is no perceptible change in the elevation of the Red and Mediterranean seas.
|
[
"A canal basin is (particularly in the United Kingdom) an expanse of waterway alongside or at the end of a canal, and wider than the canal, constructed to allow boats to moor or unload cargo without impeding the progress of other traffic, and to allow room for turning, thus serving as a winding hole. For inland waterways, a basin may be thought of as a land-locked harbour.\n",
"This is a compilation lists, by country, of canals used mainly for navigation. Historically, canals are human-made structures, built for water control, flood prevention, irrigation, and water transport. Their exact design varies depending upon the local importance of each function. This is still the case today, and new canals generally serve multiple functions. Instead of the formal expression 'inland waterways’, the vernacular term 'canal' is often used to describe both human-made canals and river navigations, whether free-flowing waterways, or those with locks and dams or weirs.\n",
"Canals have various features to tackle the problem of water supply. In cases, like the Suez Canal, the canal is simply open to the sea. Where the canal is not at sea level, a number of approaches have been adopted. Taking water from existing rivers or springs was an option in some cases, sometimes supplemented by other methods to deal with seasonal variations in flow. Where such sources were unavailable, reservoirs – either separate from the canal or built into its course – and back pumping were used to provide the required water. In other cases, water pumped from mines was used to feed the canal. In certain cases, extensive \"feeder canals\" were built to bring water from sources located far from the canal.\n",
"The Panama Canal () is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit for maritime trade. Canal locks are at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal, 26 m (85 ft) above sea level, and then lower the ships at the other end. The original locks are 34 m (110 ft) wide. A third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded canal began commercial operation on June 26, 2016. The new locks allow transit of larger, post-Panamax ships, capable of handling more cargo.\n",
"In the USA, the canal that brought about an age of canal building was the Erie Canal. It was a long-sought-after canal and connected the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. This canal initiated a half-century long boom of canal building and brought about many new features that allowed canals to be used in different areas previously inaccesible to canals. These features include locks, which allow a ship to move between different altitudes, and puddling, which waterproofed the canal.\n",
"A power canal refers to a canal used for hydraulic power generation, rather than for transport. Nowadays power canals are built almost exclusively as parts of hydroelectric power stations. Parts of the United States, particularly in the Northeast, had enough fast-flowing rivers that water power was the primary means of powering factories (usually textile mills) until after the American Civil War. For example, Lowell, Massachusetts, considered to be \"The Cradle of the American Industrial Revolution,\" has of canals, built from around 1790 to 1850, that provided water power and a means of transportation for the city. The output of the system is estimated at 10,000 horsepower. Other cities with extensive power canal systems include Lawrence, Massachusetts, Holyoke, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire, and Augusta, Georgia. The most notable power canal was built in 1862 for the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company.\n",
"The canal is primarily an irrigation canal, although parts of it were also used for navigation, primarily for its construction materials. Separate navigation channels with lock gates were provided on this system for boats to negotiate falls. Originally constructed from 1842 to 1854, for an original head discharge of 6000 ft³/s. The Upper Ganges Canal has since been enlarged gradually for the present head discharge of 10,500 ft³/s (295 m³/s). The system consists of main canal of 272 miles and about 4000 miles long distribution channels. The canal system irrigates nearly 9,000 km² of fertile agricultural land in ten districts of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Today the canal is the source of agricultural prosperity in much of these states, and the irrigation departments of these states actively maintain the canal against a fee system charged from users.\n"
] |
why are electoral votes all or nothing(for the most part)? why are they not divvied out representative to popular vote?
|
Because each state chooses to use all of its electoral votes to elect the person the majority of the electorate in that state voted for. Each state chooses to not divvy up its electoral vote.
|
[
"The advantages of this system are claimed to be that: there would be only one election campaign to fund, it does not waste votes because votes for minority parties will count in the Upper House and so it should improve voter turnout, and as the upper house has no direct vote it has no separate mandate and so the Commons will remain supreme. Critics however see a single vote as a choice between voting for an MP or voting for the upper house; if large numbers choose to vote for the upper house instead of their MP it would undermine the mandate of the Commons and create a confused election (for example MPs might be ousted by a poor performance of their party in the Upper House and vice versa). The Report suggested by Nick Clegg will be completed in the new year with a view to complete the bill by mid-2013.\n",
"A separate obstacle to proportional representation is that almost all of the states choose electors on a \"winner-take-all\" basis, where the state's electors are awarded to the candidate with the most popular votes in that state. Maine and Nebraska are the only states that instead use the \"congressional district method\", selecting one elector within each congressional district by popular vote and awarding two electors by a statewide popular vote. With the \"winner-takes-all\" method used by most of the states, a candidate can still win the presidency without winning the national popular vote (such as what happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016).\n",
"There is some debate over whether the Electoral College favors small- or large-population states. Those who argue that the College favors low-population states point out that such states have proportionally more electoral votes relative to their populations. This is because each state's electoral votes are equal to the sum of its seats in both houses of Congress: the proportional allocation of House seats has been distorted by the fixed size of the House since 1929 and the requirement that each state have at least one representative, and Senate seats are not proportional to population at all.\n",
"Because the vote is split between constituencies and a list, there is a chance that two classes of representatives will emerge under an SM system: with one class beholden to their electorate seat, and the other concerned only with their party.\n",
"It also avoids disenfranchisement of large voter groups, that are only slightly in the minority, in cases where the electorate is split nearly evenly in its choice for representation, yet the preferred representative of only one faction must be chosen to represent the entire electorate of a party or district.\n",
"Also keep in mind that a maximum of 1 vote can be cast for each candidate by a single voter, and thus it would be impossible for a given voter to cast multiple votes for a single candidate. Especially because parties may not nominate a full slate in a given district since the party usually desires maximum influence on the candidates elected and because it is unlikely for the party to win a very large majority of seats that they had not anticipated, voters who support just one party have complained that their influence is diminished because they can only support the candidates their party has nominated and thus their remaining votes would only count as party votes and not also candidate votes.\n",
"Some do not support the idea of voters being compelled to vote for candidates they have no interest in or knowledge of. Others may be well-informed, but have no preference for any particular candidate, or may have no wish to give support to the incumbent political system. In compulsory voting areas, such people often vote at random simply to fulfill legal requirements: the so-called donkey vote may account for sufficient percentage which has the potential to change the result in close races. (Robson rotation can be used to distribute the donkey vote equally among all candidates, however.) Similarly, citizens may vote with a complete absence of knowledge of any of the candidates or deliberately skew their ballot to slow the polling process and disrupt the election, or vote for frivolous or jokey candidates. Such arguments are frequently aired in Brazil, where opposition to compulsory voting has increased from 43% in 2008 to 61% in 2014 and where two out of ten voters have abstained from voting in recent elections.\n"
] |
Why is the strong force repulsive at small distances?
|
My favourite [link](_URL_0_) for "why" questions, especially of this nature.
Also the Strong force itself isn't repulsive over short distances, just an effective description of it for use between nucleons is.
|
[
"The effective range of the weak force is limited to subatomic distances, and is less than the diameter of a proton. It is one of the four known force-related fundamental interactions of nature, alongside the strong interaction, electromagnetism, and gravitation.\n",
"This is because gravitation is an attractive force, but if there is an underdense region it apparently acts as a gravitational repeller, based on the concept that there may be less attraction in the direction of the underdensity, and the greater attraction due to the higher density in other directions acts to pull objects away from the underdensity; in other words, the apparent repulsion is not an active force, but due simply to the lack of a force counteracting the attraction.\n",
"Unlike the strong force itself, the residual strong force, \"does\" diminish in strength, and it in fact diminishes rapidly with distance. The decrease is approximately as a negative exponential power of distance, though there is no simple expression known for this; see Yukawa potential. The rapid decrease with distance of the attractive residual force and the less-rapid decrease of the repulsive electromagnetic force acting between protons within a nucleus, causes the instability of larger atomic nuclei, such as all those with atomic numbers larger than 82 (the element lead).\n",
"The word \"strong\" is used since the strong interaction is the \"strongest\" of the four fundamental forces. At a distance of 1 femtometer (1 fm = 10 meters) or less, its strength is around 137 times that of the electromagnetic force, some 10 times as great as that of the weak force, and about 10 times that of gravitation.\n",
"Because the strength of the force falls off rapidly with distance, it is measurable only when the distance between the objects is extremely small. On a submicron scale, this force becomes so strong that it becomes the dominant force between uncharged conductors. In fact, at separations of 10 nm – about 100 times the typical size of an atom – the Casimir effect produces the equivalent of about 1 atmosphere of pressure (the precise value depending on surface geometry and other factors).\n",
"The weak force is due to the exchange of the heavy W and Z bosons. Its most familiar effect is beta decay (of neutrons in atomic nuclei) and the associated radioactivity. The word \"weak\" derives from the fact that the field strength is some 10 times less than that of the strong force. Still, it is stronger than gravity over short distances. A consistent electroweak theory has also been developed, which shows that electromagnetic forces and the weak force are indistinguishable at a temperatures in excess of approximately 10 kelvins. Such temperatures have been probed in modern particle accelerators and show the conditions of the universe in the early moments of the Big Bang.\n",
"The force is only dependent on the charge and electric field strength. The lighter ions will be deflected more and heavier ions less due to the difference in inertia and the ions will physically separate from each other in space into distinct beams of ions as they exit the electric sector.\n"
] |
What are your favorite historical books about great empires and/or historical figures.
|
Caesar: Life of a Colossus
Adrian Goldsworthy
Fantastic well researched life of quite possibly the worlds most interesting man that is a great approachable read.
American Ceasar
William Manchester
Sometimes a bit heavy but riveting all the same. Makes this complicated controversial man understandable and appreciable on his merits.
|
[
"BULLET::::- Shadow of Wings (1972). A historical novel set around the rise of the Persian Empire. It starts with the career of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, but mainly deals with the rise to power of King of Kings Darius I (the Great).\n",
"His best known work is a History of the second phase of the Mongol Empire published by Eugène Cavaignac (1876–1969) in the world history series \"Histoire du Monde\", which treats the Central Asian ruler Timur (also called 'Timur Lank', or ‘Tamerlane’), of the Timurids (1405–1502, his successors: Shah-Rukh, Ulugh Beg, etc., to the \"Bataille de Chourour\"), Baber and the Indian Mongol dynasty (1526–1857) and the rulers of Khwarezmian: the Khans of Khiva (until 1920).\n",
"He is best known for his historical novels, especially the pentalogy Reasonable marriages, Emperor's violets, Mean blood, The happy widow and The royal charioteer (Sňatky z rozumu, Císařské fialky, Zlá krev, Veselá vdova a Královský vozataj) and the satirical pseudo-historical trilogy depicting the travels and adventures of an imaginary nobleman Petr Kukaň z Kukaně (Peter Coop from Coop) consisting of the books Queens have no legs, The ring of the Borgias and The beautiful sorceress (Královny nemají nohy, Prsten Borgiů a Krásná čarodějka).\n",
"The 96-page booklet is wrapped in a removable cover. The book includes a one-page introduction, explaining that this book covers the \"Old Empires\", three ancient kingdoms in the South of the Forgotten Realms world: Mulhorand, Unther, and Chessenta, each of which receives its own section. Pages 3–6 detail the history of the Old Empires, including a two-page timeline of important events. Pages 7–10 briefly describe the lands surrounding the Old Empires, which include Thay, Semphar and Murghôm, Aleaxtis (kingdom of the sahuagin), the Plains of Purple Dust, the Coastal Cities, Aglarond, Raurin, Durpar, Veldorn, Eastern Shaar, and Chondath. Mulhorand (pages 11–34) describes Mulhorand's people and society, geography, current economy, current politics, laws, adventures, religion, personalities, culture, and technology. Unlike the typical deities of the Forgotten Realms, the people of Mulhorand worship the gods of Egypt, such as Isis, Thoth, and Osiris. Unther (pages 35–49) describes Unther's people and society, geography, religion, personalities, and culture. The people of Unther primarily worship the gods of the Sumerians, including Ishtar and Ramman. Chessenta (pages 50–64) describes Chessenta's people and society, geography, current economy, current politics, religion, personalities, mercenary companies, and culture. Pages 65–70 detail several short adventure scenarios appropriate for the Old Empires. Pages 71–80 detail the spells of Southern magic, a type of magic that is written in a manner that makes it undecipherable to a practitioner of standard magic. Pages 81–86 detail the magical items unique to the region. Page 87 consists of a chart to determine random encounters in Mulhorand. Pages 89–96 detail eight new monsters for the region, including the brown dragon, the dracosphinx, and the desert wraith.\n",
"Conn Iggulden (born ) is a British author who writes historical fiction, most notably the \"Emperor\" series and \"Conqueror\" series. He also co-authored \"The Dangerous Book for Boys\" along with his brother Hal Iggulden. In 2007, Iggulden became the first person to top the UK fiction and non-fiction charts at the same time.\n",
"Alex von Tunzelmann writing for \"The New York Times\" called \"Hero of the Empire\", \"a tremendously readable and enjoyable book\", and Lucy Hughes-Hallett writing for \"The Guardian\" called it, \"a thrilling journey, and Millard tells it with gusto.\"\n",
"The Conrad Stargard books belong to the subgenre started by Mark Twain's classic \"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court\", in which a modern person goes back in time and anachronistically introduces various modern technical innovations and social institutions centuries sooner than happened in our history.\n"
] |
What did pre-Columbian indigenous nations do with the dead bodies of people who they fought? Did they just leave them on the field?
|
I can't speak to the specifics of Aztec battles, but the huge diversity of pre-Columbian nations over thousands of years and across two continents gave rise to a variety of methods of treating fallen combatants. There will be as many answers to this question as there are distinct cultural traditions and skeletal remains with evidence of interpersonal violence.
For example, the Crow Creek Massacre is one of the largest pre-Columbian skeletal assemblages attributed to a violent encounter in North America. Sometime around 900 CE the ancestors of the Mandans built several earthen structures in the south central portion of modern-day South Dakota. Eventually the Caddoan-speaking ancestors of the Arikaras replaced the Mandans (no indication the replacement was by force) and increased the settlement to a decent-sized community of roughly fifty-five earthen lodges.
For unknown reasons, in roughly 1325 CE, at least 486 individuals at Crow Creek were violently killed. Evidence of the massacre was discovered in 1978 when skeletal remains eroded out of a fortification ditch. Analysis of the remains indicated extreme violence during the attack. I will spare the gory details, the destruction was quite complete, and trophies appear to have been taken by the attackers. The state of the remains indicates they were exposed for a period of time and subject to the typical animal scavenging expected on the Northern Plains. Some time later the remains were gathered together, placed in a communal burial, and covered with a thin layer of clay from the nearby river. We don't know if survivors of the attack, their kin, or someone altogether different were responsible for cleaning up the battlefield.
For all the brutality of the treatment of the victims at the Crow Creek Massacre, biological archaeologists can illustrate the care taken with the burial preparations for victims of interpersonal violence across the Americas. As in our modern culture, treatment of the dead varied according to immediate circumstances and local traditions.
|
[
"In 1847, during the Mexican–American War, the U.S. Army occupied northeastern Mexico. Captain John E. Dusenbury, a white bean survivor, returned to El Rancho Salado and exhumed the remains of his comrades. He traveled with the remains on a ship to Galveston, and by wagon to La Grange in Fayette County, Texas.\n",
"It is described the Muisca did not sacrifice humans for religious purposes, yet in two other ways. When the Panche were beaten, the boys who were presumed still being virgin were taken and sacrificed. The ritual passed with screams and the heads of the victims were hanged on the posts of their \"bohíos\". The other way would be to sacrifice the young boys by priests [\"chyquy\"] close to the temples.\n",
"It has been described -by Pedro Simón among others- that at the entrance posts of the houses of the \"caciques\" human sacrifice remains were hanging and the posts smeared with blood from the victims, who were regarded as sacred when they were young boys (\"moxas\") or captured from neighbouring indigenous groups. Archaeological evidence from Mosquera supported this thesis.\n",
"The Tlalocan-bound dead were not cremated as was customary, but instead they were buried in the earth with seeds planted in their faces and blue paint covering their foreheads. Their bodies were dressed in paper and accompanied by a digging stick for planting put in their hands.\n",
"It is believed that some South American indigenous cultures, such as the Mayoruna people, practiced endocannibalism in the past. The Amahuaca Indians of Peru picked particles of bone out of the ashes of a cremation fire, ground them with corn, and drank as a kind of gruel. For the Wari' people in western Brazil, endocannibalism is an act of compassion where the roasted remains of fellow Wari' are consumed in a mortuary setting; ideally, the affines would consume the entire corpse, and rejecting the practice would be offensive to the direct family members. Ya̧nomamö consumed the ground-up bones and ashes of cremated kinsmen in an act of mourning; this is still classified as endocannibalism, although, strictly speaking, \"flesh\" is not eaten. Such practices were generally not believed to have been driven by need for protein or other food.\n",
"BULLET::::- 4,000 Native American remains collected under an 1867 order by the Surgeon General of the United States Army to Army medical officers to send skeletal remains of Native Americans to the Army Medical Museum. These remains were transferred to the Smithsonian Institution beginning in 1898.\n",
"Military confrontations between the groups were frequent, and prisoners of war were sent to ritual sacrifice, even without the habitual cannibalism in Mesoamerican ceremonies. The missionary friar Agustín de Cevallos, when he refers to the many indigenous groups in southwestern Costa Rica in 1610, states that they lived in constant war with each other, because they had to periodically sacrifice some people, \"and when they have none, without sacrificing any from their nation, attack those of another [village] and those that they capture are sacrificed; and if they have any left, they sell them to other neighbors for the same.\" The slaves would also be sacrificed for burial with chieftains or other members of the upper class.\n"
] |
why do we get random bouts of euphoria?
|
Hmm, I've never experienced that. I've known people who had sharp mood swings one way or another, but they usually had issues like hypoglycemia, bipolar disorder, etc.
