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why would we ever care about the distinction of a newtonian fluid and a non-newtonian fluid? (i put this with an engineering flair because i want to know if there’s any practical use, not theoretical)
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Imagine you're trying to fill a mold with a material. You'd likely want to do that as fast as you can. Well, what happens if the material doesn't behave like a Newtonian fluid? It becomes much more difficult to predict how the mold will fill without extensive experimentation.
You can also get neat things like _URL_1_ which lets us do _URL_0_
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[
"Newtonian fluids are the simplest mathematical models of fluids that account for viscosity. While no real fluid fits the definition perfectly, many common liquids and gases, such as water and air, can be assumed to be Newtonian for practical calculations under ordinary conditions. However, non-Newtonian fluids are relatively common, and include oobleck (which becomes stiffer when vigorously sheared), or non-drip paint (which becomes thinner when sheared). Other examples include many polymer solutions (which exhibit the Weissenberg effect), molten polymers, many solid suspensions, blood, and most highly viscous fluids.\n",
"A Newtonian fluid (named after Isaac Newton) is defined to be a fluid whose shear stress is linearly proportional to the velocity gradient in the direction perpendicular to the plane of shear. This definition means regardless of the forces acting on a fluid, it \"continues to flow\". For example, water is a Newtonian fluid, because it continues to display fluid properties no matter how much it is stirred or mixed. A slightly less rigorous definition is that the drag of a small object being moved slowly through the fluid is proportional to the force applied to the object. (Compare friction). Important fluids, like water as well as most gases, behave—to good approximation—as a Newtonian fluid under normal conditions on Earth.\n",
"A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid whose flow properties differ in any way from those of Newtonian fluids. Most commonly the viscosity of non-Newtonian fluids is a function of shear rate or shear rate history. However, there are some non-Newtonian fluids with shear-independent viscosity, that nonetheless exhibit normal stress-differences or other non-Newtonian behaviour. Many salt solutions and molten polymers are non-Newtonian fluids, as are many commonly found substances such as ketchup, custard, toothpaste, starch suspensions, paint, blood, and shampoo. In a Newtonian fluid, the relation between the shear stress and the shear rate is linear, passing through the origin, the constant of proportionality being the coefficient of viscosity. In a non-Newtonian fluid, the relation between the shear stress and the shear rate is different, and can even be time-dependent. The study of the non-Newtonian fluids is usually called rheology. A few examples are given here.\n",
"A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid that does not follow Newton's law of viscosity, i.e. constant viscosity independent of stress. In non-Newtonian fluids, viscosity can change when under force to either more liquid or more solid. Ketchup, for example, becomes runnier when shaken and is thus a non-Newtonian fluid. Many salt solutions and molten polymers are non-Newtonian fluids, as are many commonly found substances such as custard, honey, toothpaste, starch suspensions, corn starch, paint, blood, and shampoo.\n",
"More precisely, a fluid is Newtonian only if the tensors that describe the viscous stress and the strain rate are related by a constant viscosity tensor that does not depend on the stress state and velocity of the flow. If the fluid is also isotropic (that is, its mechanical properties are the same along any direction), the viscosity tensor reduces to two real coefficients, describing the fluid's resistance to continuous shear deformation and continuous compression or expansion, respectively.\n",
"A Non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid which is different from the Newtonian fluid as the viscosity of non-Newtonian fluids is dependent on shear rate or shear rate history. In a non-Newtonian fluid, the relation between the shear stress and the shear rate is different and can even be time-dependent (Time Dependent Viscosity). Therefore, a constant coefficient of viscosity cannot be defined.\n",
"Newton's law of viscosity is not a fundamental law of nature, but rather a constitutive equation (like Hooke's law, Fick's law, and Ohm's law) which serves to define the viscosity formula_10. Its form is motivated by experiments which show that for a wide range of fluids, formula_10 is independent of strain rate. Such fluids are called Newtonian. Gases, water, and many common liquids can be considered Newtonian in ordinary conditions and contexts. However, there are many non-Newtonian fluids that significantly deviate from this behavior. For example:\n"
] |
Would supersonic air flowing across a wing fixed to the floor in a lab produce a constant sonic boom?
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A sonic boom is the perceptual phenomenon caused by the passage of a shock wave over the human ear. Every object that is going faster than the speed of sound in a medium has an associated shock wave attached to or very near the object. This shock wave is always there once the object reaches a speed faster than Mach 1. In a stationary wind tunnel, with an object exposed to supersonic flow, the shock wave would be stationary relative to the object and therefore relative to the observer. If the observer were inside the tunnel, they would not hear a sonic boom unless they deliberately walked through the shock.
|
[
"The aerodynamics of supersonic flight is called compressible flow because of the compression (physics) associated with the shock waves or \"sonic boom\" created by any object travelling faster than sound.\n",
"The later shock waves are somewhat faster than the first one, travel faster and add to the main shockwave at some distance away from the aircraft to create a much more defined N-wave shape. This maximizes both the magnitude and the \"rise time\" of the shock which makes the boom seem louder. On most aircraft designs the characteristic distance is about , meaning that below this altitude the sonic boom will be \"softer\". However, the drag at this altitude or below makes supersonic travel particularly inefficient, which poses a serious problem.\n",
"As an aircraft enters the transonic region close to the speed of sound, the acceleration of air over curved areas can cause the flow to go supersonic. This generates a shock wave and creates considerable drag, known as wave drag. The increase in drag is so rapid and powerful that it gives rise to the concept of a sound barrier.\n",
"For the purpose of comparison, in supersonic flows, additional increased expansion may be achieved through an expansion fan, also known as a Prandtl–Meyer expansion fan. The accompanying expansion wave may approach and eventually collide and recombine with the shock wave, creating a process of destructive interference. The sonic boom associated with the passage of a supersonic aircraft is a type of sound wave produced by constructive interference.\n",
"If the intensity of the boom can be reduced, then this may make even very large designs of supersonic aircraft acceptable for overland flight. Research suggests that changes to the nose cone and tail can reduce the intensity of the sonic boom below that needed to cause complaints. During the original SST efforts in the 1960s, it was suggested that careful shaping of the fuselage of the aircraft could reduce the intensity of the sonic boom's shock waves that reach the ground. One design caused the shock waves to interfere with each other, greatly reducing sonic boom. This was difficult to test at the time, but the increasing power of computer-aided design has since made this considerably easier. In 2003, a Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration aircraft was flown which proved the soundness of the design and demonstrated the capability of reducing the boom by about half. Even lengthening the vehicle (without significantly increasing the weight) would seem to reduce the boom intensity.\n",
"One of the many differences between supersonic and hypersonic flight concerns the interaction of the boundary layer and the shock waves generated from the nose of the aircraft. Normally the boundary layer is quite thin compared to the streamline of airflow over the wing, and can be considered separately from other aerodynamic effects. However, as the speed increases and the shock wave increasingly approaches the sides of the craft, there comes a point where the two start to interact and the flowfield becomes very complex. Long before that point, the boundary layer starts to interact with the air trapped between the shock wave and the fuselage, the air that is being used for lift on a waverider.\n",
"At high-subsonic flight speeds, the local speed of the airflow can reach the speed of sound where the flow accelerates around the aircraft body and wings. The speed at which this development occurs varies from aircraft to aircraft and is known as the critical Mach number. The resulting shock waves formed at these points of sonic flow can result in a sudden increase in drag, called wave drag. To reduce the number and power of these shock waves, an aerodynamic shape should change in cross sectional area as smoothly as possible.\n"
] |
What is the connection between Majorana Mass and a Majorana Particle?
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If you give a Majorana mass to a "normal" four-component spinor, so making it satisfy the Majorana *equation*, you obtain *two* particles. They are antiparticles of eachother and must be electrically neutral.
Only when you supplement the Majorana *condition*, that is that the spinor is its own charge conjugate, you get one single Majorana particle, neutral and its own antiparticle.
|
[
"However, the right-handed sterile neutrinos introduced to explain neutrino oscillation could have Majorana masses. If they do, then at low energy (after electroweak symmetry breaking), by the seesaw mechanism, the neutrino fields would naturally behave as six Majorana fields, with three of them expected to have very high masses (comparable to the GUT scale) and the other three expected to have very low masses (below 1 eV). If right-handed neutrinos exist but do not have a Majorana mass, the neutrinos would instead behave as three Dirac fermions and their antiparticles with masses coming directly from the Higgs interaction, like the other Standard Model fermions.\n",
"It is possible to include both Dirac and Majorana mass terms in the same theory, which (in contrast to the Dirac-mass-only approach) can provide a “natural” explanation for the smallness of the observed neutrino masses, by linking the right-handed neutrinos to yet-unknown physics around the GUT scale (see seesaw mechanism).\n",
"If the neutrino is a Majorana particle, the mass may be calculated by finding the half-life of neutrinoless double-beta decay of certain nuclei. The current lowest upper limit on the Majorana mass of the neutrino has been set by KamLAND-Zen: 0.060–0.161 eV.\n",
"Since Majorana masses of the right-handed neutrino are forbidden by symmetry, GUTs predict the Majorana masses of right-handed neutrinos to be close to the GUT scale where the symmetry is spontaneously broken in those models. In supersymmetric GUTs, this scale tends to be larger than would be desirable to obtain realistic masses of the light, mostly left-handed neutrinos (see neutrino oscillation) via the seesaw mechanism. These predictions are independent of the Georgi–Jarlskog mass relations, wherein some GUTs predict other fermion mass ratios.\n",
"EXO measures the rate of neutrinoless decay events above the expected background of similar signals, to find or limit the double beta decay half-life, which relates to the effective neutrino mass using nuclear matrix elements. A limit on effective neutrino mass below 0.01 eV would determine the neutrino mass order. The effective neutrino mass is dependent on the lightest neutrino mass in such a way that that bound indicates the normal mass hierarchy.\n",
"The precise mass of the neutrino is important not only for particle physics, but also for cosmology. The observation of neutrino oscillation is strong evidence in favor of massive neutrinos, but gives only a weak lower bound.\n",
"In particle physics, majorons (named after Ettore Majorana) are a hypothetical type of Goldstone boson that are theorized to mediate the neutrino mass violation of lepton number or \"B\" − \"L\" in certain high energy collisions such as\n"
] |
Floating Feature: Close Up Shop and Celebrate History Coming to an End as 'The Story of Humankind' Concludes With Volume XIII from 1947 to 2000 CE!
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**The 1980s neo-liberal reforms as an attempt to eliminate the military-industrial complex: part 1**
Now that should be a provocative title!
Over the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, there were pro-market reforms across much of the world. These reforms were and are highly controversial. My purpose in this post is to give a high-level description of the reforms and of the economic theory and practical experiences that motivated them, followed by what I think are the strongest criticisms of them.
A bit of background, I’m a New Zealander, and thus this description will be somewhat biased towards New Zealand as an example. My interests are in economic history and the history of economic thought. Combined, this means that I don’t know much about the politics behind the reforms in most countries, including the USA, so I will probably struggle to answer follow-up questions that focus on the politics.
*What we can agree on*
They say that when writing a persuasive essay on a provocative topic, you should start with outlining areas of agreement. (I will be a bit lazy and use terms like 'no one' 'everyone' and 'all' in a loose sense, I’m sure you can find someone on reddit who disagrees on something!)
We all agree that markets fail from time to time. We all agree that governments fail from time to time. No one has blind faith in markets, no one has blind faith in governments. And, while we're at it, we all agree that non-government, non-profit institutions have their uses. Different people do tend to be more inclined to view particular institutions as useful in more situations than other people do, but even Communists agree that people should be able to hold personal possessions as their own property, and only the most thorough-going libertarian would deny a role for government in services like military defence, or, to pick a NZ example, biosecurity (keeping out foreign pests). The relevant question is, for a given economic problem, which type of institution is best at solving it, or, for a more pessimistic view, least-bad. I presume a thorough pessimist would declare that it doesn't matter, whatever the problem, the worst possible institution will be picked for it.
We all agree that people do not always behave rationally, and people always have limited information to base their decisions on, and that this is true both of people acting in markets and people acting in government.
We also, I think, mainly agree, that within the things that fall in the scope of government, different types of structures might be useful for different problems. Most democracies insulate judges of criminal and civil matters from direct democratic pressures (the USA is unusual in that many states elect at least some judges). Public healthcare systems like the UK’s NHS mainly leave medical treatment to be decided by the relevant doctors and their patients. Etc.
Everyone agrees? Onto the history.
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[
"The longest of the stories is also called \"Half a Life\" and tells the story of a Russian woman kidnapped by an alien spacecraft in the years following the second world war. In a distant, but unspecified future, human cosmonauts discover the alien ship floating in space, a derelict. Entering the ship, they soon realize that it was automated - run by robots with the apparent mission of collecting biologic specimens from different planets. (The purpose of this exploration remains undetermined, but one of the humans speculate that it may have been a lucky break for mankind that the ship never returned home.) One of the cosmonauts finds bits of a journal written in Russian, a diary of life aboard the spacecraft written by the abducted Russian woman, the ship's sole human occupant. Compiling the journal, the cosmonauts learn of the human author's attempts to bond with the ship's other intelligent specimens, and of their plot to escape the ship's crew of automatons. When the cosmonauts find the journal incomplete, they are forced to learn for themselves the fate of the author.\n",
"\"Space Museum\" first appeared in the story \"The World of Doomed Spacemen\" in \"Strange Adventures\" #104 (May 1959), written by creator Gardner Fox under the editorship of Julius Schwartz. The series of 8-page stories was published in rotation with two others, \"The Atomic Knights\" and \"Star Hawkins\", and appeared in every third issue of \"Strange Adventures\" from #106 - 157 (July 1959 - October 1963), with one last story, \"Space Museum of the Dead World,\" in issue #161 (February 1964) - a total of 20 stories. With the exception of the first tale, which was drawn by Mike Sekowsky and Bernard Sachs, all the other Space Museum stories were drawn by Carmine Infantino. Only the initial story featured on the cover of \"Strange Adventures\".\n",
"\"Space Museum\" in \"Strange Adventures\" was an anthology series set in the 25th century featuring mainly unlinked heroic tales of outer space adventure; with a regular framing sequence that opens and closes each episode with the only continuing characters - Howard Parker and his young son Tommy (and on three occasions his mother) making their monthly visit to the Space Museum, later established as being in Metropolis. It is a museum dedicated to showcasing the history of five centuries of human space travel, and features many exhibits in transparent display cases, each artifact from an adventure an Earth space traveller had had in outer space. The objects in the display cases are often ordinary, although somehow they were used to either save the Earth or some other planet from disaster: \"Behind every object in the Space Museum there's a tale of heroism, daring, self sacrifice.\" During these visits Tommy always asks his father about one exhibit in particular, and Howard Parker then tells his son the story behind that exhibit, including:\n",
"The Space Museum is the seventh serial of the second season in the British science fiction television series \"Doctor Who\", which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 24 April to 15 May 1965. Set in a space museum on the planet Xeros, the serial has the time traveller the First Doctor (William Hartnell) and his travelling companions Ian Chesterton (William Russell), Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), and Vicki (Maureen O'Brien) looking for a way to change their fate after seeing themselves turned into museum exhibits in the future.\n",
"Zelazny created and edited a shared world anthology called \"Forever After\". The frame story uses preludes, written by Roger, to connect the stories. This shared world involved stories by Robert Asprin, David Drake, Jane Lindskold, and Michael A. Stackpole. \"Forever After\" was published by Baen Books posthumously.\n",
"In the 1967 \"\" episode \"The City on the Edge of Forever\", a temporarily deranged Dr. Leonard McCoy runs into a time portal, an ancient sentient stone-like ring which calls itself the Guardian of Forever, and is transported back to 1930s Depression-era Earth and history is changed as shown when the Enterprise disappears from orbit. Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock follow through the time portal to set things right.\n",
"\"Goodbye, 20th Century!\" consists of three stories of extreme violence and emotional despair. The first takes place in the year 2019, where the world has become an environment of apocalyptic wreckage and ruin. A man named Kuzman is sentenced to death by a nomadic tribe, but their attempts to fatally shoot the condemned man are a failure. Fated to live forever, Kuzman wanders the wasteland until he encounters an enigmatic figure who offers him information on how he can escape eternal life.\n"
] |
Can theories be proven or is it that they have just failed to be disproved?
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You are correct.
The general answer for the scientific method is that nothing can be proven, only disproven.
However, once a hypothesis has passed enough experimental tests that the only other competing hypothesizes are clearly wrong, then the hypothesis becomes a "theory" meaning it has a great deal of acceptance in the scientific community.
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[
"To the Sceptics, none of the contending theories, proposed by limited intellect, can be known to be true, since they are mutually contradictory. Also, any new theory is bound to contradict existing theories, and hence cannot be true. Hence nothing can be known to be true. Thus the Sceptics conclude that the contradictions of metaphysics and the impossibility of omniscience leads them to accept Scepticism.\n",
"However, such theories are controversial and cannot be all true. Conclusive evidence proving or disproving them has never been presented and there is no consensus amongst scholars on whether or not such links exist.\n",
"The Duhem–Quine thesis argues that no scientific hypothesis is by itself capable of making predictions. Instead, deriving predictions from the hypothesis typically requires background assumptions that several other hypotheses are correct; for example, that an experiment works as predicted or that previous scientific theory is sufficiently accurate. For instance, as evidence against the idea that the Earth is in motion, some people objected that birds did not get thrown off into the sky whenever they let go of a tree branch. Later theories of physics and astronomy, such as classical and relativistic mechanics could account for such observations without positing a fixed Earth, and in due course they replaced the static-Earth auxiliary hypotheses and initial conditions.\n",
"In natural science, impossibility assertions (like other assertions) come to be widely accepted as overwhelmingly probable rather than considered proved to the point of being unchallengeable. The basis for this strong acceptance is a combination of extensive evidence of something not occurring, combined with an underlying theory, very successful in making predictions, whose assumptions lead logically to the conclusion that something is impossible.\n",
"The Quine-Duhem thesis argues that it's impossible to test a single hypothesis on its own, since each one comes as part of an environment of theories. Thus we can only say that the whole package of relevant theories has been collectively falsified, but cannot conclusively say which element of the package must be replaced. An example of this is given by the discovery of the planet Neptune: when the motion of Uranus was found not to match the predictions of Newton's laws, the theory \"There are seven planets in the solar system\" was rejected, and not Newton's laws themselves. Popper discussed this critique of naïve falsificationism in Chapters 3 and 4 of \"The Logic of Scientific Discovery\". For Popper, theories are accepted or rejected via a sort of selection process. Theories that say more about the way things appear are to be preferred over those that do not; the more generally applicable a theory is, the greater its value. Thus Newton's laws, with their wide general application, are to be preferred over the much more specific \"the solar system has seven planets\".\n",
"Arguments involving underdetermination attempt to show that there is no reason to believe some conclusion because it is underdetermined by the evidence. Then, if the evidence available at a particular time can be equally well explained by at least one other hypothesis, there is no reason to believe it rather than the equally supported rival, which can be considered observationally equivalent (although many other hypotheses may still be eliminated).\n",
"Acceptance of a theory does not require that all of its major predictions be tested, if it is already supported by sufficiently strong evidence. For example, certain tests may be unfeasible or technically difficult. As a result, theories may make predictions that have not yet been confirmed or proven incorrect; in this case, the predicted results may be described informally with the term \"theoretical\". These predictions can be tested at a later time, and if they are incorrect, this may lead to the revision or rejection of the theory.\n"
] |
Are there any examples of animals practicing medicine in the wild?
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There are parrots in the amazon that eat fruit that is toxic to them. Every evening they fly to a riverbank with an exposed clay cliff and eat some of the clay. The minerals in the clay neutralise the poison. I wish I could remember more details, like the species of parrot and the specific type of fruit.
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[
"Some animal parts used as medicinals can be considered rather strange such as cows' gallstones, hornet's nests, leeches, and scorpion. Other examples of animal parts include horn of the antelope or buffalo, deer antlers, testicles and penis bone of the dog, and snake bile. Some TCM textbooks still recommend preparations containing animal tissues, but there has been little research to justify the claimed clinical efficacy of many TCM animal products.\n",
"Animals may also play a role, in particular in research. In traditional remedies, animals are extensively used as drugs. Many animals also medicate \"themselves\". Zoopharmacognosy is the study of how animals use plants, insects and other inorganic materials in self-medicatation. In an interview with the late Neil Campbell, Eloy Rodriguez describes the importance of biodiversity:\n",
"Other 20th-century medical advances and treatments that relied on research performed in animals include organ transplant techniques, the heart-lung machine, antibiotics, and the whooping cough vaccine. Treatments for animal diseases have also been developed, including for rabies, anthrax, glanders, feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), tuberculosis, Texas cattle fever, classical swine fever (hog cholera), heartworm, and other parasitic infections. Animal experimentation continues to be required for biomedical research, and is used with the aim of solving medical problems such as Alzheimer's disease, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, many headaches, and other conditions in which there is no useful \"in vitro\" model system available.\n",
"There is not much information on the Sukuma tribes use of animals in their medicine.This is mostly because a lot of the research that has been done on the medicinal practices of this tribe have been plant based. A study was conducted in the Busega District of Tanzania, an area comprising the Serengeti Game Reserve and Lake Victoria, to determine which faunal resources healers use to treat illnesses within the community. 98 Community members (farmers, healers, fisherman, and cultural officers), aged 55 and older, were interviewed to obtain their knowledge on which animals were used to treat illnesses. These were the results of the study:\n",
"Throughout the 20th century, research that used live animals has led to many other medical advances and treatments for human diseases, such as: organ transplant techniques and anti-transplant rejection medications, the heart-lung machine, antibiotics like penicillin, and whooping cough vaccine.\n",
"An important concern is the case of medications, which are routinely tested on animals to ensure they are effective and safe, and may also contain animal ingredients, such as lactose, gelatine, or stearates. There may be no alternatives to prescribed medication or these alternatives may be unsuitable, less effective, or have more adverse side effects. Experimentation with laboratory animals is also used for evaluating the safety of vaccines, food additives, cosmetics, household products, workplace chemicals, and many other substances.\n",
"Animals such as the fruit fly \"Drosophila melanogaster\" serve a major role in science as experimental models. Animals have been used to create vaccines since their discovery in the 18th century. Some medicines such as the cancer drug Yondelis are based on toxins or other molecules of animal origin.\n"
] |
Can someone lend a neutral analysis of Mao, the Cultural Revolution, and the Great Leap Forward?
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Well I will be honest I don't have anything more than an undergraduate's understanding of China, having taken a few classes on the subject, but I have a few things to say here.
First the problem with the article you linked is that it is overwhelmingly arguing from a position of "well the evidence that this happened might not be true." The problem with that tactic is that it is sort of a rabbit hole, you can basically argue almost anything from that position but it doesn't prove the reverse happened.
Additionally, even if the numbers of people who died in the famine are disputed (they typically range from 30-50 million in most things I've seen), there does seem to be a general agreement that such a famine occurred.
Basically I would say that unless some smoking gun evidence appears that suggests this massive famine didn't occur, it would be reasonable to assume it did.
Oh and Mao is still on the hook for the nightmare that was the Cultural Revolution.
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[
"The official view aimed to separate Mao's actions during the Cultural Revolution from his \"heroic\" revolutionary activities during the Chinese Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War. It also separated Mao's personal mistakes from the correctness of the theory that he created, going as far as to rationalize that the Cultural Revolution contravened the spirit of Mao Zedong Thought, which remains an official guiding ideology of the Party. Deng Xiaoping famously summed this up with the phrase \"Mao was 70% good, 30% bad.\" After the Cultural Revolution, Deng affirmed that Maoist ideology was responsible for the revolutionary success of the Communist Party, but abandoned it in practice to favour \"Socialism with Chinese characteristics\", a very different model of state-directed market economics.\n",
"Mao: A Reinterpretation is a biography of the Chinese communist revolutionary and politician Mao Zedong written by Lee Feigon, an American historian of China then working at Colby College. It was first published by Ivan R. Dee in 2002, and would form the basis of Feigon's 2006 documentary \"Passion of the Mao\".\n",
"In the early 1960s, Cadart became a researcher at the (CERI) of Sciences Po and dedicated himself to the study of contemporary China. At a time when many sinologists considered Mao Zedong a visionary leader, Cadart cautioned that Mao's political campaigns, most notably the Cultural Revolution, were not the liberation movements that many European leftists had envisioned, but were merely political machinations for maintaining his own power. This was before Simon Leys published \"Les Habits neufs du président Mao\" in 1971, the famous work that exposed the destructions of Mao's Cultural Revolution.\n",
"To make sense of the mass chaos caused by Mao's leadership in the Cultural Revolution while preserving the Party's authority and legitimacy, Mao's successors needed to lend the event a \"proper\" historical judgment. On June 27, 1981, the Central Committee adopted the \"\"Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China\",\" an official assessment of major historical events since 1949.\n",
"The Resolution frankly noted Mao's leadership role in the movement, stating that \"chief responsibility for the grave 'Left' error of the 'Cultural Revolution,' an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong.\" It diluted blame on Mao himself by asserting that the movement was \"manipulated by the counterrevolutionary groups of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing,\" who caused its worst excesses. The Resolution affirmed that the Cultural Revolution \"brought serious disaster and turmoil to the Communist Party and the Chinese people.\"\n",
"\"The Cultural Revolution in China\" is written from the perspective of trying to understand the thinking that lay behind the revolution, particularly Mao Zedong's preoccupations. Mao is seen as aiming to recapture a revolutionary sense in a population that had known only, or had grown used to, stable Communism, so that it could \"re-educate the Party\" (pp. 20, 27); to instill a realisation that the people needed the guidance of the Party and much as the other way round (p. 20); to re-educate intellectuals who failed to see that their role in society, like that of all other groups, was to 'Serve the People' (pp. 33, 43); and finally to secure a succession, not stage-managed by the Party hierarchy or even by Mao himself but the product of interaction between a revitalised people and a revitalised Party (p. 26).\n",
"BULLET::::- Significance: The meeting repeated Mao Zedong's assessment that Chinese economy was to take agriculture as basis to develop industry. The session's official communique also started to outline Mao Zedong's \"theory of continued revolution under proletarian dictatorship\" which led to the Cultural Revolution.\n"
] |
Is there any peculiarity about the places a supercontinent splits (e.g. the Atlantic coastlines of Africa and South America) or is it just about the subterranean magma flow?
|
There are a couple of things that (potentially) contribute to where the rift system that breaks up a supercontinent will localize, but all of them will generally lead to the rift system initiating broadly in the center of the supercontinent and roughly coincident with where the supercontinent was joined together in the first place.
In detail, the presence of the supercontinent contributes to (1) an accumulation of heat beneath the supercontinent from insulation of the mantle by the thick continental crust, which will be greatest roughly near the center of the continental mass and (2) the development of a [geoid](_URL_1_) high within the supercontinent (and a corresponding geoid low in the surrounding ocean basin). In a very general sense, warmer earth materials mean weaker earth materials, so the first property would tend to make areas in the center of the supercontinent weaker. The geoid high represents an instability that likely drives (or at least contributes to) the breakup of the supercontinent. Once there is a force driving supercontinent breakup, the resulting rifts will localize where the continental crust is the weakest (i.e. if you start deforming any heterogeneous material, the weakest portion will start deforming first). As mentioned earlier, the center of the supercontinent may be warmer and weaker due to the insulation effect, but anything that contributes to a reduction in strength in a particular area may help to initiate a rift in that region. One of the primary sources of weakness are preexisting structures, meaning that the [sutures](_URL_0_) marking the locations where the constituent continental portions of plates were joined during supercontinent assembly likely are important 'guides' for the localization of rifts during breakup. Pangea is a good example, at least in the North America - Europe portion, as the rifting largely followed the location of the mountain ranges (e.g. the Appalachians, etc) that were formed during the assembly of Pangea. For those interested in more details, there are a variety of review papers about the supercontitent cycle which discuss the breakup and assembly processes (and the variety of ideas related to them) in great detail, e.g. these papers [1](_URL_2_), [2](_URL_3_), or [3](_URL_4_).
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[
"In plate tectonics theory during the breakup of a continent, three divergent boundaries form, radiating out from a central point (the triple junction). One of these divergent plate boundaries fails (see aulacogen) and the other two continue spreading to form an ocean. The opening of the south Atlantic Ocean started at the south of the South American and African continents, reaching a triple junction in the present Gulf of Guinea, from where it continued to the west. The NE-trending Benue Trough is the failed arm of this junction.\n",
"During break-up of the supercontinent, rifting environments dominate. This is followed by passive margin environments, while seafloor spreading continues and the oceans grow. This in turn is followed by the development of collisional environments that become increasingly important with time. First collisions are between continents and island arcs, but lead ultimately to continent-continent collisions. This is the situation that was observed during the Paleozoic supercontinent cycle and is being observed for the Mesozoic–Cenozoic supercontinent cycle, still in progress.\n",
"Many existing continental rift valleys are the result of a failed arm (aulacogen) of a triple junction, although there are two, the East African Rift and the Baikal Rift Zone, which are currently active, as well as a third which may be, the West Antarctic Rift. In these instances, not only the crust, but also entire tectonic plates, are in the process of breaking apart to create new plates. If they continue, continental rifts will eventually become oceanic rifts.\n",
"The break-up of Sclavia, and possibly other continents or supercratons, can be linked to a global pulse of magmatic activity around 2.33–2.1 Gya probably caused by increased mantle plume activity. Related results of this mantle activity include the 2.3 Ga-old Precambrian dyke swarms in the Dharwar Craton in southern India which were emplaced in only five million years. Similar swarms have been found in what is today Antarctica, Australia, Finland, Greenland, and North America.\n",
"It was the first supercontinent to form on Earth, all the continental crust on Earth came together and formed one giant land mass. This land mass was surrounded by an even larger ocean, known as Mirovia. There were about four smaller continents that collided and came together to form Rodinia. This event is called the Grenville Orogeny. This caused there to be mountain building along the areas of were continents collided. This is because the continental crust is not very dense so neither continent would sink or sub duct. This causes the formation of Fold and Thrust belts, similar to the Himalayas today.\n",
"Supercontinents describe the merger of all, or nearly all, of the Earth's landmass into a single contiguous continent. In the Pangaea Ultima scenario, subduction at the western Atlantic, east of the Americas, leads to the subduction of the Atlantic mid-ocean ridge followed by subduction destroying the Atlantic and Indian basin, causing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to close, bringing the Americas back together with Africa and Europe. As with most supercontinents, the interior of Pangaea Proxima would probably become a semi-arid desert prone to extreme temperatures.\n",
"The geology of Duluth demonstrates the Midcontinent Rift, formed as the North American continent (Laurentia) began to split apart about 1.1 billion years ago. Continental rifting is a recurring process in the history of the earth that leads to break-up of continents and the formation of ocean basins. In the Lake Superior region, the upwelling of molten rock may have been the result of a hot spot that produced a dome over the Lake Superior area. As the earth's crust thinned, magma rose toward the surface. When insulated by overlying roof rock, the upwelling magma cooled slowly, and is therefore coarse-grained. These intrusions formed a sill some thick, primarily of gabbro, which is known as the Duluth Complex. In the areas where the rising magma erupted to the surface and cooled rapidly, basalt, the extrusive equivalent of gabbro, was formed.\n"
] |
studying vs fun
|
Feel good now many times or feel good once later in the future? Your brain prefers the former.
It comes down to gratification frequency in your brain. The frequency of dopamine release you get from video games is shorter in video games since you can get instantly rewarded for your tasks, feeding into a cycle. Think about it each time you pick up treasure or beat a hard boss. Whereas studying has a long-term dopamine award that you won't see without seeing your exam grade. That's why people often suggest creating your own dopamine awards when you've finished a study period (e.g., I can continue watching my TV show if I finish writing this report or finish studying).
The same analogy can be applied to diets too. Eating a bag of chips is highly addictive for the average person, but following a healthy diet is better for your body. Unfortunately, your brain prefers the former earlier. The mentality of preference over instant gratification probably stems from primitive times when instant gratification was necessary to ensure immediate survival in a time before modern civilization and technology.
|
[
"\"Fun School Specials\" is a set of educational games, created in 1993 by Europress Software, consisting of four different games. Upon demand, Europress designed each game specifically with a certain major topic to add depth to spelling, maths, creativity and science, respectively and comply fully with the National Curriculum.\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 pleasure of fun can be seen by the numerous efforts to harness its positive associations. For example, there are many books on serious subjects, about skills such as music, mathematics and languages, normally quite difficult to master, which have \"fun\" added to the title.\n",
"For children, fun is strongly related to play and they have great capacity to extract the fun from it in a spontaneous and inventive way. Play \"involves the capacity to have fun – to be able to return, at least for a little while, to never-never land and enjoy it.\"\n",
"Interest in combining education with entertainment, especially in order to make learning more enjoyable, has existed for hundreds of years, with the Renaissance and Enlightenment being movements in which this combination was presented to students. Komenský in particular is affiliated with the “school as play” concept, which proposes pedagogy with dramatic or delightful elements.\n",
"Fun School is a series of educational packages developed and published in the United Kingdom by Europress Software, initially as \"Database Educational Software\". The original Fun School titles were sold mostly by mail order via off-the-page adverts in the magazines owned by Database Publications. A decision was made to create a new set of programs, call the range Fun School 2, and package them more professionally so they could be sold in computer stores around the UK. Every game comes as a set of three versions, each version set to cater for a specific age range.\n",
"A step forward in the flipped-mastery model would be to include gamification elements in the learning process. Gamification is the application of game mechanisms in situations not directly related to games. The basic idea is to identify what motivates a game and see how it can be applied in the teaching-learning model (in this case it would be Flipped-Mastery). The results of the Fun Theory research showed that fun can significantly change people's behavior in a positive sense, in the same way that it has a positive effect on education (Volkswagen, 2009).\n"
] |
Would it be possible to make a device to see radio/TV/cell phone signals, the same way an infrared camera can "see" heat?
|
This is used a lot in astronomy [pic](_URL_0_)
|
[
"There are two infrared-based approaches. In one, an array of sensors detects a finger touching or almost touching the display, thereby interrupting infrared light beams projected over the screen. In the other, bottom-mounted infrared cameras record heat from screen touches.\n",
"The use of an infrared sensor to detect position can cause some detection problems in the presence of other infrared sources, such as incandescent light bulbs or candles. This can be alleviated by using fluorescent or LED lights, which emit little to no infrared light, around the Wii. Innovative users have used other sources of IR light, such as a pair of flashlights or a pair of candles, as Sensor Bar substitutes. The Wii Remote picks up traces of heat from the sensor, then transmits it to the Wii console to control the pointer on your screen. Such substitutes for the Sensor Bar illustrate the fact that a pair of non-moving lights provide continuous calibration of the direction that the Wii Remote is pointing and its physical location relative to the light sources. There is no way to calibrate the position of the cursor relative to where the user is pointing the controller without the two stable reference sources of light provided by the Sensor Bar or substitutes. Third-party wireless sensor bars have also been released, which have been popular with users of Wii emulators since the official Sensor Bar utilizes a proprietary connector to connect to the Wii console.\n",
"These systems utilize light waves to transmit sound from the transmitter to a special light sensitive receiver. The signal can be broadcast to a whole room through speakers or a person who wears an individual receiver. There must be a clear line of connection between the transmitter and receiver so that the light signal is not interrupted. The benefit of infrared systems is that they only work in the room where the transmitter and receiver are located resulting in significantly fewer issues with cross-over. These systems can be sensitive to external light sources or interfering objects.\n",
"Modified digital cameras can detect some ultraviolet, all of the visible and much of the near infrared spectrum, as most digital imaging sensors are sensitive from about 350 nm to 1000 nm. An off-the-shelf digital camera contains an infrared hot mirror filter that blocks most of the infrared and a bit of the ultraviolet that would otherwise be detected by the sensor, narrowing the accepted range from about 400 nm to 700 nm.\n",
"The use of infrared light and night vision devices should not be confused with thermal imaging, which creates images based on differences in surface temperature by detecting infrared radiation (heat) that emanates from objects and their surrounding environment.\n",
"Remote sensing and thermographic cameras are sensitive to longer wavelengths of infrared (see ). They may be multispectral and use a variety of technologies which may not resemble common camera or filter designs. Cameras sensitive to longer infrared wavelengths including those used in infrared astronomy often require cooling to reduce thermally induced dark currents in the sensor (see Dark current (physics)). Lower cost uncooled thermographic digital cameras operate in the Long Wave infrared band (see Thermographic camera#Uncooled infrared detectors). These cameras are generally used for building inspection or preventative maintenance but can be used for artistic pursuits as well, such as this image of a cup of coffee.\n",
"law enforcement, and medical applications. Night-vision devices using active near-infrared illumination allow people or animals to be observed without the observer being detected. Infrared astronomy uses sensor-equipped telescopes to penetrate dusty regions of space such as molecular clouds, detect objects such as planets, and to view highly red-shifted objects from the early days of the universe. Infrared thermal-imaging cameras are used to detect heat loss in insulated systems, to observe changing blood flow in the skin, and to detect overheating of electrical apparatus.\n"
] |
why is it difficult for the investigators to find the flight recorder from the downed malaysia flight 17 , when there is supposed to be a beacon pin-pointing its location ?
|
Finding the proverbial black box is simple if it's left where it is. The moment someone picks it up, removes the pinger, and sticks it on a truck -- it becomes hard to find. Rebels (or Russians, I don't know that there's a practical way to distinguish) have been all over the site removing "stuff".
The working hypothesis, based on the fact that rebels or Russians aiding rebels, have shot down several aircraft in the past couple of weeks is that whoever shot the missile downing the plane probably thought that it was a Ukrainian transport plane (probably rebels, since I think it's unlikely a professional Russian soldier would make such a stupid mistake). Ukraine intelligence even offered up something they claim to be an intercepted communiqué between rebels and Russian forces indicating as much.
|
[
"The aircraft's flight recorders were sent to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau for analysis. Initial statements by the authorities suggested that the pilots mistook a road for the airport's runway in low visibility.\n",
"However in case the flight recorders shall become available to the western countries their data may be used for: Confirmation of no attempt by the intercepting aircraft to establish a radio contact with the intruder plane on 121.5 MHz and no tracers warning shots in the last section of the flight\n",
"The aircraft was not required to be equipped with a flight data recorder, therefore a flight data recorder was not present. The cockpit voice recorder was burned to the point that the data inside was not usable. The National Transportation Safety Board used aircraft position data from air traffic control, the aircraft wreckage, survivor interviews, and weather information to find its probable cause.\n",
"the helicopter was the video recorder and four video cassettes. The aircraft was not equipped with a flight data recorder (FDR) or a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and investigators had hoped the tapes might have clues to the reason for the crash but apparently the recorder was not operating at the time of the incident.\n",
"Flight data recorders (FDRs) and cockpit voice recorders (CVRs) in commercial aircraft continuously record information and can provide key evidence in determining the causes of an aircraft loss. The greatest depth from which a flight recorder has been recovered is , for the CVR of South African Airways Flight 295. Most flight recorders are equipped with Underwater locator beacons to assist searchers in recovering them from offshore crash sites, however these beacons run off a battery and eventually stop transmitting. For various reasons, a flight recorder cannot always be recovered, and many recorders that are recovered are too damaged to provide any data.\n",
"Contrary to initial news reports, which stated that both flight recorders had been successfully read-out, the investigation team determined that the flight recorders could not be analyzed because the CVR had been inoperative for nine days leading up to the crash and the FDR was mysteriously found to have only recorded the first 14 minutes of the flight. \n",
"Wreckage from the aircraft was not recovered, except for seat cushions and plywood bulkheads found floating near the accident site. Regulations at the time did not require flight recorders to be installed on the aircraft, and no cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder was installed. Due to lack of evidence, the NTSB was unable to determine the probable cause of the accident. \n"
] |
Foggy London vs polluted Beijing
|
fyi, you'll find some previous discussions on this in the FAQ
* [Air pollution](_URL_0_)
|
[
"Due to Beijing's high-level of air pollution, there are various readings by different sources on the subject. Daily pollution readings at 27 monitoring stations around the city are reported on the website of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau (BJEPB). The American Embassy of Beijing also reports hourly fine particulate (PM2.5) and ozone levels on Twitter. Since the BJEPB and US Embassy measure different pollutants according to different criteria, the pollution levels and the impact to human health reported by the BJEPB are often lower than that reported by the US Embassy.\n",
"In Jan 2013, only five days were not occupied by haze and fog. In Oct 2014, the air quality index in Beijing reached a peak of 470, far beyond the severe pollution level of 300; meanwhile, the situation was even more serious in the neighboring province of Hebei, whose PM2.5 particles climbed above 500 micrograms per cubic meter—northern China was blanketed by the heavy air pollution, forcing the Chinese authorities to raise its pollution alert from yellow to orange, which was the second highest.\n",
"The issue of air pollution, which was widely discussed during the 2008 Summer Olympics, was cited as a likely factor in Beijing's bid. Beijing and Zhangjiakou suffer from severe air pollution which is worse during the winter. As of February 26, 2014, Beijing hit a dangerous particulate concentration of 537. A rate of 301-500 is marked as hazardous. An anti-pollution body expressed a concern that Beijing companies failing to meet regulations were moving their factories to Tianjin and Hebei.\n",
"As air pollution in China is at an all-time high, several Hebei cities are among one of the most polluted cities and has one of the worst air quality in China. Reporting on China's airpocalypse has been accompanied by what seems like a monochromatic slideshow of the country's several cities smothered in thick smog. According to a survey made by \"Global voices China\" in February 2013, 7 cities in Hebei including Xingtai, Shijiazhuang, Baoding, Handan, Langfang, Hengshui and Tangshan, are among China's 10 most polluted cities. Xingtai ranked 1st in the list and is referred to has the worst air quality in all Chinese cities.\n",
"Atmospheric scientists at Texas A&M University investigating the haze of polluted air in Beijing realized that their research led to a possible cause for the London event in 1952. \"By examining conditions in China and experimenting in a lab, the scientists suggest that a combination of weather patterns and chemistry could have caused London fog to turn into a haze of concentrated sulfuric acid.\"\n",
"As air pollution in China is at an all-time high, several Hebei cities are among the most polluted in the country and Tangshan has some of the worst air quality in China. Reporting on China's airpocalypse has been accompanied by what seems like a monochromatic slideshow of the country's several cities smothered in thick smog. According to a survey made by \"Global voices China\" in February 2013, 7 cities in Hebei including Xingtai, Shijiazhuang, Baoding, Handan, Langfang, Hengshui and Tangshan, are among China's 10 most polluted cities.\n",
"Other major air pollution, particularly in China, has been compared to the 1966 smog. Elizabeth M. Lynch, a New York City legal scholar, said that images of visible air pollution in Beijing from 2012 were \"gross\" but not \"that much different from pictures of New York City in the 1950s and 1960s\", specifically referring to the 1952, 1962, and 1966 smog events. Lynch wrote that the Chinese government's increased transparency on the issue was an encouraging sign that pollution in China could be regulated and abated just as it had in the United States. Similar comparisons between the 1966 smog and Chinese pollution in late 2012 appeared in \"Business Insider\" and \"Slate\". \"USA Today\" cited the 1966 smog after China issued its first \"red alert\" air quality warning in December 2015; the same month, an article in \"The Huffington Post\" used the 1966 smog to argue that China could follow the United States' model to regulate pollution.\n"
] |
Did the Barbarians of the Classical Roman Era field any navies and if so was there ever any engagements between them and the Roman Empire?
|
The Veneti, a Gallic tribe from Brittany in modern France, posed quite a naval threat to Caesar during the Gallic Wars. They had several coastal citadels that couldn't be sieged out, as the strong Venetian (no, not *that* Venetian) navy protected the supply ships from across the channel in Britain. A fascinating aspect of these coastal cities was the fact that at high tide, they were islands, and at low tide, peninsulas, creating a problem for Caesar.
At this point, the Romans had absolutely no naval power in the English Channel. To combat this, Caesar constructed a navy. However, the stormy seas of the English Channel and the oak ships of the Veneti were difficult to overcome for the Romans. The Romans did eventually, in the Battle of Morbihan, defeat the Venetians by cutting their halyards, causing their mainsails to fall, in turn leaving the ships as sitting ducks for the Romans' excellent boarding capabilities.
|
[
"The barbarians comprised war bands or tribes of 10,000 to 20,000 people,[5] but in the course of 100 years they numbered not more than 750,000 in total, compared to an average 39.9 million population of the Roman Empire at that time. Although invasion was common throughout the time of the Roman Empire,[6] the period in question was, in the 19th century, often defined as running from about the 5th to 8th centuries AD.[7][8] The first invasions of peoples were made by Germanic tribes such as the Goths (including the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths), the Vandals, the Anglo-Saxons, the Lombards, the Suebi, the Frisii, the Jutes, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, the Scirii and the Franks; they were later pushed westward by the Huns, the Avars, the Slavs and the Bulgars.[9]\n",
"Historians have postulated several explanations for the appearance of \"barbarians\" on the Roman frontier: weather and crops, population pressure, a \"primeval urge\" to push into the Mediterranean or the \"domino effect\" of the Huns falling upon the Goths who, in turn, pushed other Germanic tribes before them. Entire barbarian tribes (or nations) flooded into Roman provinces, ending classical urbanism and beginning new types of rural settlements. In general, French and Italian scholars have tended to view this as a catastrophic event, the destruction of a civilization and the beginning of a \"Dark Age\" that set Europe back a millennium. In contrast, German and English historians have tended to see Roman/Barbarian interaction as the replacement of a \"tired, effete and decadent Mediterranean civilization\" with a \"more virile, martial, Nordic one\".\n",
"During the beginning of the 6th century, several barbarian tribes who eventually destroyed the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century eventually were recruited in the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire. Among them were the Heruli, who had deposed the last Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus under their leader Odoacer in 476. Other barbarians included the Huns, who had invaded the divided Roman Empire during the second quarter of the 5th century under Attila, and the Gepids, who had settled in the Romanian territories north of the Danube River.\n",
"While the barbarian invasions of the 4th century and later mostly occurred by land, some notable examples of naval conflicts are known. In the late 3rd century, in the reign of Emperor Gallienus, a large raiding party composed by Goths, Gepids and Heruli, launched itself in the Black Sea, raiding the coasts of Anatolia and Thrace, and crossing into the Aegean Sea, plundering mainland Greece (including Athens and Sparta) and going as far as Crete and Rhodes. In the twilight of the Roman Empire in the late 4th century, examples include that of Emperor Majorian, who, with the help of Constantinople, mustered a large fleet in a failed effort to expel the Germanic invaders from their recently conquered African territories, and a defeat of an Ostrogothic fleet at Sena Gallica in the Adriatic Sea.\n",
"The Romans consistently allied themselves with certain barbarian groups outside the Empire, playing them out against rival barbarian tribes as a policy of \"divide and rule\", the barbarian allies being known as \"foederati\". Sometimes these groups were allowed to live within the Empire. Barbarians could also be settled within the Empire as \"dediticii\" or \"laeti\". The Romans could henceforth rely on these groups for military support or even as legionary recruits. One such group were the Burgundians, whom the Roman Emperor Honorius in 406 had invited to join the Roman Empire as foederati with a capital at Worms . The Burgundians were soon defeated by the Huns, but once again given land near Lake Geneva for Gundioc (r. 443-474) to establish a second federate kingdom within the Roman Empire in 443. This alliance was a contractual agreement between the two peoples. Gundioc's people were given one-third of Roman slaves and two-thirds of the land within Roman territory. The Burgundians were allowed to establish an independent federate kingdom within the Empire and received the nominal protection of Rome for their agreement to defend their territories from other outsiders. This contractual relationship between the guests, Burgundians, and hosts, Romans, supposedly provided legal and social equality. However, Drew argues that the property rights and social status of the guests may have given them disproportionate leverage over their hosts. More recently, Henry Sumner Maine argues that the Burgundians exercised \"tribe-sovereignty\" rather than complete territorial sovereignty.\n",
"Until late in the fourth century the united Empire retained sufficient power to launch attacks against its enemies in Germania and in the Sassanid Empire. \"Receptio\" of barbarians became widely practiced: imperial authorities admitted potentially hostile groups into the Empire, split them up, and allotted to them lands, status, and duties within the imperial system. In this way many groups provided unfree workers (\"coloni\") for Roman landowners, and recruits (\"laeti\") for the Roman army. Sometimes their leaders became officers. Normally the Romans managed the process carefully, with sufficient military force on hand to ensure compliance, and cultural assimilation followed over the next generation or two.\n",
"During the decline of the Roman Empire, irregulars made up an ever-increasing proportion of the Roman military. At the end of the Western Empire, there was little difference between the Roman military and the barbarians across the borders. \n"
] |
if everyone says girls mature more quickly than boys, why do boys seem to have a higher sex drive than girls while teenagers?
|
because sex drive and maturity have nothing to with each other?
|
[
"Studies have shown that most high school girls are more interested in a relationship compared to high school boys, who are mostly interested in sex. Young women tend to be honest about their sexual encounters and experiences, while young men tend to lie more often about theirs. Another study shows that once a person has sex for their first time, it becomes less of an issue or big deal to future relationships or hook ups. During this study, it was shown that girls in high school do not care as much as boys do on having sex in a relationship. But, on the contrary, girls will have sex with their partner in order to match them.\n",
"Though boys face fewer problems upon early puberty than girls, early puberty is not always positive for boys; early sexual maturation in boys can be accompanied by increased aggressiveness due to the surge of hormones that affect them. Because they appear older than their peers, pubescent boys may face increased social pressure to conform to adult norms; society may view them as more emotionally advanced, although their cognitive and social development may lag behind their appearance. Studies have shown that early maturing boys are more likely to be sexually active and are more likely to participate in risky behaviours.\n",
"Some studies have also found that adolescents whose media diet was rich in sexual content were more than twice as likely as others to have had sex by the time they were 16. In a Kaiser Family Foundation study, 76 percent of teens said that one reason young people have sex is because TV shows and movies make it seem normal for teens. In addition to higher likelihoods that an adolescent exposed to sexual content in the media will engage in sexual behaviors, they are also have higher levels of intending to have sex in the future and more positive expectations of sex.\n",
"Males reach the peak of their sex drive in their teens, while females reach it in their thirties. (speculation) The surge in testosterone hits the male at puberty resulting in a sudden and extreme sex drive which reaches its peak at age 15–16, then drops slowly over his lifetime. In contrast, a female's libido increases slowly during adolescence and peaks in her mid-thirties. Actual testosterone and estrogen levels that affect a person's sex drive vary considerably.\n",
"When comparing the sexual self-concepts of adolescent girls and boys, researchers found that boys experienced lower sexual self-esteem and higher sexual anxiety. The boys stated they were less able to refuse or resist sex at a greater rate than the girls reported having difficulty with this. The authors state that this may be because society places so much emphasis on teaching girls how to be resistant towards sex, that boys do not learn these skills and are less able to use them when they want to say no to sex. They also explain how society's stereotype that boys are always ready to desire sex and be aroused may contribute to the fact that many boys may not feel comfortable resisting sex, because it is something society tells them they should want. Because society expects adolescent boys to be assertive, dominant and in control, they are limited in how they feel it is appropriate to act within a romantic relationship. Many boys feel lower self-esteem when they cannot attain these hyper-masculine ideals that society says they should. Additionally, there is not much guidance on how boys should act within relationships and many boys do not know how to retain their masculinity while being authentic and reciprocating affection in their relationships. This difficult dilemma is called the double-edged sword of masculinity by some researchers.\n",
"One study from 1996 documented the interviews of a sample of junior high school students in the United States. The girls were less likely to state that they ever had sex than adolescent boys. Among boys and girls who had experienced sexual intercourse, the proportion of girls and boys who had recently had sex and were regularly sexually active was the same. Those conducting the study speculated that fewer girls say they have ever had sex because girls viewed teenage parenthood as more of a problem than boys. Girls were thought to be more restricted in their sexual attitudes; they were more likely than boys to believe that they would be able to control their sexual urges. Girls had a more negative association in how being sexually active could affect their future goals. In general, girls said they felt less pressure from peers to begin having sex, while boys reported feeling more pressure.\n",
"Girls are more likely than boys to co-ruminate with their close friends, and co-rumination increases with age in children. Female adolescents are more likely to co-ruminate than younger girls, because their social worlds become increasingly complex and stressful. This is not true for boys, however as age differences are not expected among boys because their interactions remain activity focused and the tendency to extensively discuss problems is likely to remain inconsistent with male norms.\n"
] |
If a person gains weight gradually, will their leg muscles (quadriceps, hamstrings, calves etc) grow proportionally to support the added weight?
|
They would have to, otherwise you wouldn't be able to walk. On the other hand, it depends on what kind of weight you are gaining. Obviously gaining muscle mass will cause your muscles to grow. On the other hand, gaining a lot of weight in the form of fat has other consequences. The fat gets deposited all over the place, including within the muscle, and certainly within the walls of your blood vessels, limiting blood flow.
Your muscles may get stronger to carry the weight, but the restricted blood flow limits the ability of the muscle to perform for long periods of time, because it doesn't get enough oxygen for oxidative phosphorylation. While overweight people may have an increased amount of glycogen providing the muscle with a larger "fuel tank" if you will, the muscle still will quickly be forced to switch to anaerobic metabolism. This is less efficient, and causes lactic acid to build up (which gives you cramps). Your heart beats faster to deliver more blood to the tissue, but it isn't getting there effectively because of the fat clogging up the blood vessels. You start to hyperventilate (technically speaking this is a misnomer, it would likely be hyperpnea in this case) to compensate for the increased oxygen demand and the increased acid load created by lactic acid. **You will tire out more quickly**
The consequence of this is that you walk less, and of course, without using the muscle, it gets weaker again, and you may end up with a weaker muscle as well as body fat that you cannot carry. **Your muscle ends up weaker in the long run, if you gain enough weight**.
See: [*Muscle strength is inversely related to prevalence and incidence of obesity in adult men*](_URL_0_)
In [this paper](_URL_1_), the results conclude that obese women are stronger than their lean counterparts, but only in terms of absolute strength. When you control for body weight, every muscle is weaker on a pound for pound basis in the obese women, with the exception of trunk flexors, which were stronger. Presumably, this might be because many obese women carry the weight in the abdomen and chest.
Edit: tl;dr: Yes, gaining weight makes your legs stronger. But there is a diminishing return on this, and the growth is not linearly proportional. This does more harm than good.
|
[
"Individuals with this disorder typically experience progressive muscle weakness of the leg and pelvis muscles, which is associated with a loss of muscle mass (wasting). Muscle weakness also occurs in the arms, neck, and other areas, but not as noticeably severe as in the lower half of the body. Calf muscles initially enlarge during the ages of 5-15 (an attempt by the body to compensate for loss of muscle strength), but the enlarged muscle tissue is eventually replaced by fat and connective tissue (pseudohypertrophy) as the legs become less used (with use of wheelchair).\n",
"Conversely, decreased use of the muscle results in incremental loss of mass and strength, known as muscular atrophy (see atrophy and muscle atrophy). Sedentary people often lose a pound or more of muscle annually.\n",
"Temporary loss or impairment of proprioception may happen periodically during growth, mostly during adolescence. Growth that might also influence this would be large increases or drops in bodyweight/size due to fluctuations of fat (liposuction, rapid fat loss or gain) and/or muscle content (bodybuilding, anabolic steroids, catabolisis/starvation). It can also occur in those that gain new levels of flexibility, stretching, and contortion. A limb's being in a new range of motion never experienced (or at least, not for a long time since youth perhaps) can disrupt one's sense of location of that limb. Possible experiences include suddenly feeling that feet or legs are missing from one's mental self-image; needing to look down at one's limbs to be sure they are still there; and falling down while walking, especially when attention is focused upon something other than the act of walking.\n",
"Thigh weights are the most reasonable form of resistance. The location of the mass more readily duplicates the natural fat-storage mechanism of the human body and being closer to the core. In leg raise exercises, it allows more activation of the hip flexors (and abdominals) without putting more strain on the quadriceps muscles for extension, making it good for sports-specific training on movements like knees and jumping. The greater area and safe location allow it to handle much more weight. For those with wide thighs, such as bodybuilders with large quadriceps, or people with large amounts of fat stores on the inner thigh, it may cause chafing. If worn on both legs, however, the chafing would be between the weights and only damage them, possibly only chafing with a lack of tightness.\n",
"A common trend in modern technology is the push to create lightweight devices. A 1981 collection of studies on amputees showed a 30% increase in metabolic cost of walking for an able-bodied subject with 2-kg weights fixed to each foot. Correspondingly, transfemoral prostheses are on average only about one third of the weight of the limb they are replacing. However, the effect of added mass appears to be less significant for amputees. Small increases in mass (4-oz and 8-oz) of a prosthetic foot had no significant effect and, similarly, adding 0.68-kg and 1.34-kg masses to the center of the shank of transfemoral prostheses did not alter metabolic cost at any of the tested walking speeds (0.6, 1.0, and 1.5 m/s). In another study, muscular efforts were significantly increased with added mass, yet there was no significant impact on walking speeds and over half of the subjects preferred a prosthetic that was loaded to match 75% weight of the sound leg. In fact, it has been reported in several articles that test subjects actually prefer heavier prostheses, even when the load is completely superficial.\n",
"Independent of strength and performance measures, muscles can be induced to grow larger by a number of factors, including hormone signaling, developmental factors, strength training, and disease. Contrary to popular belief, the number of muscle fibres cannot be increased through exercise. Instead, muscles grow larger through a combination of muscle cell growth as new protein filaments are added along with additional mass provided by undifferentiated satellite cells alongside the existing muscle cells.\n",
"The loss of 10 pounds of muscle per decade is one consequence of a sedentary lifestyle. The adaptive processes of the human body will only respond if continually called upon to exert greater force to meet higher physiological demands.\n"
] |
why do people's voices sound higher pitched in older recordings? were the vocal tastes for higher pitched voice in the past or was it due to the recording equipment used?
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Bass frequencies require more energy to record and reproduce than do higher ranges of audio. Old recording equipment didn't have the types of improvements we've made since then. The diaphragm in a modern microphone is much more sensitive to input and can record a sound with much less intensity than older equipment. The primary factor is production. Most music made these days is mixed for use on smaller speakers, like headphones, laptops, smartphones, etc. And is adjusted to try and be "louder" then the other guys. They butcher old recordings, strip out the dynamic range, and level-match everything for a "digitally remastered" sound that ruins classic albums, also.
|
[
"Some evidence exists of vocal fry becoming more common in the speech of young female speakers of American English in the early 21st century, but its frequency's extent and significance are disputed. Researcher Ikuko Patricia Yuasa suggests that the tendency is a product of young women trying to infuse their speech with gravitas by means of reaching for the male register and found that \"college-age Americans [...] perceive female creaky voice as hesitant, nonaggressive, and informal but also educated, urban-oriented, and upwardly mobile.\"\n",
"Bone conduction is one reason why a person's voice sounds different to them when it is recorded and played back. Because the skull conducts lower frequencies better than air, people perceive their own voices to be lower and fuller than others do, and a recording of one's own voice frequently sounds higher than one expects.\n",
"Like Crosby, they used the recording technique known as close miking where the microphone is less than from the singer's mouth. This produces a more intimate, less reverberant sound than when a singer is or more from the microphone. When using a pressure-gradient (uni- or bi-directional) microphone, it emphasizes low-frequency sounds in the voice due to the microphone's proximity effect and gives a more relaxed feel because the performer is not working as hard. The result is a singing style which diverged from the unamplified theater style of the musical comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.\n",
"In early music, particularly that of the Renaissance, the use of the terms soprano, alto, tenor and bass for the voice parts should not be taken in the modern sense of defining which voices are to be used. This is because much 4-voice vocal music of the time possesses the narrower overall range typical of men's voice music with a countertenor on the top (soprano) part. Appropriate downward transposition based on chiavette should always be considered.\n",
"Aside from a hoarse-sounding voice, changes to pitch and volume may occur with laryngitis. Speakers may experience a lower or higher pitch than normal, depending on whether their vocal folds are swollen or stiff. They may also have breathier voices, as more air flows through the space between the vocal folds (the glottis), quieter volume and a reduced range.\n",
"In music, boys' voices, before they 'break' being of a soprano register (specifically known as treble) unlike adult men (in a choir usually tenor and bass), have been most sought-after, especially where female voices were considered inappropriate as often in church and certain theatrical music - this even led to the practice of physically trying to prevent their 'angelical' voices ever to break by surgically cutting short the hormonal drive to manhood: for centuries, castrato singers, who coupled adult strength and experience with a treble register, starred in contratenor parts, mainly in operatic styles.\n",
"During historical periods when instrumental music rose in prominence (relative to the voice), there was a continuous tendency for pitch levels to rise. This \"pitch inflation\" seemed largely a product of instrumentalists competing with each other, each attempting to produce a brighter, more \"brilliant\", sound than that of their rivals. (In string instruments, this is not all acoustic illusion: when tuned up, they actually sound objectively brighter because the higher string tension results in larger amplitudes for the harmonics.) This tendency was also prevalent with wind instrument manufacturers, who crafted their instruments to play generally at a higher pitch than those made by the same craftsmen years earlier.\n"
] |
Do mental illnesses run in families? Will they be the same mental illness or can they vary between each offspring?