I've for sure personally moved from down to up, but never very quickly, and never for no apparent reason.
|
[
"Euphoria () is the experience (or affect) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness. Certain natural rewards and social activities, such as aerobic exercise, laughter, listening to or making music, and dancing, can induce a state of euphoria. Euphoria is also a symptom of certain neurological or neuropsychiatric disorders, such as mania. Romantic love and components of the human sexual response cycle are also associated with the induction of euphoria. Certain drugs, many of which are addictive, can cause euphoria, which at least partially motivates their recreational use.\n",
"Euphoria may occur during auras of seizures typically originating in the temporal lobe, but affecting the anterior insular cortex. This euphoria is symptomatic of a rare syndrome called ecstatic seizures, often also involving mystical experiences. Euphoria (or more commonly dysphoria) may also occur in periods between epileptic seizures. This condition, \"interictal dysphoric disorder\", is considered an atypical affective disorder. Persons who experience feelings of depression or anxiety between or before seizures occasionally experience euphoria afterwards.\n",
"Many different types of stimuli can induce euphoria, including psychoactive drugs, natural rewards, and social activities. Affective disorders such as unipolar mania or bipolar disorder can involve euphoria as a symptom.\n",
"Euphoria can occur as a result of dancing to music, music-making, and listening to emotionally arousing music. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the reward system plays a central role in mediating music-induced pleasure. Pleasurable emotionally arousing music strongly increases dopamine neurotransmission in the dopaminergic pathways that project to the striatum (i.e., the mesolimbic pathway and nigrostriatal pathway). Approximately 5% of the population experiences a phenomenon termed \"musical anhedonia\", in which individuals do not experience pleasure from listening to emotionally arousing music despite having the ability to perceive the intended emotion that is conveyed in passages of music.\n",
"In the body alkalosis generally induces vasodilation (widening of the blood vessels) but in the brain alone it causes vasoconstriction (narrowing of the blood vessels). This vasoconstriction appears to be made even worse by a sudden increase in blood pressure caused by squeezing or holding the breath \"hard\". The alkalosis-induced euphoria can be followed rapidly by hypoxia-induced unconsciousness. The sequence of events leading to unconsciousness from hyperventilation is as follows:\n",
"Euphoria sometimes occurs in persons with multiple sclerosis as the illness progresses. This euphoria is part of a syndrome originally called \"euphoria sclerotica,\" which typically includes disinhibition and other symptoms of cognitive and behavioral dysfunction.\n",
"There are a few causes for phantosmia, but one of the most common and well-documented involves brain injury or seizures in the temporal lobe. During a temporal lobe seizure the victim rarely faints, but usually blacks out and cannot remember anything that happened during the seizure. Several people who have had these seizures did, however, recollect having phantosmia just prior to blacking out. Epilepsy is a disease characterized by seizures. In the case of phantosmia, if smelling and something else become so strongly linked, the action of \"something else\" occurring can induce activation of the olfactory bulb even though there was no stimulus for the bulb present. This is an example of plasticity gone awry. Those with lesions on the temporal lobe, often brought about by a stroke but also from trauma to the head, also experience these olfactory hallucinations.\n"
] |
why does ssds have a specific number of reads/writes.
|
The way my boss describes it is like this:
When you write to a cell, you're basically shooting it with a shotgun (electrons). This makes it return a different signal when you apply power (to read it).
When you erase that cell, you take a giant magnet to rip the bullets out. Unfortunately some of the target comes out with the bullets.
Edit: I work in Intel's Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group
|
[
"SSDs store data in flash memory cells that are grouped into pages typically of 4 to 16 kB, grouped together into blocks of typically 128 to 512 pages. Example: 512 kB blocks that group 128 pages of 4 kB each. NAND flash memory cells can be directly written to only when they are empty. If they may contain data, the contents must be erased before a write operation. An SSD write operation can be done on a single page but, due to hardware limitations, erase commands always affect entire blocks; consequently writing data to empty pages on an SSD is very fast, but slows down considerably once previously written pages need to be overwritten. Since an erase of the cells in the page is needed before it can be written again, but only entire blocks can be erased, an overwrite will initiate a read-erase-modify-write cycle: the contents of the entire block are stored in cache, then the entire block is erased from the SSD, then the overwritten page is written to the cached block, and only then can the entire updated block be written to the flash medium. This phenomenon is known as write amplification.\n",
"While traditional HDDs have about the same IOPS for read and write operations, most NAND flash-based SSDs are much slower writing than reading due to the inability to rewrite directly into a previously written location forcing a procedure called garbage collection. This has caused hardware test sites to start to provide independently measured results when testing IOPS performance.\n",
"An SSI message consists of a 2-byte header and an \"n\"-byte payload. The header consists of a one byte address (wildcard is '?', 0x3F in ASCII) and a one byte message/command type. The different possible values for the message/command type are presented in SSI v1.2 command base.\n",
"Unlike basic service set identifiers, SSIDs are usually customizable. These SSIDs can be zero to 32 octets (32 bytes) long, and are, for convenience, usually in a natural language, such as English. The 802.11 standards prior to the 2012 edition did not define any particular encoding/representation for SSIDs, which were expected to be treated and handled as an arbitrary sequence of 032 octets that are not limited to printable characters. The IEEE 802.11-2012 defines a tag that the SSID is UTF-8 encoded and when interpreting could contain any non-ISO basic Latin characters within it. Wireless network stacks must still be prepared to handle arbitrary values in the SSID field.\n",
"Traditional SSDs maintain the L2P table in DRAM on the SSD and use their own CPU for maintaining that L2P table. With Open Channel SSDs the L2P table is stored in host memory and the host CPU maintains that table. While the Open Channel SSD approach is more flexible, a significant amount of host memory and host CPU cycles is required for L2P management. With an average write size of 4 KB, almost 3 GB RAM is required for an SSD with a size of 1 TB.\n",
"When an SSD is writing large amounts of data sequentially, the write amplification is equal to one meaning there is no write amplification. The reason is as the data is written, the entire block is filled sequentially with data related to the same file. If the OS determines that file is to be replaced or deleted, the entire block can be marked as invalid, and there is no need to read parts of it to garbage collect and rewrite into another block. It will need only to be erased, which is much easier and faster than the \"read–erase–modify–write\" process needed for randomly written data going through garbage collection.\n",
"Late 2011 and early 2012 benchmarks using an SSHD consisting of a 750 GB HDD and 8 GB of NAND cache found that SSHDs did not offer SSD performance on random read/write and sequential read/write, but were faster than HDDs for application startup and shutdown.\n"
] |
Why do so many aerosol products use things like propane and butane as propellants? Why not air or nitrogen?
|
Propane and butane are liquids when compressed. This allows a lot of the gas to be stored in a small space. Normal compressed air is still a gas, and has to be compressed at much higher pressures to even approach the compact storage of the usual propellants.
|
[
"Propane and butane are gases at atmospheric pressure that can be liquefied at fairly low pressures and are commonly known as liquified petroleum gas (LPG). Propane is used in propane gas burners and as a fuel for road vehicles, butane in space heaters and disposable cigarette lighters. Both are used as propellants in aerosol sprays.\n",
"A number of gases intended for household or industrial use are inhaled as recreational drugs. This includes chlorofluorocarbons used in aerosols and propellants (e.g., aerosol hair spray, aerosol deodorant). A gas used as a propellant in whipped cream aerosol containers, nitrous oxide, is used as a recreational drug. Pressurized canisters of propane and butane gas, both of which are intended for use as fuels, are used as inhalants.\n",
"Butane and propane are very flammable petroleum products; they are used as fuels for gas barbecue grills, disposable lighters, etc. Like gasoline, to which it chemically is closely related, propane has a tendency to explode if mixed with oxygen and ignited in an enclosed container.\n",
"Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the gas propellants used in aerosol spray cans, became a target for environmental concern in the 1970s and 1980s when research demonstrated that they had a harmful effect on the ozone layer in the atmosphere. The international Montreal Protocol of 1989 banned the use of these substances and they were subsequently replaced with volatile hydrocarbons.\n",
"Propane has low toxicity since it is not readily absorbed and is not biologically active. It is heavier than air and may accumulate in low places, particularly if they are poorly ventilated. Butane is similar to propane, and heavier, and has narcotic effects in large doses. Natural gas is lighter than air and disperses quickly in a well ventilated area.\n",
"BULLET::::- Propane is used as a propellant, relying on the expansion of the gas to fire the projectile. It does not ignite the gas. The use of a liquefied gas gives more shots per cylinder, compared to a compressed gas.\n",
"The use of chlorofluorocarbons as aerosols in medicine, such as USP-approved salbutamol, has been phased out by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A different propellant known as hydrofluoroalkane, or HFA, which is not known to harm the environment, was chosen to replace it.\n"
] |
In WWII, did anyone become an ace as either a pilot or gunner of a bomber?
|
There are certainly gunners credited with five or more kills. Albert E. Conder's *The Men Behind The Guns: The History of Enlisted Aerial Gunnery 1917 - 1991* has a section, "Some of the Aces"; Conder says "The thousands of enemy fighters downed by Gunners were counted as a "team" effort, rather than crediting individual gunners. The AAF claimed that record keeping was to [sic] difficult." He nevertheless goes on to list a number of "aces", including S/Sgt Donald Crossley with 11 kills, S/Sgt Michael Arooth with nine, S/Sgt Benjamin Warmer with nine (seven in one mission) and several others including S/Sgt John Quinlan, tail gunner of the Memphis Belle who later flew on B-29s, credited with five German and three Japanese fighters.
Air-to-air victories are enormously difficult to verify, though, even at the best of times with a small number of combatants and gun camera footage; with large formations of bombers, each with multiple gunners, the number of aircraft claimed downed by gunners was invariably higher than the number of actual losses suffered. Conder gives the total claims of Eighth Air Force Bombers as 6,259 destroyed, 1,836 probables, 3,210 damaged; those figures are likely out by a factor of eight or nine (see [a previous question] (_URL_3_) for further details). I'm not sure where Conder gets his individual figures from, but they're difficult to corroborate; [The Unknown Aces of the Eighth] (_URL_1_), for example, credits Arooth with "at least 17 enemy planes".
In the RAF [Wallace McIntosh] (_URL_2_) had the most claims as a bomber gunner (eight and one probable, though again it's hard to verify), [Peter Engbrecht] (_URL_4_) of the RCAF claimed five and a half. The highest claiming RAF gunners were those in Defiant turret fighters, particularly those of 264 Squadron; Ted Thorn (pilot) and Fred Barker (gunner) had the highest total, 12. Once again, though, the "confirmed" kills of 264 Squadron are likely too high, not tallying with German losses (for more details on the Defiant, see [another previous question] (_URL_0_)).
I haven't got any details of World War I gunners; *Above the War Fronts: The British Two-Seater Bomber Pilot and Observer Aces, the British Two-Seater Fighter Observer Aces, and the Belgian, Italian, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Fighter Aces 1914-1918* by Norman Franks may be of some help.
|
[
"A flying ace or fighter ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft during aerial combat (The Germans traditionally set the threshold at 10 victories.). During World War II, hundreds of German Luftwaffe fighter pilots achieved this feat flying contemporary piston engine fighter aircraft. However, only 28 pilots are credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft while flying a jet-powered aircraft.\n",
"Wilhelm Batz (21 May 1916 – 11 September 1988) was a German \"Luftwaffe\" fighter ace during World War II. A flying ace or fighter ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft during aerial combat. Batz flew 445 combat missions and claimed 237 enemy aircraft shot down. 234 of these victories were achieved over the Eastern Front, including at least 46 Il-2 Sturmoviks, but he did claim three victories, including one four-engine bomber against the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) over the Ploieşti oil fields. Batz was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.\n",
"While \"ace\" status was generally won only by fighter pilots, bomber and reconnaissance crews on both sides also destroyed some enemy aircraft, typically in defending themselves from attack. The most notable example of a non-pilot ace in World War I is Charles George Gass with 39 accredited aerial victories.\n",
"While aces are generally thought of exclusively as fighter pilots, some have accorded this status to gunners on bombers or reconnaissance aircraft, observers/gunners in two-seater fighters such as the early Bristol F.2b, and airborne weapons officers in aircraft like the F-4 Phantom. Because pilots often teamed with different air crew members, an observer or gunner might be an ace while his pilot is not, or vice versa. Observer aces constitute a sizable minority in many lists. Charles George Gass, who tallied 39 victories, was the highest scoring observer ace in World War I.\n",
"Norman Francis Williams, (3 November 1914 – 30 June 2007) served as an air gunner in Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) bombers in the Second World War, becoming its most highly decorated non-commissioned officer. A rear gunner in a Halifax bomber, he was credited with shooting down 8 German aircraft and damaging several others, making him the RAAF's only \"ace\" who was not a fighter pilot.\n",
"The following are lists of World War I flying aces. Historically, a flying ace was defined as a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft during aerial combat. The term was first used by French newspapers, describing Adolphe Pégoud as \"l'as\" (the ace), after he downed seven German aircraft.\n",
"Kurt Welter (25 February 1916 – 7 March 1949) was a German \"Luftwaffe\" fighter ace and the most successful \"Jet Expert\" of World War II. A flying ace or fighter ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft during aerial combat. He claimed a total of 63 aerial victories—that is, 63 aerial combat encounters resulting in the destruction of the enemy aircraft—achieved in 93 combat missions. He recorded 56 victories at night, including 33 Mosquitos, and scored more aerial victories from a jet fighter aircraft than anyone else in World War II and possibly in aviation history. However this score is a matter of controversy; research of Royal Air Force losses suggests Welter overclaimed Mosquito victories considerably.\n"
] |
why should i bother getting married?
|
From a secular point of view, a marriage is a contract between (usually two) people. They agree to pool their resources. The general idea is that both partners gain something from this, for instance financial security, a stable home situation and - not unimportant - a partner in procreation.
The government (that is, the other people who live in your country) generally find this pooling of resources an excellent idea and try to promote it by giving married couples all sorts of financial and other benefits that unmarried people (couples, single or otherwise engaged) do not receive.
So, to answer your question: nothing will stop you, and if you choose to not marry, you will miss out on (mainly financial) benefits that you would otherwise be eligible for.
The down side of marriage is that you enter a legally binding contract, and should you at any point in the future wish to disband it and no longer be held to the responsibilities that stem from it, you cannot simply quit operations and leave but have to go through a legal procedure (a *divorce*) which can set you back financially and emotionally.
|
[
"A marriage of convenience is contracted for reasons other than that of relationship of love. Instead, such a marriage is entered into for personal gain or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as political marriage. Some cases in which those married do not intend to live together as a couple, typically marry only for one of them to gain the right to reside in a country.\n",
"Because a man is also married before he has understood the nature of life, its problems and its pleasures, he is satisfied with the slavish nature of the wife and the sexual pleasure she gives. If he finds any incompatibility, he adapts himself to his partner and the circumstances and puts up with his lot.\n",
"Some writers have suggested that to understand why women do not marry, one should examine reasons women \"do\" marry and why it may be assumed they should marry in the first place. According to Adrienne Rich, \"Women have married because it was necessary, in order to economically, in order to have children who would not suffer economic deprivation or social ostracism, in order to remain respectable, in order to do what was expected of women because coming out of 'abnormal' childhoods they wanted to feel 'normal', and because heterosexual romance has been represented as the great female adventure, duty, and fulfillment\".\n",
"Some couples may be married solely for legal purposes or tax benefits, i.e. what is colloquially called a marriage of convenience. For example, in the US a spouse is entitled to Green Card if married to an American citizen or permanent resident. Another reason for a \"marriage of convenience\" is the lavender marriage, which conceals the homosexual or bisexual orientation of one or both spouses.\n",
"A criticism of marriage is that it may lead to the social isolation of a person, who is often expected to diminish other relations with friends, relatives or colleagues, in order to be fully dedicated to their spouse. Julie Bindel writes that: \"Maybe those at the most risk of ending up alone are not the folk who never marry, but rather the people who chuck all their eggs in one basket. [...] During their marriage, believing as they did that they only needed each other, both parties would have neglected friendships, or indeed, failed to cultivate new ones\".\n",
"”You who are already, by the will of God and the commands of your father, lawfully married to noble wives of your own nation, whom you are bound to cherish. And certainly it is not lawful for you to put away the wives you have and marry others, or ally yourselves in marriage with a foreign people, a thing never done by any of your ancestors... It is wicked of you even to entertain the thought of marrying again when you are already married. You ought not to act thus, who profess to follow the law of God, and punish others to prevent men acting in this unlawful manner. Such things do the heathen. But they ought not to be done by you who are Christians, a holy people and a kingly priesthood.”\n",
"Young people usually choose their own spouses, as parents have little influence on these processes. Theoretically, a future husband must ask for permission of marriage from a girl's parents, but this does not always happen. The marriage ceremony is as simple as possible and limited to the participation of the actual married couple, who often arranges a small holiday for themselves. Some groups have been set up so that the groom brings some gifts to the young parents, and the groom handed over handmade items to the bride's parents. Marriage is considered concluded when the young spouse begins to live together.\n"
] |
how do mesh networks maintain speed?
|
Any wireless mesh network will lose speed each hop because of the overhead. Even wired networks you will lose some speed each hop but it is not near as noticeable because there is much less overhead in wired communication. Basically each wireless node takes the data off the wire, encapsulates it in the wireless packet, sends it to the next node which has to process the packet and send it back out for the next node to pick up. So if your PC is 5 nodes away then the wireless packet has to be processed 5 times coming in, and then another 5 times going back out. If there is a lot of traffic then it will be even slower because the radios will have to wait until the air is clear to send each packet. I hope this makes sense.