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There is a genetic role in some forms of mental illness like schizophrenia for example. There's also a lot of environmental factors that cause or worsen mental illness, like physical/emotional abuse/neglect, malnutrition, traumatic life events, etc. There are usually many factors at play and no case is exactly the same.
|
[
"A similar study on the mental health of single mothers attempted to answer the question, \"Are there differences in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, between married, never-married, and separated/divorced mothers?\" Statistically, never married, and separated/divorced mothers had the highest regularities of drug abuse, personality disorder and PTSD. The family structure can become a trigger for mental health issues in single mothers. They are especially at risk for having higher levels of depressive symptoms.\n",
"A number of psychiatric disorders are linked to a family history (including depression, narcissistic personality disorder and anxiety). Twin studies have also revealed a very high heritability for many mental disorders (especially autism and schizophrenia). Although researchers have been looking for decades for clear linkages between genetics and mental disorders, that work has not yielded specific genetic biomarkers yet that might lead to better diagnosis and better treatments.\n",
"The most common mental illnesses in children include, but are not limited to, ADHD, autism and anxiety disorder, as well as depression in older children and teens. Having a mental illness at a younger age is much different from having one in your thirties. Children's brains are still developing and will continue to develop until around the age of twenty-five. When a mental illness is thrown into the mix, it becomes significantly harder for a child to acquire the necessary skills and habits that people use throughout the day. For example, behavioral skills don’t develop as fast as motor or sensory skills do. So when a child has an anxiety disorder, they begin to lack proper social interaction and associate many ordinary things with intense fear. This can be scary for the child because they don’t necessarily understand why they act and think the way that they do. Many researchers say that parents should keep an eye on their child if they have any reason to believe that something is slightly off. If the children are evaluated earlier, they become more acquainted to their disorder and treating it becomes part of their daily routine. This is opposed to adults who might not recover as quickly because it is more difficult for them to adapt.\n",
"Some diseases are hereditary and run in families; others, such as infectious diseases, are caused by the environment. Other diseases come from a combination of genes and the environment. Genetic disorders are diseases that are caused by a single allele of a gene and are inherited in families. These include Huntington's disease, Cystic fibrosis or Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Cystic fibrosis, for example, is caused by mutations in a single gene called \"CFTR\" and is inherited as a recessive trait.\n",
"Genetic disorders may also be complex, multifactorial, or polygenic, meaning they are likely associated with the effects of multiple genes in combination with lifestyles and environmental factors. Multifactorial disorders include heart disease and diabetes. Although complex disorders often cluster in families, they do not have a clear-cut pattern of inheritance. This makes it difficult to determine a person’s risk of inheriting or passing on these disorders. Complex disorders are also difficult to study and treat, because the specific factors that cause most of these disorders have not yet been identified. Studies which aim to identify the cause of complex disorders can use several methodological approaches to determine genotype-phenotype associations. One method, the genotype-first approach, starts by identifying genetic variants within patients and then determining the associated clinical manifestations. This is opposed to the more traditional phenotype-first approach, and may identify causal factors that have previously been obscured by clinical heterogeneity, penetrance, and expressivity.\n",
"Any reproductive risks (e.g. a chance to have a child with the same diagnosis) can also be explored after a diagnosis. Many disorders cannot occur unless both the mother and father pass on their genes, such as cystic fibrosis; this is known as autosomal recessive inheritance. Other autosomal dominant diseases can be inherited from one parent, such as Huntington disease and DiGeorge syndrome. Yet other genetic disorders are caused by an error or mutation occurring during the cell division process (e.g. aneuploidy) and are not hereditary.\n",
"In Sweden, Emma Fransson et al. have shown that children living with one single parent have worse well-being in terms of physical health behavior, mental health, peer friendships, bullying, cultural activities, sports, and family relationships, compared to children from intact families. As a contrast, children in a shared parenting arrangement that live approximately equal amount of time with their divorced mother and father have about the same well-being as children from intact families and better outcomes than children with only one custodial parent.\n"
] |
How did Polar Bears survive the Medieval Warm Period?
|
It [wasn't that warm](_URL_0_) compared to today.
|
[
"In the Ice Age (which included warm spells), mammals such as the woolly mammoth, wild horse, giant deer, brown bear, spotted hyena, Arctic lemming, Norway lemming, Arctic fox, European beaver, wolf, Eurasian lynx, and reindeer flourished or migrated depending on the degree of coldness. The Irish brown bear was a genetically distinct (clade 2) brown bear from a lineage that had significant polar bear mtDNA. The closest surviving brown bear is Ursus arctos middendorffi in Alaska.\n",
"To investigate the possibility of climatic cooling, scientists drilled into the Greenland ice cap to obtain core samples, which suggested that the Medieval Warm Period had caused a relatively milder climate in Greenland, lasting from roughly 800 to 1200. However, from 1300 or so the climate began to cool. By 1420, the \"Little Ice Age\" had reached intense levels in Greenland. Excavations of middens from the Norse farms in both Greenland and Iceland show the shift from the bones of cows and pigs to those of sheep and goats. As the winters lengthened, and the springs and summers shortened, there must have been less and less time for Greenlanders to grow hay. A study of North Atlantic seasonal temperature variability showed a significant decrease in maximum summer temperatures beginning in the late 13th century to early 14th century—as much as 6-8 °C lower than modern summer temperatures. The study also found that the lowest winter temperatures of the last 2,000 years occurred in the late 14th century and early 15th century. By the mid-14th century deposits from a chieftain’s farm showed a large number of cattle and caribou remains, whereas, a poorer farm only several kilometers away had no trace of domestic animal remains, only seal. Bone samples from Greenland Norse cemeteries confirm that the typical Greenlander diet had increased by this time from 20% sea animals to 80%.\n",
"Polar bears rarely live beyond 25 years. The oldest wild bears on record died at age 32, whereas the oldest captive was a female who died in 1991, age 43. The causes of death in wild adult polar bears are poorly understood, as carcasses are rarely found in the species's frigid habitat. In the wild, old polar bears eventually become too weak to catch food, and gradually starve to death. Polar bears injured in fights or accidents may either die from their injuries or become unable to hunt effectively, leading to starvation.\n",
"According to this hypothesis, a temperature increase sufficient to melt the Wisconsin ice sheet could have placed enough thermal stress on cold-adapted mammals to cause them to die. Their heavy fur, which helps conserve body heat in the glacial cold, might have prevented the dumping of excess heat, causing the mammals to die of heat exhaustion. Large mammals, with their reduced surface area-to-volume ratio, would have fared worse than small mammals.\n",
"Polar bears appear on Jan Mayen, although in diminished numbers compared with earlier times. Between 1900 and 1920, there were a number of Norwegian trappers spending winters on Jan Mayen, hunting Arctic foxes in addition to some polar bears. But the exploitation soon made the profits decline, and the hunting ended. Polar bears are genetically distinguishable in this region of the Arctic from those living elsewhere.\n",
"A portion of the time the Greenland settlements existed was during the Little Ice Age and the climate was, overall, becoming cooler and more humid. As climate began to cool and humidity began to increase, this brought longer winters and shorter springs, more storms and affected the migratory patterns of the harp seal. Pasture space began to dwindle and fodder yields for the winter became much smaller. This combined with regular herd culling made it hard to maintain livestock, especially for the poorest of the Greenland Norse. In spring, the voyages to where migratory harp seals could be found became more dangerous due to more frequent storms, and the lower population of harp seals meant that \"Nordrsetur\" hunts became less successful, making subsistence hunting extremely difficult. The strain on resources made trade difficult, and as time went on, Greenland exports lost value in the European market due to competing countries and the lack of interest in what was being traded.\n",
"To investigate the possibility of climatic cooling, scientists drilled into the Greenland ice caps to obtain core samples. The oxygen isotopes from the ice caps suggested that the Medieval Warm Period had caused a relatively milder climate in Greenland, lasting from roughly 800 to 1200. However, from 1300 or so the climate began to cool. By 1420, we know that the \"Little Ice Age\" had reached intense levels in Greenland.\n"
] |
Who were Turkish Sultans descended from?
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As strange as it may seem, your story is essentially correct. Ottoman Sultans didn't marry, and instead had lowborn concubines. I'm not sure how many of the Sultan's mothers were European, but some were, yes. And indeed since only the direct male line is the family of the Sultans, the vast majority of later Sultans' ancestors would have been commoners.
As to whether the Sultans were white... I think this sort of shows your nationality, if I'm guessing right that you're American. In the Old World Turks would generally be considered white. And to those who don't agree with that, they wouldn't really think Bulgarians or Romanians are white either! As the old proverb says after all, the "wogs start at Calais".
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[
"This is a list of the biological mothers of Ottoman sultans. There were thirty-six sultans of the Ottoman Empire in twenty-one generations. (During early days the title \"Bey\" was used instead of \"Sultan\") Throughout 623-years history the sultans were the members of the same house, namely the House of Ottoman (Turkish: \"Osmanlı Hanedanı\").\n",
"The Ottoman dynasty or \"House of Osman\" ( 1280–1922) was unprecedented and unequaled in the Islamic world for its size and duration. The Ottoman sultan, pâdişâh or \"lord of kings\", served as the empire's sole regent and was considered to be the embodiment of its government, though he did not always exercise complete control. The Ottoman family was originally Turkish in its ethnicity, as were its subjects; however the kingship quickly acquired many different ethnicities through intermarriage with slaves and European nobility.\n",
"The Çandarlı family was a prominent Turkish political family which provided the Ottoman Empire with five grand viziers during the 14th and 15th centuries. At the time, it was the second most important family after the Ottoman dynasty itself.\n",
"In 1974, descendants of the dynasty were granted the right to acquire Turkish citizenship by the Grand National Assembly, and were notified that they could apply. Mehmed Orhan, son of Prince Mehmed Abdul Kadir of the Ottoman Empire, died in 1994, leaving the grandson of Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II, Ertuğrul Osman, as the eldest surviving member of the deposed dynasty. Osman for many years refused to carry a Turkish passport, calling himself a citizen of the Ottoman Empire. Despite this attitude, he put the matter of an Ottoman restoration to rest when he told an interviewer \"no\" to the question of whether he wished the Ottoman Empire to be restored. He was quoted as saying that \"democracy works well in Turkey.\" He returned to Turkey in 1992 for the first time since the exile, and became a Turkish citizen with a Turkish passport in 2002.\n",
"Mehmed VI Vahideddin ( \"Meḥmed-i sâdis\", \"Vahideddin\", or ), who is also known as \"Şahbaba\" (meaning \"Emperor-father\") among his relatives, (14 January 1861 – 16 May 1926) was the 36th and last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, reigning from July 4, 1918 until November 1, 1922 when the Ottoman Empire dissolved after World War I and became the nation of the Republic of Turkey on October 29, 1923. The brother of Mehmed V, he became heir to the throne after the 1916 suicide of Abdülaziz's son Şehzade Yusuf Izzeddin as the eldest male member of the House of Osman. He acceded to the throne after the death of Mehmed V. He was girded with the Sword of Osman on 4 July 1918, as the thirty-sixth \"padishah\". His father was Sultan Abdulmejid I and mother was Gülüstü Hanım (1830 – 1865), an ethnic Abkhazian, daughter of Prince Tahir Bey Çaçba and his wife Afişe Lakerba, originally named Fatma Çaçba. Mehmed was removed from the throne when the Ottoman sultanate was abolished in 1922.\n",
"There were 36 Ottoman Sultans who ruled over the Empire, and each one was a direct descendant through the male line of the first Ottoman Sultan, Sultan Osman I. After the deposition of the last Sultan, Mehmet VI, in 1922, and the subsequent abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924, members of the Imperial family were forced into exile. Their descendants now live in many different countries throughout Europe, as well as in the United States, the Middle East, and since they have now been permitted to return to their homeland, many now also live in Turkey. When in exile, the family adopted the surname of Osmanoğlu\n",
"His parents were descendents of Turkish and Albanian settlers in Macedonia. The ancestors had arrived in the Balkans with Ottoman armies several centuries ago, and established themselves in farming and trade. They belonged to a culturally distinct group, different from the Christians among whom they lived but highly westernized compared to the Turkish population that remained in Anatolia.\n"
] |
The origins of the Abrahamic religions.
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Can I ask a clarification question before my answer gets deleted? Are we allowed to use religious texts such as the old testament or Koran as sources while we acknowledge the disputed historicity? In particular, the book of Joshua?
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[
"Abrahamic religions are those religions deriving from a common ancient tradition and traced by their adherents to Abraham (circa 1900 BCE), a patriarch whose life is narrated in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, where he is described as a prophet (Genesis 20:7), and in the Quran, where he also appears as a prophet. This forms a large group of related largely monotheistic religions, generally held to include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and comprises over half of the world's religious adherents.\n",
"Abrahamic religion spread globally through Christianity being adopted by the Roman Empire in the 4th century and Islam by the Islamic Empires from the 7th century. Today the Abrahamic religions are one of the major divisions in comparative religion (along with Indian, Iranian, and East Asian religions). The major Abrahamic religions in chronological order of founding are Judaism (the base of the other two religions) in the 7th century BCE, Christianity in the 1st century CE, and Islam in the 7th century CE.\n",
"Abrahamic religions are those monotheistic faiths emphasizing and tracing their common origin to Abraham or recognizing a spiritual tradition identified with him. They constitute one of three major divisions in comparative religion, along with Indian religions (Dharmic) and East Asian religions (Taoic).\n",
"In the study of comparative religion, the category of Abrahamic religions consists of the three monotheistic religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, which claim Abraham (Hebrew \"Avraham\" אַבְרָהָם; Arabic \"Ibrahim\" إبراهيم ) as a part of their sacred history. Smaller religions such as Bahá'í Faith that fit this description are sometimes included but are often omitted.\n",
"The Abrahamic religions, also referred to collectively as Abrahamism, are a group of Semitic-originated religious communities of faith that claim descent from the Judaism of the ancient Israelites and the worship of the God of Abraham. The Abrahamic religions are monotheistic, with the term deriving from the patriarch Abraham (a major biblical figure from the Old Testament, which is recognized by Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others).\n",
"According to Malhotra, Abrahamic religions are history-centric in that their fundamental beliefs are sourced from history – that God revealed his message through a special prophet and that the message is secured in scriptures. This special access to God is available only to these intermediaries or prophets and not to any other human beings. History-centric Abrahamic religions claim that we can resolve the human condition only by following the lineage of prophets arising from the Middle East. All other teachings and practices are required to get reconciled with this special and peculiar history. By contrast, the dharmic traditions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism—do not rely on history in the same absolutist and exclusive way.\n",
"The three major Abrahamic faiths (in chronological order of revelation) are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Some strict definitions of what constitutes an Abrahamic religion include only these three faiths. However, there are many other religions incorporating Abrahamic doctrine, theology, genealogy and history into their own belief systems.\n"
] |
Is the Multiverse a "God of the Gaps"-type explanation for something we don't understand?
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I think that this links directly to the question of the place of falsifiability in science more broadly, which is something that physicists are currently fighting over. [Some have argued](_URL_1_) that the multiverse theory, among others, fails a basic test of scientific rigor in being falsifiable. [Others](_URL_0_) have argued that falsifiability is unrelated to whether something is real or not, and that an idea shouldn't be rejected out of hand just because it's unfalsifiable. So some professional scientists would answer your question with a resounding "Yes!" while others would say "Of course not!" (My personal view is that the theories and their consequences should be explored, but held in suspicion until falsified or not, so both camps have a valid point. The ability to live with the tension of uncertainty is a virtue.)
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[
"The multiverse is a series of parallel universes in many of the science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories written by Michael Moorcock. (Many other fictional settings also have the concept of a multiverse.) Central to these works is the concept of an Eternal Champion who has potentially multiple identities across multiple dimensions. The multiverse contains a legion of different versions of Earth in various times, histories, and occasionally, sizes. One example is the world in which his Elric Saga takes place. The multiplicity of places in this collection of universes include London, Melniboné, Tanelorn, the Young Kingdoms, and the Realm of Dreams.\n",
"The concept of a multiverse is explored in various religious cosmologies that propose that the totality of existence comprises multiple or infinitely many universes, including our own. Usually, such beliefs include a creation myth, a history, a worldview and a prediction of the eventual fate or destiny of the world. The worldview discusses the current organizational form of our universe and may contain references to other supernatural world or worlds. These references have aided several esoteric practices, including contacts with spirit worlds, and activities concerning personal or inner spiritual development.\n",
"Stoeger, Ellis, and Kircher (sec. 7) note that in a true multiverse theory, \"the universes are then completely disjoint and nothing that happens in any one of them is causally linked to what happens in any other one. This lack of any causal connection in such multiverses really places them beyond any scientific support\". Ellis (p29) specifically criticizes the MUH, stating that an infinite ensemble of completely disconnected universes is \"completely untestable, despite hopeful remarks sometimes made, see, e.g., Tegmark (1998).\"\n",
"The Multiverse hypothesis proposes the existence of many universes with different physical constants, some of which are hospitable to intelligent life (see multiverse: anthropic principle). Because we are intelligent beings, it is unsurprising that we find ourselves in a hospitable universe if there is such a multiverse. The Multiverse hypothesis is therefore thought to provide an elegant explanation of the finding that we exist despite the required fine-tuning. (See for a detailed discussion of the arguments for and against this suggested explanation.)\n",
"If the concept of the Multiverse is true, then other hierarchies exist in other Universes. It is believed in Theosopy that the concept of the Multiverse is true because Theosophists have stated that the Universal Logos has created many other cosmoses besides our own.\n",
"The fictional Moorcock Multiverse, consisting of several universes, many layered dimensions, spheres, and alternative worlds, is the place where the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos, the two main forces of Moorcock's worlds, takes place. In all these dimensions and worlds, these forces constantly war for supremacy. Since the victory of Law or Chaos would cause the Multiverse either to become permanently static or totally formless, the Cosmic Balance enforces certain limits which the powers of Law and Chaos violate at their peril. Law, Chaos, and the Balance are active, but seemingly non-sentient, forces which empower various champions and representatives.\n",
"Critics of the multiverse-related explanations argue that there is no independent evidence that other universes exist. Some criticize the inference from fine-tuning for life to a multiverse as fallacious, whereas others defend it against that challenge.\n"
] |
why can't i, a nearsighted person, use a vr headset without my glasses? shouldn't everything still be clear since it's just a screen close to my eyes?
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Glasses refocus light to correctly hit misshapen eyes. Each person, sometimes each eye, will have different corrections that need to be made. If a "normal" sighted person wears someones prescription glasses everything will look distorted.
The lenses in a VR set also refocus light, but are designed to simulate distance rather than correct for eye shape. Wearing your glasses or contacts with the vr headset will add the corrections needed for your eyes.
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[
"VR headsets may regularly cause eye fatigue, as does all screened technology, because people tend to blink less when watching screens, causing their eyes to become more dried out. There have been some concerns about VR headsets contributing to myopia, but although VR headsets sit close to the eyes, they may not necessarily contribute to nearsightedness if the focal length of the image being displayed is sufficiently far away.\n",
"BULLET::::- People experience 3-D virtual reality through glasses and contact lenses that beam images directly to their retinas (retinal display). Coupled with an auditory source (headphones), users can remotely communicate with other people and access the Internet.\n",
"The technology differs from standard Virtual Reality. With standard Virtual Reality, people wear screens over their eyes, the headsets through which they are unable to see their own torso, arms or legs. Whereas in a VR CAVE, instead of going into the computer game, the person wears clear glasses and can see their own body, the computer-generated objects appearing to be in the real world with them.\n",
"BULLET::::- These special glasses and contact lenses can deliver \"augmented reality\" and \"virtual reality\" in three different ways. First, they can project \"heads-up-displays\" (HUDs) across the user's field of vision, superimposing images that stay in place in the environment regardless of the user's perspective or orientation. Second, virtual objects or people could be rendered in fixed locations by the glasses, so when the user's eyes look elsewhere, the objects appear to stay in their places. Third, the devices could block out the \"real\" world entirely and fully immerse the user in a virtual reality environment.\n",
"Arguably the most important facet in making a virtual environment seem real is an appeal to sight. A virtual reality headset, incorporating a head-mounted display (HMD) is placed in front of the eyes of a patient like a pair of sunglasses, enabling for complete visual attention. A virtual environment is then displayed. A system of motion sensors tracks movement of the patient's head. If the patient tilts, or turns his head to view another part of the room, the environment adjusts accordingly. This allows for a more realistic experience by limiting restrictions of the head.\n",
"Using VRI for medical, legal and mental health settings is seen as controversial by some in the deaf community, where there is an opinion that it does not provide appropriate communication access—particularly in medical settings where the patient's ability to watch the screen or sign clearly to the camera may be compromised. This is balanced by many in the services and public services sectors who identify with the benefits of being able to communicate in otherwise impossible (and sometimes life-threatening) situations without having to wait hours for an interpreter to turn up, even if this initial contact is used just to arrange a further face-to-face appointment. Therefore, businesses and organizations contend that it meets or exceeds the minimum threshold for reasonable accommodation as its principle is built around offering \"reasonable adjustment\" through increasing initial accessibility.\n",
"BULLET::::- By the same year, practical virtual reality glasses will be in use. The devices will work by beaming images directly onto the retinas of their users, creating large, three-dimensional floating images in the person's field of view. Such devices would provide a visual experience on par with a very large television, but would be highly portable, combining the best features of a portable video player and a widescreen TV. The glasses will deliver full-immersion virtual reality.\n"
] |
why, when watching a live tv program, is there a delay on a screen in the shot when it shows the same program as being broadcast
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Because there is a time delay in capturing video and displaying it.
The live view is capturing a display of itself. At one frame in time, that light information from the camcorder gets converted to electrical signals, decoded, then sent to be displayed elsewhere. This will take several frames of time before it pops up on screen for the live view to see. This time difference is the delay you see.
You can get the same effect by pointing a webcam to look at a screen with its own video feed, you'll get a repeating image of what you see but they will pop up one at a time due to the delay.
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[
"In radio and television, broadcast delay is an intentional delay when broadcasting live material. Such a delay may be short (often seven seconds) to prevent mistakes or unacceptable content from being broadcast. Longer delays lasting several hours can also be introduced so that the material is aired at a later scheduled time (such as the prime time hours) to maximize viewership.\n",
"Tape delay may also refer to the process of broadcasting an event at a later scheduled time because a scheduling conflict prevents a live telecast, or a broadcaster seeks to maximize ratings by airing an event in a certain timeslot. That can also be done because of time constraints of certain portions, usually those that do not affect the outcome of the show, are edited out or the availability of hosts or other key production staff only at certain times of the day, and it is generally applicable for cable television programs.\n",
"If a user is interrupted while watching television, they can use Chase Play to 'pause' the television until they can keep watching. Initiating 'Chase Play' means that the user no longer has to wait until the show is over before finding out what they have missed. When returning from the interruption, 'Chase Play' allows the user to start viewing the program from precisely where they left off. The recording device will continue to capture the program in 'real time' until instructed to stop.\n",
"Many modern digital television receivers, such as standalone TV sets and set-top boxes use sophisticated audio processing, which can create a delay between the time when the audio signal is received and the time when it is heard on the speakers. Since many of these TVs also cause delays in processing the video signal this can result in the two signals being sufficiently synchronized to be unnoticeable by the viewer. However, if the difference between the audio and video delay is significant, the effect can be disconcerting. Some TVs have a \"lip sync\" setting that allows the audio lag to be adjusted to synchronize with the video, and others may have advanced settings where some of the audio processing steps can be turned off.\n",
"Because television is a field- rather than frame-based system, however, not all the information in the picture can be retained on film in the same way as it can on videotape. The time taken physically to move the film on by one frame and stop it so that the gate can be opened to expose a new frame of film to the two fields of television picture is much longer than the vertical blanking interval between these fields—so the film is still moving when the start of the next field is being displayed on the television screen. It is not possible to accelerate the film fast enough to get it there in time without destroying the perforations in the film stock—and the larger the film gauge used, the worse the problem becomes.\n",
"\"Screen time was precious, and infusing every moment with the emotion [was the point], not just forming the pieces of the puzzle to tell the story, which is hard enough. If you’re going to take five seconds of screen time, you’d better damn well be sure that there’s an emotion there. It may be very, very subtle, but trust the audiences to pick up on that, because audiences do.\"\n",
"By default, users can view program titles for multiple TV channels simultaneously, but, except for the currently selected or displayed channel, only for one time slot at a time. For the currently selected or displayed channel, the next three shows and their times are displayed in a \"paddle\" off to the right side of the vertical list. To see more time slots, users can use the BACK and NEXT buttons on the remote to scroll through time slots (this works on all menus) or can double press the askew 'square' button on the top row of the remote to view a more traditional TV channel grid guide (this only works for the Channels menu). While watching full-screen TV (with the Moxi Menu hidden), the Moxi Flip Bar (a bar that pops up on the bottom of the screen) provides programming information and ability to change channels by using the arrow keys on the remote.\n"
] |
why do people's ears tend to get hot when they drink alcohol?
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Alcohol causes your blood vessels to expand which increases circulation. This is more noticeable where there is very little skin and muscle to hide the changes. Like your ears.
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[
"Alcohol may worsen asthmatic symptoms in up to a third of people. This may be even more common in some ethnic groups such as the Japanese and those with aspirin-induced asthma. Other studies have found improvement in asthmatic symptoms from alcohol.\n",
"Alcohol abuse can cause a susceptibility to infection after major trauma to the lungs / respiratory system. It creates an increased risk of aspiration of gastric acid, microbes from the upper part of the throat, decreased mucous-facilitated clearance of bacterial pathogens from the upper airway and impaired pulmonary host defenses. This increased colonization by pathogenic organisms, combined with the acute intoxicating effects of alcohol and the subsequent depression of the normally protective gag and cough reflexes, leads to more frequent and severe pneumonia from gram-negative organisms. Defects in the function of the upper airway's clearance mechanisms in alcoholic patients have been detected.\n",
"Alcohol consumption increases the risk of hypothermia in two ways: vasodilation and temperature controlling systems in the brain. Vasodilation increases blood flow to the skin, resulting in heat being lost to the environment. This produces the effect of an individual \"feeling\" warm, when they are actually losing heat. Alcohol also affects the temperature-regulating system in the brain, decreasing the body's ability to shiver and use energy that would normally aid the body in generating heat. The overall effects of alcohol lead to a decrease in body temperature and a decreased ability to generate body heat in response to cold environments. Alcohol is a common risk factor for death due to hypothermia. Between 33% and 73% of hypothermia cases are complicated by alcohol.\n",
"Repeated exposure to fatty alcohols produce low-level toxicity and certain compounds in this category can cause local irritation on contact or low-grade liver effects (essentially linear alcohols have a slightly higher rate of occurrence of these effects). No effects on the central nervous system have been seen with inhalation and oral exposure. Tests of repeated bolus dosages of 1-hexanol and 1-octanol showed potential for CNS depression and induced respiratory distress. No potential for peripheral neuropathy has been found. In rats, the no observable adverse effect level (NOAEL) ranges from 200 mg/kg/day to 1000 mg/kg/day by ingestion. There has been no evidence that fatty alcohols are carcinogenic, mutagenic, or cause reproductive toxicity or infertility. Fatty alcohols are effectively eliminated from the body when exposed, limiting possibility of retention or bioaccumulation.\n",
"Alcohol also impairs and alters the functioning in the cerebellum, which affects both motor function and coordination. It has a notable inhibitory effect on the neurons of the cerebral cortex, affecting and altering thought processes, decreasing inhibition, and increasing the pain threshold. It also decreases sexual performance by depressing nerve centers in the hypothalamus. Alcohol also has an effect on urine excretion via inhibition of anti-diuretic hormone (ADH) secretion of the pituitary gland. Lastly, it depresses breathing and heart rate by inhibiting neuronal functioning of the medulla.\n",
"Regular consumption of alcohol is associated with an increased risk of gouty arthritis and a decreased risk of rheumatoid arthritis. Two recent studies report that the more alcohol consumed, the lower the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis. Among those who drank regularly, the one-quarter who drank the most were up to 50% less likely to develop the disease compared to the half who drank the least.\n",
"A study conducted by French scientists showed that loud music leads to more alcohol consumption in less time. For three Saturday evenings researchers observed customers of two bars situated in a medium-sized city in the west of France. Participants included forty males aged between 18 and 25, who were unaware that they were subjects of a research. The study featured only those who ordered a glass of draft beer (25 cl. or 8 oz.). The lead researcher, Nicolas Guéguen, said that each year more than 70,000 people in France die from an increased level of alcohol consumption, which also leads to fatal car accidents.\n"
] |
Why are older geological layers at the bottom and newer ones at the top?
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An important concept is that of [isostatic subsidence](_URL_0_). Let's imagine a really simple scenario. Imagine a lake whose level is around sea-level. It is receiving sediment from rivers draining mountains and other surrounding upland areas. Let's say that we deposit 1 cm of sediment in that lake. That 1 cm of sediment has a mass associated with it which now adds to the total mass of the column of crust beneath it. This addition of mass causes a little more of the aesthenosphere (a part of the mantle beneath the lithosphere which is weaker, behaves plastically and is able to "flow" on a geologic timescale) to be displaced beneath this column so the column sinks a tiny bit, thus creating more space, referred to as "accommodation space" within this lake. Continue this process for a long time and you will progressively end up with a column of sediments that increases in age downward, but the surface of the earth (where sediment is being deposited in your simple lake) is about the same absolute elevation referenced to some external datum (like sea level).
There is also some amount of recycling that is happening as some areas are uplifted due to processes like mountain building. So you may have millions of years of deposition in an area and eventually this area may be involved in the formation of a mountain range and then a decent portion of those rocks will be uplifted, eroded and then deposited in a basin.
|
[
"That new rock layers are above older rock layers is stated in the principle of superposition. There are usually some gaps in the sequence called unconformities. These represent periods where no new sediments were laid down, or when earlier sedimentary layers were raised above sea level and eroded away.\n",
"When rock units are placed under horizontal compression, they shorten and become thicker. Because rock units, other than muds, do not significantly change in volume, this is accomplished in two primary ways: through faulting and folding. In the shallow crust, where brittle deformation can occur, thrust faults form, which causes deeper rock to move on top of shallower rock. Because deeper rock is often older, as noted by the principle of superposition, this can result in older rocks moving on top of younger ones. Movement along faults can result in folding, either because the faults are not planar or because rock layers are dragged along, forming drag folds as slip occurs along the fault. Deeper in the Earth, rocks behave plastically and fold instead of faulting. These folds can either be those where the material in the center of the fold buckles upwards, creating \"antiforms\", or where it buckles downwards, creating \"synforms\". If the tops of the rock units within the folds remain pointing upwards, they are called anticlines and synclines, respectively. If some of the units in the fold are facing downward, the structure is called an overturned anticline or syncline, and if all of the rock units are overturned or the correct up-direction is unknown, they are simply called by the most general terms, antiforms and synforms.\n",
"The \"law of superposition\" states that a sedimentary rock layer in a tectonically undisturbed sequence is younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it. This is because it is not possible for a younger layer to slip beneath a layer previously deposited. The only disturbance that the layers experience is bioturbation, in which animals and/or plants move things in the layers. however, this process is not enough to allow the layers to change their positions. This principle allows sedimentary layers to be viewed as a form of vertical time line, a partial or complete record of the time elapsed from deposition of the lowest layer to deposition of the highest bed.\n",
"The oldest rocks are Lower Carboniferous limestones of Dinantian age, which form the core of the White Peak within the Peak District National Park. Because northern Derbyshire is effectively an uplifted dome of rock layers which have subsequently eroded back to expose older rocks in the centre of that dome, these are encircled by progressively younger limestone rocks until they in turn give way on three sides to Upper Carboniferous shales, gritstones and sandstones of Namurian age.\n",
"An inlier is an area of older rocks surrounded by younger rocks. Inliers are typically formed by the erosion of overlying younger rocks to reveal a limited exposure of the older underlying rocks. Faulting or folding may also contribute to the observed outcrop pattern. A classic example from Great Britain is that of the inlier of folded Ordovician and Silurian rocks at Horton in Ribblesdale in North Yorkshire which are surrounded by the younger flat-lying Carboniferous Limestone. The location has long been visited by geology students and experts. Another example from South Wales is the Usk Inlier in Monmouthshire where Silurian age rocks are upfolded amidst Old Red Sandstone rocks of Devonian age.\n",
"The oldest rocks are hard, grey limestones that make up the Carboniferous Limestone. These were laid down in a warm, shallow, subtropical sea and are rich in fossils, especially corals, crinoids and brachiopods. About 300 million years ago movements in the Earth's crust deformed and folded the rocks, as a result of which the rocks above the Carboniferous Limestone were worn away. Deposition resumed during the Triassic Period when the area was a desert with hills of limestone, and a dry plain where the Bristol Channel is now. Short violent storms caused flash-floods which carried debris down the hillsides and deposited it as alluvial fans of coarse, red conglomerate at the edge of the plain. These Triassic lie unconformably on the Carboniferous Limestone.\n",
"Rocks normally decrease in porosity with age and depth of burial. Tertiary age Gulf Coast sandstones are in general more porous than Cambrian age sandstones. There are exceptions to this rule, usually because of the depth of burial and thermal history.\n"
] |
What was the journey to Auschwitz like?
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What they were referring to as "goods wagons" were likely the trucks which were in this case used to take people from factories to centers from which they were deported to Auschwitz in cattle cars. The Nazis usually deported Jews to extermination camps such as Auschwitz Birkenau in cattle cars with very horrible conditions. Auschwitz was a large camp complex with concentration camp, labor camp, and extermination camp sections. Most of the German Jews deported in February of 1943 were murdered in the gas chambers in the Birkenau section of Auschwitz. About 4000 people escaped the Aktion, and about 1500 of these people survived in hiding. However there were no escapees once people were put on the trains. Some of the deportees from the Fabrikaktion survived because in Auschwitz they were selected for forced labor, a very small number of people, mostly able bodied young men and young women without children were chosen for forced labor and so were not immediately gassed as most of the deportees were. Most of these forced laborers were eventually killed, but some did survive.
Most of the other Jews in Berlin had already been deported and murdered, most of the people deported in the Fabrikaktion were the spouses of non-Jews or were children of interfaith couples, or else were skilled workers or forced laborers in war production. Up until then these people had avoided deportation, however at the end of 1942 the Nazis decided to deport and murder these last Jews in Berlin by the end of March of 1943. This particular Aktion is well known historically because it was the day of the Rosenstrasse protests of women married to Jewish men occurred. This was particularly significant because it was the only mass demonstration against the deportation of Jews in Germany.
The deportations were ordered by the RSHA, and were organized by various groups, mainly the SS but also others, including local police. The deportations themselves were extraordinarily brutal. Usually between 75 to 100 people were stuffed in a cattle car, without windows, with no food, with no room to move or even sit down. Some cars had a bucket of water and an empty bucket for a toilet, but many did not even have these. The trip from Berlin to Auschwitz usually took a a day or two, sometimes longer. Many people died during the journey. These trains were heavily guarded, often with a guard with a machine gun on top of each car. Very few people escaped and almost all who did were murdered. Thousands of railway workers, and the Deutsche Reichsban were also complicit. The trains then arrived at Auschwitz and the prisoners underwent selection, a few able bodied prisoners were chosen to live and the rest were murdered and their bodies burned within a few hours.
"The Factory Action and the Events at the Rosenstrasse in Berlin: Facts and Fictions about 27 February 1943: Sixty Years Later" by Wolf Gruner and Ursula Marcum
[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)
"An Underground Life" by Gad Beck, Beck's description of the Aktion is particularly heart wrenching because he remembers losing his first love, Manfred during the Aktion (though not the one on feb. 27).
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
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[
"The trip was organized to both commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II as well as to be witness to the suffering in contemporary war zones. The group walked from Auschwitz to Vienna, then travelled through Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. They crossed the front lines of the Bosnian war in Mostar and held a day of vigil, fasting and prayer there. The next leg took them through Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan and Iraq.\n",
"According to Henryk Swiebocki of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, local people, including members of the Polish underground who lived near the camp, did what they could to help escapees. Vrba wrote that there was no organized help for them on the outside. At first the men avoided contact with other people, moving only at night; they ate bread they'd taken from Auschwitz and drank water from streams. On 13 April, lost in Bielsko-Biala, they knocked on the door of a farmhouse and a Polish woman took them in for a day. Feeding them bread, potato soup and \"ersatz\" coffee, she explained that most of the area had been \"Germanized\" and that Poles helping Jews risked death.\n",
"The purpose of the camp was to act as a transit camp and it was to be filled to capacity with Italian Jews and, once full, these were to be deported predominately to Auschwitz for extermination. It was during this period that the first two trains left for Auschwitz on 19 and 22 February 1944, with the camp still under Italian control. The second convoy left with 650 other prisoners (which Primo Levi recalls in the first pages of the famous book \"If This is a Man\").\n",
"They left through the main Auschwitz camp through the Arbeit Macht Frei gate. They had taken a cart and passed themselves off as a \"Rollwagenkommando\"\"haulage detail\"a work group which consisted of between four and twelve inmates pulling a freight cart instead of horses.\n",
"The first transports to Auschwitz began in early May 1944, and continued, even as Soviet troops approached. The Hungarian government was solely in charge of the Jews' transportation up to the northern border. The Hungarian commander of the Kassa (Košice) railroad station meticulously recorded the trains heading to Auschwitz with their place of departure and the number of people inside them. The first train went through Kassa on May 14. On a typical day, there were three or four trains, with between 3,000 and 4,000 people on each train, for a total of approximately 12,000 Jews delivered to the extermination facilities each day. There were 109 trains during these 33 days through June 16. (There were days when there were as many as six trains.) Between June 25 and 29, there were 10 trains, then an additional 18 trains on July 5–9. The 138th recorded train (with the 400,426th victim) heading to Auschwitz via Kassa was on July 20. Another 10 trains were sent to Auschwitz via other routes (24,000+ people) (the first two left Budapest and Topolya on April 29, and arrived at Auschwitz on May 2), while 7 trains with 20,787 people went to Strasshof between June 25 and 28 (2 each from Debrecen, Szeged, and Baja; 1 from Szolnok). The unique Kastner train left for Bergen-Belsen with 1,685 people on June 30.\n",
"Deportees were brought to Auschwitz crammed in wretched conditions into goods or cattle wagons, arriving near a railway station or at one of several dedicated trackside ramps, including one next to Auschwitz I. The \"Altejudenrampe\" (old Jewish ramp), part of the Oświęcim freight railway station, was used from 1942 to 1944 for Jewish transports. Located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, arriving at this ramp meant a 2.5 km journey to Auschwitz II and the gas chambers. Most deportees were forced to walk, accompanied by SS men and a car with a Red Cross symbol that carried the Zyklon B, as well as an SS doctor in case officers were poisoned by mistake. Inmates arriving at night, or who were too weak to walk, were taken by truck. Work on another railway line and \"Judenrampe\" \"(pictured right)\" between sectors BI and BII in Auschwitz II, was completed in May 1944 for the arrival of Hungarian Jews, who between May and early July 1944 were deported to Auschwitz II at a rate of 12,000 a day. The rails led directly to the area around the gas chambers.\n",
"From May 1944 the trains into Auschwitz II arrived on a new train spur that had been built to carry the Hungarian Jews directly into the camp. The three-track line, which stopped near the gas chambers, meant that a new train could arrive while a previous one was being unloaded. The crematoria could barely cope; the \"Sonderkommando\" (prisoners forced to work there) had to start burning bodies in open fire pits. About 90 percent of the Hungarian Jews who survived the journey to Auschwitz were sent to the gas chambers on arrival; the rest were selected for slave labour.\n"
] |
Was American Artillery more effective and decisive than German Artillery in WW2? If so, why?
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[This response by /u/vonadler is exactly what you are looking for.](_URL_0_)
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[
"Although also frequently out-ranged by their German counterparts, American artillery built up a reputation for effectiveness and the infantry increasingly relied on the artillery to get them forward. The War Department General Staff ignored the Army Ground Force's recommendations for a powerful heavy artillery arm, authorizing only 81 medium and 54 heavy non-divisional artillery battalions instead of the 140 and 101 recommended by Army Ground Forces, only to have combat experience in Italy prove that air power could not substitute for heavy artillery. As a result, over 100 medium and heavy artillery battalions were activated in 1944, mostly through the conversion of coast artillery units.\n",
"After the fall of France, the U.S. Army studied the reasons behind the effectiveness of the German campaign against the French and British forces. One aspect that was highlighted by this study was the use of self propelled artillery, however by 1941 there was little available in the U.S. Army's arsenal that could be used in such a role. The Army had a number of M1897A5 guns, sufficient for the mass-production for such a weapon, and the M3 half-track was coming into production. After some debate, the Army decided to place M1897A5 guns on the M3 half-track chassis, which was designated the T12 GMC. The M1897A5 gun was originally adapted for the M3 chassis by placing it in a welded box riveted to the chassis behind the driver's compartment. It was accepted by the Army on 31 October 1941.\n",
"By the early 20th century, infantry weapons had become more powerful, forcing most artillery away from the front lines. Despite the change to indirect fire, cannon proved highly effective during World War I, directly or indirectly causing over 75% of casualties. The onset of trench warfare after the first few months of World War I greatly increased the demand for howitzers, as they were more suited at hitting targets in trenches. Furthermore, their shells carried more explosives than those of guns, and caused considerably less barrel wear. The German army had the advantage here as they began the war with many more howitzers than the French. World War I also saw the use of the Paris Gun, the longest-ranged gun ever fired. This calibre gun was used by the Germans against Paris and could hit targets more than away.\n",
"Initially, anti-aircraft artillery guns of World War I were adaptations of existing medium-caliber weapons, mounted to allow fire at higher angles. By 1915, the German command realized that these were useless for anything beyond deterrence, even against the vulnerable balloons and slow-moving aircraft of the period. With the increase of aircraft performance, many armies developed dedicated AA guns with a high muzzle velocity – allowing the projectiles to reach greater altitudes. It was this muzzle velocity, combined with a projectile of high weight, that made the 8.8 cm Flak one of the great World War II anti-tank guns. The first such German gun was introduced in 1917, and it used the 8,8 cm caliber, common in the \"Kaiserliche Marine\" (navy).\n",
"But changes have been made since past wars and in World War I, artillery was more accurate than before, although not as accurate as artillery one century newer. The tactics of artillery from previous wars were carried on, and still had similar success. Warships and battleships also carried large caliber guns that needed to be elevated to certain degrees to accurately hit targets, and they also had the similar drawbacks of land artillery.\n",
"By the early 20th century, infantry weapons became more powerful and accurate, forcing most artillery away from the front lines. Despite the change to indirect fire, cannon still proved highly effective during World War I, causing over 75% of casualties. The onset of trench warfare after the first few months of World War I greatly increased the demand for howitzers, as they fired at a steep angle, and were thus better suited than guns at hitting targets in trenches. Furthermore, their shells carried larger amounts of explosives than those of guns, and caused considerably less barrel wear. The German army took advantage of this, beginning the war with many more howitzers than the French. World War I also marked the use of the Paris Gun, the longest-ranged gun ever fired. This caliber gun was used by the Germans to bombard Paris, and was capable of hitting targets more than away.\n",
"Soon after the war, Ernst von Hoeppner wrote that German air units were overwhelmed by the number and aggression of British and French air crews, who gained air supremacy and reduced the \"to a state of impotence\". Hoeppner wrote that Anglo-French artillery-observation aircraft were their most effective weapon, operating in \"perfect accord\" with their artillery and \"annihilating\" the German guns, although the French aviators were superior to the British. Low-altitude flying for machine-gun attacks on German infantry had little practical effect but the depression of German infantry morale was much greater, leading to a belief that return fire had no effect on Allied aircraft and that all aeroplanes seen were British or French, which led to more demands from the infantry for air protection by the , despite their unsuitable aircraft.\n"
] |
Why does it seem like early American civilizations' (Maya, Olmec, Aztec) art/architecture is much less developed or much less impressive than that of early Europe and Asia?
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This is a common misconception, in truth mesoamerican and south american cultures were very advanced, just in ways that were different than what is typically thought of as "advanced". Early American civilizations had very complex construction and architecture techniques as well as metallurgy and textiles.
When people say that "they weren't that advanced" people are usually referring to the fact that the Incas didn't use wheels. Long story short; They did. But American cultures didn't use extensively for a couple of reasons, namely they didn't have any draft animals. Cattle and horses simply didn't exist in the american continents at the time. [Llamas](_URL_0_) aren't very strong, and the [American Bison](_URL_4_) was never tamed. This, in combination with the many steep, rocky, mountainous regions of the american continents meant that the wooden cart wheels of the time simply weren't useful to them on a large scale.
Another reason they tend to be thought of as less advanced is that the american cultures tended to favor natural defenses instead of the artificial method of castle building. See [Machu Picchu](_URL_1_) and the [Cliffdwellers](_URL_5_). Those, and many construction sites like them had very advanced construction and carving techniques employed throughout them.
There was also [Tenochtitlan](_URL_2_) the capital city of the Aztecs that was built in the middle of a lake using a combination of natural and artificial islands, complete with huge drawbridges that could be raised in case of an attack. This wasn't just one fortress either, the entire city was built like this. And in some places there was even running water thanks to two large aqueducts flowing into the city.
And then we come to [Teotihuacan](_URL_3_) a *massive* city that existed centuries before the aztecs built Tenochtitlan. It is thought to have housed at least 125,000 people during its height making it the 6th largest city in the world at the time. These were the people the Aztecs worshipped as gods!
There are a couple of other reasons why they aren't thought of as "advanced" including their highly fragmentized cultures, their lack of large scale warfare (there are exceptions, but most ancient american conflicts were relatively small and over pretty quickly compared to the grand battles of european military history), and the difficulty of obtaining certain materials made certain tasks more difficult for the people of the american continents.
TL;DR The many American cultures were advanced, in some cases just as much or moreso than their european counterparts. But due to differing circumstances and environments, they never developed, or never needed to develop those technologies in the first place.
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[
"They were a forerunner of later cultures such as Teotihuacan, north of Mexico City, the Zapotecs in Oaxaca and the Mayas in southern Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. While empires rose and fell, the basic cultural underpinnings of the Mesoamerica stayed the same until the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. These included cities centered on plazas, temples usually built on pyramid bases, Mesoamerican ball courts and a mostly common cosmology.\n",
"Famous is their well-elaborated Muisca art, especially their goldworking. Different from the other three well-known civilisations of the Americas; the Maya, Aztec and Inca, they did not construct grand architecture.\n",
"There were many cultural changes during that time. One of them was the expansion of metallurgy, imported from South America, and whose oldest remnants in Mesoamerica come from the West, as is the case also with ceramics. The Mesoamericans did not achieve great facility with metals; in fact, their use was rather limited (a few copper axes, needles, and above all jewellery). The most advanced techniques of Mesoamerican metallurgy were developed by the mixtecos, who produced fine, exquisitely handcrafted articles. Remarkable advances were made in architecture as well. The use of nails in architecture was introduced to support the sidings of the temples, mortar was improved, the use of columns and stone roofs was widespread — something that only the Maya had used during the Classic period. In agriculture, the system of irrigation became more complex; in the Valley of Mexico especially, chinampas were used extensively by the Mexica, who built a city of 200,000 around them.\n",
"Although civilizations in Central America attained a relatively high level of sophistication by the eleventh century AD, they lagged behind other civilizations in the development of musical instruments. For example, they had no stringed instruments; all of their instruments were idiophones, drums, and wind instruments such as flutes and trumpets. Of these, only the flute was capable of producing a melody. In contrast, pre-Columbian South American civilizations in areas such as modern-day Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile were less advanced culturally but more advanced musically. South American cultures of the time used pan-pipes as well as varieties of flutes, idiophones, drums, and shell or wood trumpets.\n",
"Though the term refers specifically to the Maya civilization of southern Mexico and Central America, in practice this revivalist style frequently blends Maya architectural and artistic motifs, a \"playful pilferings of the architectural and decorative elements\" with those of other Mesoamerican cultures, particularly the Central Mexican Aztec architecture styling from the pre-contact period as exhibited by the Mexica and other Nahua groups. Although there were mutual influences between these original and otherwise distinct and richly varied pre-Columbian artistic traditions, the syncretism of these modern reproductions is often an ahistorical one.\n",
"As complex civilizations arose in the Eastern Hemisphere, the indigenous societies in the Americas remained relatively simple and fragmented into diverse regional cultures. During the formative stage in Mesoamerica (about 1500 BCE to 500 CE), more complex and centralized civilizations began to develop, mostly in what is now Mexico, Central America, and Peru. They included civilizations such as the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Moche, and Nazca. They developed agriculture, growing maize, chili peppers, cocoa, tomatoes, and potatoes, crops unique to the Americas, and creating distinct cultures and religions. These ancient indigenous societies would be greatly affected, for good and ill, by European contact during the early modern period.\n",
"The Aztec civilization originated in Central America. Likewise, the architecture of the ancient Aztec architecture reflects that of the natives' traditions, culture, religion, and everyday life. The ancient Aztecs relied on cosmology, astronomy, and religion as their main sources of inspiration. The most prominent of features are the Aztec temples which were built for the purpose of appeasing the gods, so many of their features reflect that goal. The temples were terraced pyramids with steep stairs leading up to the main temple. \n"
] |
Neutron Star Density question. (Chemistry/Astrophysics)
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The mass density of a neutron star is comparable to the mass density of the nucleus of an atom.
In ordinary matter, the density is much less, because the mass of an atom is almost all in the nucleus, but the nucleus takes up only a tiny fraction of the volume of an atom, so the density of ordinary matter is vastly less than the density of the nucleus.
In a neutron star, you basically have density comparable to what you'd get if you piled a bunch of nuclei as close to each other as you could.
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[
"Neutron stars have overall densities of to ( to times the density of the Sun), which is comparable to the approximate density of an atomic nucleus of . The neutron star's density varies from about in the crust—increasing with depth—to about or (denser than an atomic nucleus) deeper inside. A neutron star is so dense that one teaspoon (5 milliliters) of its material would have a mass over , about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza. In the enormous gravitational field of a neutron star, that teaspoon of material would weigh , which is 15 times what the Moon would weigh if it were placed on the surface of the Earth. The entire mass of the Earth at neutron star density would fit into a sphere of 305m in diameter (the size of the Arecibo Observatory). The pressure increases from to from the inner crust to the center.\n",
"The equation of state for a neutron star is not yet known. It is assumed that it differs significantly from that of a white dwarf, whose equation of state is that of a degenerate gas that can be described in close agreement with special relativity. However, with a neutron star the increased effects of general relativity can no longer be ignored. Several equations of state have been proposed (FPS, UU, APR, L, SLy, and others) and current research is still attempting to constrain the theories to make predictions of neutron star matter. This means that the relation between density and mass is not fully known, and this causes uncertainties in radius estimates. For example, a neutron star could have a radius of 10.7, 11.1, 12.1 or 15.1 kilometers (for EOS FPS, UU, APR or L respectively).\n",
"As noted above, a mass distribution will emit gravitational radiation only when there is spherically asymmetric motion among the masses. A spinning neutron star will generally emit no gravitational radiation because neutron stars are highly dense objects with a strong gravitational field that keeps them almost perfectly spherical. In some cases, however, there might be slight deformities on the surface called \"mountains\", which are bumps extending no more than 10 centimeters (4 inches) above the surface, that make the spinning spherically asymmetric. This gives the star a quadrupole moment that changes with time, and it will emit gravitational waves until the deformities are smoothed out.\n",
"Neutron star relativistic equations of state describe the relation of radius vs. mass for various models. The most likely radii for a given neutron star mass are bracketed by models AP4 (smallest radius) and MS2 (largest radius). BE is the ratio of gravitational binding energy mass equivalent to the observed neutron star gravitational mass of \"M\" kilograms with radius \"R\" meters,\n",
"The seven objects seem to be the best laboratory to study neutron star atmospheres and, probably, internal structure. The holy grail of neutron star astrophysics is the determination of the equation of state (EOS) of matter at supra-nuclear densities. The most direct way of constraining the EOS is to measure simultaneously the neutron star mass and radius. If a neutron star emits blackbody radiation from its surface of radius formula_1 at homogeneous temperature formula_2, the received flux at distance formula_3 is:\n",
"Neutron stars that can be observed are very hot and typically have a surface temperature of around . They are so dense that a normal-sized matchbox containing neutron-star material would have a weight of approximately 3 billion metric tons, the same weight as a 0.5 cubic kilometre chunk of the Earth (a cube with edges of about 800 metres). Their magnetic fields are between 10 and 10 (100 million to 1 quadrillion) times stronger than Earth's magnetic field. The gravitational field at the neutron star's surface is about (200 billion) times that of Earth's gravitational field.\n",
"A team of astronomers from Italy, Poland, and the U.K. has reported in 2016 observations of the light emitted by a neutron star (pulsar RX J1856.5−3754). The star is surrounded by a very strong magnetic field (10G), and one expects birefringence from the vacuum polarization described by the Euler–Heisenberg Lagrangian. A degree of polarization of about 16% was measured and was claimed to be \"large enough to support the presence of vacuum birefringence, as predicted by QED\". Fan et al. pointed that their results are uncertain due to low accuracy of star model and the direction of the neutron magnetization axis.\n"
] |
why are addresses depicted the way they are, and not postcode/zipcode first? surely this would be easier?
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Pretty much you answered it yourself.
It's done that way because it's traditional.
People haven't felt a need for change because there were no problems with the old way.
The cost to promote the change, and the cost of potential delays or disruptions from confusion or inconsistency, would outweigh the negligible benefits.
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[
"Postal designations for place names become \"de facto\" locations for their addresses, and as a result, it is difficult to convince residents and businesses that they are located in another city or town different from the \"preferred\" place name associated with their ZIP Codes. Because of issues of confusion and lack of identity, some cities, such as Signal Hill, California, (an enclave located entirely inside the separate city of Long Beach) have successfully petitioned the Postal Service to change ZIP Code boundaries or create new ZIP Codes so their cities become the \"preferred\" place name for addresses within the ZIP Code.\n",
"The classic postal codes of the 1970s are not fine-grained, can't be used as location (converted to approximated latitude/longitude of the address). But modern digital maps can generate geocodes (e.g. Geohash), it can be used as a finer location code with the same number of digits, and without administrative cost. \n",
"Initially, states divided into multiple area codes were assigned area codes with a \"1\" in the second position, while areas that covered entire states or provinces received codes with \"0\" as the middle digit; however, this rule was abandoned by the early 1950s. In order to distinguish seven-digit dialing from ten-digit dialing, central office codes were restricted to not having a \"0\" or \"1\" in the middle position. This was already common practice, because the system of using the initial letters of central office names did not assign letters to digits \"1\" and \"0\". Furthermore, area codes and central office codes could not start with \"0\" or \"1\", because \"0\" was used for operator assistance and a leading single pulse (\"i.e.\", the digit \"1\") was automatically ignored by most switching equipment of the time. In addition, the eight codes of the form \"N11\" (\"N = 2–9\") were reserved as service codes. The easily recognizable codes of the form \"N00\" were available in the numbering plan, but were not initially included in assignments.\n",
"Most of the postal code systems are numeric; only a few are alphanumeric (i.e., use both letters and digits). Alphanumeric systems can, given the same number of characters, encode many more locations. For example, while a 2 digit numeric code can represent 100 locations, a 2 character alphanumeric code using ten numbers and twenty letters can represent 900 locations.\n",
"Because of the way the segment address and offset are added, a single linear address can be mapped to up to 2 = 4096 distinct segment:offset pairs. For example, the linear address 08124h can have the segmented addresses 06EFh:1234h, 0812h:0004h, 0000h:8124h, etc.\n",
"\"Acceptable\" place names are usually added to a ZIP Code in cases where the ZIP Code boundaries divide them between two or more cities, as in the case of Centennial. However, in many cases, only the \"preferred\" name can be used, even when many addresses in the ZIP Code are in another city. People sometimes must use the name of a post office rather than their own city.\n",
"The mapcode system was designed specifically as a free, brand-less, international standard for representing any location on the surface of the Earth by a short, easy to recognize and remember “code”, usually consisting of between 4 and 7 letters and digits.\n"
] |
In late medieval England, how were MPs chosen for the House of Commons?
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Ah the pre reform house of commons.
As always the answer is it depends which ones.
Essentially you had 2 main forms of MPs. The knights of the shires that represented counties and those that represented urban centres. Then you had varies other MPs such as those that represented the Cinque Ports (University constituencies though cam rather later.
Now we've got that out of the way it depends on the date. 1430 is a critical year as is when the 40 shilling freeholders act was passed. After that date you needed to have a freehold worth 40 shillings a year in rent in order to vote in county elections (prior to that point is possible that all freeholders had the vote in theory). One big catch was that you had to vote in the county court. This meant if you didn't live near it voting wouldn't be very practical. An exception was Hampshire where you could vote in Newport on the Isle of Wight as well as Winchester. Voting was public so you might want to stick to candidates that the great and good of Winchester were happy with. So in practice such MPs were selected by who met the voting requirements, were able to get to the county town and were prepared to openly support them.
For MPs that represented towns the system was largely left up to the authorities of the town in question and a range of approaches were taken from giving the vote to most householders through just those that paid certain taxes to just the members of the borough corporation.
Of course this assumes that any MP was chosen at all. Southampton for example repeatedly failed to provide an MP (at the time it was expected to produce two). This makes more sense when you realise that Southampton was frequently a poor town and parliaments could be held in some fairly random places.
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[
"The House of Commons of the Kingdom of England evolved from an undivided parliament to serve as the voice of the tax-paying subjects of the counties and of the boroughs. Knights of the shire, elected from each county, were usually landowners, while the borough members were often from the merchant classes. These members represented subjects of the Crown who were not Lords Temporal or Spiritual, who themselves sat in the House of Lords. The House of Commons gained its name because it represented communities (\"communes\"). Members of the Commons were all elected, while members of the upper house were summoned to parliament by the monarch, usually on the basis of a title which would be inherited after the holder's death, or because they held a position in the realm that warranted special recognition, such as the bishops of the English and Welsh dioceses. After the Reformation, these bishops were those of the Church of England. \n",
"The division of the Parliament of England into two houses occurred during the reign of Edward III: in 1341 the Commons met separately from the nobility and clergy for the first time, creating in effect an Upper Chamber and a Lower Chamber, with the knights and burgesses sitting in the latter. They formed what became known as the House of Commons, while the clergy and nobility became the House of Lords. Although they remained subordinate to both the Crown and the Lords, the Commons did act with increasing boldness. During the Good Parliament of 1376, the Commons appointed Sir Peter de la Mare to convey to the Lords their complaints of heavy taxes, demands for an accounting of the royal expenditures, and criticism of the King's management of the military. The Commons even proceeded to impeach some of the King's ministers. Although Mare was imprisoned for his actions, the benefits of having a single voice to represent the Commons were recognized, and the office which became known as Speaker of the House of Commons was thus created. Mare was soon released after the death of King Edward III and in 1377 became the second Speaker of the Commons.\n",
"In 1341 the Commons met separately from the nobility and clergy for the first time, creating what was effectively an Upper Chamber and a Lower Chamber, with the knights and burgesses sitting in the latter. This Upper Chamber became known as the House of Lords from 1544 onward, and the Lower Chamber became known as the House of Commons, collectively known as the Houses of Parliament.\n",
"Montfort's Parliament of 1265 was the first parliament of England to include representatives chosen by the counties (or shires), the cities, and the boroughs, groups who eventually became the House of Commons, although to begin with Lords and Commons met all together, \n",
"From 1295, (the Model Parliament) a form of this constituency on a narrower area, the Parliamentary borough of Salisbury, returned two MPs to the House of Commons of England Elections were held using the bloc vote system. This afforded the ability for wealthy male townsfolk who owned property rated at more than £2 a year liability in Land Tax to vote in the county and borough (if they met the requirements of both systems). The franchise (right to vote) in the town was generally restricted to male tradespersons and professionals within the central town wards, however in medieval elections would have been the aldermen.\n",
"The procedure for filling a vacant seat in the House of Commons of England was developed during the Reformation Parliament of the 16th century by Thomas Cromwell; previously a seat had remained empty upon the death of a member. Cromwell devised a new election that would be called by the king at a time of the king's choosing. This made it a simple matter to ensure the seat rewarded an ally of the crown.\n",
"The House of Lords developed from the \"Great Council\" (\"Magnum Concilium\") that advised the King during medieval times. This royal council came to be composed of ecclesiastics, noblemen, and representatives of the counties of England and Wales (afterwards, representatives of the boroughs as well). The first English Parliament is often considered to be the \"Model Parliament\" (held in 1295), which included archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and representatives of the shires and boroughs of it.\n"
] |
how can monsanto get away with virtually suing any farmer? how can the non-gmo farmer protect him/herself?
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You have to go out of your way to get sued. Here's what happens...
It's suspected that you have GMO crops on your land, this is usually reported by other farmers or by seed elevators that buy crops from farmers.
The owners of the technology (Monsanto, usually (thanks to their patent portfolio)...but can be Dupont/Dow/BASF/Bayer/etc depending on the crop or technology) will approach the farmer/farm and ask for voluntary documentation on their seed source and/or a sample of their seed/crops.
Things can go a couple ways from here...either they comply or they resist. If they resist, things can go into legal wrangling (especially since pretty much everyone who denies to comply in order to investigate the issue is in the wrong). If they comply (or once compliance is legally won) then they send the samples off to labs to test for priority genes. Sometimes it gets to the point where it's a case of "well, go ahead and harvest and then we'll take samples" when farmers are adamant they're doing nothing wrong...they will be busted or cleared once sampled after harvest without any impact to the value of the farmer's crop or harvest if in the clear.
Here's the thing about GMO accidentally ending up on your land...Monsanto/etc. have programs in place which will pay for the contaminated crop, it's clean-up, and the labor/chemicals used to remove it from your land...even in border lands like ditches and runoff-protection areas that aren't in production fields.
Here's the other thing...there is no way on this planet someone accidentally has 70-80-90%+ GMO contaminated seed in their fields. This only happens when buying illegal seed or (more commonly) cultivating, selecting, and saving GMO seed when you notice it's shown up on your property. If I happen to be driving a truck holding 10,000 copies of MS Windows and a copy falls off the back of my truck you don't have the right to install that on 1000 computers at your business or go around installing copies on other people's computers because you found it on the ground.
Monsanto has never lost a case they've sued a farmer over...and it's only been a few dozen farmers in the past 18-ish years...and well over 1/2 of them happened in the early years of GMO adoption before a lot of people knew exactly what was up with the legal limits of using this technology.
If you're farming 100s-1000s of acres, you know exactly what you're getting into when you choose to cross the line into stealing intellectual property. The only farmers that have gone up against this system were either testing the system for it's limits and/or were simply trying to steal intellectual property. It's a very deliberate act in either case.
Beyond all this, it's a case of farmers who WANT to crop GMO crops without actually paying the higher seed price for GMO seed. They are no different than GMO seed purchasing farmers, use no more or less chemicals, nor are they somehow saintly or innocent for wanting to do this...they just want to cut out the "paying for it" part that helps brings this intellectual property to market.
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[
"Those who opposed the provision referred to it as the \"Monsanto Protection Act\", on the premise that it \"effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of controversial genetically modified (aka GMO) or genetically engineered (GE) seeds, no matter what health issues may arise concerning GMOs in the future\". Fox News reported that by lobbying Washington lawmakers, Monsanto \"short-circuited\" the process. According to Al Jazeera, the provision was drafted in part by Monsanto representatives, and added to the bill without review from Congress' Agricultural or Judiciary committees, angering many who said the Act was \"snuck\" through government.\n",
"OSGATA presents this case as protecting members against prosecution following \"accidental contamination\" with Monsanto patented crops, but Monsanto's chief counsel clarified that \"Monsanto never has and has committed it never will sue if our patented seed or traits are found in a farmer's field as a result of inadvertent means.\" For example, in Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser, an initial claim of accidental contamination is balanced against a finding of fact that 95%-98% of the crop was actually infringing.\n",
"Since the mid‑1990s, Monsanto indicates that it has filed suit against 145 individual U.S. farmers for patent infringement and/or breach of contract in connection with its genetically engineered seed but has proceeded through trial against only eleven farmers, all of which it won. The Center for Food Safety has listed 90 lawsuits through 2004 by Monsanto against farmers for claims of seed patent violations. Monsanto defends its patents and their use, explaining that patents are necessary to ensure that it is paid for its products and for all the investments it puts into developing products. As it argues, the principle behind a farmer’s seed contract is simple: a business must be paid for its product., but that a very small percentage of farmers do not honor this agreement. While many lawsuits involve breach of Monsanto's Technology Agreement, farmers who have not signed this type of contract, but do use the patented seed, can also be found liable for violating Monsanto's patent. That said, Monsanto has stated it will not \"exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means.\" The Federal Circuit found that this assurance is binding on Monsanto, so that farmers who do not harvest more than a trace amount of Monsanto's patented crops \"lack an essential element of standing\" to challenge Monsanto's patents.\n",
"It is known primarily for its March 2011 initiation of a lawsuit against Monsanto Corporation to stop it from suing farmers who have been \"contaminated\" by their genetically modified seeds. On Jan. 2013, the US Federal Court of Appeals heard the oral arguments appealing the dismissal of the case.\n",
"SESE is a member of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association which brought a lawsuit against Monsanto to prevent them from suing organic farmers when they are contaminated by Monsanto products. While SESE and OSGATA technically lost the suit, the Federal Appeals Judge panel did rule that Monsanto could not sue farmers with less than 1% contamination levels.\n",
"Acorn, with 82 other farmers and seed businesses, preemptively sued Monsanto Corporation to protect themselves from predatory lawsuits for GMO patent infringement. This suit is between Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association and Monsanto. This class action suit was litigated by the Public Patent Foundation in response to Monsanto's multiple lawsuits against farmers who have been contaminated by their GMO seeds.\n",
"Monsanto has also successfully sued grain elevators that clean seeds for farmers to replant of inducing patent infringement. For example, Monsanto sued the Pilot Grove Cooperative Elevator in Pilot Grove, Missouri, which had been cleaning conventional seeds for decades before the issuance of the patent that covered genetically engineered seeds. Similarly, a seed cleaner from Indiana, Maurice Parr, was sued by Monsanto for inducing farmers to save seeds in violation of Monsanto’s patent rights. Parr told his customers that cleaning patented seeds for replanting was not infringing activity. The case was settled and in exchange for paying no monetary damages, Parr agreed to an injunction requiring Parr to obtain certification from his clients that their seeds were not Monsanto patented seeds and to advise clients that seed saving of patented seeds is illegal. Mr. Parr was featured in a documentary, Food, Inc.\n"
] |
How does cortisone work?
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I think you mean cortisol, rather than cortisone. The two are interconverted in the cell by an enzyme system (11- beta HSD 1 and 2) and cortisone is actually much less active than cortisol.
Cortisol circulates in the blood bound to corticosteroid binding globulin, a carrier molecule. About 96% of cortisol is bound, but it is only the 4% free fraction that is biologically active. Free cortisol passes from the blood into the intracellular space, and then passes freely through the cell membrane.
Once inside the cell, cortisol binds to the glucocorticoid receptor, a molecule found in all nucleated cells. The binding of cortisol causes the receptor to shed heat shock proteins, then the cortisol and receptor complex migrate into the cell nucleus. It is here in the nucleus that cortisol has its effects. The complex binds to glucocorticoid response elements in the DNA and by so doing effects the regulation of genes - by either suppressing or stimulating them. Its is thought that cortisol can effect the regulation of over 2000 genes, so its actions are widespread- -not just the immune system, but on metabolic control, cardiovascular response and wound healing.
The immune system effects are very complicated. Some cortisol is necessary for a normal response to infection; animals without adrenal glands who don't secrete cortisol die when exposed to bacteria. However, cortisol also has anti inflammatory actions. A lot of its actions are mediated by control of cytokine release - TNF alpha, and especially NF kappa b.