|
[
"A mesh refers to rich interconnection among devices or nodes. Wireless mesh networks often consist of mesh clients, mesh routers and gateways. Mobility of nodes is less frequent. If nodes constantly or frequently move, the mesh spends more time updating routes than delivering data. In a wireless mesh network, topology tends to be more static, so that routes\n",
"The network establishes pretty good routes in real time, and substantially reduces the number and size of messages sent to keep the network connected, compared to many other protocols. Many of the simpler mesh routing protocols just flood the whole network with routing information whenever a link changes.\n",
"A mesh network (or simply meshnet) is a local network topology in which the infrastructure nodes (i.e. bridges, switches, and other infrastructure devices) connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate with one another to efficiently route data from/to clients. This lack of dependency on one node allows for every node to participate in the relay of information. Mesh networks dynamically self-organize and self-configure, which can reduce installation overhead. The ability to self-configure enables dynamic distribution of workloads, particularly in the event that a few nodes should fail. This in turn contributes to fault-tolerance and reduced maintenance costs.\n",
"Mesh networks are used to extend coverage (to cover entire homes) and for ad-hoc networking (emergency communication). Wireless mesh networks use a mesh topology to provide the desired coverage. The data travels from one node to another until it reaches its destination. In mesh networks using a single frequency, the data is typically store-and-forwarded, with each hop adding a delay. SIC can enable wireless mesh nodes to reuse frequencies so that the data is retransmitted (relayed) as it is received. In mesh networks using multiple frequencies, such as whole-home Wi-Fi networks using “tri-band” routers, SIC can enable greater flexibility in channel selection. Tri-band routers have one 2.4 GHz and one 5 GHz radio to communicate with client devices, and a second 5 GHz radio that is used exclusively for internode communication. Most tri-band routers use the same pair of 80 MHz channels (at opposite ends of the 5 GHz band) to minimize interference. SIC can allow tri-band routers to use any of the six 80-MHz channels in the 5 GHz band for coordination both within networks and between neighboring networks.\n",
"Wireless mesh networks is a relatively \"stable-topology\" network except for the occasional failure of nodes or addition of new nodes. The path of traffic, being aggregated from a large number of end users, changes infrequently. Practically all the traffic in an infrastructure mesh network is either forwarded to or from a gateway, while in wireless ad hoc networks or client mesh networks the traffic flows between arbitrary pairs of nodes.\n",
"However, in order to route traffic efficiently through the network, nodes in a structured overlay must maintain lists of neighbors that satisfy specific criteria. This makes them less robust in networks with a high rate of \"churn\" (i.e. with large numbers of nodes frequently joining and leaving the network).\n",
"A layer 1 network device transfers data, but does not manage any of the traffic coming through it, an example is Ethernet hub. Any packet entering a port is repeated to the output of every other port except for the port of entry. Specifically, each bit or symbol is repeated as it flows in. A repeater hub can therefore only receive and forward at a single speed. Since every packet is repeated on every other port, packet collisions affect the entire network, limiting its overall capacity.\n"
] |
why do i see product placement at big events in the form of only the name of a brand?
|
When you go to buy, say, a TV, you might see a Sony and a Magnavox. If you see Sony's name over and over again, you'll be more familiar with the brand name and think it more reputable.
|
[
"Due to the variety of ways in which product placement can be accomplished in any media, and because the category is nascent, this category is not standardized at all, but some examples include branded in-game goods or even in-game quests. For example, in a game where you run a restaurant, you might be asked to collect ingredients to make a Starbucks Frappuccino, and receive in-game rewards for doing so.\n",
"A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising. Name brands are sometimes distinguished from generic or store brands.\n",
"The positioning process is imperative in marketing because of the specific level of consumer-based recognition is involved. A company must create a trademark brand for themselves in order to be recognizable by a broad range of consumers. For example, a fast food restaurant positions itself as fast, cheap, and delicious. They are playing upon their strengths and most visible characteristics. On the other hand, a luxury car brand will position its brand as a stylish and expensive platform because they want to target a specific brand very different than the fast food brand.\n",
"Promotional merchandise is products branded with a logo or slogan and distributed at little or no cost to promote a brand, corporate identity, or event. Such products, which are often informally called swag (mass nouns), tchotchkes, or freebies (count nouns), are used in marketing and sales. They are given away or sold at a loss to promote a company, corporate image, brand, or event. They are often distributed as handouts at trade shows, at conferences, on sales calls (that is, visits to companies that are purchasing or might purchase), and as bonus items in shipped orders. They are often used in guerrilla marketing campaigns.\n",
"Brand recognition is a huge part of celebrity branding. Brand recognition is where the general public is able to establish a brand from its attributes. It is most successful when a brand is exposed without a company name and is then recognized by the customer through the visual signifiers such as logos, slogans, and colors. An Example of this is Coke whereby their signature color is red and consumers acknowledge that. Brand Recognition is extremely effective in promotional campaigns. To measure brand recognition and the effectiveness it has on promotional campaigns, companies will conduct experiments on study groups for results. If brands are equal in quality similar products brand recognition will always have an advantage of higher sales (Investopedia. 2016).\n",
"Because the product's appearance or its packaging, in terms of shape, size or colour, may be characteristic of a particular manufacturer, consumer may associate the appearance with either a brand or trademark in his or her mind, or rely on the appearance to indicate the use of the product without knowing the name of the product or manufacturer.\n",
"Branding goes beyond having a logo; it is how businesses communicate on behalf of their company, verbally and visually. A brand is a conversation it is how people talk about your company when you are not in the room. Consumers are constantly interacting and meeting with brands. This can be through television or other media advertisements such as event sponsorships, personal selling and product packaging. Brand exposure such as this is known as a brand touch point or brand contact whereby the organization can try impressing its consumer. Without branding, consumers wouldn't be able to decipher between products and decide which one they like most. People may not be able to even tell the differences between some of the brands, they would have to try each brand several times before being able to judge which one was best. In order to help with purchase decisions, marketing communications try to create a distinct image for the brand. Brand associations are made to encourage linkages with places, personalities or even emotions which creates a sophisticated brand personality in the minds of the consumers. This shows how brand communications add value to products and why branding is a crucial aspect to the communication platform.\n"
] |
What was the power relationship between USSR "spy agencies" and the Communist Party up until the fall of the Soviet Union?
|
First off, it's important to remember that the KGB didn't exist until the 1950s. The Cheka, OGPU and NKVD all came before. After NKVD director Lavrenty Beria fell in 1953, intelligence gathering was done by more than one agency, though KGB certainty had the most influence.
The answer to your question varies greatly with the time period being examined. Having the approval of the NKVD was far more important in the Stalin era than being on the KGBs good side during Gorbachev's reign.
|
[
"All sides in the Cold War engaged in espionage. The Soviet KGB (\"Committee for State Security\"), the bureau responsible for foreign espionage and internal surveillance, was famous for its effectiveness. A massive network of informants throughout the Soviet Union was used to monitor dissent from official Soviet politics and morals.\n",
"Following the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, commentators, including the US Congressional Intelligence Committee, noted a redirection amongst the espionage community from military to industrial targets, with Western and former communist countries making use of \"underemployed\" spies and expanding programs directed at stealing such information.\n",
"The KGB (), translated in English as Committee for State Security, was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its break-up in 1991. As a direct successor of preceding agencies such as the Cheka, NKGB, NKVD and MGB, the committee was attached to the Council of Ministers. It was the chief government agency of \"union-republican jurisdiction\", acting as internal security, intelligence and secret police. Similar agencies were constituted in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from Russian SFSR, and consisted of many ministries, state committees and state commissions.\n",
"The KGB was not the only intelligence agency that Russia used to gain information around the globe. The Soviet Union formed two other well known agencies: GRU (The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) and SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service). \n",
"The Soviet secret police have been frequently described by historians as a \"state within a state.\". According to Yevgenia Albats, most KGB leaders, including Lavrenty Beria, Yuri Andropov, and Vladimir Kryuchkov, always competed for power with the Communist Party and manipulated communist leaders.\n",
"It was Cold War policy for the KGB of the Soviet Union and the secret services of the satellite states to extensively monitor public and private opinion, internal subversion and possible revolutionary plots in the Soviet Bloc. In supporting those Communist governments, the KGB was instrumental in crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the Prague Spring of \"Socialism with a Human Face\", in 1968 Czechoslovakia.\n",
"Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union effectively used the KGB's Service A of the First Chief Directorate in order to conduct its covert, or \"black\", \"active measures\". It was Service A that was responsible for clandestine campaigns that were targeted at foreign governments, public populations, as well as to influence individuals and specific groups that were hostile towards the Soviet government and its policies. The majority of their operations was actually conducted by other elements and directorates of the KGB. As a result, it was the First Chief Directorate that was ultimately responsible for the production of Soviet black propaganda operations.\n"
] |
Could a large object come close enough to Earth to cause people to temporarily float without knocking the planet out of orbit?
|
For that to happen, the surface gravity of the object would have to be greater than the surface gravity of Earth. Such as object, presumably made of some sort of rocky material, would have to be of comparable mass to the Earth. The only way this object would careen past the Earth at super close range without hitting it is if it was going really, really, really fast.
|
[
"At a distance relatively close to Earth (less than 3000 km), gravity is only slightly reduced. As an object orbits a body such as the Earth, gravity is still attracting objects towards the Earth and the object is accelerated downward at almost 1g. Because the objects are typically moving laterally with respect to the surface at such immense speeds, the object will not lose altitude because of the curvature of the Earth. When viewed from an orbiting observer, other close objects in space appear to be floating because everything is being pulled towards Earth at the same speed, but also moving forward as the Earth's surface \"falls\" away below. All these objects are in free fall, not zero gravity.\n",
"Accidents can occur on the ground during launch, preparation, or in flight, due to equipment malfunction or the naturally hostile environment of space itself. An additional risk is posed by (unmanned) low-orbiting satellites whose orbits eventually decay due to friction with the extremely thin atmosphere. If they are large enough, massive pieces traveling at great speed can fall to the Earth before burning up, with the potential to do damage.\n",
"This maneuver can be approximated by an elastic collision at large distances, though the flyby does not involve any physical contact. Due to Newton's Third Law (equal and opposite reaction), any momentum gained by a spacecraft must be lost by the planet, or vice versa. However, because the planet is much, much more massive than the spacecraft, the effect on the planet's orbit is negligible.\n",
"BULLET::::- \"Floating\" objects in a spacecraft in LEO are actually in independent orbits around the Earth. If two objects are placed side-by-side (relative to their direction of motion), they will be orbiting the Earth in different orbital planes. Since all orbital planes pass through the center of the Earth, any two orbital planes intersect along a line. Therefore, two objects placed side-by-side (at any distance apart) will come together after one quarter of a revolution. If they are placed so they miss each other, they will oscillate past each other, with the same period as the orbit. This corresponds to an inward acceleration of 0.128 μ\"g\" per meter horizontal distance from the center at 400 km altitude. If they are placed one ahead of the other in the same orbital plane, they will maintain their separation. If they are placed one above the other (at different radii from the center of the Earth), they will have different potential energies, so the size, eccentricity, and period of their orbits will be different, causing them to move in a complex looping pattern relative to each other.\n",
"Earth's surface is situated fairly deep in a gravity well. The escape velocity required to get out of it is 11.2 kilometers/second. As human beings evolved in a gravitational field of 1g (9.8 m/s²), an ideal propulsion system would be one that provides a continuous acceleration of 1g (though human bodies can tolerate much larger accelerations over short periods). The occupants of a rocket or spaceship having such a propulsion system would be free from all the ill effects of free fall, such as nausea, muscular weakness, reduced sense of taste, or leaching of calcium from their bones.\n",
"Even in the unlikely event that this object is headed for impact with the Earth, whether it is an asteroid or rocket body, it is so small that it would disintegrate in the atmosphere and not cause harm on the ground.\n",
"The pull of gravity in LEO is only slightly less than on the Earth's surface. This is because the distance to LEO from the Earth's surface is far less than the Earth's radius. However, an object in orbit is, by definition, in free fall, since there is no force holding it up. As a result objects in orbit, including people, experience a sense of weightlessness, even though they are not actually without weight.\n"
] |
What was happening along the rest of the eastern front during the Battle of Berlin?
|
On the Balkans, the Croatians and Heeresgruppe F were retreating under the combined pressure of Titos (by now regular) army, the Soviets and elements of the Bulgarian army. They were mostly attempting to make contact with the British in western Austria to surrender to them in a vain hope to not be turned over to Tito or the Soviets.
The Soviets were pushing westwards from Slovakia into Bohemia and were clearing Hungary of German troops after Budapest finally fell. Towards the end of the Battle of Berlin they were at the outskirts of Vienna.
In Germany, the Soviets had reached the agreed demarcation line, and were fighting the German 12. and 9. Armee, which had fought their way to unite and then through multiple Soviet attacks and defence line to cross the river together with thousands of civilians to surrender to the Americans.
The Soviets were also advancing in Pommerania along the coast of the Baltic sea and keeping check on a small German force on the Hel peninsula (outside Gdansk) and a much larger one in Courland (what remained of Heeresgruppe Nord).
|
[
"The Battle of Berlin was the final major offensive of the European theatre of World War II and was designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union. Starting on 16 April 1945, the Red Army breached the German front as a result of the Vistula–Oder Offensive and rapidly advanced westward through Germany, as fast as 30–40 kilometres a day. The battle for Berlin lasted from late 20 April 1945 until 2 May and was one of the bloodiest in history.\n",
"When the Soviet offensive resumed on 16 April, two Soviet fronts (army groups) attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. Before the main battle in Berlin commenced, the Red Army encircled the city after successful battles of the Seelow Heights and Halbe. On 20 April 1945, Hitler's birthday, the 1st Belorussian Front led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, advancing from the east and north, started shelling Berlin's city centre, while Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front broke through Army Group Centre and advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin. On 23 April General Helmuth Weidling assumed command of the forces within Berlin. The garrison consisted of several depleted and disorganised Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, along with poorly trained \"Volkssturm\" and Hitler Youth members. Over the course of the next week, the Red Army gradually took the entire city.\n",
"On April 16, the Red Army started the Battle of Berlin with a three Front attack across the Oder-Neisse line. By April 21, it had broken through the German front line in two places and had started to surround Berlin. The German Ninth Army covered the defenses of the Seelow Heights against Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, but its position was unhinged by the successful attack of Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front (against Army Group Centre) on the Neisse. By April 20, the Ninth Army retreated south-east of Berlin, opening the way for the 1st Belorussian Front.\n",
"The battle in Berlin was an end phase of the Battle of Berlin. While the Battle \"of\" Berlin encompassed the attack by three Soviet Army Groups to capture not only Berlin but the territory of Germany east of the River Elbe still under German control, the battle \"in\" Berlin details the fighting and German capitulation that took place within the city.\n",
"The Battle of Berlin proved one of the last major engagements of World War II in Europe. With a great majority of German scientific facilities in Berlin and its suburbs, this area became a major target of the atomic-search teams. Haste was necessary, as the American military forces were rapidly approaching Berlin. Soviet troops broke the Berlin defense-ring on 25 April 1945, and the Soviet Union announced the fall of Berlin on 2 May. The main search team, headed by Colonel General Zavenyagin, arrived in Berlin on 3 May; it included Colonel General V. A. Makhnjov, and nuclear physicists Yulij Borisovich Khariton, Isaak Konstantinovich Kikoin, and Lev Andreevich Artsimovich. Georgij Nikolaevich Flerov had arrived earlier, although Kikoin did not recall a vanguard group. Targets on the top of their list included the \"Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik\" (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics), the University of Berlin, and the \"Technische Hochschule Berlin\".\n",
"The offensive to capture central Germany and Berlin started on 16 April with an assault on the German front lines on the Oder and Neisse rivers. After several days of heavy fighting the Soviet 1BF and 1UF punched holes through the German front line and were fanning out across central Germany. By 24 April, elements of the 1BF and 1UF had completed the encirclement of the German capital and the Battle of Berlin entered its final stages. On 25 April the 2BF broke through the German 3rd Panzer Army's line south of Stettin. They were now free to move west towards the British 21st Army Group and north towards the Baltic port of Stralsund. The 58th Guards Rifle Division of the 5th Guards Army made contact with the US 69th Infantry Division of the First Army near Torgau, Germany at the Elbe river.\n",
"Stalin directed the Red Army to move rapidly in a broad front into Germany because he did not believe the Western Allies would hand over territory they occupied, while he made the overriding objective capturing Berlin. After successfully capturing Eastern Prussia, three Red Army fronts converged on the heart of Eastern Germany, with one of the last pitched battles of the war putting the Soviets at the virtual gates of Berlin. By April 24, Berlin was encircled by elements of two Soviet fronts, one of which had begun a massive shelling of the city on April 20 that would not end until the city's surrender. On 30 April, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide, after which Soviet forces found their remains, which had been burned at Hitler's directive. German forces surrendered a few days later. Some historians argue that Stalin delayed the last final push for Berlin by two months in order to capture other areas for political reasons, which they argue gave the Wehrmacht time to prepare and increased Soviet casualties (which exceeded 400,000), though this is contested by other historians.\n"
] |
can someone explain to me what a tax bracket is?
|
A tax bracket says the percentage of your income that is taken as income tax when you're earning a given amount.
So, for example, it might be (taken from the Australian tax scheme):
* 0 - $6,000: Nil
* $6,001 - $37,000: 15c for each $1 over $6,000
* $37,001 - $80,000: $4,650 plus 30c for each $1 over $37,000
* $80,001 - $180,000: $17,550 plus 37c for each $1 over $80,000
* $180,001 and over: $54,550 plus 45c for each $1 over $180,000
One thing to note here is that each bracket gets applied in turn. If you look at the $80,001 - $180,000 bracket, you'll notice that it says "$17,550 plus 37c for each $1 over $80,000". This is because $17,550 is what you would have owed from the previous tax brackets if you earned $80,000. Generally speaking, you are said to be 'in' your highest tax bracket, as that informs how much of every extra dollar you earn will be taken in tax.
As an example to see how much tax you'd pay in this, assume that you earn $70,000.
From the previous brackets, you'd pay $4650. Then from the current bracket, you'd pay (70,000 - 37,000) * 0.3 = $9900. So your total income tax on $70,000 would be $4650+$9900=$14,550.
|
[
"Tax brackets are the divisions at which tax rates change in a progressive tax system (or an explicitly regressive tax system, although this is much rarer). Essentially, they are the cutoff values for taxable income—income past a certain point will be taxed at a higher rate.\n",
"Bracket creep is usually defined as the process by which inflation pushes wages and salaries into higher tax brackets, leading to fiscal drag. However, even if there is only one tax bracket, or one remains within the same tax bracket, there will still be bracket creep resulting in a higher proportion of income being paid in tax. That is, although the marginal tax rate remains unchanged with inflation, the average tax rate will increase.\n",
"The personal income bracket tax (\"trinnskatt\") is, as the employee's and self-employed's social security contributions, levied on \"personal income\". In 2018, is levied in four different income brackets:\n",
"Tax ladder is a term sometimes used to refer to the formula for calculating a taxpayer's tax liability in a given year for United States federal personal income tax purposes. The term \"ladder\" is used because as your taxable income increases, you \"climb\" the ladder and your tax rate increases.\n",
"Percentage rent, or a percentage lease, is a type of lease seen in commercial real estate. It is a rental charge based on the gross income of the tenant rather than a fixed monthly or annual value. In most examples, the percent rent only applies after a certain amount of base rent has been paid. The amount where the percentage rent begins to apply is known as the breakpoint. Some leases may be purely percent based and have no base component, but such cases are not common. Percent rent is normally considered an additional rent term.\n",
"There is a progressive tax on wages, social security benefits and pensions. Thus there are tax brackets, each with its own tax rate. Mathematically, apart from discretization (whole euros both for income and for tax), the tax is a continuous, convex, piecewise linear function of income.\n",
"In a proportional tax, the tax rate is fixed and the average tax rate equals this tax rate. In case of tax brackets, commonly used for progressive taxes, the average tax rate increases as taxable income increases through tax brackets, asymptoting to the top tax rate. For example, consider a system with three tax brackets, 10%, 20%, and 30%, where the 10% rate applies to income from $1 to $10,000, the 20% rate applies to income from $10,001 to $20,000, and the 30% rate applies to all income above $20,000. Under this system, someone earning $25,000 would pay $1,000 for the first $10,000 of income (10%); $2,000 for the second $10,000 of income (20%); and $1,500 for the last $5,000 of income (30%). In total, they would pay $4,500, or an 18% average tax rate.\n"
] |
Why is there so little known about seizures?
|
I think we know more about seizures than you'd think, and are learning more and more with the advancement of technology. It's just that this information isn't yet to the point where it is truly helpful to doctors.
> Doctor's cannot even tell us why it happens
Do you mean why seizures happen in general, or why they happen to your specific family members? From a research perspective we are beginning to understand more and more the genetics, heredity, childhood illnesses, previously unknown brain anomalies, etc that are associated with seizures. The problem is that there is a huge gap between where the research is and the clinical side of things. Our treatments (medications) just aren't good enough that it really matters what's causing an idiopathic epilepsy and so there's no reason for the doctors to try to figure it out (though in most cases they likely could with some degree of certainty). If we develop better medications then you might see doctors start to try to determine what is causing the epilepsy.
Using technology (MRI, fMRI, SPECT, Wada, MEG, scalp EEG, intracranial EEG, EEG with depth electrodes, Video EEG monitoring) we are getting really good at identifying exactly where in the brain the seizures originate for a given individual, and often times can surgically remove that area and drastically reduce the frequency and severity of a person's seizure disorder.
> There are no answers or cures
I'd agree that other than surgery there is no clear cure, but I think there are lots of answers. If you have more specific questions I'm happy to try and answer them.
|
[
"It has been reported that repeated seizure stimulation can result in spontaneous seizures, but studies have had conflicting findings on this question. In humans, some seizure disorders come to an end by themselves even after large numbers of seizures. However, in both human epilepsy and in some animal models, evidence suggests that a process like that found in kindling does occur.\n",
"There are many causes of seizures. The factors that lead to a seizure are often complex and it may not be possible to determine what causes a particular seizure, what causes it to happen at a particular time, or how often seizures occur.\n",
"There is evidence that epileptic seizures are usually not a random event. Seizures are often brought on by factors such as stress, alcohol abuse, flickering light, or a lack of sleep, among others. The term seizure threshold is used to indicate the amount of stimulus necessary to bring about a seizure. Seizure threshold is lowered in epilepsy.\n",
"The earliest classification of seizures can be attributed to Babylonian scholars who inscribed their medical knowledge into stone tablets known as the \"Sakikku\" (meaning \"All Diseases\"). This dates from the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina of the Second Dynasty of Isin - estimated to be between 1067 and 1046 BC. Many types of seizures are described, each attributed to a certain demon or departed spirit and given a prognosis.\n",
"Concerns that video games can trigger epileptic seizures began in the early 1980s, with the first medically documented case of a video game-induced seizure occurring in 1981. In early 1993 \"The Sun\" reported a boy choked to death on his own vomit during a seizure triggered by playing a video game; similar though less serious incidents were subsequently reported by news media around the world, and within a year all video game console manufacturers required that epilepsy warnings be included in the instruction manuals for all games published for their consoles.\n",
"Seizures have a number of causes. Of those who have a seizure, about 25% have epilepsy. A number of conditions are associated with seizures but are not epilepsy including: most febrile seizures and those that occur around an acute infection, stroke, or toxicity. These seizures are known as \"acute symptomatic\" or \"provoked\" seizures and are part of the seizure-related disorders. In many the cause is unknown.\n",
"Seizures may be provoked and unprovoked. Provoked seizures are due to a temporary event such as low blood sugar, alcohol withdrawal, low blood sodium, fever, brain infection, or concussion. Unprovoked seizures occur without a known or fixable cause such that ongoing seizures are likely. Unprovoked seizures may be triggered by stress or sleep deprivation. Diseases of the brain, where there has been at least one seizure and a long term risk of further seizures, are collectively known as epilepsy. Conditions that look like epileptic seizures but are not include fainting, nonepileptic psychogenic event, and tremor.\n"
] |
how does billing work for toll roads?
|
Will be helpful to list the specific system you are talking about
In many cases in the US, tolls may be assessed on certain entry/exit points and certain points along the road.
|
[
"The toll can be paid by different means. Firstly, a particular route can be pre-booked over the Internet. Secondly, the toll can be paid at terminals (often found in fuel stations). Thirdly, the preferred method is the fully automated billing using On-Board-Units (OBUs) deployed in the trucks, receiving GPS signals. When the truck is started, the OBU localises the vehicle by satellite navigation. Based on the position and the road data stored in the OBU, the device can determine independently the toll regulations for the particular route. The data collected in this manner are transferred to the data center by (land-based) mobile data communication, and processed for billing. Thus the terminology of the system being \"satellite based\" relates to the positioning only, not to subsequent communication.\n",
"Collection of tolls on open toll roads is usually conducted through either the use of transponders or automatic plate recognition, the vast majority of which utilizes an overhead gantry system above the road. While rarely used as the primary vehicle identification method, automatic number plate recognition is used on a number of different highway systems. Both methods aims to eliminate the delay on toll roads by collecting tolls electronically by electronically debiting the accounts of registered car owners without requiring them to stop.\n",
"HOT tolls are collected by manned toll booths, automatic number plate recognition, or electronic toll collection systems. Some systems use RFID transmitters to monitor entry and exiting of the lane and charge drivers depending on demand. Typically, tolls increase as traffic density and congestion within the tolled lanes increase, a policy known as congestion pricing. The goal of this pricing scheme is to minimize traffic congestion within the lanes.\n",
"With a few exceptions, tolls on national expressways are based on distance travelled. When entering the expressway, one collects a ticket, which can be inserted along with the fare into a machine or handed to an attendant upon exiting the expressway. There is also an Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) card system installed in many cars which automatically pays at the toll gate. As of 2001 toll fees consist of a 150 yen terminal charge plus a fee which depends on the distance travelled. The rate of this fee depends on the type of vehicle as shown in the following table.\n",
"Tolls are often collected at toll booths, toll houses, plazas, stations, bars, or gates. Some toll collection points are autonomous, and the user deposits money in a machine which opens the gate once the correct toll has been paid. To cut costs and minimise time delay, many tolls are collected with electronic toll collection equipment which automatically communicates with a toll payer's transponder or uses automatic number plate recognition to charge drivers by debiting their accounts.\n",
"At conventional toll plazas, in lanes marked with the e-tag sign, overhead equipment register and verify the details of an e-tag in a slow-moving vehicle, and an amount is deducted from the road user's toll account, whereupon the boom lifts, or a light turns green. \n",
"The Ontario Highway 407 Express Toll Road (ETR), opened in Toronto in 1997 to ease the burden of traffic on Highway 401 which passes through the heart of the city to the south. Special technology is used to collect tolls without the use to toll booths. Regular users can equip their cars with a transponder that sends a signal to highway sensors when the vehicle enters and leaves the road. For those vehicles without a transponder, special electro-optical sensors read the number plate and a bill for the toll is sent to the vehicle owner in the mail.\n"
] |
You're in a medieval European city and you need to find yourself a place to call home. Who do you talk to? A medieval realtor?
|
Obligatory "medieval Europe can mean a lot of different times and a lot of different places." You should probably make your question a little more specific.
|
[
"In Medieval days a destination for such days out would be religious (to a nearby shrine) or commercial, for example to a seasonal fair. Later, in England, visits to stately homes by those who regarded themselves middle class became frequent and it was the tradition to reward the butler or housekeeper with a tip for providing access to their employers' home. As such homes were meant for show it is unlikely that the owning family would object, provided they were not in residence at the time.\n",
"The old town (Barribalto) is the stage for a return to the past where herrereños participate, either by incorporating their business, their welcoming spirit or their desire to have fun during one of the weekends in the October Herrera Medieval Market. Around the Parish of Santiago El Mayor and its square, a large number of taverns, inns and populate craft stalls with their products, the streets allowing visitors to move a few centuries back in time. Among the activities that have been conducted over the years and can be found in the Medieval Market include exhibitions of handicrafts made by local artisans, the parades, the tasting concoctions, crafts workshops, displays of fireworks, juggling, theater and belly dancing as well as activities for children, such as storytelling and face painting.\n",
"The medieval city was made up of the cathedral, castle and administrative buildings on the peninsula. The outlying areas were known as the townships and owned by the bishop, the most famous of these being Gilesgate (which still contains the mediaeval St Giles Church), Claypath and Elvet.\n",
"Although mainly a town of services, Ourense is not without its tourist sites. The town has three parts: the medieval, the area of 19th-century expansion, and the modern perimeter. Many who pass by on the highway linking Madrid to Vigo are unaware of the medieval quarter, with its narrow streets and tiny plazas. Once an area of a certain dilapidated charm the area is now undergoing renovation and is full of typical restaurants and bars patronized by the university students of the town. The Plaza Mayor is the center of city life with its arcaded shops and the Town Hall.\n",
"Other medieval European remains include the Church of Saint George and adjacent houses at the Genovese Square (called Kikar ha-Genovezim or Kikar Genoa in Hebrew). There were also residential quarters and marketplaces run by merchants from Pisa and Amalfi in Crusader and medieval Acre. \n",
"BULLET::::- \"Corso Vittorio Emanuele\" is the main street of the medieval town, surrounded by interesting buildings of different ages, such as several examples of Catalan-gothic (as the so-called \"House of Re Enzo)\", the baroque church of \"Sant' Andrea\", built by Corsican community, the neoclassic \"Civic Theatre\" and \"Quesada's palace\".\n",
"Delle Piane “the dweller at the Plain” was the name for someone who lived on the plain of Genova and of the Val Polcevera; the name may derive from the place name where the family held land or from a manor house held or where they had a religious dwelling in the medieval ages.\n"
] |
why does it hardly rain in southern california, despite being adjacent to the pacific ocean?
|
Proximity to an ocean is only one of the factors when determining rainfall. There's lost of deserts in the world that are ocean adjacent.
The overall weather patterns play a much more significant role. So air currents, ocean temperature, as well as land features like mountains. There's more important factors than how close you are to the ocean.
|
[
"The large Westerly winds from the oceans also bring moisture, and the northern parts of the state generally receive higher annual rainfall amounts than the south. California's mountain ranges influence the climate as well: moisture-laden air from the west cools as it ascends the mountains, dropping moisture; some of the rainiest parts of the state are west-facing mountain slopes. Northwestern California has a temperate climate with rainfall of to per year. Some areas of Coast Redwood forest receive over of precipitation per year.\n",
"Despite its long coastline, California is not vulnerable to tropical cyclones. Because of the cold California Current from the North Pacific Ocean and the fact that the storms tend to \"steer\" west, California has only been hit with two tropical storms in recorded history, a storm which came ashore in 1939 and dumped heavy rainfall on the Los Angeles Area and interior deserts and Tropical Storm Nora. The remnants of tropical systems will affect California more commonly, every several years.\n",
"Due to the rotation of the Earth, tropical cyclones in the Northern Hemisphere tend to move from east to west. This causes tropical cyclones to approach the West Coast of the United States infrequently. Another inhibiting factor for a California landfall is the surrounding water temperatures. Because of the water currents, the waters off the coast of California are rarely above , which is too cold for hurricanes to sustain themselves. This tropical cyclone was rare enough that only three other eastern Pacific tropical cyclones brought tropical storm-force winds to the Continental United States during the twentieth century. The Long Beach Tropical Storm was the only one to make landfall; the other three hit Mexico before moving north, but didn't make landfall in California.\n",
"There are two reasons why tropical cyclones rarely strike California at tropical storm intensity or higher: sea surface temperatures, and the usual upper level steering winds in the eastern Pacific, with sea surface temperatures being more important.\n",
"The west coast Peninsular Ranges, or other west ranges, of Southern California–northern Baja California, block most eastern Pacific coastal air and rains, producing an arid climate. Other short or longer-term weather events can move in from the Gulf of California to the south, and are often active in the summer monsoons. These include remnants of Pacific hurricanes, storms from the southern tropical jetstream, and the northern intertropical convergence zone.\n",
"Temperate winds from the Pacific Ocean and the cold California Current make the climate along the northwestern coast pleasant year-round. As a result of the state's location on the California current, rains from the north barely reach the peninsula, thus leaving southern areas drier. South of El Rosario River the state changes from a Mediterranean landscape to a desert one. This desert exhibits diversity in succulent flora species that flourish in part due to the coastal fog.\n",
"Northern parts of the state have more rain than the south. California's mountain ranges also influence the climate: some of the rainiest parts of the state are west-facing mountain slopes. Northwestern California has a temperate climate, and the Central Valley has a Mediterranean climate but with greater temperature extremes than the coast. The high mountains, including the Sierra Nevada, have an alpine climate with snow in winter and mild to moderate heat in summer.\n"
] |
Mom says you will catch a cold if you go out in the cold weather or rain without a coat. Do these actually contribute to getting you sick? And how?
|
The 'common cold' is usually caused by a rhinovirus. Cold temperature itself does not cause illness. [However, temperature effects may facilitate viral infection:](_URL_0_)
> Although not all studies agree, most of the available evidence from laboratory and clinical studies suggests that inhaled cold air, cooling of the body surface and cold stress induced by lowering the core body temperature cause pathophysiological responses such as vasoconstriction in the respiratory tract mucosa and suppression of immune responses, which are responsible for increased susceptibility to infections.
This is further confounded by the fact that people may stay indoors during the cold months, further allowing spread of the virus.
|
[
"In addition to providing warmth for residents, cold weather rules help prevent damage to homes. Wintertime temperatures can freeze Water pipes, potentially causing bursts in the lines as the water inside expands as it turns into ice. Cleaning up after this can lay heavy burdens upon people who are already of limited financial means.\n",
"Humans are sensitive to cold, see hypothermia. Snowblindness, norovirus, seasonal depression. Slipping on black ice and falling icicles are other health concerns associated with cold and snowy weather. In the Northern Hemisphere, it is not unusual for homeless people to die from hypothermia in the winter.\n",
"There is no vaccine for the common cold. The primary methods of prevention are hand washing; not touching the eyes, nose or mouth with unwashed hands; and staying away from sick people. Some evidence supports the use of face masks. There is also no cure, but the symptoms can be treated. Zinc may reduce the duration and severity of symptoms if started shortly after the onset of symptoms. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen may help with pain. Antibiotics, however, should not be used and there is no good evidence for cough medicines.\n",
"Grif and Simmons present various tips to combat the cold and flu, though they have little expert knowledge of the subject. To supplement this, Doc appears to offer his own advice, though it becomes obvious that he considers many of the side effects of 's possession of him to be common ailments that are met with the cold and flu, along with a series of listed effects. It is revealed that Caboose has been suffering from avian influenza, from which he believes he can fly, and falls off a rock trying to demonstrate his ability. Finally, Donut advises to stay warm and avoid computer viruses. As Grif pretends to be sick himself, Sarge prepares his own unorthodox treatments.\n",
"As well as the usual viral effects, Freshers' Flu can also have some psychological effects. These effects arise where the stress of leaving home and other consequences of being independent, not to mention various levels of homesickness and the attempts at making new friends, can further weaken the immune system, increasing susceptibility to illness.\n",
"Symptoms of cold agglutinin disease (CAD) are often triggered or made worse by cold temperatures or a viral infection. Therefore, symptoms generally are worse during winter months. Symptoms may arise suddenly leading to abrupt onset of severe anemia and hemoglobinuria or develop more gradually and insidiously in the background without patient's consciousness and precaution.\n",
"BULLET::::- Those sick with flu-like illness are recommended to stay home for at least 24 hours after their fever is gone, except to get medical care or for other necessities. (The fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.) The sickened are advised to keep away from others as much as possible to avoid making others sick.\n"
] |
Instead of a space elevator, how (un) feasible would a railgun /coilgun be to shoot things into orbit?
|
Because even without drag, nothing could survive the acceleration required. Let's assume no drag, and you're on the surface of the Earth. In fact, we'll put you right on the equator, to get maximum benefit from the Earth's rotation. Now, the ISS is in LEO (low earth orbit) so that takes the least energy to get into place. It is traveling at 17000 mph around the Earth. So you at least need to accelerate to that speed in order to get into orbit (minus the 1000 mph you get from being on the equator). So, assuming you are accelerated over an entire mile, you must be accelerated at [16,244 m/s^2 ](_URL_0_) over the course of that mile, otherwise known as 1657 g's.