If you don't have enough cortisol you won't survive a serious illness. having too much will suppress your immune system. Give extra steroid to critically ill patients is a deeply controversial practice at the moment.
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[
"Cortisol is a stress hormone secreted by the adrenal gland, which makes up part of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. It is typically released at periods of high stress designed to help the individual cope with stressful situations. Cortisol secretion results in increased heart rate and blood pressure and the temporary shut down of metabolic processes such as digestion, reproduction, growth, and immunity as a means of conserving energy for the stress response. Chronic release of cortisol over extended periods of time caused by long-term high stress can result in: \n",
"Cortisone is a pregnane (21-carbon) steroid hormone. It is one of the main hormones released by the adrenal gland in response to stress. In chemical structure, it is a corticosteroid closely related to cortisol. It is used to treat a variety of ailments and can be administered intravenously, orally, intra-articularly (into a joint), or transcutaneously. Cortisone suppresses the immune system, thus reducing inflammation and attendant pain and swelling at the site of the injury. Risks exist, in particular in the long-term use of cortisone.\n",
"Cortisone is one of several end-products of a process called steroidogenesis. This process starts with the synthesis of cholesterol, which then proceeds through a series of modifications in the adrenal gland (suprarenal) to become any one of many steroid hormones. One end-product of this pathway is cortisol. For cortisol to be released from the adrenal gland, a cascade of signaling occurs. Corticotropin-releasing hormone released from the hypothalamus stimulates corticotrophs in the anterior pituitary to release ACTH, which relays the signal to the adrenal cortex. Here, the zona fasciculata and zona reticularis, in response to ACTH, secrete glucocorticoids, in particular cortisol. In the peripheral tissues, cortisol is converted to cortisone by the enzyme 11-beta-steroid dehydrogenase.\n",
"Cortisol is produced in the human body by the adrenal gland in the zona fasciculata, the second of three layers comprising the adrenal cortex. The cortex forms the outer \"bark\" of each adrenal gland, situated atop the kidneys. The release of cortisol is controlled by the hypothalamus, a part of the brain. The secretion of corticotropin-releasing hormone by the hypothalamus triggers cells in the neighboring anterior pituitary to secrete another hormone, the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), into the vascular system, through which blood carries it to the adrenal cortex. ACTH stimulates the synthesis of cortisol and other glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoid aldosterone, and dehydroepiandrosterone.\n",
"Cortisol is the primary glucocorticoid produced in humans (equivalent to rodent corticosterone). This steroid hormone is both synthesized and released from the adrenal cortex in response to physical or emotional stress. Additionally, basal serum levels of cortisol display circadian variations. Cortisol receptors are located throughout the body and are involved in a variety of processes including inflammation and lung maturation.\n",
"Cortisol is synthesized from cholesterol. Synthesis takes place in the zona fasciculata of the adrenal cortex. (The name cortisol is derived from cortex.) While the adrenal cortex also produces aldosterone (in the zona glomerulosa) and some sex hormones (in the zona reticularis), cortisol is its main secretion in humans and several other species. (However, in cattle, corticosterone levels may approach or exceed cortisol levels.). The medulla of the adrenal gland lies under the cortex, mainly secreting the catecholamines adrenaline (epinephrine) and noradrenaline (norepinephrine) under sympathetic stimulation.\n",
"The primary control of cortisol is the pituitary gland peptide, ACTH, which probably controls cortisol by controlling the movement of calcium into the cortisol-secreting target cells. ACTH is in turn controlled by the hypothalamic peptide corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which is under nervous control. CRH acts synergistically with arginine vasopressin, angiotensin II, and epinephrine. (In swine, which do not produce arginine vasopressin, lysine vasopressin acts synergistically with CRH.)\n"
] |
Are the stars in the big dipper closer to Earth than other stars in the night sky and is that how they came to be a constellation?
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[This image](_URL_0_) shows the Big Dipper head on, and from the side. Distances to astronomical objects are essentially impossible to judge from a human perspective on Earth. Stars that are much brighter, but further away, can far outshine nearby dim stars. A star's location on the sky or in a constellation usually has little to do with it's distance to stars that are visually nearby, except in the case of clusters or binaries.
*Edit*: To answer the constellation question, yes; constellations are essentially just groupings of bright stars in a region on the sky that helps make observing and recording the movements of celestial objects easy. This was originally done for calendar keeping and astrology, but they're still useful features for astronomy and the general public today.
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[
"If the Sun were to be observed from the Alpha Centauri system, the nearest star system to ours, it would appear to be a 0.46 magnitude star in the constellation Cassiopeia, and would create a \"/W\" shape instead of the \"W\" as seen from Earth. Due to the proximity of the Alpha Centauri system, the constellations would, for the most part, appear similar. However, there are some notable differences with the position of other nearby stars; for example, Sirius would appear about one degree from the star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion. Also, Procyon would appear in the constellation Gemini, about 13 degrees below Pollux.\n",
"Other star patterns or groups called asterisms are not constellations per se but are used by observers to navigate the night sky. Asterisms may be several stars within a constellation, or they may share stars with more than one constellation. Examples of asterisms include the Pleiades and Hyades within the constellation Taurus and the False Cross split between the southern constellations Carina and Vela, or Venus' Mirror in the constellation of Orion.\n",
"Not only are the stars in the Big Dipper easily found themselves, they may also be used as guides to yet other stars. Thus it is often the starting point for introducing Northern Hemisphere beginners to the night sky:\n",
"Orion is among the most prominent and recognizable constellations. The Big Dipper (which has a wide variety of other names) is helpful for navigation in the northern hemisphere because it points to Polaris, the north star.\n",
"Some stars within the far northern constellation (such as Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor) roughly north of the Tropic of Cancer (+23½°) will be circumpolar stars, which never rise or set.\n",
"One of the faintest constellations in the night sky, Mensa contains no apparently bright stars—the brightest, Alpha Mensae, is barely visible in suburban skies. At least three of its star systems have been found to have exoplanets, and part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, several star clusters and a quasar lie in the area covered by the constellation.\n",
"The Pleiades (), also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, are an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky.\n"
] |
Navigation in bombers during world war 2. Were the navigators able to compute the route on their own or their work was mostly handled by electronical devices?
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Mostly map work and instruments - at least early on - which is why the Blackouts actually worked as a measure to reduce the accuracy of Bomber attack. There are examples of long-range guidance by electronics; however, the Luftwaffe used radio transmitters and modified Lorentz blind-landing sets (short range radio receivers designed to guide pilots in to land in poor visibility) to produce the 'knickerbine' bomber guidance system.
The system essentially consisted of a radio that would pick up either dots or dashes if you strayed too far left or right of your flight path and a final beam that told aircrews they were over their targets. The system relied upon the fact Germany controlled France and Norway, so they could properly cross all the beams of radio signal required. The system was not incredibly successful because local interference (such as falsifying the signal for 'you are too far right' at the rightmost edge of the lane) could cause it to mislead the pilots it was supposed to lead, and it was rather expensive (directed high-power radio transmitters aren't cheap).
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[
"The first distance-based navigation system was the German Y-Gerät blind-bombing system. This used a Lorenz beam for horizontal positioning, and a transponder for ranging. A ground-based system periodically sent out pulses which the airborne transponder returned. By measuring the total round-trip time on a radar's oscilloscope, the aircraft's range could be accurately determined even at very long ranges. An operator then relayed this information to the bomber crew over voice channels, and indicated when to drop the bombs.\n",
"Later in the war, Bomber Command wanted to deploy a new navigation system not for location fixing, but to mark a single spot in the air. This location would be used to drop bombs or target indicators for strikes by other bombers. The Oboe system provided this already; Oboe sent an interrogation signal from stations in the UK, \"reflected\" them from transceivers on the aircraft, and timed the difference between the two signals using equipment similar to Gee. However, Oboe had the major limitation that it could only guide a single aircraft at a time and took about 10 minutes to guide a single aircraft to its target. A system able to guide more aircraft at once would be a dramatic improvement.\n",
"The first system of radio navigation was the \"Radio Direction Finder\", or RDF. By tuning in a radio station and then using a directional antenna, one could determine the direction to the broadcasting antenna. A second measurement using another station was then taken. Using triangulation, the two directions can be plotted on a map where their intersection reveals the location of the navigator. Commercial AM radio stations can be used for this task due to their long range and high power, but strings of low-power radio beacons were also set up specifically for this task, especially near airports and harbours.\n",
"Radio navigation (navigational beam) systems are based on the transmission of pulsed radio beams that are detected by aircraft. R. J. Dippy devised the GEE (also called AMES Type 7000) radio navigation system at TRE, where it was developed into a powerful instrument for increasing the accuracy of bombing raids.\n",
"The Luftwaffe pioneered the use of distance-measuring radio navigation systems with their Y-Gerät system in 1941. Y-Gerät used a single Knickebein-like beam for steering the bomber in the proper direction, and an onboard transponder for distance measurements. A special signal was periodically sent from a ground station and on reception the transponder would send out an answering pulse after a known delay. A ground operator used an oscilloscope to measure the time between broadcast and reception, and deduced the range in a fashion similar to conventional radar systems. He then radioed this information to the bomber by voice, telling them when to release their bombs.\n",
"BULLET::::- Also during the Second World War, British scientists analyzed and defeated a series of increasingly sophisticated radio navigation systems being used by the German Luftwaffe to perform guided bombing missions at night. The British countermeasures to this system were so effective that in some cases German aircraft were led by signals to land at RAF bases, believing they were back in German territory.\n",
"Prior to the introduction of radar, aircraft flying at night were nearly impossible to locate accurately enough for attack. Acoustic location was used to obtain preliminary rough coordinates. Searchlights scanning the sky could illuminate aircraft by chance and might track them long enough for anti-aircraft artillery to fire a few shots. Alternatively, night fighters were used for interception; they either cooperated with searchlights or tried to spot the bombers in the moonlight. The success rate of such defences were so low that it was widely believed that \"The bomber will always get through\", in the words of British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Since World War I, the bomber had been seen as a terror weapon, and was later seen as a primary strategic weapon of total war. As Baldwin later said, their primary purpose was to \"kill the enemy's women and children more rapidly than they killed yours\".\n"
] |
what happens to our world (including its inhabitants) if the worst case scenario happens with global warming. i'm not even sure how to define worst case scenario. melting of polar ice caps? temperature going up globally 10 degrees (f)?
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The ice caps are going to melt. It is a question of when. The models use are always failing for predicting how much sea ice is melting.
There are unknown factors. We estimate based on what we know and what we guess. The unknowns can kill us.
As things warm up, we know they will, there will be more carbon dioxide released from soils, more released from the tundra, and there is a tremendous amount of methane clathrates on the ocean floor waiting for conditions to change a little for the methane to go back into solution and into the atmosphere. The ocean pH is changing. We know this. The ocean is warming. "When the ocean changes enough that methane will go into the atmosphere.
We are conducting a tremendous experiment on the whole world. The US has just elected a president who is appointing a climate change denier to the EPA.
We really do not know what the worse case is. But we know that changes must be made which should happen as soon as possible with as many incentives from government as possible. The worst case scenario for doing this is that we will have a cleaner environment and pay a little more for it. There are many health care benefits from living in a clean environment. Do you have asthma? Know someone who does? That is one of the costs of a dirty environment.
|
[
"António Guterres the Secretary-General of the United Nations told “We’re running out of time. To waste this opportunity would compromise our last best chance to stop runaway climate change. It would not only be immoral, it would be suicidal.” The IPCC special report is a stark acknowledgment of what the consequences of global warming beyond 1.5 degrees will mean for billions of people around the world, especially those who call small island states home. This is not good news, but we cannot afford to ignore it.”\n",
"Some areas of the world would start to surpass the wet-bulb temperature limit of human survivability with global warming of about 6.7 °C (12 °F) while a warming of 11.7 °C (21 °F) would put half of the world's population in an uninhabitable environment. In practice, the survivable limit of global warming in these areas is probably lower and in practice, some areas may experience lethal wet-bulb temperatures even earlier, because this study conservatively projected the survival limit for persons who are out of the sun, in gale-force winds, doused with water, wearing no clothing, and not working.\n",
"The World Bank and the International Energy Agency warned that the world is heading for unprecedented warming – of between 4 °C and 6 °C – if trends are not reversed. That scale would result in droughts, floods, heatwaves and fiercer storms, decline agricultural productivity, bring plant and animal extinctions, and wide human migration.\n",
"Izrael agreed with the IPCC predictions for future climate change, stating, \"Global temperatures will likely rise by 1.4-5.8 degrees during the next 100 years. The average increase will be three degrees. I do not think that this threatens mankind. Sea levels, due to rise by 47 cm in the 21st century, will not threaten port cities.\" He also states, \"I think the panic over global warming is totally unjustified. There is no serious threat to the climate,\" and, \"There is no need to dramatize the anthropogenic impact, because the climate has always been subject to change under Nature's influence, even when humanity did not even exist.\" Additionally, he did not believe the 0.6 °C (1.08 °F) rise in temperature observed in the last 100 years is a threat, stating, \"there is no scientifically sound evidence of the negative processes that allegedly begin to take place at such temperatures.\"\n",
"The global warming that has already occurred poses a risk to some human and natural systems (e.g., coral reefs). Higher magnitudes of global warming will generally increase the risk of negative impacts. According to Field \"et al.\" (2014), climate change risks are \"considerable\" with 1 to 2 °C of global warming, relative to pre-industrial levels. 4 °C warming would lead to significantly increased risks, with potential impacts including widespread loss of biodiversity and reduced global and regional food security.\n",
"This group considers an end to society as it exists today under possible scenarios including global warming, global cooling, environmental degradation, warming or cooling of gulf stream waters, or a period of severely cold winters caused by a supervolcano, an asteroid strike, or large-scale nuclear proliferation.\n",
"Sheldon Ungar, a Canadian sociologist, compares the different public reactions towards ozone depletion and global warming. The public opinion failed to tie climate change to concrete events which could be used as a threshold or beacon to signify immediate danger. Scientific predictions of a temperature rise of two to three degrees Celsius over several decades do not respond with people, e.g. in North America, that experience similar swings during a single day. As scientists define global warming a problem of the future, a liability in \"attention economy\", pessimistic outlooks in general and assigning extreme weather to climate change have often been discredited or ridiculed (compare Gore effect) in the public arena. While the greenhouse effect \"per se\" is essential for life on earth, the case was quite different with the ozone shield and other metaphors about the ozone depletion. The scientific assessment of the ozone problem also had large uncertainties. But the metaphors used in the discussion (ozone shield, ozone hole) reflected better with lay people and their concerns.\n"
] |
Is there a "filter" that can shift infrared light into the visible spectrum?
|
Not all night vision goggles work that way. The more traditional approach is to use the photoelectric effect - incoming IR photons hit a screen, which emits electrons. These are then accelerated through an electric field and strike another screen, which causes the emission of even more electrons, and these then strike a phosphor screen which emits visible photons.
|
[
"For observing the sun, a much narrower band filter can be made from three parts: an \"energy rejection filter\" which is usually a piece of red glass that absorbs most of the unwanted wavelengths, a Fabry–Pérot etalon which transmits several wavelengths including one centred on the H-alpha emission line, and a \"blocking filter\" -a dichroic filter which transmits the H-alpha line while stopping those other wavelengths that passed through the etalon. This combination will pass only a narrow (<0.1 nm) range of wavelengths of light centred on the H-alpha emission line.\n",
"Narrowband filters are astronomical filters which transmit only a narrow band of spectral lines from the spectrum (usually 22 nm or less). It is mainly used for nebulae observation. Emission nebulae mainly radiate the doubly ionized oxygen in the visible spectrum, which emits near 500 nm wavelength. These nebulae also radiate weakly at 486 nm, the Hydrogen-beta line.\n",
"Most astronomical filters work by blocking a specific part of the color spectrum above and below a \"bandpass\", significantly increasing the signal to noise of the interesting wavelengths, and so making the object gain detail and contrast. While the color filters transmit certain colors from the spectrum and are usually used for observation of the planets and the Moon, the polarizing filters work by adjusting the brightness, and are usually used for the Moon. The broadband and narrowband filters transmit the wavelengths that are emitted by the nebulae (by the Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms), and are frequently used for reducing light pollution.\n",
"Optical filters selectively transmit light in a particular range of wavelengths, that is, colours, while absorbing the remainder. They can usually pass long wavelengths only (longpass), short wavelengths only (shortpass), or a band of wavelengths, blocking both longer and shorter wavelengths (bandpass). The passband may be narrower or wider; the transition or cutoff between maximal and minimal transmission can be sharp or gradual. There are filters with more complex transmission characteristic, for example with two peaks rather than a single band; these are more usually older designs traditionally used for photography; filters with more regular characteristics are used for scientific and technical work.\n",
"An optical filter is a device that selectively transmits light of different wavelengths, usually implemented as a glass plane or plastic device in the optical path, which are either dyed in the bulk or have interference coatings. The optical properties of filters are completely described by their frequency response, which specifies how the magnitude and phase of each frequency component of an incoming signal is modified by the filter.\n",
"Atomic line filters may operate in the ultraviolet, visible and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. In absorption-re-emission ALFs, the frequency of light must be shifted in order for the filter to operate, and in a passive device, this shift must be to a lower frequency (i.e. red shifted) simply because of energy conservation. This means that passive filters are rarely able to work with infrared light, because the output frequency would be impractically low. If photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) are used then the \"output wavelength of the ARF should lie in a spectral region in which commercial, large-area, long-lived PMT's [sic] possess maximum sensitivity\". In such a case, active ALFs would have the advantage over passive ALFs as they would more readily, \"generate output wavelengths in the near UV, the spectral region in which well-developed photocathodes possess their highest sensitivity\".\n",
"Optical filters are commonly used in photography (where some special effect filters are occasionally used as well as absorptive filters), in many optical instruments, and to colour stage lighting. In astronomy optical filters are used to restrict light passed to the spectral band of interest, e.g., to study infrared radiation without visible light which would affect film or sensors and overwhelm the desired infrared. Optical filters are also essential in fluorescence applications such as fluorescence microscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy.\n"
] |
the mess of weird text you get when you turn a .png/.jpg file into a .txt
|
In the end, all files are just 1s and 0s.
A jpg is only a jpg because the program opening it knows how to interpret those 1s and 0s as an image.
But notepad doesn't know how to interpret it as an image. It just assumes anything you open in it is meant to be text. So it interprets the data as if it was text.
But since the data wasn't meant to be text it looks weird. There are some characters that have special purposes and aren't really meant to be displayed. So they are represented by weird symbols. Chances are some of the numbers in that jpg file will happen to match up with the values of these special characters so you get these symbols which you wouldn't normally see in data that is actually meant to be text.
|
[
"The next graphic shows the contents of such a minimal PNG file, representing just one red pixel. The PNG signature bytes and the individual chunks are marked with colors. On the left side, the byte values are shown in hex format, on the right side as their equivalent characters from ISO-8859-1 with unrecognized and control characters replaced with periods. This dual display is common for hex editors. Note that the chunks are easy to identify because of their human readable 4-byte type names (in this example IHDR, IDAT & IEND).\n",
"If a binary file is opened in a text editor, each group of eight bits will typically be translated as a single character, and the user will see a (probably unintelligible) display of textual characters. If the file is opened in some other application, that application will have its own use for each byte: maybe the application will treat each byte as a number and output a stream of numbers between 0 and 255—or maybe interpret the numbers in the bytes as colors and display the corresponding picture. Other type of viewers (called 'word extractors') simply replace the unprintable characters with spaces revealing only the human-readable text. This type of view is useful for quick inspection of a binary file in order to find passwords in games, find hidden text in non-text files and recover corrupted documents. It can even be used to inspect suspicious files (software) for unwanted effects. For example, the user would see any URL/email to which the suspected software may attempt to connect in order to upload unapproved data (to steal). If the file is itself treated as an executable and run, then the operating system will attempt to interpret the file as a series of instructions in its machine language.\n",
"In most hex editor applications, the data of the computer file is represented as hexadecimal values grouped in 4 groups of 4 bytes (or two groups of 8 bytes), followed by one group of 16 printable ASCII characters which correspond to each pair of hex values (each byte). Non-printable ASCII characters (e.g., Bell) and characters that would take more than one character space (e.g., tab) are typically represented by a dot (\".\") in the following ASCII field.\n",
"A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flatfile) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In operating systems such as CP/M and MS-DOS, where the operating system does not keep track of the file size in bytes, the end of a text file is denoted by placing one or more special characters, known as an end-of-file marker, as padding after the last line in a text file. On modern operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems, text files do not contain any special EOF character, because file systems on those operating systems keep track of the file size in bytes. There are for most text files a need to have end-of-line delimiters, which are done in a few different ways depending on operating system. Some operating systems with record-orientated file systems may not use new line delimiters and will primarily store text files with lines separated as fixed or variable length records.\n",
"Foremost is used from the command-line interface, with no graphical user interface option available. It is able to recover specific filetypes, including \"jpg\", \"gif\", \"png\", \"bmp\", \"avi\", \"exe\", \"mpg\", \"wav\", \"riff\", \"wmv\", \"mov\", \"pdf\", \"ole\", \"doc\", \"zip\", \"rar\", \"htm\", and \"cpp\". There is a configuration file (usually found at /usr/local/etc/foremost.conf) which can be used to define additional file types.\n",
"The web publishing subsystem included in the registered edition allow users to upload photos directly to photo-sharing websites such as SmugMug, Zenfolio, PhotoShelter or a local hard disk or USB drive. The publishing function is able to perform on-the-fly format conversions to JPEG when necessary (so it can seamlessly publish RAW, TIFF and CGI files such as OpenEXR, DDS etc. to websites that normally don't support these formats), as well as automatic color-space conversion to sRGB for consistent color viewing across web browsers and devices.\n",
"Based on a feature extraction method, it reads images in portable pixmap formats known as Portable anymap and produces text in byte (8-bit) or UTF-8 formats. Also included is a layout analyser, able to separate the columns or blocks of text normally found on printed pages.\n"
] |
how do companies get paid from credit cards?
|
Short answer: They receive money in chunks throughout the month usually on a daily basis but it is on a 2 day delay.
The company has a bank that they process credit cards through, this is called the acquirer bank. The card the customer uses is also backed by a bank, this is called the issuer bank. When the merchant charges the customers card it goes to the acquiring bank which puts the transaction on to a network (MasterCard, VISA, etc) the transaction reaches the issuer bank where they make the decision to honor or decline the card. They send their decision back to the acquirer bank and the bank sends it back to the merchant. The transaction goes to ACH (automated clearing house) which is when the actual money moves from the issuer bank to the acquiring bank. ACH usually takes 2 days to process.
|
[
"Within the United States, credit card transactions are controlled by four main financial institutions: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover, making it an oligopoly. Credit cards work as a two-sided market, with the institutions providing benefits to consumers (by allowing them to access lines of credit to make instant purchases) and merchants (by providing them the funds for that purchase instantly). The institutions support this by taking a transaction fee off the merchant's funds, with the fee varying between each institution.\n",
"Credit card merchant associations, like Visa and MasterCard, receive profits from transaction fees, charging between 0% and 3.25% of the purchase price plus a per transaction fee of between 0.00 USD and 40.00 USD. Cash costs more to bank up, so it is worthwhile for merchants to take cards. Issuers are thus motivated to pursue policies which increase the money transferred by their systems. Many merchants believe this pursuit of revenue reduces the incentive for credit card issuers to adopt procedures to reduce crime, particularly because the cost of investigating a fraud is usually higher than the cost of just writing it off. These costs are passed on to the merchants as \"chargebacks\". This can result in substantial additional costs: not only has the merchant been defrauded for the amount of the transaction, he is also obliged to pay the chargeback fee, and to add insult to injury the transaction fees still stand.. Additionally, merchants may lose their merchant account if their percent of chargeback to overall turnover exceeds some value related to their type of product or service sold.\n",
"In addition, credit card companies issue prepaid cards which act like generic gift cards, which are anonymous and not linked to any bank accounts. These cards are accepted by merchants who accept credit cards and are processed through the EFTPOS terminal in the same way as credit cards.\n",
"Merchants that accept credit cards must pay interchange fees and discount fees on all credit-card transactions. In some cases merchants are barred by their credit agreements from passing these fees directly to credit card customers, or from setting a minimum transaction amount (no longer prohibited in the United States, United Kingdom or Australia). The result is that merchants are induced to charge all customers (including those who do not use credit cards) higher prices to cover the fees on credit card transactions. The inducement can be strong because the merchant's fee is a percentage of the sale price, which has a disproportionate effect on the profitability of businesses that have predominantly credit card transactions, unless compensated for by raising prices generally. In the United States in 2008 credit card companies collected a total of $48 billion in interchange fees, or an average of $427 per family, with an average fee rate of about 2% per transaction.\n",
"Many credit card companies will also, when applying payments to a card, do so, for the matter at hand, at the end of a billing cycle, and apply those payments to everything before cash advances. For this reason, many consumers have large cash balances, which have no grace period and incur interest at a rate that is (usually) higher than the purchase rate, and will carry those balances for years, even if they pay off their statement balance each month.\n",
"Rewards based credit card products like cash back are more beneficial to consumers who pay their credit card statement off every month. Rewards based products generally have higher Annual percentage rate. If the balance were not paid in full every month the extra interest would eclipse any rewards earned. Most consumers do not know that their rewards-based credit cards charge higher fees to the vendors who accept them without vendors having any notification.\n",
"Business credit cards offer a number of features specific to businesses. They frequently offer special rewards in areas such as shipping, office supplies, travel, and business technology. Most issuers use the applicant's personal credit score when evaluating these applications. In addition, income from a variety of sources may be used to qualify, which means these cards may be available to businesses that are newly established. In addition, most major issuers of these cards do not report account activity to the owner's personal credit unless there is a default. This may have the effect of protecting the owner's personal credit from the activity of the business.\n"
] |
Why did Staten Island remain mostly residential, and not develop more like Manhattan did?
|
Totally got this one. Native Staten Islander here, who has done research. I'm on my phone, so I cannot provide links at the moment though.
First, one has to realize that Staten Island is the least populous borough--I think the current population is only about 500-600k. Staten Island historically has also been sparsely populated in relationship to the rest of the city. This is very much a result of the geography of the island. While not a problem now, Staten Island had difficult terrain to live: rocky hills (made of Serpentine rock) and wetland/marshland further south. This made it very difficult for many people to have farms, and the surroubdi by waterways (Arthur Kill and Kill van Kull) would have been too narrow and shallow for large scale exporting.
Staten Island, therefore, remained as a sparsely populated farmland for a long time. Similarly, it's distance from Brooklyn and Manhattan made it difficult for regular travel and inter-county trade. There were ferries (such as Cornelius Vanderbilt's, which started him on to his fortune and later evolved into the Staten Island Ferry), but they were not as many as would have been needed for large scale trade.
That being said, Staten Island was always integrated with New York rather than New Jersey. Fort Wadsworth was paired with Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn to protect the harbor. Staten Island served as a quarantine for sick immigrants. It's proximity to the harbor allowed it to profit from New Yorks trade as well.
When New York became a city, Staten Island was the last to join in 1898. Many Staten Islanders were not happy (and many are still not to this day).
The first easy access to the borough came in 1963, when the Verrazano Narrows bridge was completed. That started Staten Islands population growth. New Yorkers saw the free land and the proximity to the city (now with bridge access) and began to move there for residential purposes, while working in the rest of the city.
|
[
"Although Staten Island as a whole remained largely residential and less densely populated and developed than the surrounding region, the inhabitants of the region favored consolidation with the greater metropolis. In 1898, Staten Island was consolidated with New York City, and this move accelerated development of the region. At this time immigrant groups settled in New Brighton in greater numbers; Italians and African-Americans along the Kill Van Kull, and Jewish communities on the eastern boundary of the village near St. George and Tompkinsville.\n",
"The modern five boroughs, comprising the city of New York, were united in 1898. That year, the cities of New York—which then consisted of present-day Manhattan and the Bronx—and Brooklyn were both consolidated with the largely rural areas of Queens and Staten Island. The total population was 3.4 million in 1900, leaping to 5.6 million in 1920 and leveling off at 7.9 million in 1950. The population was highly diverse in terms of ethnicity, race, religion and class. The city went through an enormous growth in population, industry, and wealth. The major achievements included the building of the subway system by private enterprise. The city funded major new bridges between Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens, which facilitated commuting and the rise of an industrial base in those boroughs. The city also expanded its port facilities, improved its traffic system, built hundreds of new elementary and high schools, and engaged in large-scale public health programs.\n",
"Dom Giotti, founder of the Staten Island Catapult Development Committee (S.I.C.D.C.) maintains that the commuting needs of Staten Islanders have long been underserved by a cost-prohibitive dichotomy of bridge or boat. In his opinion the outermost New York City borough is a trove of history and culture that remains largely untapped due to a lack of mass transit alternatives.\n",
"Before 1898, the city included little beyond the island of Manhattan. The 1898 consolidation created the city as it is today with five boroughs: Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.\n",
"New York City is located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, and the boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island are (primarily) coterminous with islands of the same names, while Queens and Brooklyn are located at the west end of the larger Long Island, and The Bronx is located at the southern tip of New York State's mainland. This situation of boroughs separated by water led to the development of an extensive infrastructure of well-known bridges and tunnels.\n",
"In the 18th century, only the southern portion of the island was settled by Europeans, leaving the rest of Manhattan largely untouched. Among the many unspoiled tracts of land was the highest spot on the island, which provided unsurpassed views of what would become the New York metropolitan area.\n",
"In the 18th century, only the southern portion of the island was settled by Europeans, leaving the rest of Manhattan largely untouched. Among the many unspoiled tracts of land was the highest spot on the island, which provided unsurpassed views of what would become the New York metropolitan area.\n"
] |
After reverse transcriptase creates a provirus, how does a retrovirus differ from a single-stranded DNA virus in its activity?
|
There are two major reasons, to my knowledge, that retrovirus replication using a provirus intermediate is different than an single stranded DNA virus.
One, proviruses directly integrate into the chromosomal genome, while DNA viruses (usually) integrate extrachromosomally ([there have been some reports that Herpes virus can integrate into the chromosome](_URL_1_). Whether or not there are any benefits to being integrated directly into the genome as opposed to not integrating directly but still sitting in the nucleus (and subsequently "hidden" from cytoplasmic DNA sensing immunity proteins) I do not know.