The human body can only withstand an instantaneous acceleration of 40 g's, and sustained it is somewhere less than 10. So, let's say it is 10 g's is how fast you want to accelerate this capsule. Since the above calculation was inversely proportional to distance accelerated, that means the tube we accelerate the capsule in would have to be 165 miles long. And of course, this is assuming no drag, and that it takes no energy to get to the height required. So in reality, it would have to be much longer than this.
|
[
"BULLET::::- In the video game \"Portal\", yet another similar gun to \"Half-Life 2\"'s, which is titled the \"Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device\", can create a weaker zero-point energy field by simply lifting objects and carrying them, but cannot throw or pull in from a distance. These items can also be dropped through the portals it can create. Unstationary Scaffolds and chamberlock elevators move on tractor beams. A tractor beam known as the \"Aperture Science Excursion Funnel\" appears in the second game in the series, \"Portal 2\". Razer Hydra owners get upgraded version of the Portal Device in \"Portal 2\" which can freely move objects in three dimensions.\n",
"A space elevator is a proposed type of space transportation system. Its main component is a ribbon-like cable (also called a tether) anchored to the surface and extending into space above the level of geosynchronous orbit. As the planet rotates, the centrifugal force at the upper end of the tether counteracts gravity, and keeps the cable taut. Vehicles can then climb the tether and reach orbit without the use of rocket propulsion.\n",
"A railgun is a device that uses electromagnetic force to launch high velocity projectiles, by means of a sliding armature that is accelerated along a pair of conductive \"rails\". It is typically constructed as a weapon, and the projectile normally does not contain explosives, instead relying on the projectile's high speed to inflict damage. The railgun uses a pair of parallel conductors - 'rails' - along which a sliding armature is accelerated by the electromagnetic effects of a current that flows down one rail, into the armature and then back along the other rail. It is based on principles similar to those of the homopolar motor.\n",
"In addition to military applications, NASA has proposed to use a railgun to launch \"wedge-shaped aircraft with scramjets\" to high-altitude at Mach 10, where they will then fire a small payload into orbit using conventional rocket propulsion. The extreme g-forces involved with direct railgun ground-launch to space may restrict the usage to only the sturdiest of payloads. Alternatively, very long rail systems may be used to reduce the required launch acceleration.\n",
"In addition to being considered for destroying ballistic missile threats, railguns were also being planned for service in space platform (sensor and battle station) defense. This potential role reflected defense planner expectations that the railguns of the future would be capable of not only rapid fire, but also of multiple firings (on the order of tens to hundreds of shots).\n",
"BULLET::::- A space elevator is a tether that is fixed to the ground, extending beyond geostationary orbital altitude, such that centripetal force exceeds gravitational force, leaving the structure under slight outward tension.\n",
"A space elevator is a proposed type of planet-to-space transportation system. The main component would be a cable (also called a tether) anchored to the surface and extending into space. The design would permit vehicles to travel along the cable from a planetary surface, such as the Earth's, directly into space or orbit, without the use of large rockets. An Earth-based space elevator would consist of a cable with one end attached to the surface near the equator and the other end in space beyond geostationary orbit (35,786 km altitude). The competing forces of gravity, which is stronger at the lower end, and the outward/upward centrifugal force, which is stronger at the upper end, would result in the cable being held up, under tension, and stationary over a single position on Earth. With the tether deployed, climbers could repeatedly climb the tether to space by mechanical means, releasing their cargo to orbit. Climbers could also descend the tether to return cargo to the surface from orbit.\n"
] |
Hypothetically, if someone with a cold ate ice cream out of a tub of ice cream and then the rest of that ice cream tub was put back into the freezer, would all the cold germs "freeze to death" making it safe for someone else to eat that ice cream?
|
Bacteria are not going to "freeze to death", they are frozen at much lower temperatures on a normal basis (a normal lab freezer is set to -20C). Ice formation in the bacterial cells can lead to them "freezing to death", but this is unlikely in your freezer. I suppose if you waited long enough, the tunneling effect would kill them but this is not going to happen on a realistic time scale.
That said, if you don't want the ice cream send it to me, the immune system is pretty incredible and I'll take my chances.
|
[
"BULLET::::- Freeze-dried ice cream is ice cream that has had most of the water removed from it by a freeze-drying process; sealed in a pouch, it requires no refrigeration. It achieved fame as a popular food in human spaceflight.\n",
"Some Turks believe that cold foods, such as ice cream, will cause illnesses – such as sore throats and the common cold; it is held that consumption of warm liquid while consuming ice cream will counteract these effects.\n",
"In 2006, some commercial ice cream makers began to use liquid nitrogen in the primary freezing of ice cream, thus eliminating the need for a conventional ice cream freezer. The preparation results in a column of white condensed water vapour cloud. The ice cream, dangerous to eat while still \"steaming\" with liquid nitrogen, is allowed to rest until the liquid nitrogen is completely vapourised. Sometimes ice cream is frozen to the sides of the container, and must be allowed to thaw. Good results can also be achieved with the more readily available dry ice, and authors such as Heston Blumenthal have published recipes to produce ice cream and sorbet using a simple blender.\n",
"“The water freezes and the germs are in the water. The freezing does not kill the germs for they are very resistant to cold and they remain in the ice until liberated by its melting when placed in water, or milk, or in contact with food taken into the system.\n",
"Freezers allow people to buy food in bulk and eat it at leisure, and bulk purchases save money. Ice cream, a popular commodity of the 20th century, could previously only be obtained by traveling to where the product was made and eating it on the spot. Now it is a common food item. Ice on demand not only adds to the enjoyment of cold drinks, but is useful for first-aid, and for cold packs that can be kept frozen for picnics or in case of emergency.\n",
"Anna Elisabeth Johansson Bågenholm (born 1970) is a Swedish radiologist from Vänersborg, who survived after a skiing accident in 1999 left her trapped under a layer of ice for 80 minutes in freezing water. During this time she became a victim of extreme hypothermia and her body temperature decreased to , one of the lowest survived body temperatures ever recorded in a human with accidental hypothermia. Bågenholm was able to find an air pocket under the ice, but suffered circulatory arrest after 40 minutes in the water.\n",
"It is also known as astronaut ice cream or space ice cream, typically a slab of ready-to-eat dehydrated ice cream. Compared to regular ice cream, it can be kept at room temperature without melting and is more brittle and rigid but still soft when bitten into. It was developed by Whirlpool Corporation under contract to NASA for the Apollo missions. However, it was never used on any Apollo mission. Freeze-dried foods were developed so that foods could be sent on long-duration spaceflights, as to the Moon, and to reduce the weight of the water and oxygen normally found in food.\n"
] |
how does an iud work?
|
Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:
1. [ELI5: How does a IUD work? ](_URL_3_) ^(_18 comments_)
1. [ELI5: How do hormonal IUDs release a reliable, steady stream of hormones for years? And do they taper off or just stop releasing hormones? ](_URL_0_) ^(_3 comments_)
1. [How does a copper IUD work? (ParaGard or equivalent) ](_URL_2_) ^(_3 comments_)
1. [ELI5: how do non-hormonal IUD's work? ](_URL_1_) ^(_2 comments_)
1. [ELI5: How can IUDs prevent periods? Where does the uterine lining go? ](_URL_5_) ^(_3 comments_)
1. [ELI5: What are IUDs? ](_URL_4_) ^(_4 comments_)
|
[
"IUDs primarily work by preventing fertilization. The progestogen released from hormonal IUDs mainly works by thickening the cervical mucus, preventing sperm from reaching the fallopian tubes. IUDs may also function by preventing ovulation from occurring but this only occurs partially.\n",
"An intrauterine device (IUD), also known as intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD or ICD) or coil, is a small, often T-shaped birth control device that is inserted into a woman's uterus to prevent pregnancy. IUDs are one form of long-acting reversible birth control (LARC). Among birth control methods, IUDs, along with contraceptive implants, result in the greatest satisfaction among users. One study found that female family planning providers choose LARC methods more often (41.7%) than the general public (12.1%).\n",
"The use of IUDs has increased within the United States from 0.8% in 1995 to 7.2% from the period of 2006 to 2014. The use of IUDs as a form of birth control dates from the 1800s. A previous model known as the Dalkon shield was associated with an increased risk of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). However, current models do not affect PID risk in women without sexually transmitted infections during the time of insertion.\n",
"Hormonal IUDs (brand names Mirena, Skyla, Kyleena, and Liletta; referred to as intrauterine systems in the UK) work by releasing a small amount of levonorgestrel, a progestin. Each type varies in size, amount of levonorgestrel released, and duration. For example, Mirena and Liletta measure 32x32mm while Skyla and Kyleena measure 28x30mm. The primary mechanism of action is making the inside of the uterus uninhabitable for sperm. They can also thin the endometrial lining and potentially impair implantation but this is not their usual function. Because they thin the endometrial lining, they can also reduce or even prevent menstrual bleeding. As a result, they are used to treat menorrhagia (heavy menses), once pathologic causes of menorrhagia (such as uterine polyps) have been ruled out.\n",
"An intrauterine device (IUD) is a small contraceptive device, often 'T'-shaped and containing either copper or the hormone levonorgestrel, which is implanted into the uterus. They are long-acting, reversible, and the most effective types of reversible birth control. Failure rates with the copper IUD is about 0.8% while the levonorgestrel IUD has a failure rate of 0.2% in the first year of use. Among types of birth control they, along with birth control implants, result in the greatest satisfaction among users. As of 2011, IUDs are the most widely used form of reversible contraception worldwide. IUDs also tend to be one of the most cost-effective methods of contraception for women.\n",
"Inert IUDs do not have a bioactive component. They are made of inert materials like stainless steel (such as the stainless steel ring (SSR), a flexible ring of steel coils that can deform to be inserted through the cervix) or plastic (such as the Lippes Loop, which can be inserted through the cervix in a cannula and takes a trapezoidal shape within the uterus). They are less effective than copper or hormonal IUDs, with a side effect profile similar to copper IUDs. Their primary mechanism of action is inducing a local foreign body reaction, which makes the uterine environment hostile both to sperm and to implantation of an embryo. They may have higher rates of preventing pregnancy after fertilization, instead of before fertilization, compared to copper or hormonal IUDs.\n",
"CRUD is also relevant at the user interface level of most applications. For example, in address book software, the basic storage unit is an individual \"contact entry\". As a bare minimum, the software must allow the user to\n"
] |
When I take medicine that supresses symptoms, do I prolong the sickness?
|
There are basically three classes of symptoms
* caused by the disease "intentionally" to help it survive
* caused by your body to manipulate your behavior
* caused by your body to promote healing
And each symptom is often a mix of the three. There isn't enough research in lots of cases to say surely if a specific symptom is good or bad, and intensity of the symptom is important to consider as well.
In short: it's complicated, and for your specific question, not well understood.
|
[
"Many pharmacological treatments which are effective for nausea and vomiting in some medical conditions may not be effective for motion sickness. For example, metoclopramide and prochlorperazine, although widely used for nausea, are ineffective for motion-sickness prevention and treatment. This is due to the physiology of the CNS vomiting centre and its inputs from the chemoreceptor trigger zone versus the inner ear. Sedating anti-histamine medications such as promethazine work quite well for motion sickness, although they can cause significant drowsiness.\n",
"Depending on the patient's condition, other medications will be prescribed accordingly. For example, if patients develop depression, antidepressants will be prescribed. Anti-inflammation and anti-nausea medications may also be prescribed.\n",
"Increasing the dosage of an antidepressant is a common strategy to treat depression that does not respond after adequate treatment duration. Practitioners who use this strategy will usually increase the dose until the person reports intolerable side effects, symptoms are eliminated, or the dose is increased to the limit of what is considered safe.\n",
"Withdrawal symptoms can occur when this medicine is suddenly stopped, such as paraesthesiae, sleeping problems (difficulty sleeping and intense dreams), feeling dizzy, agitated or anxious, nausea, vomiting, tremors, confusion, sweating, headache, diarrhea, palpitations, changes in emotions, irritability, and eye or eyesight problems. Treatment with citalopram should be reduced gradually when treatment is finished.\n",
"Many drugs taken to relieve typical symptoms of motion sickness (including nausea, dizziness, etc.) contain compounds that may exacerbate drowsiness. Antihistamines are commonly used to treat motion sickness; however, side effects include drowsiness and impaired cognitive abilities. Anticholinergics such as scopolamine have also proved effective against motion sickness, but may induce drowsiness. These treatments may be combined with stimulants to counteract typical motion-induced nausea and dizziness while also preventing sedation.\n",
"Patients must stop taking desmopressin if they develop severe vomiting and diarrhea, fever, the flu, or severe cold. Patients should also be very cautious about taking desmopressin during hot weather conditions or following strenuous exercise, as these conditions can place stress on the body's electrolyte and water balance.\n",
"Immunosuppressive drugs have the potential to cause immunodeficiency, which can cause increased susceptibility to opportunistic infections and decreased cancer immunosurveillance. Immunosuppressants may be prescribed when a normal immune response is undesirable, such as in autoimmune diseases.\n"
] |
if what we see and hear has happened in the past does that mean that time outside our sphere of awareness is moving faster?
|
It's all "going at the same speed", so to speak. The brain just takes a fraction of a second to 'boot up', and so it is starting out on the back foot.
A bit like... if you have two identical marathon runners in a race, but one of them is given an 80ms handicap. You wouldn't say that time is now "running slower" for that person. They are running at exactly the same speed as the person in front of them. They're just suffering the effects of a momentary delay to start with.
|
[
"A proposed explanation for this effect is that the visual system is predictive, accounting for neural delays by extrapolating the trajectory of a moving stimulus into the future. In other words, when light from a moving object hits the retina, a certain amount of time is required before the object is perceived. In that time, the object has moved to a new location in the world. The motion extrapolation hypothesis asserts that the visual system will take care of such delays by extrapolating the position of moving objects forward in time. As such it is related to the flash lag illusion.\n",
"Time perception is a field of study within psychology, cognitive linguistics and neuroscience that refers to the subjective experience, or sense, of time, which is measured by someone's own perception of the duration of the indefinite and unfolding of events. The perceived time interval between two successive events is referred to as perceived duration. Though directly experiencing or understanding another person's perception of time is not possible, such a perception can be objectively studied and inferred through a number of scientific experiments. Time perception is a construction of the sapient brain, but one that is manipulable and distortable under certain circumstances. These temporal illusions help to expose the underlying neural mechanisms of time perception.\n",
"The second arrow is the psychological arrow of time. Our subjective sense of time seems to flow in one direction, which is why we remember the past and not the future. Hawking claims that our brain measures time in a way where disorder increases in the direction of time. We never observe it working in the opposite direction. In other words, the psychological arrow of time is intertwined with the thermodynamic arrow of time.\n",
"The specious present is the time duration wherein one's perceptions are considered to be in the present. Time perception studies the sense of time, which differs from other senses since time cannot be directly perceived but must be reconstructed by the brain.\n",
"Unlike time flashes, during a temporal displacement, time is actually being changed. For example, the events of Desmond's displacement are different from that of the original events before he got to the Island. During the displacement, the person can either have their consciousness from the past in both times, or the present in both times (Desmond's experienced his 1996 consciousness, while Minkowski experienced his present consciousness).\n",
"The general awareness of proprioceptive responses seem to enhance, as emotional involvement is reported to enhance perception in general. Taste and smell seem intensified and visual scenes seem to have more depth while sounds are heard with more dimension. Perception of time is also reported to change: there is a general experience of time distortion where events take longer to occur and the subject is involved in internal fantasies with the impression that external time has slowed down. However, there seems to be no impression of speed or rapidity for internal processes. Similar effects are common in normal experience, for example when time slows down in boredom. It is proposed that this distortion is caused as the experience itself is the focus of attention rather than what is happening around the individual.\n",
"Although the perception of time is not associated with a specific sensory system, psychologists and neuroscientists suggest that humans do have a system, or several complementary systems, governing the perception of time. Time perception is handled by a highly distributed system involving the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia. One particular component, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, is responsible for the circadian (or daily) rhythm, while other cell clusters appear to be capable of shorter (ultradian) timekeeping. There is some evidence that very short (millisecond) durations are processed by dedicated neurons in early sensory parts of the brain\n"
] |
Is there any evidence to suggest that the Coliseum was flooded for sport?
|
Seutonius passes over it quickly in his *Life of Nero*:
> But he compelled four hundred senators and six hundred Roman knights, some of whom were well to do and of unblemished reputation, to fight in the arena. Even those who fought with the wild beasts and performed the various services in the arena were of the same orders. **He also exhibited a naval battle in salt water with sea monsters swimming about in it;** besides pyrrhic dances by some Greek youths, handing each of them certificates of Roman citizenship at the close of his performance.
There are a few accounts of it happening in addition to Seutonius', but the logistics and specifics are debated and not precisely known.
|
[
"The Coliseum by this time was hailed as a financial success. Besides football games, the facility hosted bicycle races, the Military and Athletic Carnival of the AAU, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, horse shows, agricultural exhibitions, and commercial trade shows. But all this would soon come to an end. On December 24, 1897, around 6:00 PM, during the Manufacturers' Carnival and Winter Fair, after many visitors had left the exhibit for supper, a fire caused by faulty electrical wiring broke out and swept through the building. Despite initial reports of numerous deaths, only one fireman died. The building was completely destroyed, primarily when one of the 14 arches supporting the roof fell over to bring down all the other arches like a row of dominoes. The fire consumed the building within 20 minutes. This massive structure, one of the greatest indoor facilities of the 19th century, had a lifespan of only 19 months.\n",
"Among other sporting events held at the Coliseum over the years were games of Major League Baseball, which were held at the Coliseum when the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League relocated to the West Coast in 1958. The Dodgers played here until Dodger Stadium was completed in time for the 1962 season. Even allowing for its temporary status, the Coliseum was extremely ill-suited for baseball due to the fundamentally different sizes and shapes of football and baseball fields. A baseball field requires roughly 2.5 times more area than a football gridiron, but the playing surface was just barely large enough to accommodate a baseball diamond. As a result, foul territory was almost nonexistent down the first base line, but was very expansive down the third base line with a very large backstop for the catcher. Sight lines also left much to be desired; some seats were as far as from the plate. Also, from baseball's point of view, the locker rooms were huge, because they were designed for football (not baseball) teams.\n",
"The city's largest indoor arena, the Scotiabank Saddledome, was among the facilities damaged as flood waters were reported to have filled up to the first ten rows of the lower seating bowl. The Calgary Stampede grounds adjacent to the arena were also severely flooded, less than two weeks before the scheduled opening of the annual exhibition and rodeo, however officials vowed the event would go on.\n",
"It appears it would have been difficult to flood the amphitheatre, but, because few records survive on the operation of the Colosseum, it is impossible to say for certain where the naval battles took place. Suetonius writes that Titus' brother and successor, Domitian, staged sea-fights in the amphitheatre, but he had made alterations to the structure, which probably included adding the \"hypogeum\"—a complex of underground passages that may have allowed the arena to be quickly flooded and emptied. While Suetonius only records that Titus' recreations of naval battles took place, Dio gives some details:\n",
"After Hellenistic festivals and bloody spectacles were banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I in the late 4th century, the stadium was abandoned and fell into ruin. Gradually, its significance was forgotten and a field of wheat covered the site. During the Latin rule of Athens, Crusader knights held feasts of arms at the stadium. A 15th century traveler saw \"not only several rows of white marble benches, but also the portico at the entrance of the Stadion, which he calls the North entrance, and the Stoa round the koilon, which he calls the South entrance.\" The derelict stadium's marbles were incorporated into other buildings. European travelers wrote of \"magical rites enacted by young Athenian maidens in the ruined vaulted passage, aimed at finding a good husband.\"\n",
"They then went on to create \"The Flood\" which inspired a stadium show that involved pouring in galleons of water to fill the stadium to simulate a flood. This caused multiple drownings and was very controversial because of this.\n",
"Actual demolition work began in late October 2005 with removal of most of the arena area. At 7:50 a.m. on January 20, 2007, after years of wrangling and delay, the Coliseum was finally imploded, using more than 2,000 pounds of explosive. It was said that the implosion could be heard all the way to Meriden and Northford. As it came down, a massive cloud of dust and smoke covered the surrounding area, but blew away quickly toward the shoreline. Upwards of 20,000 people watched from the nearby Temple Street Garage and other buildings, and residents of nearby apartments were evacuated. The two helical ramps were not imploded, and were subsequently destroyed by conventional methods.\n"
] |
Were there ever any battles that involved artillery units targeting each other?
|
It's a frequent occurrence known as counter-battery fire. It's one of the more basic artillery strategies there is, employed as far back as there's been artillery. I suggest picking up John Norris' *Artillery: A History*. It's a good introductory primer to the history of big guns.
|
[
"The firefight included large-scale troop movements and the simulated destruction of major bridges – coal dust and dynamite were used to create explosions. Nine troop formations held three positions each during the tightly scripted invasion sequence; they were directed via telephone (one line per formation) and flash-lamp signals from the headquarters established at the Chamber of Commerce building. The defensive pattern employed was similar to that used during the First World War in Paris to conduct soldiers to the front. Light tanks were stationed at road and rail junctions as fighting intensified. Thirty anti-aircraft vehicles fired blanks at fighter planes overhead, assisted by anti-aircraft gunners on buildings downtown. The first mock casualty was reported at 8:00 am. Dressing stations were set up at strategic points to treat the mock casualties; they also treated the two real casualties of the event – a soldier who sprained his ankle, and a woman who cut her thumb preparing toast during the early-morning blackout.\n",
"Artillery fire and air strikes played a large role in the battle, especially in the far north. In direct support of 2nd ACR, Colonel Garrett Bourne's 210th FA Brigade fired missions out to the 78 Easting. Close air support missions struck targets in greater depth, preventing some Iraqi units from closing with G Troop or escaping the battle area. Attack helicopters flew in support of air scouts at key intervals during the day and the 2-1 Aviation Battalion's Apache helicopters, led by Lt. Colonel John Ward, destroyed two batteries of enemy artillery and struck march units along the IPSA Pipeline Road at 4:30 p.m., just as the battle began in earnest.\n",
"Attacks were carried out in several manners, including single or double rank battle lines with individual regiments side-by-side in a line of battle, assault waves (with multiple regiments or brigades in successive waves spaced out loosely one behind the other), brigade columns (all regiments of a brigade in line one behind the other in close formation), and other formations.\n",
"In addition to units which engage in direct (line-of-sight) combat, both powers can build mortar and artillery units, which engage enemies at standoff distance through indirect fire. Indirect fire is characterized by a long time of flight to target, and low accuracy, but possesses a wide area of effect. It is particularly effective against massed infantry and light vehicles, but less hazardous to armored vehicles. A perfectly coordinated artillery strike can turn the tide of a battle, while a poor one can inflict significant friendly-fire casualties.\n",
"The battle was fought by both sides as a World War I Western Front style battle, with each side launching bloody frontal assaults on enemy positions in what became a war of attrition. The Nationalist tactic was to use artillery and aerial bombardment in small areas to soften resistance and then to launch a frontal assault with one or two infantry battalions to occupy the area. Each day 500 cannons fired more than 13,000 rounds at the Republican troops and more than 200 Nationalist aircraft dropped 10,000 pounds of bombs. Nevertheless, the Republican troops fought with stubborn bravery and repelled the Nationalist assaults with barrages of machine-gun and mortar fire. In many zones, the terrain was too hard to dig trenches or foxholes, and as the August heat became unbearable (on 4 August it was 37 degrees in the shade), the shortages of water and food grew worse for the Republican troops. The situation was made more desperate by the relentless bombing that the Republican troops endured from dawn to dusk, which made it impossible for bodies to be buried, and meant that the wounded could only be evacuated at night, by small boats.\n",
"Another fierce battle was at Najaf, where U.S. airborne and armored units with British air support fought an intense battle with Iraqi Regulars, Republican Guard units, and paramilitary forces. It started with U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships setting out on a mission to attack Republican Guard armored units; while flying low the Apaches came under heavy anti-aircraft, small arms, and RPG fire which heavily damaged many helicopters and shot one down, frustrating the attack. They attacked again successfully on 26 March, this time after a pre-mission artillery barrage and with support from F/A-18 Hornet jets, with no gunships lost.\n",
"Only one U.S. soldier was wounded by enemy fire during the battle. In the confusion, however, three U.S. M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles of C Company, 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment were accidentally hit with 5 depleted uranium rounds fired by the tanks of Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment. At the time, the Task Force was under indirect fire and were \"buttoned up.\" The engagement took place using their thermal sights and the Bradleys of C Company were misidentified as retreating Iraqi vehicles. They fired between 15 and 25 rounds at what they identified as T-72 Iraqi tanks. This friendly fire incident resulted in the 10 additional American casualties: two deaths and eight injuries.\n"
] |
why does adobe publish so much software for free?
|
By publishing so much free software, they can get their name known to pretty much every computer user in the world.
That way, when someone needs some software which is not free, Adobe's offering is a natural choice, because you've already heard of them.
|
[
"Adobe's decision to make the subscription service the only sales route for its creative software was met with strong criticism (see Creative Cloud controversy). Several online articles began offering replacements of Photoshop, Illustrator, and other programs, with free software such as GIMP and Inkscape or competing products such as CorelDRAW, PaintShop Pro, and Pixelmator directly offering alternatives.\n",
"BULLET::::- Adobe Illustrator is a commonly-used editor because of Adobe's market dominance, but is more expensive than other similar products. It is primarily developed consistently in line with other Adobe products and such is best integrated with Adobe's Creative Suite packages. The ai file format is proprietary, but some vector editors can open and save in that format. Illustrator imports over two dozen formats, including PSD, PDF and SVG, and exports AI, PDF, SVG, SVGZ, GIF, JPG, PNG, WBMP, and SWF. However, the user must be aware of unchecking the \"Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities\" option if he or she desires to generate interoperable SVG files. Illustrator has been criticized for having a steep learning curve.\n",
"Adobe produces a suite of publishing software. SoftMan sells various software through its website, including individual copies of Adobe software that was originally part of a bundle. Adobe claims such sales are unauthorized and SoftMan is infringing both Adobe's copyright and violating terms of service that is embedded in each Adobe Software. The users need to agree to these EULA to install the software. In addition, Adobe claims that SoftMan is distributing Adobe software that is not genuine, because unbundled software does not give the customers access to Adobe's support services. Based on the aforementioned claims, Adobe applied for a preliminary injunction.\n",
"Adobe Systems made the PDF specification available free of charge in 1993. In the early years PDF was popular mainly in desktop publishing workflows, and competed with a variety of formats such as DjVu, Envoy, Common Ground Digital Paper, Farallon Replica and even Adobe's own PostScript format.\n",
"Adobe distributed its Adobe Reader (now Acrobat Reader) program free of charge from version 2.0 onwards, and continued supporting the original PDF, which eventually became the \"de facto\" standard for fixed-format electronic documents.\n",
"Judge Pregerson ruled that Adobe has sold its software instead of licensed the software. Thus under the first-sale doctrine, Adobe can not control how SoftMan resells those particular copies of Adobe software after the initial sale. The Court also found that SoftMan had not infringed on the EULA because SoftMan had never run the program and therefore never assented to the terms. In addition, the Court found that factual disputes exist on whether the separately sold copies are materially different from the original copies, which is central to Adobe's trademark claim. Since Adobe was unable to demonstrate a likelihood of success on both copyright and trademark claims, the Court denied Adobe's application for a preliminary injunction against SoftMan.\n",
"Adobe retains copyright on Atmosphere and does not give permission for others to distribute copies of the software, so the company's decision to stop making the Builder available for purchase has essentially halted the creation of new worlds. The plugin remains available as a free download on Adobe's FTP site, however. Adobe still provides 3D capabilities in its more popular Adobe Acrobat product, but these features were developed using technology from New Zealand's Right Hemisphere, rather than using Atmosphere. Nearly all of the Atmosphere development team went on to work with the Acrobat team. The only Atmosphere component still in use at Adobe is the scripting API; other Atmosphere components including scene graphs and the physics engine were licensed from other companies, such as Viewpoint.\n"
] |
if the europe-central map projection used in most places is inaccurate, why isn't a more accurate created and used instead?
|
Are you talking about the distortion of certain maps, physically? Or are you talking about the fact that it's centered on Europe, and people think it should be centered elsewhere?
In general, though, there is no "accurate" flat map of the earth. The earth is round, and a map is flat. That will cause every map to be inaccurate in some way. We just get to choose WHICH inaccuracy we want, when we use different maps.
|
[
"Modern national mapping systems typically employ a transverse Mercator or close variant for large-scale maps in order to preserve conformality and low variation in scale over small areas. For smaller-scale maps, such as those spanning continents or the entire world, many projections are in common use according to their fitness for the purpose, such as Winkel tripel, Robinson and Mollweide. Reference maps of the world often appear on compromise projections. Due to distortions inherent in any map of the world, the choice of projection becomes largely one of aesthetics.\n",
"Some maps, called cartograms, have the scale deliberately distorted to reflect information other than land area or distance. For example, this map (at the right) of Europe has been distorted to show population distribution, while the rough shape of the continent is still discernible.\n",
"Arthur Robinson, an American cartographer influential in thematic cartography, stated that a map not properly designed \"will be a cartographic failure.\" Any map that does not take its audience into account by assuming too much reader knowledge about the map area's context will not fulfill its purpose. Location maps help achieve this purpose by familiarizing the reader with the location of an area they may not have read about previously. A good understanding of the audience's mental map for a particular area is critical for a proper application of location maps. \n",
"The conveyance of proper scale was the foremost challenge in preparing the maps. Kaufmann noted that most modern readers are acclimated to online maps like Google Maps that allow users to easily zoom in and out, which is impossible to achieve with paint on paper. In order to present an \"easily digested, unified vision\" with a homogenous sense of scale, Kaufmann used a simplified legend across all of the maps. For convenience and uniformity, the legend's symbols flatten the differences between certain features. For example, the same icon is used to describe both a campground on one map and the much larger Fort Irwin National Training Center—with a total area of about –on a second, larger map.\n",
"On the other hand, because of great land area distortions, it is not well suited for general world maps. Therefore, Mercator himself used the equal-area sinusoidal projection to show relative areas. However, despite such distortions, Mercator projection was, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, perhaps the most common projection used in world maps, despite being much criticized for this use.\n",
"The map projection is used most often in maps of regions elongated east-to-west (such as the continental United States), with the standard parallels chosen to be about a sixth of the way inside the northern and southern limits of interest. This way distortion is minimized throughout the region of interest.\n",
"Where real-world patterns may not conform to the regions discussed, issues such as the ecological fallacy and the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) can lead to major misinterpretations, and other techniques are preferable. Similarly, the size and specificity of the displayed regions depend on the variable being represented. While the use of smaller and more specific regions can decrease the risk of ecological fallacy and MAUP, it can cause the map to appear to be more complicated. Although representing specific data in large regions can be misleading, it can make the map clearer and easier to interpret and remember. The choice of regions will ultimately depend on the map's intended audience and purpose.\n"
] |
what is the tech bubble burst that everyone keeps talking about will happen soon?
|
Tech is part of our daily lives now and it's unlikely that will change any time soon so the demand for tech is comfortably high. But what is happening is the nature of that tech is always changing.
Consumers are opting for tablets and smart phones over computers and laptops so the industry has to evolve to meet the new demand, and handle the decreased demand for products which used to be the bread winners.
Ironically in spite of all the money being spent on mobile devices, there was already a pretty big tech bubble that burst a few years back in telecomm with some pretty big names like Nortel and Alcatel. Even Nokia and Avaya.
Right now there is a lot of money being thrown at the internet of things and having many tiny, inexpensive, computers operating together rather than big machines being central to the home. If consumers decided they don't really need smart toasters and refrigerators, then that could be a bust and there will be some shaking up of the job market some more.
|
[
"The dot-com bubble (also known as the dot-com boom, the tech bubble, and the Internet bubble) was a historic speculative bubble and period of excessive speculation mainly in the United States that occurred roughly from 1994 to 2000, a period of extreme growth in the use and adoption of the Internet.\n",
"The decline from this peak signalled the beginning of the dot-com bubble burst. There were multiple things contributing to this Dot-com boom and bust. Some optimists thought the internet and World Wide Web would be more significant to business than any kind of Industrial Revolution in the past, possibly enabling us to achieve a Technological Singularity. More pessimistic types were concerned that business would require massive technology replacement to achieve Y2K compatibility.\n",
"In 2015, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team and star of the TV show, \"Shark Tank,\" sounded an alarm on his personal blog over the social media bubble, calling it worse than the tech bubble in 2000 due to the lack of liquidity in social media stocks. A year prior, however, Cuban told CNBC that he did not believe social media stocks were on the verge of a bubble. In a letter to investors in 2014, David Einhorn, who runs the hedge-fund Greenlight Capital, wrote that \"we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years.\" He went on to write, \"What is uncertain is how much further the bubble can expand, and what might pop it.\" Einhorn cited several factors supporting the existence an over-exuberance including \"rejection of conventional valuation methods\" and \"huge first day IPO pops for companies that have done little more than use the right buzzwords and attract the right venture capital.\"\n",
"The dot-com bubble burst in March 2000, with the technology heavy NASDAQ Composite index peaking at 5,048.62 on March 10 (5,132.52 intraday), more than double its value just a year before. By 2001, the bubble's deflation was running full speed. A majority of the dot-coms had ceased trading, after having burnt through their venture capital and IPO capital, often without ever making a profit. But despite this, the Internet continues to grow, driven by commerce, ever greater amounts of online information and knowledge and social networking.\n",
"BULLET::::- The dot com bubble started growing in the mid to late 1990s and burst in 2000. The bubble was driven by a large increase in Internet access, large increase in wireless handset availability, and a belief that data intensive applications were going to drive the next generation network. The network was moving from being voice centric to data centric, from narrowband technologies to broadband technologies and from 2nd generation wireless to 3rd generation wireless technologies to accommodate real and perceived demand. Data bandwidth needs were doubling every 3 – 4 months. As the bubble burst, network operators, service providers, equipment manufacturers and others suffered huge losses. Over $2 trillion in market capitalization evaporated in less than 12 months and over 500,000 jobs were lost. Over 60 telecommunications carriers in the U.S. filed for bankruptcy between 2000 and 2002. By the end of 2000, it was difficult for companies to raise money through private equity funding or initial public offerings.\n",
"Economic bubbles thrive on collective infatuations of a different kind: 'all boom-bust processes contain an element of misunderstanding or misconception', whether it is the 'infatuation with...becoming the latest dot.com billionaire', or the one that followed with subprime mortgages, once 'Greenspan had replaced the tech bubble with a housing bubble'. As markets 'swung virtually overnight from euphoria to fear' in the credit crunch, even the most hardened market fundamentalist had to concede that such 'periodic surges of euphoria and fear are manifestations of deep-seated aspects of human nature'—whether these are enacted in home-room infatuations or upon the global stage.\n",
"The bubble, however, burst in 2000. The stock market took a dive, especially in tech stocks. A recession loomed. The year 2000 would prove to be the apex for NTI's revenue growth. What followed over the next decade was a slow, bumpy decline. Market forces and the increasing power of the Internet slowly began to erode the strength of the alternative press.\n"
] |
why do we pronounce the "w" in words like "swore," but not in "sword?"
|
Because English is a stupid language.
_URL_0_
|
[
"Many imported words beginning with \"w\" in English have cognates in French that start with a \"g\" or \"gu\". This is because the English word was not borrowed directly from French or Old French, but from some of the northern langue d'oïl dialects such as Picard and Norman, where the original \"w\" sound was preserved (the majority of these words are words of Germanic origin, and stem mainly from either the Frankish language, or other ancient Germanic languages, like Burgundian). In Old French, the initial \"w\" sound was prefixed by the letter \"g\" as \"gw\" and then the \"w\" sound was later lost. The \"w\" survives in orthography as \"u\" in \"gu\", but only to produce a hard \"g\" sound.\n",
"BULLET::::- The letter \"w\" is almost always pronounced as , like in English, which also approximates the Flemish \"w\". In France, it is often pronounced , as in German. For example, the word \"wagon\" (train car) is pronounced in France but in Belgium.\n",
"BULLET::::- \"andwurde\", \"andwyrde\": 'to answer'. A combination of the prefix \"and-\" ('against', related to Greek \"anti-\") and \"wurde\" ('word'). By the end of the 12th century, \"andwurde\" had been replaced by \"andswerian\" ('answer'), (containing \"swear\", probably Common Germanic, attested at least before 900). Compare with German \"Antwort\", Dutch \"antwoord\".\n",
"BULLET::::- (pronounced like German \"ü\" and French \"u\") is a Greek sound used only in borrowed words. It is transliterated as \"w\" (as it uses the same letter that otherwise denoted the consonant ): \"azwmus\" \"unleavened bread\" ( Gk. ). It represents an υ (y) or the diphthong οι (oi), both of which were pronounced in the Greek of the time. Since the sound was foreign to Gothic, it was perhaps pronounced .\n",
"\"W\" was created in the 11th century from \"VV\". It represented in Germanic languages, not Latin, which still uses \"V\" for the purpose. \"J\" was distinguished from the original \"I\" only during the late Middle Ages, as was the letter \"U\" from \"V\". Although some Latin dictionaries use \"J\", it is rarely used for Latin text, as it was not used in classical times, but many other languages use it.\n",
"Pronounced , ' is a derisive term used by the Allies during World War I, often collectively (\"the Boche\" meaning \"the Germans\"). It is a shortened form of the French slang portmanteau ', itself derived from ' (\"German\") and ' (\"head\" or \"cabbage\"). The alternative spellings \"Bosch\" or \"Bosche\" are sometimes found. According to a 1916 article in the \"New York Times\" magazine \"Current History\", the origin is as follows:\n",
"BULLET::::- * — The use of in these two cases to represent \"w\" is rare in modern Japanese except for Internet slang and transcription of the Latin sound [w] into katakana. Eg: ミネルウァ (\"Mineruwa \"Minerva\", from Latin \"MINERVA [mɪˈnɛrwa]); ウゥルカーヌス (Wurukānusu\" \"Vulcan\", from Latin VVLCANVS\", \"Vulcānus\" [wʊlˈkaːnʊs]). The \"wa\"-type of foreign sounds (as in \"watt\" or \"white\") is usually transcribed to ワ (\"wa\"), while the \"wu\"-type (as in \"wood\" or \"woman\") is usually to ウ (\"u\") or ウー (\"ū\").\n"
] |
how can you get pregnant when not taking the pill every day at the same time/missing a day or when leaving the hormonal ring out for more than 3 hours? doesn't hormonal bc have a longer-term effect on women's bodies?