Two, creating a provirus is an error intensive process. Unlike the cell's normal method of replicating DNA, Reverse Transcriptase (RT) is notoriously sloppy. Regular DNA polymerases have an error rate of [about 1 in 1,000,000 to 100,000,000](_URL_0_) but RT has an error rate of about [1 in 1700](_URL_2_). Such high rates of mutation would be deleterious to most organisms, however, not all mutations would necessarily be negative (you could very possibly have silent mutations, or you could have gain of function mutations). Deleterious mutants would be quickly selected against because of their inability to replicate and subsequently infect other cells, while productive viruses can continue to replicate very quickly. Massive amounts of mutations can be a good thing for the virus, especially in the case of antiviral treatment. This is why HAART, the standard in HIV treatment, exists as a cocktail; when the first antiviral was released for HIV people that took the drug quickly found that the virus mutated to evolve resistance against it. But by giving a cocktail of multiple drugs you make it less likely that the virus will generate resistant mutations against all of the drugs at once.
|
[
"The retrovirus begins the journey into a host cell by attaching a surface glycoprotein to the cell's plasma membrane receptor. Once inside the cell, the retrovirus goes through reverse transcription in the cytoplasm and generates a double-stranded DNA copy of the RNA genome. Reverse transcription also produces identical structures known as long terminal repeats (LTRs). Long terminal repeats are at the ends of the DNA strands and regulates viral gene expression. The viral DNA is then translocated into the nucleus where one strand of the retroviral genome is put into the chromosomal DNA by the help of the virion intergrase. At this point the retrovirus is referred to as provirus. Once in the chromosomal DNA, the provirus is transcribed by the cellular RNA polymerase II. The transcription leads to the splicing and full-length mRNAs and full-length progeny virion RNA. The virion protein and progeny RNA assemble in the cytoplasm and leave the cell, whereas the other copies send translated viral messages in the cytoplasm.\n",
"Retroviruses are commonly known to have a (+) single stranded RNA genome with a DNA intermediate. Typically, the virus will use its own reverse transcriptase enzyme to create DNA from the RNA genome. The FeFV viral genome is linear with (+) single stranded RNA or double stranded DNA depending on the timing of reverse transcription as this process occurs later in the replication cycle of foamy viruses. This results in the infectious particles having DNA.\n",
"Retroviruses encode an unusual DNA polymerase called reverse transcriptase, which is an RNA-dependent DNA polymerase (RdDp) that synthesizes DNA from a template of RNA. The reverse transcriptase family contain both DNA polymerase functionality and RNase H functionality, which degrades RNA base-paired to DNA. An example of a retrovirus is HIV.\n",
"Although retroviruses are often classified separately, they share many features with LTR retrotransposons. A major difference with Ty1-\"copia\" and Ty3-\"gypsy\" retrotransposons is that retroviruses have an envelope protein (ENV). A retrovirus can be transformed into an LTR retrotransposon through inactivation or deletion of the domains that enable extracellular mobility. If such a retrovirus infects and subsequently inserts itself in the genome in germ line cells, it may become transmitted vertically and become an Endogenous Retrovirus (ERV). Endogenous retroviruses make up about 8% of the human genome and approximately 10% of the mouse genome.\n",
"Although retroviruses are often classified separately, they share many features with LTR retrotransposons. A major difference with Ty1-\"copia\" and Ty3-\"gypsy\" retrotransposons is that retroviruses have an envelope protein (ENV). A retrovirus can be transformed into an LTR retrotransposon through inactivation or deletion of the domains that enable extracellular mobility. If such a retrovirus infects and subsequently inserts itself in the genome in germ line cells, it may become transmitted vertically and become an Endogenous Retrovirus.\n",
"Retroviruses can be retrained to attach to cells and replace DNA. They go through a process called reverse transcription to deliver genetic packaging in a vector. Usually, these devices are Pol – Gag genes of the virus for the Capsid and Delivery system. This process is called retroviral gene therapy, having the ability to re-engineer cellular DNA by usage of viral vectors. This approach has appeared in the form of retroviral, adenoviral, and lentiviral gene delivery systems. These gene therapy vectors have been used in cats to send genes into the genetically modified organism (GMO), causing it to display the trait.\n",
"While transcription was classically thought to occur only from DNA to RNA, reverse transcriptase transcribes RNA into DNA. The term \"retro\" in retrovirus refers to this reversal (making DNA from RNA) of the usual direction of transcription. It still obeys the central dogma of molecular biology, which states that information can be transferred from nucleic acid to nucleic acid but cannot be transferred back from protein to either protein or nucleic acid. Reverse transcriptase activity outside of retroviruses has been found in almost all eukaryotes, enabling the generation and insertion of new copies of retrotransposons into the host genome. These inserts are transcribed by enzymes of the host into new RNA molecules that enter the cytosol. Next, some of these RNA molecules are translated into viral proteins. For example, the \"gag\" gene is translated into molecules of the capsid protein, the \"pol\" gene is translated into molecules of reverse transcriptase, and the \"env\" gene is translated into molecules of the envelope protein. It is important to note that a retrovirus must \"bring\" its own reverse transcriptase in its capsid, otherwise it is unable to utilize the enzymes of the infected cell to carry out the task, due to the unusual nature of producing DNA from RNA.\n"
] |
Why does our skin get numb when we're cold?
|
Blood flow to exterior arteries is restricted to keep the internal organs warm.
|
[
"When exposed to cold temperatures, the blood supply to the fingers or toes, and in some cases the nose or earlobes, is markedly reduced; the skin turns pale or white (called pallor) and becomes cold and numb.\n",
"The most common, everyday cause is temporary restriction of nerve impulses to an area of nerves, commonly caused by leaning or resting on parts of the body such as the legs (often followed by a pins and needles tingling sensation). Other causes include conditions such as hyperventilation syndrome and panic attacks. A cold sore outside the mouth (not a canker sore inside the mouth) can be preceded by tingling because a cold sore is caused by herpes simplex virus. The varicella zoster virus (shingles) also notably may cause recurring pain and tingling in skin or tissue along the distribution path of that nerve (most commonly in the skin, along a dermatome pattern, but sometimes feeling like a headache, chest or abdominal pain, or pelvic pain).\n",
"Cold-induced vasodilation (CIVD) occurs after cold exposure, possibly to reduce the risk of injury. It can take place in several locations in the human body but is observed most often in the extremities. The fingers are especially common because they are exposed most often.\n",
"It is not known what causes the condition, but microtubule and mitochondrial damage, and leaky blood vessels near nerve cells are some of the possibilities being explored. Pain can often be helped with drug or other treatment but the numbness is usually resistant to treatment.\n",
"When the fingers are exposed to cold, vasoconstriction occurs first to reduce heat loss, resulting in strong cooling of the fingers. Approximately five to ten minutes after the start of the cold exposure of the hand, the blood vessels in the finger tips will suddenly vasodilate. This is probably caused by a sudden decrease in the release of neurotransmitters from the sympathetic nerves to the muscular coat of the arteriovenous anastomoses due to local cold. The CIVD increases blood flow and subsequently the temperature of the fingers. This can be painful and is sometimes known as the 'hot aches' which can be painful enough to bring on vomiting.\n",
"A nerve biopsy can potentially find the cause of the numbness and/or pain experienced in the limbs. It can reveal if these symptoms are caused by damage to the myelin sheath, damage to the small nerves, destruction of the axon in the nerve cells or neuropathies.\n",
"This reddened skin or rash may signal a deeper, more serious infection of the inner layers of skin. Once below the skin, the bacteria can spread rapidly, entering the lymph nodes and the bloodstream and spreading throughout the body. This can result in influenza-like symptoms with a high temperature and sweating or feeling very cold with shaking, as the sufferer cannot get warm.\n"
] |
Was there any presidential republics like the United States before the United States existed?
|
There were prior examples of mixed regimes. Aristotle advocated for them and the Roman Republic may be an example with its consuls, senators and assemblies. However, no prior regime deeply resembled the US.
The US arguably drew more on ideas than examples in its creation. The separation of powers, of which the US president is a product, was an Enlightenment idea perhaps inspired by Aristotle and Cicero but articulated more recently (and perhaps with greater influence on the US) by Locke. The framers also drew the constitution against things that they feared, the tyranny of monarchy and the tyranny of the majority. And they also had to reconcile their government with the conditions that already prevailed in their newly independent land: sovereign states. This meant that many executive powers would be reserved not for the president but the states. Lastly, much of the nature of the US presidency has evolved over time with gradual developments in the constitutional interpretation of presidential powers.
Overall, then, the US presidential system was rather new to human experience and a product of its era and location. It has served as a model for others but did not really have close models itself.
|
[
"In the example of the United States, the original 13 British colonies became independent states after the American Revolution, each having a republican form of government. These independent states initially formed a loose confederation called the United States and then later formed the current United States by ratifying the current U.S. Constitution, creating a union of sovereign states with the union or federal government also being a republic. Any state joining the union later was also required to be a republic.\n",
"States of Colombia existed from February 27, 1855, in the Republic of New Granada and the Granadine Confederation, where they were called \"federal states\". In the United States of Colombia they were called \"sovereign states\" (though they were not at all sovereign states in the modern sense of the word).\n",
"At first, during the French revolutionary wars these states were erected as republics (the so-called \"Républiques soeurs\", or \"sister republics\"). They were established in Italy (Cisalpine Republic in Northern Italy, Parthenopean Republic in Southern Italy), Greece (Septinsular Republic), Switzerland (Helvetic Republic and Rhodanic Republic), Belgium and the Netherlands (Batavian Republic).\n",
"The States of Colombia existed from February 27, 1855 in the Republic of New Granada and the Granadine Confederation, where they were called \"federal states\". In the United States of Colombia they were called \"sovereign states\". The Congress of the Grenadine Confederation passed a law on 3 June 1859 authorising the sovereign states to establish their own postal services. In 1863 the United States of Colombia, as it had now become, made up of eight sovereign states, confirmed and authorised the states’ power to operate their own postal services and issue postage stamps. These were only valid for postage within the state, although a few examples are known of stamps that were sent to other states and even to Europe.\n",
"Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama and Missouri participated in their first presidential election in 1820, Missouri with controversy, since it was not yet officially a state (see below). No new states would participate in American presidential elections until 1836, after the admission to the Union of Arkansas in 1836 and Michigan in 1837 (after the main voting, but before the counting of the electoral vote in Congress).\n",
"Early in United States history, state legislatures were essentially electoral colleges for both the U.S. Senate and even the federal Electoral College itself. Prior to 1913, U.S. state legislatures appointed U.S. senators from their respective states, and prior to 1872, U.S. presidential electors were in many cases chosen by state legislatures (though most states had switched to popular elections for electors by 1824). Because state legislatures had so much influence over federal elections, state legislative elections were frequently proxy votes for either the Senate or the presidency. The famed 1858 Lincoln–Douglas debates, reputedly held during a U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois, actually occurred during an election for the Illinois state legislature; neither Lincoln's nor Douglas' names appeared on any ballot. During the American Civil War, the Confederacy used an Electoral College that was functionally identical to that of the United States; it convened just once, in 1861, to elect Jefferson Davis as president.\n",
"The First Federal Republic was established on October 4, 1824. In the new constitution, the republic took the name of United Mexican States, and was defined as a representative federal republic, with Catholicism as the official and unique religion.\n"
] |
why do cats love to push things off tables?
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I did a report for an animal behavior class in undergrad on animal play. It overwhelmingly focused on younger animals and why it is such a common trend across species to mess around with each other and fuck around with objects. As far as playing with each other, it seems to be a natural inclination to enjoy it but the evolutionary purpose seems to be that it reinforces social norms, learning how hard you can bite someone without it being aggressive, seeing how you can figure your social standing in the pack by whether or not you groom the others, as well as running and chasing to build hunting skills and refine motor movement/muscle memory/whatever you want to call it.
Playing with objects seems to be important for that latter part as well. It helps them develop and refine motor functions that can be applied later on in life for actually not ass hole tasks. So, that's why kittens would do that kind of thing, it feels enjoyable for them, and it feels enjoyable because a billion years ago, the saber tooth tigers that liked swatting hamsters off of rocks wound up with better developed neuromuscular systems which allowed more successful not-dying. Traits got passed on.
I can only assume adults do it because that youthful drive to refine motor skills doesn't just disappear.
Edit: Obligatory "holy crap, thank you for the gold" edit...holy crap, thank you for the gold!
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[
"Jackson teaches that cats are territorial, needing spaces within homes to call their own and that they send signals when they no longer desire petting, a condition he refers to as \"overstimulation.\" Cats do not like being cornered and lash out when overstimulated. Certain cats (whom he calls \"tree-dwelling cats\") behave better when they have access to above-ground perches, and he often instructs owners of such cats to install an above-the-floor walkway with no dead ends, in order to provide these cats with the psychological comfort of escape routes.\n",
"BULLET::::- Cats are quite anti-social animals in human eyes, preferring to go out and mind their own business. Since cats hunt mice, a much smaller animal, humans' sympathy has always gone to the mouse rather than the cat, despite mice being considered vermin by most people. A cruel game where the hunter teases his victim before finally striking him is called a \"cat-and-mouse game\" in many languages. The concept is based on the behavior that real cats often display before killing their prey and which is often misunderstood as cruel torture. In reality it's just an instinctive imperative to make sure their prey is weak enough to be killed.\n",
"A cat may be trained to do tricks such as playing dead or ringing the doorbell. Because of the cat's flexibility and bone structure, they are able to twist and bend their bodies, and jump a fair distance from standing still. This talent can be turned into tricks involving jumping through hoops and off scratching posts. Cats are able to learn many types of commands, such as to come when called, sit, roll over, shake a paw, and jump.\n",
"He teaches that there are correct and incorrect ways to pick up a cat and that when cats are picked up incorrectly, they will often injure humans in an attempt to escape. Most cats need exercise to release excess energy in a positive way; toys and play with owners are outlets Jackson encourages. When this is not done, such cats find ways to release energy on their own, which are often undesirable to their owners and/or destructive to the home.\n",
"Cats meow for various reasons, and some are naturally more vocal than others. This becomes a problem behavior when there is excessive meowing or yowling, especially at night. Positive reinforcement training, sometimes accompanied by a clicker, is commonly used in this case. This involves ignoring the cat when it is making noise, and rewarding with treats and affection when it is being quiet.\n",
"Cats have a natural fondness for heights. If a cat is distracted by potential prey, or if it falls asleep, it can fall. If this were to occur in a tree, for example, the cat would often be able to save itself by grabbing on with its claws. Many building materials such as concrete and painted metal do not allow a cat to grip successfully.\n",
"Owners with outdoor cats may not be able to observe the symptoms associated with litter box use and should watch for unusual behavioral changes. As time passes, the bladder fills up with urine and causes painful bladder distension. The cat becomes increasingly distressed, and may howl or cry out in pain. The male cat may constantly lick at his penis and the penis may be protruded. The cat may seek seclusion, stop eating and drinking, begin to vomit, and become lethargic and eventually comatose as toxins accumulate in the bloodstream.\n"
] |
I know that in the middle ages many towns were rather small (often the largest still only consisting of tens of thousands of people). How vital to the national economy were towns? What sort of professions were people practising there and were there any that weren't as common in more rural locations?
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"How important were towns" is kind of a tough question to answer, because the existence/increase of towns is both a sign and a cause of overall exonomic restructuring over the later Middle Ages. Towns were essential to the economic system they were a part of/helped create. You can say something like by 1300, about 65% of England's economic production was shipped overseas, which meant it came through market towns, but obviously this was heavily agricultural/pastoral commodity. And of the 35% or so internal trade, that would be intimately bound up in a market/rural/urban web.
As Christopher Dyer neatly sums it up, by the late Middle Ages, tow key developments had happened. First, lords were thinking about economic productivity and how to get *more* out of their land. (But at the same time, we are in the days of the moral economy as well--fixing bread prices to make sure everyone can afford at least A Loaf of bread each day, even if it was a smaller load when grain prices rose). Second, the transition from crop to cash rents, which would be accelerated by the Great Famine in1315-1322, was already underway.
Thus, lords expected income in cash from their peasants, paid it in tax, and sold their share of crops on their land for cash. Day laborers in the countryside were paid in cash and needed somewhere to buy the necessary goods to stay alive. Conversion of crops to cash meant longer distance trade, which meant traders--and the people to support them. Who, in turn, produced more refined goods and services for each other, and maybe for rural dwellers who might spend more time gearing up for production of what brought them cash (either their own crops or as mill workers, harvest laborers, miners).Talking about towns is inseparable from talking about long-distance economies overall. (Since "national" can be a questionable term still at this time. Centralized/royal authority isn't even always an aspiration of rulers, much less a fact.)
But there are a couple of things we can look at to get a bit deeper. First, towns enabled specialization of profession--the ability to make a living from a very narrowly focused line of work which, overall, meant a greater variety of goods being produced in abundance. Secondly, towns were vital to economic *growth*.
Towns were signs and causes of specialization in profession. And medieval people could be very, very specific about what constituted a "profession." In Rouen, for example, the guilds for women (yes, women!) who made clothes out of new fabric versus those who made clothes out of secondhand fabric were not only separate but often at war in the courts for encroaching on each other's territory. Nuremberg had a dedicated craft (Nuremberg's formal guild system was abolished around 1348) of *gingerbread baking.*
The Nuremberg *Hausbücher* are a great example of how specialized professions could be. You can navigate around the site--I've sorted it by "profession" for you--and click through to see illustrations of the different jobs or people who did them in late medieval/early modern Germany.
_URL_0_
Probably the most important urban profession was not unique to towns, but it illustrates well the central role that towns played in economic development. In northwest Europe, it was increasingly popular for teenage men but *especially* women to move to cities and work as servants for a period of time, saving up money for marriage or to start a singlewoman's household. (The medieval demographic imbalance between women and men was heightened by the fact that a higher proportion of women moved to cities and stayed; a higher proportion of men stayed in or went back to the countryside.)
What Hajnal originally identified as the "European marriage pattern," of women and men both marrying later in northwest Europe connected to which countries' economies grew relatively stronger in the early modern era, isn't quite a *marriage* pattern. Women in Eastern Europe show a wide variety of ages at first marriage; even in Italy many women married later than we are often given to assume. Instead, it seems to be a *women's wages* pattern. Places with towns where women worked--acquiring cash income, spending cash income--generally speaking saw more economic growth from the late Middle Ages on.
I'm still struggling to say "how important were towns" because without them, the late medieval economy would have had to look completely different. This would have been true at the local level, the regional level, the "national" level, and the international level. But within the system that existed, specialized professions and their products would seem to be a good illustration of the economic contributions of cities to local life rather than just long-distance trade.
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[
"A few towns in the Low Countries dated back to Roman times, but most had been founded from the 9th century onward. The oldest were in the Scheldt and Meuse areas, with many towns in what's now the Netherlands being much younger and only dating from the 13th century. From early on, the Low Countries began to develop as a commercial and manufacturing center. Merchants became the dominant class in the towns, with the nobility largely limited to countryside estates.\n",
"Throughout the Middle Ages, the population of the town center grew, helped along by the facilities provided by the various \"maestres\" (\"masters\") of the Order of Santiago. The survey records of Philip II (1575) report some 1,000 households (between four and five thousand inhabitants), which by the first decade of the 17th century had risen to 1,300–1,500 households. From this time its population shows the unfortunate state of a rural society affected very severely by climate, epidemics of disease, poor harvests, and excessive taxation. The recovery was very slow until well into the 19th century.\n",
"By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries some cities become powerful states, taking surrounding areas under their control or establishing extensive maritime empires. In Italy medieval communes developed into city-states including the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Genoa. These cities, with populations in the tens of thousands, amassed enormous wealth by means of extensive trade in eastern luxury goods such as spices and silk, as well as iron, timber, and slaves. Venice introduced the \"ghetto\", a specially regulated neighborhood for Jews only. In Northern Europe, cities including Lübeck and Bruges formed the Hanseatic League for collective defense and commerce. Their power was later challenged and eclipsed by the Dutch commercial cities of Ghent, Ypres, and Amsterdam. (City rights were granted by nobility.) The city's central function was commerce, enabled by waterways and ports; the cities themselves were heavily fortified with walls and sometimes moats. \n",
"During the Middle Ages many towns were founded, especially in the climatically more favoured lower plateau. In 1500 there were already 130 towns, connected by a dense road-network. With the rise of industrialisation in the early 19th century the cities became more and more important. In 1860 a drastic population growth of the cities started which lasted for about 100 years. In the 1970s, however, an outmigration from the cities started. Therefore, the municipalities surrounding the cities grew disproportionately, whereas the cities themselves lost inhabitants. In recent times the outmigration has moved farther away from the cities.\n",
"From around the 10th century, mainly due to population growth and improved infrastructure, more larger settlements begin to appear. Around the 11th century, some of these cities begin to form networks of urban centers. In the Low Countries these appeared in 3 regions; at first in the County of Flanders in the South, then followed by the County of Holland in the North and Northern Guelders/Oversticht in the East. The cities located in the center of the Low Countries were able to profit of both of the Flemish and Hollandic cities and no real urban network emerged there. In the North of the Low Countries, however, such as Frisia and Groningen; cities remained relatively isolated. Groningen is still nicknamed \"stad\" (\"city\") within its province; signaling its position as the only city in the region as well as its isolation. \n",
"The existence since the Middle Ages of a large number of small municipalities with no financial resources and without people qualified to take part in municipal councils caused the stagnation of their growth. The Liberal revolution of 1836, resulted in the suppression/annexation of many of these smaller municipalities, which allowed the infusion of new revenues and facilitated growth in population and size.\n",
"There were approximately four thousand towns and cities in the Empire, although around the year 1600 over nine-tenths of them had fewer than one thousand inhabitants. During the late Middle Ages, fewer than two hundred of these places ever enjoyed the status of Free Imperial Cities, and some of those did so only for a few decades. The military tax register (\") of 1521 listed eighty-five such cities, and this figure had fallen to sixty-five by the time of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. From the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 to 1803, their number oscillated at around fifty.\n"
] |
when i uninstall a program using an unistallation .exe included in the program's folder, how is that .exe capable of uninstalling itself?
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It is not possible for a Windows executable to delete itself. This is due to the way that executable files are loaded by Windows. Instead of reading the entire file into RAM (as some commenters have suggested), Windows *maps* the file into memory - it is more accurate to say it maps portions of the file to different places in memory. The file is then *paged* into memory as needed. (This process is handled by the operating system and is transparent to application developers and users).
Most Windows applications' installation and uninstallation is handled by [Windows Installer](_URL_0_), a component of the operating system. To uninstall a product, an executable simply has to request that Windows Installer remove the product from the system and then terminate. The Windows Installer service handles all the of the file and registry operations.
|
[
"The term \"decompiler\" is most commonly applied to a program which translates executable programs (the output from a compiler) into source code in a (relatively) high level language which, when compiled, will produce an executable whose behavior is the same as the original executable program. By comparison, a disassembler translates an executable program into assembly language (and an assembler could be used to assemble it back into an executable program).\n",
"One option is to remove the kernel completely and program directly to the hardware, but then the entire machine would be dedicated to the application being written (and, conversely, the entire application codebase would be dedicated to that machine). The exokernel concept is a compromise: let the kernel allocate the basic physical resources of the machine (e.g. disk blocks, memory pages, and processor time) to multiple application programs, and let each program decide what to do with these resources. The program can then link to a support library that implements the abstractions it needs (or it can implement its own).\n",
"Versomatic installs as a file system service where it tracks file changes and preemptively archives a copy of a file before it is modified. Archiving copies pre-emptively obviates the need to archive a reference copy of the files beforehand, as would be the case if the files were archived after being edited.\n",
"GNU unshar scans a set of mail messages looking for the start of shell archives. It will automatically strip off the mail headers and other introductory text. The archive bodies are then unpacked by a copy of the shell. unshar may also process files containing concatenated shell archives.\n",
" is a setuid program that modifies the file, and only allows ordinary users to modify their own login shells. The superuser can modify the shells of other users, by supplying the name of the user whose shell is to be modified as a command-line argument. For security reasons, the shells that both ordinary users and the superuser can specify are limited by the contents of the file, with the pathname of the shell being required to be exactly as it appears in that file. (This security feature is alterable by re-compiling the source code for the command with a different configuration option, and thus is not necessarily enabled on all systems.) The superuser can, however, also modify the password file directly, setting any user's shell to any executable file on the system without reference to and without using .\n",
"Contig is designed to defragment individual files, or specified groups of files, and does not attempt to move files to the beginning of the partition. Unlike the Windows built-in defragmenter tool, Contig can defragment individual files, individual directories, and subsets of the file system using wildcards.\n",
"All converted files are available and writable in the default subvolume of the Btrfs. A sparse file holding all of the references to the original ext2/3/4 filesystem is created in a separate subvolume, which is mountable on its own as a read-only disk image, allowing both original and converted file systems to be accessed at the same time. Deleting this sparse file frees up the space and makes the conversion permanent.\n"
] |
how do items like peelers, graters, scissors etc. stay sharp but knives constantly need to be sharpened?
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It's not that they stay sharp, but for their purpose they don't need to be as sharp. They are also subject to lesser forces and materials than a knife, which might be used to cut a carrot one minute and a tomato the next. The knife's edge will also get rolled over and dulled by the cutting board/surface and how it is used. The degree to which this happens is determined by the metal used in the knife which can have different properties based on it's purpose (It's sharpness, hardness, and rust resistant properties are variable whereas the other devices are just regular old stainless steel so it won't rust). Lastly, scissors can be sharpened but most don't bother.
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[
"Different knives are sharpened differently according to grind (edge geometry) and application. For example, surgical scalpels are extremely sharp but fragile, and are generally disposed of, rather than sharpened, after use. Straight razors used for shaving must cut with minimal pressure, and thus must be very sharp with a small angle and often a hollow grind. Typically these are stropped daily or more often. Kitchen knives are less sharp, and generally cut by slicing rather than just pressing, and are steeled daily. At the other extreme, an axe for chopping wood will be less sharp still, and is primarily used to split wood by chopping, not by slicing, and may be reground but will not be sharpened daily. In general, but not always, the harder the material to be cut, the higher (duller) the angle of the edge.\n",
"Sharpening straight edges (knives, chisels, etc.) by hand can be divided into phases. First the edge is sharpened with an abrasive sharpening stone, or a succession of increasingly fine stones, which shape the blade by removing material; the finer the abrasive the finer the finish. Then the edge may be stropped by polishing the edge with a fine abrasive such as rouge or tripoli on a piece of stout leather or canvas. The edge may be steeled or honed by passing the blade against a hard metal or ceramic \"steel\" which plastically deforms and straightens the material of the blade's edge which may have been rolled over irregularly in use, but not enough to need complete resharpening.\n",
"In use, it is swung like a meat tenderizer or hammer - the knife's design relies on sheer momentum to cut efficiently; to chop straight through rather than slicing in a sawing motion. Part of the momentum derives from how hard the user swings the cleaver, and the other part from how heavy the cleaver is. Because of this, the edge of a meat cleaver does not need to be particularly sharp, in fact a knife-sharp edge on a cleaver is undesirable. The grind for a meat cleaver, at approximately 25°, is much blunter than for other kitchen knives\n",
"Many implements have a cutting edge which is essentially straight. Knives, chisels, straight-edge razors, and scissors are examples. Sharpening a straight edge is relatively simple, and can be done by using either a simple sharpening device which is very easy to use but will not produce the best possible results, or by the skillful use of oil or water grinding stones, grinding wheels, hones, etc.\n",
"A sharp object works by concentrating forces which creates a high pressure due to the very small area of the edge, but high pressures can nick a thin blade or even cause it to roll over into a rounded tube when it is used against hard materials. An irregular material or angled cut is also likely to apply much more torque to hollow-ground blades due to the \"lip\" formed on either side of the edge. More blade material can be included directly behind the cutting edge to reinforce it, but during sharpening some proportion of this material must be removed to reshape the edge, making the process more time-consuming. Also, any object being cut must be moved aside to make way for this wider blade section, and any force distributed to the grind surface reduces the pressure applied at the edge.\n",
"\"Biting\" sharpness is considered ideal for kitchen knives, but sharper blades are desired for shaving and surgical scalpels, which must cut without side-to-side slicing of the blade, and duller but tougher blades are more suitable for chiseling and chopping wood.\n",
"Sharpening these implements can be expressed as the creation of two intersecting planes which produce an edge that is sharp enough to cut through the target material. For example, the blade of a steel knife is ground to a bevel so that the two sides of the blade meet. This edge is then refined by honing until the blade is capable of cutting.\n"
] |
How did someone such as Ibn Battuta (practically and logistically) travel, and keep travelling?
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While I cannot speak for Ibn Battuta's case (I think he is a really interesting figure though), you need to break away from the 20-21st century capitalist mentality that every service is paid for using cash currency. My guess (and I will defer to scholars of the Islamic world) is that given his high status he would have likely benefited from the hospitality of other high status individuals. He very well might not have needed to pay for lodging or food he might have been welcomed into someone's home. He could have become a dependent of that household (which is different than a servant).
edit: punctuation
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[
"Scholars do not believe that Ibn Battuta visited all the places he described and argue that in order to provide a comprehensive description of places in the Muslim world, he relied on hearsay evidence and made use of accounts by earlier travellers. For example, it is considered very unlikely that Ibn Battuta made a trip up the Volga River from New Sarai to visit Bolghar and there are serious doubts about a number of other journeys such as his trip to Sana'a in Yemen, his journey from Balkh to Bistam in Khorasan and his trip around Anatolia.\n",
"Ibn Battuta had intended to continue his journey to Mecca by sea, via the port of ‘Aydhab on the Red Sea, but war and the dangers that posed made him travel by land through Damascus instead, joining a 10,000-strong caravan of fellow pilgrims along the way, staying with them until they finally reach their destination, Mecca.\n",
"Abu Abdallah Ibn Battuta was born in Morocco in the year 1304. Years later during his mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca as a Muslim and a qadi (Muslim judge), he decided that what he wished to do most was travel to and beyond every part of the Muslim world. Upon this realization, Ibn made a personal vow to ‘never travel any road a second time.” He began on his long and eventful journey, making many stops along the way. It was in Cairo, Egypt, that he first heard of the great ruler of Mali- Mansa Musa. A few years prior to Battuta's visit, Mansa Musa had passed through Cairo as well on his own pilgrimage to Mecca. He had brought with him a large entourage of slaves, soldiers and wives, along with over a thousand pounds of gold. With this he 'flooded' Cairo to the point of disrupting the entire gold market for decades to come. Aside from gold Mali traded many other lavish resources and its riches were spoke of widely, along with encouraging Islam across Africa. There is no doubt that, even after his long and tiring travels, a curious Ibn Battuta would saddle up again to make the long journey across the Sahara (1,500 miles) and into the Kingdom of Mali. After entering the country and staying for eight long months, Ibn left with mixed feelings. At first his impressions were not good- as a meal he was offered a bowl of millet with honey an yogurt. Seeing this as offensive, he wished to leave as soon as possible. During his stay he was also fed rice, milk, fish, chicken, melons, pumpkins and yams (that would end up making him very ill). From the King, he was gifted three loaves of bread, a gourd full of yogurt, and a piece of beef fried in shea butter. He was insulted by this as well, feeling that the gift was inadequate for him.\"\"When I saw it I laughed, and was long astonished at their feeble intellect and their respect for mean things.\"\" He was also taken aback by the local customs regarding the sexes. In his mind, man and woman should be separate in an Islamic society. Here the sexes were friends, spent time with one another and were agreeable. Upon his disapproval he was told that their relations were a part of good manners, and that there would be no suspicion attached to it. To his surprise, female servants and slaves also often went completely nude in front of the court to see, which would not have been acceptable as a Muslim- or any kind of- woman. They wore no veil and crawled on their hands and knees, throwing dust over themselves when approaching their ruler, Mansa Sulayman. Mansa Sulayman was the younger brother of Mansa Musa who took reign after he died. The public ceremony he attended was strange to him but grand, as he observed from the audience. \"\"[The sultan] has a lofty pavilion ... where he sits most of the time... There came forth from the gate of the palace about 300 slaves, some carrying in their hands bows and others having in their hands short lances and shields... Then two saddled and bridled horses are brought, with two rams which, they say, are effective against the evil eye... The interpreter stands at the gate of the council-place wearing fine garments of silk... and on his head a turban with fringes which they have a novel way of winding... The troops, governors, young men, slaves, ... and others sit outside the council-place in a broad street where there are trees... Anyone who wishes to address the sultan addresses the interpreter and the interpreter addresses a man standing [near the sultan] and that man standing addresses the sultan\". \"While he had his grievances, there were parts of Mali that Ibn Battuta found to be exceptional. For one, the safety in the streets of Mali went unmatched. The city was very secure with many guards and it was said that no man walked afraid in the streets of Mali. The people also held justice to a very high standard and that was notable for Ibn. Most importantly, he was impressed with the peoples devotion to Islam. There were mosques there that people visited regularly, and they always prayed on Friday, the holy prayer day established by Mansa Musa for Muslims. The citizens wished to learn more about the Islamic faith and seemed to be very involved with the teaching of the Quran. Although many had converted and had a zeal for Islam, there were many common people who still held on to their traditional African religions. Mansa Sulayman had to appease these people as well, which is something that Ibn may not have considered and viewed as an insult to Islam. In the end, Sulayman attempted to appease him by giving him a house to stay at and an allowance as well. Upon his departure, Ibn left with 100 mithqals ($15,501.84) of gold and diverse feelings towards the kingdom of Mali.\n",
"Ibn Battuta (; ; fully ; Arabic: ) (February 25, 13041368 or 1369) was a Muslim Moroccan scholar, and explorer who widely travelled the medieval world. Over a period of thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of the Islamic world and many non-Muslim lands, including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and China. Near the end of his life, he dictated an account of his journeys, titled \"A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling\".\n",
"He travelled to Mecca overland, following the North African coast across the sultanates of Abd al-Wadid and Hafsid. The route took him through Tlemcen, Béjaïa, and then Tunis, where he stayed for two months. For safety, Ibn Battuta usually joined a caravan to reduce the risk of being robbed. He took a bride in the town of Sfax, the first in a series of marriages that would feature in his travels.\n",
"During the medieval times, pilgrims would gather in big cities of Syria, Egypt, and Iraq to go to Mecca in groups and caravans comprising tens of thousands of pilgrims, often under state patronage. Hajj caravans, particularly with the advent of the Mamluk Sultanate and its successor, the Ottoman Empire, were escorted by a military force accompanied by physicians under the command of an \"amir al-hajj\". This was done in order to protect the caravan from Bedouin robbers or natural hazards, and to ensure that the pilgrims were supplied with the necessary provisions. Muslim travelers like Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Battuta have recorded detailed accounts of Hajj-travels of medieval time. The caravans followed well-established routes called in Arabic \"darb al-hajj\", lit. \"pilgrimage road\", which usually followed ancient routes such as the King's Highway.\n",
"On the way to Mecca, riding alone on horseback, Ibn Battuta was held up by bandits, robbed and nearly killed, but when the leader of the bandits realized that he was a pilgrim, feeling ashamed, he offered to escort Ibn Battuta to Egypt (for a fee). It was a difficult journey by camel across the desert and they were faced with fierce sandstorms, before taking to boats to navigate the Nile. Reaching Egypt, he handed a letter given to him by a friend to a Sheikh, and based on a Hadith (an oral tradition) of the Prophet Muhammed, he was advised \"to seek knowledge to China\", hence his further extensive travels.\n"
] |
If time is infinite...