|
As I understand it (and I'm not an expert or anything close), hormonal birth control stops you from ovulating, and the part that it stops doesn't take very long. If it gets messed up, that little part will happen, then when whole process starts and you can be fertile.
|
[
"Progestogen-only contraceptive pills (sometimes called the 'mini pill') are taken continuously without a 7-day span of using placebo pills, and therefore menstrual periods are less likely to occur than with the combined pill with placebo pills. However, disturbance of the menstrual cycle is common with the mini-pill; 1/3-1/2 of women taking it will experience prolonged periods, and up to 70% experience break-through bleeding (metrorrhagia). Irregular and prolonged bleeding is the most common reason that women discontinue using the mini pill.\n",
"The placebo, or hormone-free, week in the 28-day pill package simulates an average menstrual cycle, though the hormonal events during a pill cycle are significantly different from those of a normal ovulatory menstrual cycle. Because the pill suppresses ovulation (to be discussed more in the Mechanism of Action section), birth control users do not have true menstrual periods. Instead, it is the lack of hormones for a week that causes a withdrawal bleed. The withdrawal bleeding that occurs during the break from active pills has been thought to be reassuring, a physical confirmation of not being pregnant. The withdrawal bleeding is also predictable. Unexpected breakthrough bleeding can be a possible side effect of longer term active regimens.\n",
"These medications tighten the bladder neck muscles and prevent semen from going backwards into the bladder. However, the medications do have many side effects and they have to be taken at least 1–2 hours prior to sexual intercourse. In many cases, the medications fail to work at the right time because most men are not able to predict when they will have an orgasm.\n",
"Certain medications, particularly contraceptive medications, can induce amenorrhoea in a healthy woman. The lack of menstruation usually begins shortly after beginning the medication and can take up to a year to resume after stopping a medication. Hormonal contraceptives that contain only progestogen like the oral contraceptive Micronor, and especially higher-dose formulations like the injectable Depo Provera commonly induce this side effect. Extended cycle use of combined hormonal contraceptives also allow suppression of menstruation. Patients who use and then cease using contraceptives like the combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP) may experience secondary amenorrhoea as a withdrawal symptom. The link is not well understood, as studies have found no difference in hormone levels between women who develop amenorrhoea as a withdrawal symptom following the cessation of COCP use and women who experience secondary amenorrhoea because of other reasons. New contraceptive pills, like continuous oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) which do not have the normal 7 days of placebo pills in each cycle, have been shown to increase rates of amenorrhoea in women. Studies show that women are most likely to experience amenorrhoea after 1 year of treatment with continuous OCP use.\n",
"Side effects can include nausea, headache, blood clots, breast pain, depression, and liver problems. Use is not recommended during pregnancy, the initial three weeks after childbirth, and in those at high risk of blood clots. It; however, may be started immediately after a miscarriage or abortion. Smoking while using combined birth control pills is not recommended. It works by stopping ovulation, making the uterus not suitable for implantation, and making the mucus at the opening to the cervix thick.\n",
"Side effects can include nausea, headache, blood clots, breast pain, depression, and liver problems. Use is not recommended during pregnancy, the initial three weeks after childbirth, and in those at high risk of blood clots. However, it may be started immediately after a miscarriage or abortion. Smoking while using combined birth control pills is not recommended. It works by stopping ovulation, making the mucus at the opening to the cervix thick, and making the uterus not suitable for implantation.\n",
"When a woman takes COCP, the hormones in the pills prevent both ovulation and shedding of the endometrium (menstruation). Traditionally, COCPs are packaged with 21 active (hormone-containing) pills and 7 placebo pills. During the week of placebo pills, withdrawal bleeding occurs and simulates an average 28-day menstrual cycle. The placebo pills are not required for pregnancy protection, and with any monophasic COCP the placebo pills may be discarded, and the next pack of active pills may be started to prevent the withdrawal bleeding. With bi- and tri-phasic pills, skipping the placebo week results in a sudden change in hormone levels, which may cause irregular spotting or flow.\n"
] |
why is it we find walking outside in 90 degree heat unbearable, yet sitting in a 90 degree sauna is so relaxing?
|
Part of it probably has to do with the sun. The temperature isn't really the unbearable part, the burning from the sun is. In a sauna it is dark and moist. Even so I still hate them.
|
[
"BULLET::::- Being in cold and humid places such as bathtub, swimming pool, cold tub, and steam sauna is not good for them, while taking intense exercise such as jogging, running, cycling especially under low sun is recommended to them.\n",
"Though known to cause a rise in the stress hormones due to hyperthermic stress, saunas are most usually perceived as a means for relaxation and for that reason considered healthy in the Netherlands and Flanders. \n",
"Occasionally one uses a bunch of leafy, fragrant silver birch called a \"vihta\" (\"vasta\" in Eastern Finland) to gently beat oneself. This has a relaxing effect on the muscles and also helps to soothe the irritation from mosquito bites. When the heat begins to feel uncomfortable it is customary to jump into a lake, sea, or a swimming pool, or to have a shower. In the winter, rolling in the snow or even swimming in a hole cut in lake ice, an avanto, is sometimes used as a substitute. Often after the sauna it is a custom to sit down in the dressing room or on the porch of the sauna to enjoy a sausage, along with beer or soft drinks.\n",
"A sauna session can be a social affair in which the participants disrobe and sit or recline in temperatures typically between . This induces relaxation and promotes sweating. The Finns use a bundle of birch twigs with fresh leaves (Finnish: vihta or vasta), to gently slap the skin and create further stimulation of the pores and cells.\n",
"It is also a common way of socializing and bonding with family or friends, but loud conversation and noisy behavior are not appreciated, especially not in the sweating room itself. In the Netherlands and Flanders sauna visits are used more for social binding and relaxation opportunity, rather than for spiritual of healing purposes as is common in the German language area.\n",
"Physical activity in extremely hot weather should be avoided. If a person starts to experience over heating, and symptoms of heat syncope, they should move or be moved to a shaded or cool area. It is also recommended to avoid alcoholic beverages in hot weather, because they cause dehydration which may worsen symptoms. Finally, drinking plenty of water with electrolytes is imperative when engaging in physical activity in hot weather.\n",
"Some clothing suppliers assert that the use of a sauna suit accelerates weight loss in exercise by an increase in metabolic rate. Others disagree, and indicate that the only significant effect is temporary water loss that is immediately reversed by subsequent drinking of water. A possible effect of wearing a sauna suit is that it may encourage the wearer to do physical exercise. The increase in body heat from wearing a sauna suit gives the impression of getting \"a good workout\".\n"
] |
How did the US become solely a British Colony when originally there were so many different colonial powers in the area?
|
Remember that the French controlled Louisiana (a territory that does not match the boundaries of the State of Louisiana) until well after the American Revolution. We bought it during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson.
Each area has its own history of turning from non-English controlled areas to either English or American control.
It is also a little misleading to say that the US became a British Colony. The US was an amalgamation of pre-existing colonies that had already revolted from colonial control and gone through one failed attempt at a common government by the time the Constitution finally knitted them together.
By the time the US was created, each of those colonies had already become sovereign states (little s to denote the fact that they were essentially countries) which agreed to give up a portion of their sovereignty in order to become the United States.
|
[
"Three types of colonies were established in the English overseas possessions in America of the 17th century and continued into the British Empire at the height of its power in the 17th century. These were charter colonies, proprietary colonies, and royal colonies. A group of 13 British American colonies collectively broke from the British Empire in the 1770s through a successful revolution, establishing the modern United States. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), the remaining British territories in North America were slowly granted more responsible government. In 1838 the Durham Report recommended full responsible government for Canada, but this was not fully implemented for another decade. Eventually, with the Confederation of Canada, the Canadian colonies were granted significant autonomy and became a self-governing Dominion in 1867. Other colonies in the Americas followed at a much slower pace. In this way, two countries in North America, ten in the Caribbean, and one in South America have received their independence from Great Britain or the later United Kingdom. All of these, except the United States, are members of the Commonwealth of Nations and nine are Commonwealth realms. The eight current British overseas territories in the Americas have varying degrees of self-government.\n",
"Great Britain's Thirteen North American colonies were the first to break from the British Empire in 1776, and were recognized as an independent nation by France in 1778 and Britain in 1783. The United States of America was the first set of European established colonies to achieve independence and establish itself as a nation, and was the first independent settler state in the Americas.\n",
"As the colony grew, colonists and British military forces came into confrontation with Natives in the Western half of the state. Britain fought for control of the neighboring Ohio Country with France during the French and Indian War, and following the British victory the territory was formally ceded to them in 1763 and became part of the British Empire.\n",
"British colonies were created along the east coast of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries but by the late 18th century most of these colonies rebelled against British rule, leading to the American War of Independence and formation of the United States of America. Nevertheless, Great Britain retained significant colonies in Canada, the Caribbean and India, and shortly thereafter began the settlement of Australia and New Zealand. Following France's defeat in the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Great Britain took possession of many more overseas territories in Africa and Asia, and established informal empires of free trade in South America, China and Persia.\n",
"In 1775, on the eve of the American Revolution, the British Empire included 20 territories in the Western Hemisphere northeast of New Spain, and apart from the islands and claims of the British West Indies. These colonies were:\n",
"Two additional U.S. states on the East Coast were not among the original thirteen colonies: Maine (became part of the English colony of Massachusetts in 1677) and Florida (part of New Spain until 1821, though held by the British from after the end of the French and Indian War until 1781).\n",
"Britain approached the task of governing its New World territories in a less centralized manner, establishing about twenty distinct colonies in North America and the Caribbean from 1585 onward. Each British colony had its own governor and most would have representative assemblies. Most of the North American Thirteen Colonies that became the United States had strong self-government via popular assemblies that countered the authority of governors with their own assertions of rights via parliamentry and other English sources of authority. Only property owners could vote in British polities, but since so many free men in mainland British Colonial America owned land, a majority could vote and participate in popular politics. The British challenge to the authority of colonial assemblies, especially via taxation, was a major cause of the American Revolution in the 1770s.\n"
] |
Why isn't Juneteenth a national holiday in the United States?
|
Juneteenth does not commemorate the actual emancipation of slaves; that happened in January 1863 for the states in rebellion, and with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in Dec. 1865.
Juneteenth celebrates when news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached Texas in June 1865. Initially a celebration only among Negroes in Texas, the commemoration first spread to a couple of adjacent states, and in the 20th century traveled with African-Americans from Texas as they migrated to industrial cities elsewhere. In particular, it seems to have taken hold among those who moved to the Bay Area during World War II to work in shipyards and defense industries. It seems likely that its enduring popularity owes something to the summer date, suitable for large outdoor gatherings and celebrations. Only in the last 25 years has the celebration become known nationwide.
[The *Handbook of Texas* has a good summary.](_URL_0_)
|
[
"Commemoration of the American Revolution typifies the patriotic sentiment surrounding the American Revolution and the desire to preserve and honor the \"Spirit of '76\". As the founding story of the United States, it is covered in the schools, memorialized by a national holiday, and commemorated in innumerable monuments. Thus Independence Day (the \"Fourth of July\") is a major national holiday celebrated annually. Besides local sites such as Bunker Hill, one of the first national pilgrimages for memorial tourists was Mount Vernon, George Washington's estate, which attracted ten thousand visitors a year by the 1850s.\n",
"By 2008, nearly half of US states observed the holiday as a ceremonial observance. Forty-six of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have recognized Juneteenth as either a state holiday or ceremonial holiday, a day of observance. The four states that do not recognize Juneteenth are Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.\n",
"May 15, is celebrated as the feast day of San Isidro, sometimes with a rodeo. It is also common holding Independence Day with a parade of students. The Christmas is important because many people gather on that date with their families elsewhere.\n",
"In 1968, Governor Ronald Reagan signed a resolution calling for a holiday called American Indian Day, to be held the Fourth Friday in September. In 1998, the California Assembly passed AB 1953, which made Native American Day an official state holiday, observed annually on the fourth Friday in September.\n",
"The main Mexican holiday is the Day of Independence, celebrated on September 16. Americans are more familiar with the Cinco de Mayo. Cinco de Mayo commemorates the date of the Battle of Puebla, in which Díaz participated, when a major victory was won against the French. Under the \"Porfiriato\", the Mexican Consuls in the United States gave Cinco de Mayo more importance than the Day of Independence due to the President's personal involvement in the events. It is still widely celebrated in the United States, although largely due to cultural permeation.\n",
", there were eleven federal holidays in the United States, ten annual holidays and one quadrennial holiday (Inauguration Day). Pursuant to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 (effective 1971), official holidays are observed on a Monday, except for New Year's Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.\n",
"Each year, the United States celebrates a holiday known as Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. It is a federal holiday and frequently involves a family gathering with a large feast, traditionally featuring a turkey. Civic recognitions of the holiday typically include parades and football games. The holiday is meant to honor the First Thanksgiving, which was a harvest feast held in Plymouth in 1621, as first recorded in the book \"New England's Memorial\" by Nathaniel Morton, secretary of Plymouth Colony and nephew of Governor William Bradford.\n"
] |
the expulsions of the germans in european countries during and after ww2.
|
By the time of the World Wars, German speaking populations existed in many places throughout Europe, including Central Europe and along the Baltic Sea. These maps both show Prussia and other German states [before WWI](_URL_4_) and [before WWII](_URL_0_). Note how the territory is larger than modern Germany, and includes much of modern day Poland.
As WWII drew to a close, many German speaking residents of Eastern Europe/the Baltic migrated west with the retreating front line, fearing dire ramifications from the Soviets. Eventually by the war's end a lot of German speakers (regardless of ethnicity) and German citizens (regardless of language) ended up in Allied-Occupied Germany or Austria.
According to the Potsdam Agreement by Allied leaders on the state of post-war Europe/boundary changes/etc, this population migration continued up until 1950 or so. About 12 million Germans are estimated to have been moved. Up to 500,000 may have died during this migration.
If you look at a map of Europe, you can see notable changes, especially in Russian territory. [Koenigsberg](_URL_3_) for example, the former capital of East Prussia was heavily war-torn and repopulated with Russians. Today, it's called [Kaliningrad](_URL_2_) it's about 0.7% German by ethnicity.
EDIT: For more reading I'd recommend this _URL_1_
|
[
"Germans fled, were evacuated, or were expelled as a result of actions of Nazi Germany, the Red Army, civilian militias, and/or the organized efforts of governments of the reconstituted states of Eastern Europe. Between 1944 and 1950, at least 12 million had fled or had been expelled and resettled to post-war Germany, almost all (11.5 million) from the territories of post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia. About three million persons of German ancestry remained in the expulsion areas, but gradually emigrated westward in the Cold War era or have been assimilated into the local populations. The areas from which the Germans fled or were expelled were subsequently repopulated by nationals of the states to which that territory now belonged, many of whom were Poles who fled or were expelled from the former Polish territories in the USSR. 148 000 of Polish citizens declared German nationality in 2011.\n",
"After WWII ended, about 11-12 million Germans were forced to flee from or were expelled from several countries throughout Eastern and Central Europe including Russia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary Yugoslavia and the prewar territory of Poland. A large number of them were also displaced when Germany's former eastern provinces were given to Poland as part of the Potsdam Agreement, regardless of those annexed lands being ethnically, politically, and culturally German for nearly a thousand years. The majority of these expelled and displaced Germans ended up in what remained of Germany, with some being sent to West Germany and others being sent to East Germany.\n",
"During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, German citizens and people of German ancestry fled or were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, as well as the German provinces of Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia. The idea to expel the ethnic Germans was supported by Winston Churchill and by the Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments in London at least since 1942. The expulsion of Germans formed also part of Stalin's plan, in concert with other Communist subordinates, to expel all Germans from their homes east of the Oder and lands which from May 1945 fell inside the Soviet occupation zones. Many Germans were murdered or died in transit to the remaining territory of Germany and Austria.\n",
"The expulsions of Germans from the lost areas in the east (see also Former eastern territories of Germany), the Sudetenland, and elsewhere in eastern Europe went on for several years. The number of Germans expelees totaled roughly 15,000,000. Estimates of number of deaths in connection with expulsion range from under 500,000 to 3 million.\n",
"Ingo Haar believes that civilian losses in the expulsion of the Germans from eastern Europe have been overstated in Germany for decades for political reasons. Haar argues that Cold War political pressure influenced the findings of the Schieder commission and the 1958 West German government demographic study that estimated 2 million expulsion deaths . Haar maintains that the actual number of deaths directly related to the expulsions is between 500-600,000 persons based on the findings of the German church search service and the report of the German government archives. Dr. Haar maintains that the figure of 2 million expulsion deaths includes \"a fall in the German birth rate, persons assimilated into the local population, military dead, murdered Jews and missing persons\" Haar has criticized the Federation of Expellees for inflating the numbers of German victims of the expulsion of Germans after World War II,; the former expellees' president Erika Steinbach in her reply accused Haar of reducing the number of victims.\n",
"The expulsion of Germans after World War II refers to the forced migration and ethnic cleansing of German nationals (\"Reichsdeutsche\") and ethnic Germans (\"Volksdeutsche)\" from the former eastern territories of Germany, former Sudetenland and other areas across Europe in the first five years after World War II.\n",
"In contrast to expulsions from other nations or states, the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary was dictated from outside Hungary. It began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet Commander-in-Chief ordered the expulsions. Three percent of the German pre-war population (about 20,000 people) had been evacuated by the Volksbund before that. They went to Austria, but many had returned. Overall, 60,000 ethnic Germans had fled.\n"
] |
Why wasn't Augustus one of the "5 good Roman emperors"?