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> If time is infinite, would it be fair to say that every configuration of the universe happens at least once,
That conclusion does not necessarily follow from that premise.
> similar to how if the set of natural numbers is infinite, every number is in this set?
Of course the set of natural numbers contains every number in that set, but that has nothing to do with the set being infinite. I don't even know what it would mean to say that some set *didn't* contain every element of itself.
On the other hand, it is clearly possible to construct infinite sets of numbers that don't contain every number. Or even every number of some particular type. For example, the set of all even numbers is just as infinite as the set of all integers, but doesn't contain the number 3.
Moreover, and this is important, the fact that an event has nonzero probability per unit time does *not* guarantee that it will happen even if you have an infinite amount of time. While the probability will approach 1 as the time approaches infinity, a probability of 1 does not actually guarantee success.
|
[
"In \"Did the World Have a Beginning?\" he argues that the temporal world cannot always have existed. An actual infinity is impossible, he reasons, because infinity is a potential value that cannot be reached. A line, for example, may be extended infinitely—that is, without a limit—but at no point will the actual measure of the line become infinite. Likewise, time itself, whether measured by minutes or millennia, cannot comprise an actual infinity. Therefore, the temporal world cannot have existed forever.\n",
"One such argument was based upon Aristotle's own theorem that there were not multiple infinities, and ran as follows: If time were infinite, then as the universe continued in existence for another hour, the infinity of its age since creation at the end of that hour must be one hour greater than the infinity of its age since creation at the start of that hour. But since Aristotle holds that such treatments of infinity are impossible and ridiculous, the world cannot have existed for infinite time.\n",
"Kraft made a distinction between time and eternity writing that \"the finite can never obtain eternity, but it can obtain an infinite time, (Aevum) or a time with beginning but without end.\" The infinite by contrast has permanence (\"sempiternité\")\".\n",
"Time is the dimension of the world's motion; and it is infinite in just the way that the whole number is said to be infinite. Some of it is past, some present, and some future. But the whole of time is present, as we say that the year is present on a larger compass. Also, the whole of time is said to belong, though none of its parts belong exactly.\n",
"According to Hindu vedic cosmology, there is no absolute start to time, as it is considered infinite and cyclic. Similarly, the space and universe has neither start nor end, rather it is cyclical. The current universe is just the start of a present cycle preceded by an infinite number of universes and to be followed by another infinite number of universes.\n",
"According to Hindu cosmology, there is no absolute start to time, as it is considered infinite and cyclic. Similarly, the space and universe has neither start nor end, rather it is cyclical. The current universe is just the start of a present cycle preceded by an infinite number of universes and to be followed by another infinite number of universes.\n",
"A full exposition of Philoponus' several arguments, as reported by Simplicius, can be found in Sorabji. One such argument was based upon Aristotle's own theorem that there were not multiple infinities, and ran as follows: If time were infinite, then as the universe continued in existence for another hour, the infinity of its age since creation at the end of that hour must be one hour greater than the infinity of its age since creation at the start of that hour. But since Aristotle holds that such treatments of infinity are impossible and ridiculous, the world cannot have existed for infinite time.\n"
] |
Why doesn't gravity work on small scales?
|
Gravity is a very, very, very, very weak force.
To get appreciable gravitational effects, therefore, you need to have very large objects, like a planet.
There is a gravitational force between you and that building you walk by, but it is absolutely tiny.
|
[
"As the sizes got smaller, one would have to redesign some tools, because the relative strength of various forces would change. Although gravity would become unimportant, surface tension would become more important, Van der Waals attraction would become important, etc. Feynman mentioned these scaling issues during his talk. Nobody has yet attempted to implement this thought experiment, although it has been noted that some types of biological enzymes and enzyme complexes (especially ribosomes) function chemically in a way close to Feynman's vision. Feynman also mentioned in his lecture that it might be better eventually to use glass or plastic because their greater uniformity would avoid problems in the very small scale (metals and crystals are separated into domains where the lattice structure prevails). This could be a good reason to make machines and also electronics out of glass and plastic. At the present time, there are electronic components made of both materials. In glass, there are optical fiber cables that amplify the light pulses at regular intervals, using glass doped with the rare-earth element erbium. The doped glass is spliced into the fiber and pumped by a laser operating at a different frequency. In plastic, field effect transistors are being made with polythiophene, a plastic invented by Alan J. Heeger et al. that becomes an electrical conductor when oxidized. At this time, a factor of just 20 in electron mobility separates plastic from silicon.\n",
"An instrument used to measure gravity is known as a gravimeter. For a small body, general relativity predicts gravitational effects indistinguishable from the effects of acceleration by the equivalence principle. Thus, gravimeters can be regarded as special-purpose accelerometers. Many weighing scales may be regarded as simple gravimeters. In one common form, a spring is used to counteract the force of gravity pulling on an object. The change in length of the spring may be calibrated to the force required to balance the gravitational pull. The resulting measurement may be made in units of force (such as the newton), but is more commonly made in units of gals.\n",
"For Gregory, this observation raised particularly interesting questions about how different principles for understanding the world compete in our perception. The \"anti-gravity effect\" is a much stronger paradox than the \"size change\" effect, because it seems to negate the law of gravity which is a fundamental feature of the world. In contrast, the apparent size change is not such a strong paradox, because we do have the experience that objects can change size to a certain degree (for example, people and animals can appear to become smaller or larger by crouching or stretching).\n",
"Scale symmetry means that if an object is expanded or reduced in size, the new object has the same properties as the original. This is \"not\" true of most physical systems, as witness the difference in the shape of the legs of an elephant and a mouse (so-called allometric scaling). Similarly, if a soft wax candle were enlarged to the size of a tall tree, it would immediately collapse under its own weight.\n",
"Thus the fundamental Planck mass (the extra-dimensional one) could actually be small, meaning that gravity is actually strong, but this must be compensated by the number of the extra dimensions and their size. Physically, this means that gravity is weak because there is a loss of flux to the extra dimensions.\n",
"If the bodies in question have spatial extent (as opposed to being point masses), then the gravitational force between them is calculated by summing the contributions of the notional point masses which constitute the bodies. In the limit, as the component point masses become \"infinitely small\", this entails integrating the force (in vector form, see below) over the extents of the two bodies.\n",
"Because gravity varies by over 0.5% over the surface of the earth, the distinction between force due to gravity and mass is relevant for accurate calibration of scales for commercial purposes. Usually the goal is to measure the mass of the sample rather than its force due to gravity at that particular location.\n"
] |
Why is carbonated water effervescent while other gas-liquid solutions (e.g. vinegar, hydrochloric acid, etc.) are not?
|
Two things:
1. While carbondioxide can disolve in water it can also react following CO2 + H2O -- > H(+) + HCO3(-). This means the gas can be stored as ions and react back into gas when the relation between the amounts of CO2 and HCO3(-) changed.
2. Carbonated drinks are made under pressure. At say 10 bar a lot more CO2 can dissolve in one liter water than at 1 bar.
So when you open a bottle the gas will come out of the liquid because of the lower pressure and reasons 2, and it will keep going for a while because of reason one.
In other gas-liquid solutions only a soluble amount of gas is dissolved making it a stable solution with no needs to bubble.
|
[
"By itself, carbonated water appears to have little impact on health. While carbonated water is somewhat acidic, this acidity can be partially neutralized by saliva. A study found that sparkling mineral water is slightly more erosive to teeth than non-carbonated water but is about 100 times less erosive to teeth than soft drinks are.\n",
"Carbonated water is formed by dissolving CO in water under pressure. When the partial pressure of CO is reduced, for example when a can of soda is opened, the equilibrium for each of the forms of carbonate (carbonate, bicarbonate, carbon dioxide, and carbonic acid) shifts until the concentration of CO in the solution is equal to the solubility of CO at that temperature and pressure. In living systems an enzyme, carbonic anhydrase, speeds the interconversion of CO and carbonic acid.\n",
"Carbonated water (also known as soda water, sparkling water or, especially in the U.S., seltzer or seltzer water) is water containing dissolved carbon dioxide gas, either artificially injected under pressure or occurring due to natural geological processes. Carbonation causes small bubbles to form, giving the water an effervescent quality. Common forms include sparkling natural mineral water, club soda, and commercially produced sparkling water.\n",
"Carbonated water is a key ingredient in soft drinks: sweet beverages that typically consist of carbonated water, a sweetener and a flavoring, such as cola, root beer, or orange soda. Plain carbonated water is often consumed as an alternative to soft drinks; some brands, such as La Croix, produce unsweetened seltzer products that are lightly flavored by the addition of aromatic ingredients such as essential oils. Carbonated water is often consumed mixed with fruit juice, or infused with flavor by the addition of cut-up fresh fruit or mint leaves.\n",
"As lime in the form of limewater is added to raw water, the pH is raised and the equilibrium of carbonate species in the water is shifted. Dissolved carbon dioxide (CO) is changed into bicarbonate (HCO) and then carbonate (CO). This action causes calcium carbonate to precipitate due to exceeding the solubility product. Additionally, magnesium can be precipitated as magnesium hydroxide in a double displacement reaction.\n",
"In the presence of water or simply ambient moisture, the strong bases, NaOH or KOH, readily dissolve in their hydration water (hygroscopic substances, deliquescence phenomenon) and this greatly facilitates the catalysis process because the reaction in aqueous solution occurs much faster than in the dry solid phase. The moist NaOH impregnates the surface and the porosity of calcium hydroxide grains with a high specific surface area. Soda lime is commonly used in closed-circuit diving rebreathers and in anesthesia systems.\n",
"Carbonated drinks are beverages that contain dissolved carbon dioxide. The dissolution of CO in a liquid, gives rise to \"fizz\" or \"effervescence\". The process usually involves carbon dioxide under high pressure. When the pressure is removed, the carbon dioxide is released from the solution as small bubbles, which causes the solution to become effervescent, or fizzy. A common example is the dissolving of carbon dioxide in water, resulting in carbonated water. Carbon dioxide is only weakly soluble in water, therefore it separates into a gas when the pressure is released.\n"
] |
why shouldn’t you eat anything before going into a swimming pool?
|
People used to think that it would cause cramps, which could result in you drowning in the pool. This is an old wives tale - it doesn't cause cramps no matter how soon you swim after eating.
However, it does have the benefit of keeping food out of and away from pools, thus keeping the pools cleaner, so no one is really interested in dispelling the inaccuracy.
|
[
"Nonetheless, licking does play a role for humans. Even though humans cannot effectively drink water by licking, the human tongue is quite sufficient for licking more viscous fluids. Some foods are sold in a form intended to be consumed mainly by licking, e.g. ice cream cones and lollipops.\n",
"BULLET::::- Don't Drown Your Food (voiced by actor/comedian Arnold Stang), encouraging children not to overuse condiments, such as gravy, ketchup and salad dressing, and learn to enjoy the natural flavors of vegetables, eggs, etc.\n",
"BULLET::::- Tide Pod Challenge – Similar to other eating challenges, this saw people attempt to eat Tide Pods, small packets filled with laundry detergent and other chemicals that normally dissolve while in a washing machine. The challenge gained attention in late 2017 and early 2018, and quickly was addressed by several health-related organizations, as the chemicals in the packet are poisonous and toxic to humans. These agencies sought to warn users and strongly discourage the challenge after dozens of cases of poisoning were reported within the first few weeks of 2018, while YouTube took action to remove videos related to the challenge to further stop its spread.\n",
"\"It's either me or my girlfriend or my daughter. I let her feed them but she tends to overfeed them which can kill them and if you don't feed them enough that can kill them, so it's real poignant subject. You've got to be careful with fish.\"\n",
"It can be very easy for children under one year old to absorb too much water, especially if the child is under nine months old. Because of their small body mass, it is easy for them to take in a large amount of water relative to body mass and total body sodium stores.\n",
"It is not advisable to swim. If you really want to, do not swallow the water. Be particularly cautious of Oyster-shells which can cut the feet when walking in or out of the water. If an iguana (Kabara Goya in Sinhalese) is nearby, swim very quietly without moving the water too much (breast-stroke is the best) to the shore and get out. They are known to bite swimmers.\n",
"BULLET::::- Eating less than an hour before swimming does not increase the risk of experiencing muscle cramps or drowning. One study shows a correlation between alcohol consumption and drowning, but there is no evidence cited regarding the consumption of food or stomach cramps.\n"
] |
why does a computer need to "warm up"?
|
Because (especially in the case of Windows), the operating system loads and runs just enough components to allow you to log in, and show the desktop, while literally hundreds of drivers and services continue to be loaded and run "in the background" .
Older versions of Windows would not allow use until everything was loaded and running, which meant that, for several minutes, the system was completely unusable. The newer method is a compromise.
You may find that installing an SSD disk drive greatly speeds up the time to usability.
|
[
"Reducing the heat output of the computer helps reduce noise, since fans do not have to spin as fast to cool the computer. Reduced heat and resulting lower cooling demands may increase computer reliability.\n",
"Because high temperatures can significantly reduce life span or cause permanent damage to components, and the heat output of components can sometimes exceed the computer's cooling capacity, manufacturers often take additional precautions to ensure that temperatures remain within safe limits. A computer with thermal sensors integrated in the CPU, motherboard, chipset, or GPU can shut itself down when high temperatures are detected to prevent permanent damage, although this may not completely guarantee long-term safe operation. Before an overheating component reaches this point, it may be \"throttled\" until temperatures fall below a safe point using dynamic frequency scaling technology. Throttling reduces the operating frequency and voltage of an integrated circuit or disables non-essential features of the chip to reduce heat output, often at the cost of slightly or significantly reduced performance. For desktop and notebook computers, throttling is often controlled at the BIOS level. Throttling is also commonly used to manage temperatures in smartphones and tablets, where components are packed tightly together with little to no active cooling, and with additional heat transferred from the hand of the user.\n",
"Cooling may be designed to reduce the ambient temperature within the case of a computer, such as by exhausting hot air, or to cool a single component or small area (spot cooling). Components commonly individually cooled include the CPU, Graphics processing unit (GPU) and the northbridge.\n",
"Another growing trend due to the increasing heat density of computer, GPU, FPGA, and ASICs is to immerse the entire computer or select components in a thermally, but not electrically, conductive liquid. Although rarely used for the cooling of personal computers, liquid immersion is a routine method of cooling large power distribution components such as transformers. It is also becoming popular with data centers. Personal computers cooled in this manner may not require either fans or pumps, and may be cooled exclusively by passive heat exchange between the computer hardware and the enclosure it is placed in. A heat exchanger (i.e. heater core or radiator) might still be needed though, and the piping also needs to be placed correctly. \n",
"Components are often designed to generate as little heat as possible, and computers and operating systems may be designed to reduce power consumption and consequent heating according to workload, but more heat may still be produced than can be removed without attention to cooling. Use of heatsinks cooled by airflow reduces the temperature rise produced by a given amount of heat. Attention to patterns of airflow can prevent the development of hotspots. Computer fans are widely used along with heatsink fans to reduce temperature by actively exhausting hot air. There are also more exotic cooling techniques, such as liquid cooling. All modern day processors are designed to cut out or reduce their voltage or clock speed if the internal temperature of the processor exceeds a specified limit.\n",
"Computer cooling is required to remove the waste heat produced by computer components, to keep components within permissible operating temperature limits. Components that are susceptible to temporary malfunction or permanent failure if overheated include integrated circuits such as central processing units (CPUs), chipset, graphics cards, and hard disk drives.\n",
"While in earlier personal computers it was possible to cool most components using natural convection (passive cooling), many modern components require more effective active cooling. To cool these components, fans are used to move heated air away from the components and draw cooler air over them. Fans attached to components are usually used in combination with a heatsink to increase the area of heated surface in contact with the air, thereby improving the efficiency of cooling. Fan control is not always an automatic process. A computer's BIOS (basic input/output system) can control the speed of the built-in fan system for the computer. A user can even supplement this function with additional cooling components or connect a manual fan controller with knobs that set fans to different speeds.\n"
] |
How do anti-diarrheals work? Is a bowel movement is coming from the colon/rectum how does something like Imodium of pepto bismal work so quickly when digestion of food takes hours?
|
Gastroenterologist here: Short answer - there are multiple mechanisms:
1) **Mu Receptor agonists** These bad boys are drugs like immodium (loperamide) and lomotil (diphynoxylate and atropine). They work by binding to Mu receptors on the smooth muslcles of the colon. By binding to these receptors the muscles of the colon wall (which normally contract like a worm) are slowed down. This is also the mechanism by which morphine, dilaudid, percocet, heroin, etc cause severe constipation - and people who undergo withdrawl from these drugs often have severe diarrhea.
2) **Fiber Supplements** Most commonly Psyllium (Metamucil), Methylcellulose (synthetic fiber) and Guar Gum. These supplements are not absorbed by the colon (the cellulose is nonabsorbable). Like a sponge they absorb the water/liquid in the colon/SB. They also bulk the stool and can be used in constipation (dual use). The colonic bacteria are able to breakdown some of the fiber (via fermentation) and as a result produce hydrogen and methane which can cause gas/bloating.
3)**Bile Acid Binding Resins** You may know these drugs as cholysteramine. They actually work when there is diarrhea due to Bile Acid Malabsorption (BAM). Bile acid is usually absorbed in the ileum (terminal small bowel). Patients that have had a surgical resection of the small bowel, a choleycstectomy, or disease of the small bowel (like Crohns) can result in failure of bile from being absorbed in the small bowel. Excess bile then enters the colon - which is actually an irritant to the colon wall - and cause diarrhea from the irritation (inflammatory diarrhea)
4) **Somatostain analogues** Now we are getting into some specialized drugs - Octreotide (most common somatostatin analogue in Canada). Works be inhibiting secretion of fluids from the cells of the small bowel (these cells are responsible mainly for absorption of liquid, but they can also secrete liquid - like in cholera). The mechanism of Somatostatin analogues are complex and involve activating signalling proteins that downregulate the production of channels (like chloride and sodium channels) that are ultimately responsible for secreting water INTO the colon/small bowel.
5) **Targeted treatment** most gastroenterologist will actually work to figure out the cause of the diarrhea and will prescribe medications that will treat the disease. These drugs are often very different from the drugs I describe above. Example Diseases **Inflammatory Bowel Disease** (5-amisosalycilic acid, azathiprine, 6-mp, infliximab), **Cholera** (oral rehydration solution), **Microscopic Colitis** (discontinue offending drug, 5-asa), **Infectious Colitis** (Antibiotics), **Irritible Bowel Syndrome** (antidpressants), etc**.
Hope that helps
|
[
"As bowel stimulants, enemas are employed for the same purposes as orally administered laxatives: To relieve constipation; To treat fecal impaction; To empty the colon prior to a medical procedure such as a colonoscopy. A large volume of enema can be given to cleanse as much of the colon as possible of feces. However, a low enema is generally useful only for stool in the rectum, not in the intestinal tract.\n",
"While bismuth compounds (Pepto-Bismol) decreased the number of bowel movements in those with travelers' diarrhea, they do not decrease the length of illness. Anti-motility agents like loperamide are also effective at reducing the number of stools but not the duration of disease. These agents should only be used if bloody diarrhea is not present.\n",
"Transanal irrigation of the rectum and colon is designed to assist the evacuation of faeces from the bowel by introducing water into rectum via the anus. By regularly emptying the bowel using transanal irrigation, controlled bowel function is often re-established to a high degree in patients with bowel incontinence and/or constipation. This enables the users to develop a consistent bowel routine by choosing the time and place of evacuation. An international consensus on when and how to use transanal irrigation for people with bowel problems was published 2013. The article offers practitioners a clear, comprehensive and simple guide to practice for the emerging therapeutic area of transanal irrigation.\n",
"Bisacodyl (INN) is an organic compound that is used as a stimulant laxative drug. It works directly on the colon to produce a bowel movement. It is typically prescribed for relief of episodic and chronic constipation and for the management of neurogenic bowel dysfunction, as well as part of bowel preparation before medical examinations, such as for a colonoscopy.\n",
"BULLET::::- Whole bowel irrigation cleanses the bowel. This is achieved by giving the patient large amounts of a polyethylene glycol solution. The osmotically balanced polyethylene glycol solution is not absorbed into the body, having the effect of flushing out the entire gastrointestinal tract. Its major uses are to treat ingestion of sustained release drugs, toxins not absorbed by activated charcoal (e.g., lithium, iron), and for removal of ingested drug packets (body packing/smuggling).\n",
"Bowel management is achieved mainly through a daily enema which empties the colon to prevent unwanted and uncontrolled bowel movements that day. Some patients also use laxatives and a controlled diet as part of their bowel management regimen. Another alternative is transanal irrigation.\n",
"Alvimopan is indicated in people to avoid postoperative ileus following partial large or small bowel resection with primary anastomosis. Alvimopan accelerates the gastrointestinal recovery period as defined by time to first bowel movement or flatus.\n"
] |
how do we know how much charge is left in a battery?
|
_URL_0_
This question has been asked before.
|
[
"Charge and discharge rates are often given as \"C\" or \"C-rate\", which is a measure of the rate at which a battery is charged or discharged relative to its capacity. The C-rate is defined as the charge or discharge current divided by the battery's capacity to store an electrical charge. While rarely stated explicitly, the unit of the C-rate is h, equivalent to stating the battery's capacity to store an electrical charge in unit hour times current in the same unit as the charge or discharge current. The C-rate is never negative, so whether it describes a charging or discharging process depends on the context.\n",
"State of charge (SoC) is the level of charge of an electric battery relative to its capacity. The units of SoC are percentage points (0% = empty; 100% = full). An alternate form of the same measure is the depth of discharge (DoD), the inverse of SoC (100% = empty; 0% = full). SoC is normally used when discussing the current state of a battery in use, while DoD is most often seen when discussing the lifetime of the battery after repeated use.\n",
"For example, for a battery with a capacity of 500 mAh, a discharge rate of 5000 mA (i.e., 5 A) corresponds to a C-rate of 10 (per hour), meaning that such a current can discharge 10 such batteries in one hour. Likewise, for the same battery a charge current of 250 mA corresponds to a C-rate of 1/2 (per hour), meaning that this current will increase the state of charge of this battery by 50% in one hour.\n",
"SOC, or state of charge, is the equivalent of a fuel gauge for a battery. SOC cannot be determined by a simple voltage measurement, because the terminal voltage of a battery may stay substantially constant until it is completely discharged. In some types of battery, electrolyte specific gravity may be related to state of charge but this is not measurable on typical battery pack cells, and is not related to state of charge on most battery types. Most SOC methods take into account voltage and current as well as temperature and other aspects of the discharge and charge process to in essence count up or down within a pre-defined capacity of a pack. More complex state of charge estimation systems take into account the Peukert effect which relates the capacity of the battery to the discharge rate.\n",
"Battery charging and discharging rates are often discussed by referencing a \"C\" rate of current. The C rate is that which would theoretically fully charge or discharge the battery in one hour. For example, trickle charging might be performed at C/20 (or a \"20 hour\" rate), while typical charging and discharging may occur at C/2 (two hours for full capacity). The available capacity of electrochemical cells varies depending on the discharge rate. Some energy is lost in the internal resistance of cell components (plates, electrolyte, interconnections), and the rate of discharge is limited by the speed at which chemicals in the cell can move about. For lead-acid cells, the relationship between time and discharge rate is described by Peukert's law; a lead-acid cell that can no longer sustain a usable terminal voltage at a high current may still have usable capacity, if discharged at a much lower rate. Data sheets for rechargeable cells often list the discharge capacity on 8-hour or 20-hour or other stated time; cells for uninterruptible power supply systems may be rated at 15 minute discharge.\n",
"The battery's open-circuit voltage can also be used to gauge the state of charge. If the connections to the individual cells are accessible, then the state of charge of each cell can be determined which can provide a guide as to the state of health of the battery as a whole, otherwise the overall battery voltage may be assessed.\n",
"Before the Battery Charging Specification was defined, there was no standardized way for the portable device to inquire how much current was available. For example, Apple's iPod and iPhone chargers indicate the available current by voltages on the D− and D+ lines. When D+ = D− = 2.0 V, the device may pull up to 900 mA. When D+ = 2.0 V and D− = 2.8 V, the device may pull up to 1 A of current. When D+ = 2.8 V and D− = 2.0 V, the device may pull up to 2 A of current.\n"
] |
why's it so important to recycle batteries?
|
We don't want the metals found in batteries in our drinking water. If they go into the trash, the go to the landfill. Water leaching from landfill ends up in someone's glass eventually.
|
[
"Battery recycling is a recycling activity that aims to reduce the number of batteries being disposed as municipal solid waste. Batteries contain a number of heavy metals and toxic chemicals and disposing of them by the same process as regular trash has raised concerns over soil contamination and water pollution.\n",
"As a result, most retailers who sell rechargeable and other special batteries will take the old ones back for free recycling and safe disposal. The not-for-profit Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC), used by most retailers, reclaims the metals within the old batteries to make new products such as batteries (mercury, cadmium, lead) and stainless steel (nickel).\n",
"Many cities offer battery recycling services for lead–acid batteries. In some jurisdictions, including U.S. states and Canadian provinces, a refundable deposit is paid on batteries. This encourages recycling of old batteries instead of abandonment or disposal with household waste. In the United States, about 99% of lead from used batteries is reclaimed.\n",
"Another common medium for storing energy is batteries, which have the advantages of being responsive, useful in a wide range of power levels, environmentally friendly, efficient, simple to install, and easy to maintain. Batteries also facilitate the use of electric motors, which have their own advantages. On the other hand, batteries have low energy densities, short service life, poor performance at extreme temperatures, long charging times, and difficulties with disposal (although they can usually be recycled). Like fuel, batteries store chemical energy and can cause burns and poisoning in event of an accident. Batteries also lose effectiveness with time. The issue of charge time can be resolved by swapping discharged batteries with charged ones; however, this incurs additional hardware costs and may be impractical for larger batteries. Moreover, there must be standard batteries for battery swapping to work at a gas station. Fuel cells are similar to batteries in that they convert from chemical to electrical energy, but have their own advantages and disadvantages.\n",
"Battery recycling of automotive batteries reduces the need for resources required for the manufacture of new batteries, diverts toxic lead from landfills, and prevents the risk of improper disposal. Once a lead acid battery ceases to hold a charge, it is deemed a used lead-acid battery (ULAB), which is classified as hazardous waste under the Basel Convention. The 12-volt car battery is the most recycled product in the world, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. In the U.S. alone, about 100 million auto batteries a year are replaced, and 99 percent of them are turned in for recycling. However the recycling may be done incorrectly in unregulated environments. As part of global waste trade ULABs are shipped from industrialized countries to developing countries for disassembly and recuperation of the contents. About 97 percent of the lead can be recovered. Pure Earth estimates that over 12 million third world people are affected by lead contamination from ULAB processing.\n",
"The large variation in size and type of batteries makes their recycling extremely difficult: they must first be sorted into similar kinds and each kind requires an individual recycling process. Additionally, older batteries contain mercury and cadmium, harmful materials that must be handled with care. Because of their potential environmental damage, proper disposal of used batteries is required by law in many areas. Unfortunately, this mandate has been difficult to enforce.\n",
"In the US, only one state, California, requires all alkaline batteries to be recycled. Vermont also has a statewide alkaline battery collection program. In other US states, individuals can purchase battery recycling kits used to ship batteries to recyclers. Examples of such kits are Retriev Technologies' The Big Green Box, Battery Solutions' iRecycleKits, and Call2Recycle's battery recycling boxes. Some stores such as IKEA also collect alkaline batteries for recycling. However, some chain stores which advertise battery recycling (such as Best Buy) only accept rechargeable batteries and will generally not accept alkaline batteries. \n"
] |
Woodrow Wilson had a PHD. Was he addressed as Dr. President?
|
No—"Mr. President" is not just the name of the job preceded by the traditional male English honorific. It's the actual title of the sitting president, the way something like "your majesty" might be used for a monarch. *Edit:* /u/The_Alaskan's [comment reply](_URL_4_) notes that "Madam President" would be used by a female president, and that a formal decision to that effect was made in advance of the 2016 U.S. general election.
So did this hold true for Dr. Wilson? Yes! From my own study of America during that time period, I recalled seeing Wilson addressed as Mr. President in print, but I wanted to confirm that by finding a verifiable example with a source. The best I've got for now is a reference to a sign carried in the NAACP's 1917 "Silent Protest Parade" that read "Mr. President, why not make America safe for democracy?" [Source: Alan Dawley, *Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution.*](_URL_5_) *Edit again:* /u/Lo-Jupiter pointed to additional, earlier examples of Wilson being addressed as Mr. President in [this comment reply!](_URL_2_)
But why is Mr. President the title, and not something else? Initially, after the formation of the young U.S. government, there was a bit of a debate over how to address the president. Some in the early U.S., including the first president and vice president, favored a more exalted title. VP John Adams suggested "his highness," and George Washington preferred "his mightiness." Adams believed the executive ~~was~~ appeared too weak in comparison to the other branches of the new government, and sought to ~~consolidate presidentail power~~ boost the appearance of the president's power by way of a grandiose form of address.
However, there was vehement opposition to this style of address among many other leaders, who felt it was a bit too reminiscent of the monarchy they had all just worked so hard to escape (Thomas Jefferson said an exalted presidential title was "the most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard of," and Benjamin Franklin called Adams' stance "absolutely mad"), and ultimately Washington and Adams yielded and accepted the title "Mr. President." *Edit a third time:* /u/yodatsracist points to a source in [this comment reply](_URL_3_) suggesting that Washington himself never actually went by Mr. President. My sources (listed below) suggest that the title was adopted through common usage because the House of Representatives opposed anything more elevated than that, but don't say whether or not Washington himself ever used it.
*****
I'm not an expert on the American Revolution or its aftermath, and I'd be happy if a real expert could flesh out or correct any aspects of that hurried section of this explanation! Here are the sources I used for my quick study on it:
- [James H. Hutson, *John Adams' Title Campaign*](_URL_0_)
- [Albert Hart, *Formation of the Union, 1750-1829*](_URL_1_)
Edits for clarity, and to add additional info!
|
[
"BULLET::::- Woodrow Wilson (1210 Eutaw Pl.), President of Princeton University, Governor of New Jersey, and President of the United States. Wilson lived in Bolton Hill during his doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins.\n",
"Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was an American statesman, lawyer, and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University and as the 34th governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election. As president, he oversaw the passage of progressive legislative policies unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933. He also led the United States into World War I in 1917, establishing an activist foreign policy known as \"Wilsonianism.\"\n",
"Woodrow Wilson made two international trips while in office. When he sailed for France in December 1918 for the Paris Peace Conference, he became the first sitting president to travel to Europe. He spent nearly seven months in Europe, interrupted by a brief 9-day return to the U.S. in late February 1919. Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his peacemaking efforts. While in Rome, he met with Pope Benedict XV; this was the first meeting between an incumbent American president and a reigning pope.\n",
"Robert Woodrow Wilson was born on January 10, 1936, in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Lamar High School in River Oaks, in Houston, and studied as an undergraduate at Rice University, also in Houston, where he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society. He then earned a PhD in physics at California Institute of Technology.\n",
"Wilson completed his master's degree (MPA) at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1998. While there, he taught an undergraduate policy workshop on Implementing NATO Expansion with Dr. Richard Ullman and was selected for a Presidential Management Fellowship. As a fellow, Wilson worked on the State Department's China desk and at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.\n",
"James Wilson (September 14, 1742 – August 21, 1798) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Wilson was elected twice to the Continental Congress, where he represented Pennsylvania, and was a major force in drafting the United States Constitution. A leading legal theorist, he was one of the six original justices appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court of the United States.\n",
"Wilson made two international trips during his presidency. He was the first sitting president to travel to Europe. He spent nearly seven months in Europe after World War I (interrupted by a brief 9-day return stateside).\n"
] |
what does it mean if a currency is ‘strong’ or ‘weak’
|
A strong currency is a currency that has an increased value compared to other currencies. But this has little to do with the numerical value of the currencies, despite what other commenters above said.