|
I think the best explanation in this case is the simplest one: the term “5 Good Emperors” refers specifically to the chronological succession of five emperors (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius, and Marcus Aurelius) who were lauded for their expansion of the empire and the relative stability of their reigns. It’s not simply a list of “the five best Emperors of Rome — number 4 will shock you!” it’s a non-dynastic succession of notable emperors. Augustus is widely regarded as a successful and comparable emperor, but he wasn’t part of the succession that involved the aforementioned 5, he reigned much earlier and as part of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
|
[
"Many consider Augustus to be Rome's greatest emperor; his policies certainly extended the Empire's life span and initiated the celebrated \"Pax Romana\" or \"Pax Augusta\". The Roman Senate wished subsequent emperors to \"be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan\". Augustus was intelligent, decisive, and a shrewd politician, but he was not perhaps as charismatic as Julius Caesar and was influenced on occasion by Livia (sometimes for the worse). Nevertheless, his legacy proved more enduring. The city of Rome was utterly transformed under Augustus, with Rome's first institutionalized police force, fire fighting force, and the establishment of the municipal prefect as a permanent office. The police force was divided into cohorts of 500 men each, while the units of firemen ranged from 500 to 1,000 men each, with 7 units assigned to 14 divided city sectors.\n",
"Due to his advanced age, Augustus was unable to travel to the east himself. There were few the Emperor trusted to settle matters in the east, but he was confident Gaius could. Gaius made a good choice, because his presence represented that of the imperial family – all orders, promises, or threats coming from him were as valid as if they came from the Emperor himself. Nonetheless, he was only eighteen, and therefore too young for the conduct of important business.\n",
"Although the most powerful individual in the Roman Empire, Augustus wished to embody the spirit of Republican virtue and norms. He also wanted to relate to and connect with the concerns of the plebs and lay people. He achieved this through various means of generosity and a cutting back of lavish excess. In the year 29 BC, Augustus gave 400 sesterces (equal to 1/10 of a Roman pound of gold) each to 250,000 citizens, 1,000 sesterces each to 120,000 veterans in the colonies, and spent 700 million sesterces in purchasing land for his soldiers to settle upon. He also restored 82 different temples to display his care for the Roman pantheon of deities. In 28 BC, he melted down 80 silver statues erected in his likeness and in honor of him, an attempt of his to appear frugal and modest.\n",
"The two victories were his contribution to the final triumph of his father over Licinius. Constantine was the only Augustus left in the Empire. He honoured his son for his support and success by depicting his face in imperial coins, statues, mosaics, cameos, etc. Eusebius of Caesaria wrote for Crispus that he is \"an Imperator most dear to God and in all regards comparable to his father.\"\n",
"The concept of \"The Five Good Emperors\" reflects the internal Roman point of view. As regards their treatment of Roman citizens, these five Emperors clearly seem better than other Emperors – specifically, better than Domitian who immediately preceded them and Commodus who immediately followed them – and this view was taken up by later Europeans, drawing on Roman historical sources. It is, however, not necessarily the point of view of provincials and of Rome's neighbors – particularly, of those targeted by one or more of these emperors in a war of conquest or in the suppression of a revolt. \n",
"Octavian's victory enabled him to consolidate his power over Rome and its dominions. He adopted the title of Princeps (\"first citizen\") and some years later was awarded the title of Augustus (\"revered\") by the Roman Senate. This became the name by which he was known in later times. As Augustus, he retained the trappings of a restored Republican leader, but historians generally view this consolidation of power and the adoption of these honorifics as the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.\n",
"Modern historians conventionally regard Augustus as the first Emperor whereas Julius Caesar is considered the last dictator of the Roman Republic, a view having its origins in the Roman writers Plutarch, Tacitus and Cassius Dio. However, the majority of Roman writers, including Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius and Appian, as well as most of the ordinary people of the Empire, thought of Julius Caesar as the first Emperor.\n"
] |
How does the fact that heat moves from warmer objects to cooler objects relate to IR emitted from greenhouse gases?
|
No, that is a entirely unreasonable argument.
As an illustration, which do you think would heat up to higher temperatures? An oven with the door open or an oven with the door closed?
If you consider the surface of the planet to be the IR source in the oven, and greenhouse gasses to be the oven door, you have a fairly reasonable (albeit exaggerated) analogy on your hands.
Now the person you are talking to is onto *something* with the point that you can't increase the heat of an object by trapping smaller amounts of heat around it... but in the real world that really only applies to very specific and simple situations and is totally irrelevant here. The surface of the planet (rocks, soils, buildings, etc) are already in balance between heat gathered from the sun and heat lost to the atmosphere. As the atmosphere increases in temperature, the physical surface of the planet will have a harder time shedding heat, and it can be expected to increase in temperature too.
|
[
"When greenhouse gas molecules absorb thermal infrared energy, their temperature rises. Those gases then radiate an increased amount of thermal infrared energy in all directions. Heat radiated upward continues to encounter greenhouse gas molecules; those molecules also absorb the heat, and their temperature rises and the amount of heat they radiate increases. The atmosphere thins with altitude, and at roughly 5–6 kilometres, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the overlying atmosphere is so thin that heat can escape to space.\n",
"Because greenhouse gas molecules radiate infrared energy in all directions, some of it spreads downward and ultimately returns to the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed. The Earth's surface temperature is thus higher than it would be if it were heated only by direct solar heating. This supplemental heating is the natural greenhouse effect. It is as if the Earth is covered by a blanket that allows high frequency radiation (sunlight) to enter, but slows the rate at which the low frequency infrared radiant energy emitted by the Earth leaves.\n",
"The warmer temperature in a greenhouse occurs because incident solar radiation passes through the transparent roof and walls and is absorbed by the floor, earth, and contents, which become warmer. As the structure is not open to the atmosphere, the warmed air cannot escape via convection, so the temperature inside the greenhouse rises. This differs from the earth-oriented theory known as the \"greenhouse effect\".\n",
"Glass coated with a low-emissivity substance can reflect radiant infrared energy, encouraging radiant heat to remain on the same side of the glass from which it originated, while letting visible light pass. This often results in more efficient windows because radiant heat originating from indoors in winter is reflected back inside, while infrared heat radiation from the sun during summer is reflected away, keeping it cooler inside.\n",
"Objects struck by sunlight absorb its visible and short-wave infrared components, increase in temperature, and then re-radiate that heat at longer infrared wavelengths. Though transparent building materials such as glass allow visible light to pass through almost unimpeded, once that light is converted to long-wave infrared radiation by materials indoors, it is unable to escape back through the window since glass is opaque to those longer wavelengths. The trapped heat thus causes solar gain via a phenomenon known as the greenhouse effect. In buildings, excessive solar gain can lead to overheating within a space, but it can also be used as a passive heating strategy when heat is desired.\n",
"In all cases, the air has to be cooler than the object or surface from which it is expected to remove heat. This is due to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that heat will only move spontaneously from a hot reservoir (the heat sink) to a cold reservoir (the air).\n",
"The basic mechanism can be qualified in a number of ways, none of which affect the fundamental process. The atmosphere near the surface is largely opaque to thermal radiation (with important exceptions for \"window\" bands), and most heat loss from the surface is by sensible heat and latent heat transport. Radiative energy losses become increasingly important higher in the atmosphere, largely because of the decreasing concentration of water vapor, an important greenhouse gas. It is more realistic to think of the greenhouse effect as applying to a layer in the mid-troposphere, which is effectively coupled to the surface by a lapse rate. The simple picture also assumes a steady state, but in the real world, the diurnal cycle as well as the seasonal cycle and weather disturbances complicate matters. Solar heating applies only during daytime. During the night, the atmosphere cools somewhat, but not greatly, because its emissivity is low. Diurnal temperature changes decrease with height in the atmosphere.\n"
] |
How did Plato's name become root word for non-sexual friendship? Platonic.
|
Mainly because of his dialogue the *Symposium*, which is effectively a prose drama showing several people making speeches about the nature of love/desire. All of the speakers are in agreement that physical desire is the "lowest" kind of love, and as the drama progresses there's a kind of escalation of what "higher" kinds of love look like. One speaker casts "higher" love as a relationship between minds, not bodies; another casts love as a cosmic force, representing all forms of attraction; another casts love as the desire for wholeness; Socrates (the hero) casts different kinds of love on an ascending scale that reaches up, at its most philosophical "heights", to the meditation on and contemplation of abstractions that are usually known as [Platonic forms](_URL_0_).
The term "Platonic love" was coined by Ben Jonson in his 1631 play *The New Inn*. Act III scene 2 is essentially a discourse on love, and explicitly summarizes a number of passages in Plato's *Symposium*. At lines 73-6 the character Lovel starts off by defining love as follows:
> For, what else
is *Love*, but the most noble, pure affection
of what is truly beautiful, and faire?
Desire of union with the thing beloved?
This is essentially a paraphrase of an opening section in Socrates' speech. A few lines after that, Beaufort paraphrases Aristophanes' speech in the *Symposium*, and Lovel makes the attribution explicit ("It is a fable of *Plato's*, in his Banquet, / and utter'd, there, by *Aristophanes*"). Lovel goes on to cite ideas from other speeches in the *Symposium*:
> **Beaufort.** I relish not these philosophicall feasts;
give me a banquet o' sense, like that of Ovid...
> **Lovel.** They are the earthly, lower forme of lovers,
are only taken with what strikes the senses!
And so on, until we get to Lovel coining the phrase at line 278, with the twist of simultaneously demanding a kiss as a fee for his time:
> **Lovel.** Most *Socratick* Lady!
Or, if you will *Ironick*! gi'you joy
o'you *Platonick* love here, Mr *Lovel*.
But pay him his first kisse, yet, i'the Court,
which is a debt, and due: for the houre's run.
Plato's/Jonson's philosophization of love, and Jonson's emphasis on the non-sexual nature of "Platonic" love (a view that Plato did not share!), provided a useful way for people to rationalize homosocial relationships and categorize them as non-sexual. A lot of western homosocial culture depends on the existence of that non-sexual category. Platonic love as sexual did get somewhat rehabilitated, largely thanks to the invention of homosexuality and elevation of "Greek love" in the 19th century, but Jonson's phrase has stayed with us.
|
[
"\"Platonic\" refers to the writings of Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher who wrote on the interesting subject of love. Platonic love and platonic friendships are marked by the absence of physical or sexual desire. Plato did acknowledge physical desire, but thought that if two people truly inspired each other, their spiritual or ideal love would bring them closer to God.\n",
"In the dialogue \"Cratylus\", Plato considered the question of whether the names of things were determined by convention or by nature. He criticized conventionalism because it led to the bizarre consequence that anything can be conventionally denominated by any name. Hence, it cannot account for the correct or incorrect application of a name. He claimed that there was a natural correctness to names. To do this, he pointed out that compound words and phrases have a range of correctness. He also argued that primitive names had a natural correctness, because each phoneme represented basic ideas or sentiments. For example, for Plato the letter \"l\" and its sound represented the idea of softness. However, by the end of the \"Cronic\", he had admitted that some social conventions were also involved, and that there were faults in the idea that phonemes had individual meanings.\n",
"Plato's early philosophical endeavors involved poetry discussing many ideas, such as the differences between knowledge and opinion, particulars and universals, and God and man. These early dialogues do not utilize conventional notions of reason. Rather, they appeal to the emotions, the allegorical, the spiritual, and the mythological interests of an ancient speculative mind.\n",
"Thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters (the \"Epistles\") have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, though modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these. Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts.\n",
"Though Plato's discussions of love originally centered on relationships which were sexual and between members of the same sex, scholar Todd Reeser studies how the meaning of platonic love in Plato's original sense underwent a transformation during the Renaissance, leading to the contemporary sense of nonsexual heterosexual love.\n",
"Plato in Ancient Greece was one of the earliest philosophers to provide a detailed discussion of ideas and of the thinking process (in Plato's Greek the word \"idea\" carries a rather different sense from our modern English term). Plato argued in dialogues such as the \"Phaedo\", \"Symposium\", \"Republic\", and \"Timaeus\" that there is a realm of ideas or forms (\"eidei\"), which exist independently of anyone who may have thoughts on these ideas, and it is the ideas which distinguish mere opinion from knowledge, for unlike material things which are transient and liable to contrary properties, ideas are unchanging and nothing but just what they are. Consequently, Plato seems to assert forcefully that material things can only be the objects of opinion; real knowledge can only be had of unchanging ideas. Furthermore, ideas for Plato appear to serve as universals; consider the following passage from the \"Republic\":\n",
"Ancient Greek philosophers were also interested in the conception of eros, which became a central issue in their analyses. In particular, Plato devoted two of his dialogues, \"Phaedrus\" and \"Symposium\", to the philosophical dimensions of love, and in particular pederastic love. In \"Phaedrus\", the best eros of a man for a boy is said to be a form of divine madness that is a gift from the gods, and that its proper expression is rewarded by the gods in the afterlife; the \"Symposium\" details the method by which love takes one to the form of beauty and wisdom. The term Platonic love derived from the philosopher's influential writings, and describes the passionate but chaste love of a man for a youth.\n"
] |
how do the "double irish" and "double irish w/ dutch sandwich" tax avoidance techniques work?
|
The EU operates a free trade regime such that a state can't attempt to tax an entity based in another country selling to its citizens. In the US context its very similar to the way US states behave, if I live in NY and buy something from a company in MA then NY doesn't tax the company in MA for profits they make but instead they are taxed in MA.
In the EU Ireland has the most favorable tax rate so many corporations HQ there in order to pay the lower tax rate. If you buy a Dell computer in France you are not doing business with Dell France but with Dell Ireland. In effect businesses funnel all sales through an Irish office to pay a lower rate of corporation tax.
Ireland has a tax treaty with the Netherlands which massively reduces Irish tax burden for profit transfers there (technically its an entire exemption but some revenue will be subject to taxation due to licensing arrangements). Once in the Netherlands there is a small tax imposed (again licensing arrangements) but then it is transferred back to Ireland to a separate entity (2nd Irish subsidiary, hence the "Double").
A quirk in Irish tax law means that a company that is actually controlled by foreign managers can transfer all profits to that country tax free so the 2nd Irish subsidiary is actually controlled by another subsidiary in another country (outside the EU, Bermuda is popular).
[This](_URL_0_) illustrates the process fairly well.
Some countries (most of the Middle-East, Africa, Australia, Asia) has lax revenue shifting controls so companies also shift earnings from these subsidiaries through Ireland to similarly reduce their tax exposure.
While this is typically mentioned in the context of US corporations it actually has no impact on US tax revenue at all, its impossible to shift US based revenue out of the US and due to IP transfer fees (fees a subsidiary has to pay to its US parent to account for brand, technology etc developed in the US) some of the non-US revenue does make it back in to the US and instead primarily impacts EU income. In the Google example in 2012 they had an EU effective corporate tax rate of 4.4% while a US effective corporate tax rate of 29.1%.
|
[
"In 2013, Bloomberg reported that lobbying by PriceWaterhouseCoopers Irish Managing Partner Feargal O'Rourke, who Bloomberg labelled \"grand architect\" of the Double Irish, led to the Irish Government to relax the rules for making Irish royalty payments to non-EU companies (i.e. IRL2), without incurring Irish withholding tax. This removed the explicit need for the Dutch Sandwich, but there are still several conditions that will not suit all types of Double Irish structures, and thus several US multinationals in Ireland continued with the classic \"Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich\" combination.\n",
"The Double Irish is a base erosion and profit shifting (\"BEPS\") corporate tax tool, used mostly by US multinationals since the late 1980s, to avoid corporate taxation on most non–U.S. profits. It is the largest tax avoidance tool in history and by 2010, was shielding US$100 billion annually in US multinational foreign profits from taxation, and was the main tool by which US multinationals built up untaxed offshore reserves of US$1 trillion from 2004 to 2018. Traditionally, it was also used with the Dutch Sandwich BEPS tool; however, changes to Irish tax law in 2010 dispensed with this requirement for most users.\n",
"The 2014–16 EU investigation into Apple in Ireland (see below), showed that the Double Irish existed as far back as 1991. Early U.S. academic research in 1994 into U.S. multinational use of tax havens identified \"profit shifting\" accounting techniques. U.S. congressional investigations into the tax practices of U.S. multinationals were aware of such BEPS tools for many years. However, the U.S. did not try to force the closure of the Double Irish BEPS tool, instead it was the EU which forced Ireland to close the Double Irish to new schemes in October 2014. Even still, existing users of the Double Irish BEPS tool (e.g. Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, amongst many others), were given five more years until January 2020, before the tool would be fully shut-down to all users.\n",
"The Double Irish uses an Irish company (IRL2) that is legally incorporated in Ireland, and thus the US-tax code regards it as foreign, but is \"managed and controlled\" from, say, Bermuda (and thus the Irish tax code also regards it as foreign). The Dutch Sandwich, with the Dutch company as the \"dutch slice\" in the \"sandwich\", is used to move money to this Irish company (IRL2), without incurring Irish withholding tax. \n",
"The Double Irish was the largest BEPS tool in history which by 2015, was shielding over USD$100 billion in mostly US corporate profits from US taxation. When the EU Commission fined Apple €13 billion for using an illegal hybrid-Double Irish structure, their report noted that Apple had been using the structure from at least as far back as 1991. Several Senate and Congressional inquiries in Washington cited public knowledge of the Double Irish from 2000 onwards. However, it was not the US who finally forced Ireland to close the structure in 2015, but the EU Commission; and existing users were given until 2020 to find alternative arrangements, two of which (e.g. Single malt arrangement) were already operating. The lack of action by the US, similar to their position with the OECD MLI (above), has been attributed to the of tax havens. However, some commentators note the reform of the US corporate tax code by the 2017 TCJA may change this.\n",
"In an October 2013 interview, PwC tax partner Feargal O'Rourke (\"architect\" of the Double Irish, see above), said that: \"the days of the Double Irish tax scheme are numbered\". In October 2014, as the EU forced the Irish State to close the Double Irish BEPS tool, the influential U.S. National Tax Journal published an article by Jeffrey L Rubinger and Summer Lepree, showing that Irish based subsidiaries of U.S. corporations could replace the Double Irish arrangement with a new structure (now known as \"Single Malt\"). The Irish media picked up the article, but when an Irish MEP notified the then Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, he was told to \"Put on the green jersey\". A November 2017 report by Christian Aid, titled \"Impossible Structures\", showed how quickly the Single Malt BEPS tool was replacing the Double Irish. The report detailed Microsoft's and Allergen's schemes and extracts from advisers to their clients. In September 2018, \"The Irish Times\" revealed that U.S. medical device manufacturer Teleflex, had created a Single Malt scheme in July 2018, and reduced their corporate tax rate to circa 3%; and that the Irish State were keeping the matter, \"under consideration\".\n",
"In October 2014, as the EU forced the Irish State to close the Double Irish BEPS tool, the influential U.S. National Tax Journal published an article by Jeffrey L Rubinger and Summer Lepree, showing that Irish based subsidiaries of U.S. corporations could replace the Double Irish arrangement with a new structure (now known as Single Malt). If the Bermuda–controlled Irish company (IRL2) was relocated to a country with whom (a) Ireland had a tax treaty, (b) with wording on \"management and control\" tax residency, and (c) had a zero corporate tax rate, then the Double Irish effect could be replicated. They highlighted Malta as a candidate. The Irish media picked up the article, but when an Irish MEP notified the then Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, he was told to \"Put on the green jersey\".\n"
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.