1 dollar is usually worth 100-120 yen. If the dollar becomes worth 80 yen, then it means the yen has become stronger relative to the dollar, and the dollar weaker relative to the yen.
It's completely meaningless to say that if 1 dollar = 1000 of X currency then X currency is weak, and if 1 dollar = 0.1 Y currency then Y currency is strong, because prices in the countries of those currencies will be adjusted accordingly.
Another example is the Brazilian Real, which is currently US$ 1 = R$ 3.70. The country is in recession so the dollar is strong compared to the real. But in 2008 US$ 1 = R$1.60. At that time, the US was in recession and the brazilian economy was still strong. The dollar was weak compared to the Real, even though one dollar was worth more than 1 real.
Edit: another example is that governments with hyperinflation usually need to remove zeroes from their currency every few years. Imagine if the zimbabwe government changed its 100 trillion dollar (40 USD cents) and removed 14 zeroes. Now 1 zimbabwe dollar is worth 40 US cents. But why stop at 14 zeroes? They could remove 15 zeroes, so now 1 zimbabwe dollar is worth 4 US dollars. This would not make the zimbabwe dollar a stronger currency than the US dollar. It's just a numerical trick. To decide if a currency is strong or weak you can't just look at the numbers they are being traded for, but also their value history, and evaluate their purchasing power.
|
[
"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",
"In grammar, the term weak (originally coined in German: \"schwach\") is used in opposition to the term strong (\"stark\") to designate a conjugation or declension when a language has two parallel systems. The only constant feature in all the grammatical usages of the word \"weak\" is that it forms a polarity with \"strong\"; there is not necessarily any objective \"weakness\" about the forms so designated.\n",
"In quantum mechanics (and computation), a weak value is a quantity related to a shift of a measuring device's pointer when usually there is pre- and postselection. It should not be confused with a weak measurement, which is often defined in conjunction. The weak value was first defined by Yakir Aharonov, David Albert and Lev Vaidman, published in Physical Review Letters 1988, and is related to the two-state vector formalism. There is also a way to obtain weak values without postselection.\n",
"A strong currency helps domestic importers as their currency buys more, benefits foreign exporters as their exports garner more, hurts domestic exporters as there are not as many foreign buyers, and harms foreign importers as they cannot buy as much. A weak currency does the opposite of the above. They are summed up in the tables below.\n",
"\"Weak\" is a song by American indie pop band AJR. It was first released on their EP \"What Everyone's Thinking\" on September 16, 2016, by their own label AJR Productions, and was later featured on their second studio album \"The Click\" (2017).\n",
"\"Weak\" was released as the third single from \"It's About Time\", following the commercial success of \"I'm So into You\". It sold over one million copies domestically and was awarded a Platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). \"Weak\" hit number one on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for two weeks in July 1993, ending the two-month-long reign of Janet Jackson's \"That's the Way Love Goes\". It also topped the \"Billboard\" Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for two weeks. Outside the US, the single also reached number six on the New Zealand Singles Charts.\n",
"Notice that if formula_5 then the weak value is equal to the usual expected value in the initial state formula_6 or the final state formula_7. In general the weak value quantity is a complex number. The weak value of the observable becomes large when the post-selected state, formula_2, approaches being orthogonal to the pre-selected state, formula_1, i.e. formula_10. If formula_11 is larger than the largest eigenvalue of formula_3 or smaller than the smallest eigenvalue of formula_3 the weak value is said to be anomalous.\n"
] |
How do thermophiles survive temperatures that would quickly cook animal tissue?
|
I found a website that has several different adaptations thermophiles have:
_URL_0_
Basically it boils down to having extra-tough proteins that can withstand the higher temperatures without denaturing. The flipside is though, that some of these tougher proteins are only viable at higher temperatures.
If the temperature drops too far the protein essentially freezes and the organism is ... going to have a bad day.
|
[
"There are two explanations for thermophiles being able to survive at such high temperatures whereas mesophiles can not. The most evident explanation is that thermophiles are believed to have cell components that are relatively more stable than the cell components of mesophiles which is why thermophiles are able to live at higher temperatures than mesophiles. \"A second school of thought, as represented by the writings of Gaughran (21) and Allen (3), believes that rapid resynthesis of damaged or destroyed cell constituents is the key to the problem of biological stability to heat.\"\n",
"Living organisms can survive only within a certain temperature range. When the ambient temperature is excessive, humans and many animals cool themselves below ambient by evaporative cooling (sweat in humans and horses, saliva and water in dogs and other mammals); this helps to prevent potentially fatal hyperthermia due to heat stress. The effectiveness of evaporative cooling depends upon humidity; wet-bulb temperature, or more complex calculated quantities such as Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) which also takes account of solar radiation, give a useful indication of the degree of heat stress, and are used by several agencies as the basis for heat stress prevention guidelines.\n",
"Much research has been done on the genetics of \"Pyrodictium\" in order to understand its ability to survive and even thrive in such extreme temperatures. The thermal stability of \"Pyrodictum occultum\"'s isolate tRNA has been analyzed, indicating that modifications in the nucleosides allow the organism to withstand temperatures well over 100 °C.\n",
"Thermogenic plants have the ability to raise their temperature above that of the surrounding air. Heat is generated in the mitochondria, as a secondary process of cellular respiration called thermogenesis. Alternative oxidase and uncoupling proteins similar to those found in mammals enable the process, which is still poorly understood.\n",
"Extreme temperatures destroy viruses and vegetative cells that are active and metabolising. Organic molecules such as proteins, carbohydrates, lipid and nucleic acids, as well as cell walls and membranes, all of which play important roles in cell metabolism, are damaged by excessive heat. Food for human consumption is routinely heated by baking, boiling and frying to temperatures which destroy most pathogens. Thermal processes often cause undesirable changes in the texture, appearance and nutritional value of foods. Autoclaves generate steam at higher than boiling point and are used to sterilise laboratory glassware, surgical instruments, and, in a growing industry, medical waste. A danger inherent in using high temperatures to destroy microbes, is their incomplete destruction through inadequate procedures with a consequent risk of producing pathogens resistant to heat.\n",
"Because many homeothermic animals use enzymes that are specialized for a narrow range of body temperatures, hypothermia rapidly leads to torpor and then death. Additionally, homeothermy obtained from endothermy is a high energy strategy and many environments will offer lower carrying capacity to these organisms. In cold weather the energy expenditure to maintain body temperature accelerates starvation and may lead to death.\n",
"Extremophiles are organisms that grow best in extremely cold, acidic, basic or hot environments. \"P. fumarii\" is a hyperthermophile, indicating that this organism grows best at extremely high temperatures (70–125 °C). \"P. fumarii\" grows best at 106 °C. Due to the extremely high temperatures this archaea is subjected to, this organism must have extremely stable biomolecules to survive. Without increased stability in the membrane, the cell would fall apart, and too many molecules would flow in and out of the membrane, destroying the chemical gradients the cell uses as energy and letting all the proteins the cell has synthesized diffuse away, stopping its metabolic processes.\n"
] |
If the speed of light is constant, how does it "bounce" off of a mirror. Does'nt that imply that the light slowed to a velocity of zero and reversed its momentum?
|
Well...I'd like to clear up a subtle point in your post's title. You say "if the speed of light is constant" - remember that c is the speed of light *in vacuum*. The speed of light in a material is less than c, and has to do with the material properties that the light is traveling through (it's NOT due to photon absorption and re-emission, like many say).
Mirrors are complicated little things believe it or not. Your average metal mirror behaves the way it does because the the electric field of the incoming light moves the (unbound) electrons in the metal back and forth. The energy from the incoming light is absorbed and makes the electrons wiggle. These wiggling electrons then produce a secondary light wave, which we see as a reflection. This behavior is organized in such a way that we see clear reflections with very little scatter.
[Source](_URL_0_)
|
[
"The formula for radar Doppler shift is the same as that for reflection of light by a moving mirror. There is no need to invoke Einstein's theory of special relativity, because all observations are made in the same frame of reference. The result derived with \"c\" as the speed of light and \"v\" as the target velocity gives the shifted frequency (formula_1) as a function of the original frequency (formula_2) :\n",
"BULLET::::- The excited portion of a reflecting mirror acts as a new source of light and the reflected light has the same velocity \"c\" with respect to the mirror as has original light with respect to its source. (Proposed by Richard Chase Tolman in 1910, although he was a supporter of special relativity).\n",
"Babcock and Bergman (1964) placed rotating glass plates between the mirrors of a common-path interferometer set up in a static Sagnac configuration. If the glass plates behave as new sources of light so that the total speed of light emerging from their surfaces is \"c\" + \"v\", a shift in the interference pattern would be expected. However, there was no such effect which again confirms special relativity, and which again demonstrates the source independence of light speed. This experiment was executed in vacuum, thus extinction effects should play no role.\n",
"Einstein proposed as part of his theory of special relativity that light reflected from a mirror moving close to the speed of light will have higher peak power than the incident light because of temporal compression. Using a dense relativistic electron mirror created from a high-intensity laser pulse and nanometre-scale foil, the frequency of the laser pulse was shown to shift coherently from infrared to the ultraviolet. The results elucidate the reflection process of laser-generated electron mirrors and suggest future research in relativistic mirrors.\n",
"In 2001, Antoine Suarez's team, which included Nicolas Gisin who had participated in the Geneva experiment, reproduced the experiment using mirrors or detectors in motion, allowing them to reverse the order of events across the frames of reference, in accordance with special relativity (this inversion is only possible for events without any causal relationship). The speeds are chosen so that when a photon is reflected or crosses the semi-transparent mirror, the other photon has already crossed or been reflected from the point of view of the frame of reference attached to the mirror. This an \"after-after\" configuration, in which sound waves play the role of semi-transparent mirrors.\n",
"The speed of light is lower in media with an index of refraction greater than that of a vacuum, which is 1. Specifically, its speed is: \"v\" = \"c\"/\"n\", where \"c\" is the speed of light in vacuum, and \"n\" is the index of refraction. This causes a phase shift increase proportional to (\"n\" − 1) × \"length traveled\". If \"k\" is the constant phase shift incurred by passing through a glass plate on which a mirror resides, a total of 2\"k\" phase shift occurs when reflecting from the rear of a mirror. This is because light traveling toward the rear of a mirror will enter the glass plate, incurring \"k\" phase shift, and then reflect from the mirror with no additional phase shift, since only air is now behind the mirror, and travel again back through the glass plate, incurring an additional \"k\" phase shift.\n",
"The object has not changed its velocity before or after the emission. Yet in this frame it has lost some right-momentum to the light. The only way it could have lost momentum is by losing mass. This also solves Poincaré's radiation paradox, discussed above.\n"
] |
slightly new to reddit, why do people post their edits at the bottom of their posts
|
If you edit a post after a number of minutes it puts an asterisk in the header of the post.
Additionally, people generally do it as a form of courtesy, either to not force someone to re-read the entire post and figure out what the altered content is, or to maintain the flow of conversation. That is to say, if you post, and someone replies to your post, and you alter the original post, you can make the reply appear nonsensical. Posting that you have edited the post will clue other people in on why this mismatch may exist, and thus is courteous to both them (by aiding their reading comprehension) and the respondents (by making them look less crazy).
|
[
"An editor's current position is represented with an editor-specific color/cursor, so if another editor happens to be viewing the same slide, they can see edits as they occur. A sidebar chat functionality allows collaborators to discuss edits. The revision history allows users to see the additions made to a document, with each author distinguished by color. Only adjacent revisions can be compared, and users cannot control how frequently revisions are saved. Files can be exported to a user's local computer in a variety of formats, including HTML, .jpg, and PDF.\n",
"The most popular posts from the site's numerous subreddits are visible on the front page to those who browse the site without an account. By default for those users, the front page will display the subreddit r/popular, featuring top-ranked posts across all of Reddit, excluding not-safe-for-work communities and others that are most commonly filtered out by users (even if they are safe for work). The subreddit r/all does not filter topics. Registered users who subscribe to subreddits see the top content from the subreddits to which they subscribe on their personal front pages.\n",
"Reddit released its \"spoiler tags\" feature in January 2017. The feature warns users of potential spoilers in posts and pixelates preview images. Reddit unveiled changes to its public front page, called r/popular, in 2017; the change creates a front page free of potentially adult-oriented content for unregistered users.\n",
"An editor's current position is represented with an editor-specific color/cursor, so if another editor happens to be viewing that part of the document they can see edits as they occur. A sidebar chat functionality allows collaborators to discuss edits. The revision history allows users to see the additions made to a document, with each author distinguished by color. Only adjacent revisions can be compared, and users cannot control how frequently revisions are saved. Files can be exported to a user's local computer in a variety of formats (ODF, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text, Office Open XML). Files can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes.\n",
"Editing operates on several levels. The lowest level, often called line editing, is the stage in the writing process where the writer makes changes in the text to correct errors—such as spelling, subject/verb agreement, verb tense consistency, point of view consistency, mechanical errors, word choice, and word usage (there, their or they're)—and fine-tune his or her style. Having revised the draft for content, the writer's task is now to make changes that will improve the communication with the reader. Depending on the genre, the writer may choose to adhere to the conventions of Standard English. These conventions are still being developed and the rulings on controversial issues may vary depending on the source. For example, Strunk and White's \"Elements of Style\", first published in 1918, is considered by some to be an authority on stylistic conventions, but has been derided by linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum as \"stupid\". A more recent handbook for students is Diana Hacker's \"A Writer's Reference\". An electronic resource is the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), where writers may search a specific issue to find an explanation of grammatical and mechanical conventions.\n",
"Postbacks are commonly seen in edit forms, where the user introduces information in a form and hits \"save\" or \"submit\", causing a postback. The server then refreshes the same page using the information it has just received.\n",
"\"The edits over the week lack some of the narrative flow that a Wired News piece usually contains. The transitions seem a bit choppy, there are too many mentions of companies, and too much dry explication of how wikis work.\n"
] |
what is it about orange juice that dulls the taste of alcohol so well?
|
Ethanol causes a burning sensation because it activates the same [receptors](_URL_0_) as capsaicin. Acids also activate this class of receptors and so drinks like OJ and coke which are acidic will also activate them.
|
[
"Orange soft drinks (especially those without orange juice) often contain very high levels of sodium benzoate, and this often imparts a slight metallic taste to the beverage. Other additives commonly found in orange soft drinks include rosin and sodium hexametaphosphate.\n",
"Common orange juice is made from the sweet orange. Different cultivars (for example, Valencia, Hamlin) have different properties, and a producer may mix cultivar juices to get the desired taste. Orange juice usually varies between shades of orange and yellow, although some ruby red or blood orange varieties are a reddish-orange or even pinkish. This is due to different pigmentation in ruby red oranges.\n",
"The extract of bitter orange (and bitter orange peel) has been marketed as dietary supplement purported to act as a weight-loss aid and appetite suppressant. Bitter orange contains the tyramine metabolites \"N\"-methyltyramine, octopamine and synephrine, substances similar to epinephrine, which act on the α adrenergic receptor to constrict blood vessels and increase blood pressure and heart rate. Several low-quality clinical trials have had results of p-Synephrine (alone or in combination with caffeine or some other substances) increasing weight loss slightly.\n",
"Commercial orange juice with a long shelf life is made by pasteurizing the juice and removing the oxygen from it. This removes much of the taste, necessitating the later addition of a flavor pack, generally made from orange products. Additionally, some juice is further processed by drying and later rehydrating the juice, or by concentrating the juice and later adding water to the concentrate.\n",
"The lack of acid, which protects orange juice against spoilage in other groups, renders them generally unfit for processing as juice, so they are primarily eaten. They remain profitable in areas of local consumption, but rapid spoilage renders them unsuitable for export to major population centres of Europe, Asia, or the United States.\n",
"Bitter orange is also employed in herbal medicine as a stimulant and appetite suppressant, due to its active ingredient, synephrine. Bitter orange supplements have been linked to a number of serious side effects and deaths, and consumer groups advocate that people avoid using the fruit medically. It is still not concluded if bitter orange affects medical conditions of heart and cardiovascular organs, by itself or in formulae with other substances. Standard reference materials are released concerning the properties in bitter orange by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), for ground fruit, extract and solid oral dosage form, along with those packaged together into one item.\n",
"Citrus juices contain flavonoids (especially in the pulp) that may have health benefits. Orange juice is also a source of the antioxidant hesperidin. Because of its citric acid content, orange juice is acidic, with a typical pH of around 3.5.\n"
] |
the difference between discrimination & prejudice?
|
Prejudice is a feeling or an opinion, while discrimination is an actual act. Prejudice of course often leads to discrimination.
For example, if I believe people of a certain ethnicity are likelier to be shop lifters then I am prejudiced against them, but that doesn't mean I discriminate against them. It's discrimination when I act upon it, for example if I were to check every person of that ethnicity before they leave my store to make sure they haven't stolen anything.
|
[
"Discrimination is the selection for unfavorable treatment of an individual or individuals on the basis of: gender, race, color or ethnic or national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, social class, age, or as a result of any conditions or requirements that do not accord with the principles of fairness and natural justice.\n",
"Discrimination is the act of someone being prejudiced towards another. This term is used to highlight the difference in treatment between members of different groups when one group is intentionally singled out and treated worse, or not given the same opportunities. Attitudes toward minorities have been marked by discrimination historically in the United States. Many forms of discrimination have come to be recognized in U.S. society, on the basis of national origin, race, gender, and sexuality in particular.\n",
"Prejudice is often associated with discrimination, which, in the colloquial sense, means the active and explicit exclusion and derogation of minority groups based on preconceived and unfounded judgments. This type of discrimination certainly exists, but it is in no way justified by the presence of evolved prejudices. However, discriminate sociality is an integral part of group living, as different individuals afford different threats and opportunities. For instance, indiscriminate cooperation is inherently unstable because it is easily invaded by cheats and free-riders. Thus, cooperative groups cannot exist without mechanisms to recognize and punish non-cooperators. Indiscriminate association in other domains, such as pathogen avoidance and intergroup conflict, has similar consequences, and indiscriminate social actors will generally have lower fitness than those who are able to respond functionally to the affordances of others.\n",
"Racial discrimination occurs under the RDA when someone is treated less fairly than someone else in a similar situation because of their race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin. Racial discrimination can also occur when a policy or rule appears to treat everyone in the same way but actually has an unfair effect on more people of a particular race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin than others.\n",
"In human social behavior, discrimination is treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction towards, a person based on the group, class, or category to which the person is perceived to belong. These include age, caste, colour, criminal record, height, disability, ethnicity, family status, gender identity, generation, genetic characteristics, marital status, nationality, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. Discrimination consists of treatment of an individual or group, based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group or social category, \"in a way that is worse than the way people are usually treated\". It involves the group's initial reaction or interaction going on to influence the individual's actual behavior towards the group leader or the group, restricting members of one group from opportunities or privileges that are available to another group, leading to the exclusion of the individual or entities based on illogical or irrational decision making.\n",
"Prejudice is defined as unfair negative attitude toward a social group or a member of that group. Prejudices can stem from many of the things that people observe in a different social group that include, but are not limited to, gender, sex, race/ethnicity, or religion. This is pertinent to stereotypes because a stereotype can influence the way people feel toward another group, hence prejudice.\n",
"The term \"racial discrimination\" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.\n"
] |
how are vector illustrations not based on pixels if our screen is made up of pixels?
|
> So even if we're using a software like Adobe Illustrator, isn't a vector line made up of a bunch of small pixels in actuality?
The vector itself is just a bit of math saying "A line exists between point A and point B". The resulting line is *displayed* using pixels, but the underlying mathematical representation means that you can display the same vector on a higher-resolution screen, and it would fully take advantage of the higher resolution by being drawn with more pixels.
If the image itself were stored as pixels, then showing it on a higher resolution monitor would just make the image smaller, and not more detailed.
|
[
"Vector formats are not always appropriate in graphics work and also have numerous disadvantages. For example, devices such as cameras and scanners produce essentially continuous-tone raster graphics that are impractical to convert into vectors, and so for this type of work, an image editor will operate on the pixels rather than on drawing objects defined by mathematical expressions. Comprehensive graphics tools will combine images from vector and raster sources, and may provide editing tools for both, since some parts of an image could come from a camera source, and others could have been drawn using vector tools.\n",
"Vector extraction, or vectorization, offer another approach. Vectorization first creates a resolution-independent vector representation of the graphic to be scaled. Then the resolution-independent version is rendered as a raster image at the desired resolution. This technique is used by Adobe Illustrator, Live Trace, and Inkscape. Scalable Vector Graphics are well suited to simple geometric images, while photographs do not fare well with vectorization due to their complexity.\n",
"For example, in a vector graphics application the user creates drawings out from elements such as lines, rectangles and circles. When such an element is selected on the page, an inspector will show the current size and absolute position on the page of this element with numbers. The user can then change those numbers to change the size or position of the object on the page.\n",
"BULLET::::- Vector data can be displayed as vector graphics used on traditional maps, whereas raster data will appear as an image that may have a blocky appearance for object boundaries. (depending on the resolution of the raster file).\n",
"As opposed to the raster image formats above (where the data describes the characteristics of each individual pixel), vector image formats contain a geometric description which can be rendered smoothly at any desired display size.\n",
"With vector-based tools, the content is stored digitally as resolution-independent mathematical formulae describing lines (open paths), shapes (closed paths), and color fills, strokes or gradients. Vector paths are constructed of anchor points and path segments by using the pointing device to click and drag. Many vector graphics are readily available for download from online databases which can then be edited and incorporated into larger projects. Drawing tools typically create precise lines, shapes and patterns with well-defined edges and are superb for working with complex constructions such as maps and typography.\n",
"An image does not have any structure: it is just a collection of marks on paper, grains in film, or pixels in a bitmap. While such an image is useful, it has some limits. If the image is magnified enough, its artifacts appear. The halftone dots, film grains and pixels become apparent. Images of sharp edges become fuzzy or jagged. See, for example, pixelation. Ideally, a vector image does not have the same problem. Edges and filled areas are represented as mathematical curves or gradients, and they can be magnified arbitrarily.\n"
] |
Have any of the works of Greek & Roman Antiquity been recovered in contemporaneous form, and turned out to differ from their Renaissance-era translations?
|
Not "first editions" (haha), but ancient copies, certainly. The most common avenue for finding ancient copies is via papyri preserved in Egyptian rubbish dumps, or turned into papyrus-mâché and used in sarcophaguses, though papyri have certainly turned up elsewhere too (e.g. in Herculaneum, as you mention).
They're nearly always very fragmentary. Often the surviving fragment preserves no more than a few letters. But yes, they're important sources of textual variants. They're not always *better* than the mediaeval manuscript tradition: transmission errors happened in antiquity too. But earlier witnesses always add more information, so even if there are errors, they're always *informative*.
The number of papyri that have been found varies depending on how popular the text was. For things like the New Testament and Homer, we have thousands of papyrus fragments. For example, we have fragments of at least 136 separate papyri of Euripides, 36 of Sophocles, and 32 of Aeschylus. For early epic, we have 1569 papyri of the *Iliad*, at least 252 of the *Odyssey*, 58 of the *Catalogue of Women*, 40 of the *Theogony*, and 32 of the *Works and Days*.
A very few are relatively intact. There's one 5th/6th cent. CE papyrus that preserves substantial chunks from every book of the *Iliad*, and one 3rd/4th cent. CE papyrus that preserves most of 11 books of the *Odyssey*. A very few texts are known only from papyri: the main ones I know of are Aristotle's *Constitution of the Athenians*, the majority of what survives of the *Catalogue of Women*, and the Derveni papyrus.
As to how they shed light on surviving texts, [I wrote an old post here](_URL_0_) which gives one example of how a papyrus reading affected our understanding of the correct reading of a text. Papyri are and will always continue to be an important avenue for finding new corrections to ancient texts, which is why there are a few journals specifically devoted to papyrology. In a modern critical edition of a text, papyrus readings will normally be annotated in the apparatus (the list of textual variants at the bottom of the page) with the letter *p*, though the exact typography varies from edition to edition (e.g. sometimes an edition will use a lower-case italic *p*; some older editions use a capital *P* in blackletter script).
|
[
"recovery of lost Greek classics (and, to a lesser extent, Arab advancements on them) following the Crusader conquest of the Byzantine heartlands, revitalized medieval philosophy in the Renaissance of the 12th century, just as the refugee Byzantine scholars who migrated to Italy during and following the Turkish conquest of the Byzantines between the 12th and 15th centuries were important in sparking the new linguistic studies of the Renaissance, in newly created academies in Florence and Venice. Humanist scholars searched monastic libraries for ancient manuscripts and recovered Tacitus and other Latin authors. The rediscovery of Vitruvius meant that the architectural principles of Antiquity could be observed once more, and Renaissance artists were encouraged, in the atmosphere of humanist optimism, to excel the achievements of the Ancients, like Apelles, of whom they read.\n",
"Copies of the Greek text still exist, some of which can be found in the Vatican Library and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The manuscripts available are of variable quality, and invariably incomplete. By careful analysis of the translations and originals, hypotheses have been made about the contents of the original text (copies of which are no longer available).\n",
"Although the hope of finding all the lost literary works of antiquity at Oxyrhynchus was not realized, many important Greek texts were found at the site. These include poems of Pindar, fragments of Sappho and Alcaeus, along with larger pieces of Alcman, Ibycus, and Corinna.\n",
"After the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) and the Sack of Constantinople (1204), scholars such as William of Moerbeke gained access to the original Greek texts of scientists and philosophers, including Aristotle, Archimedes, Hero of Alexandria and Proclus, that had been preserved in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, and translated them directly into Latin.\n",
"Modern scholars were in disagreement as to whether any Greek original really existed; but all doubt on the point was removed by the discovery of a fragment in Greek amongst the Tebtunis papyri found by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt in 1899–1900. It revealed that the Latin was a close translation. The other surprise was the discovery, in the library of conte Aurelio Guglielmo Balleani at Jesi, of a manuscript of Dictys, in large part of the ninth century, that was described and collated by C. Annibaldi in 1907.\n",
"In the Byzantine Empire, Ancient and Medieval Greek texts were copied repeatedly; studying these texts was part of Byzantine education. Several collections of transcriptions tried to record the entire body of Greek literature since antiquity. As there had already been extensive exchange with Italian academics since the 14th century, many scholars and a large number of manuscripts found their way to Italy after the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire. Renaissance Italian and Greek humanists set up important collections in Rome, Florence and Venice. The conveyance of Greek by Greek contemporaries also brought about the itacistic tradition of Greek studies in Italy.\n",
"The work as a whole has been lost in the original Greek, but it may be reconstructed from later chronographists of the Byzantine school who made excerpts from the work, especially George Syncellus. The tables of the second part have been completely preserved in a Latin translation by Jerome, and both parts are still extant in an Armenian translation. The loss of the Greek originals has given the Armenian translation a special importance; thus, the first part of Eusebius' \"Chronicle\", of which only a few fragments exist in the Greek, has been preserved entirely in Armenian, though with lacunae. The \"Chronicle\" as preserved extends to the year 325.\n"
] |
why does wine give such wicked hangovers?
|
You've got a mild allergy to the grape in that type of wine.
Switch types and/or color, and drink more water.
Or switch to beer or hard liquor or heroin.
|
[
"Whether fusel alcohol contributes to hangover symptoms is a matter of scientific debate. A Japanese study in 2003 concluded: \"the fusel oil in whisky had no effect on the ethanol-induced emetic response\" in the Asian house shrew. Additionally, consumption of fusel oils with ethanol suppressed subjects' subsequent taste aversion to alcohol, which suggested subjects' hangover symptoms were lessened, according to the journal.\n",
"The wine is purportedly unique in that it causes inebriation not primarily by its alcohol content, but through enzymatic action triggered when one drinks it and then receives significant sun exposure. It is popularly claimed that one can become inebriated at night, regain sobriety by the next day, and then undergo inebriation again in the morning without consuming any more, merely by being exposed to the sun again.\n",
"It is sometimes claimed incorrectly that wine with \"lots of legs\" is sweeter or of a better quality. In fact the intensity of this phenomenon depends only on alcohol content, and it can be eliminated completely by covering the wine glass (which stops the evaporation of the alcohol). British physicist C. V. Boys argues that the biblical injunction, \"Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright\", (Proverbs 23:31) refers to this effect. Since the \"tears of wine\" are most noticeable in wine which has a high alcohol content, the author may be suggesting this as a way to identify wines that should be avoided in the interest of sobriety.\n",
"Ouzo can colloquially be referred to as a particularly strong drink, the cause of this being its sugar content. Sugar delays ethanol absorption in the stomach, and may thus mislead the drinker into thinking that they can drink more as they do not feel tipsy early on. Then the cumulative effect of ethanol appears and the drinker becomes inebriated rather quickly. This is why it is generally considered poor form to drink ouzo \"dry hammer\" (\"ξεροσφύρι\", \"xerosfýri\", an idiomatic expression that means \"drinking alcohol without eating anything\") in Greece. The presence of food, especially fats or oils, in the upper digestive system prolongs the absorption of ethanol and ameliorates alcohol intoxication.\n",
"But from whichever it is made, whether from oats, barley or wheat, it harms the head and the stomach, it causes bad breath and ruins the teeth, it fills the stomach with bad fumes, and as a result anyone who drinks it along with wine becomes drunk quickly; but it does have the property of facilitating urination and makes one's flesh white and smooth.\n",
"While the causes of a hangover are still poorly understood, several factors are known to be involved including acetaldehyde accumulation, changes in the immune system and glucose metabolism, dehydration, metabolic acidosis, disturbed prostaglandin synthesis, increased cardiac output, vasodilation, sleep deprivation and malnutrition. Beverage-specific effects of additives or by-products such as congeners in alcoholic beverages also play an important role. The symptoms occur typically after the intoxicating effect of the alcohol begins to wear off, generally the morning after a night of heavy drinking.\n",
"Several studies have examined whether certain types of alcohol cause worse hangovers. All four studies concluded that darker liquors, which have higher congeners, produced worse hangovers. One even showed that hangovers were worse \"and\" more frequent with darker liquors. In a 2006 study, an average of 14 standard drinks (330 ml each) of beer was needed to produce a hangover, but only 7 to 8 drinks was required for wine or liquor (note that one standard drink has the same amount of alcohol regardless of type). Another study ranked several drinks by their ability to cause a hangover as follows (from low to high): distilled ethanol diluted with fruit juice, beer, vodka, gin, white wine, whisky, rum, red wine and brandy.\n"
] |
Why are triangles, squares, and hexagons the only shapes that can tesselate?
|
Regular polygons are equilateral and equiangular. The only way a regular polygon can tesselate the plane is if some multiple of the interior angle equals 360 degrees. This is the only possible way you can actually fit a multiple of the polygons around each vertex.
The interior angle of an *N*-gon is (1- 2/N)π radians. Some multiple of this angle must be exactly equal to 2π. So the only regular *N*-gons that can tesselate the plate are those *N*-gons for which there is some integer *M* such that
> M = 2N/(N - 2)
The function f(N) = 2N/(N - 2) decreases to 2 as N varies from 3 to infinity, and f(3) = 6. So we need only find those values of *N* that correspond to M = 3, 4, 5, 6. The corresponding values of *N* are N = 6, 4, 10/3, 3. Since 10/3 is not an integer, the only possible regular *N*-gons that can tesselate the plane are the 3-gon (triangle), 4-gon (square), and 6-gon (hexagon).
> I understand that the angles don't allow other shapes to do this, but I would like to understand it from a more conceptual and visual perspective.
Well, all of the relevant concepts are in the proof above. As for a visual, I'm not sure you can get any more insight than just looking at an image of tesselations for the regular polygons ([like this](_URL_1_)) and an attempted tesselation with some other regular polygon ([like this failed regular pentagon tesselation](_URL_0_)). Recall that above we found that f(5) = 10/3 = 3.33. So around each vertex you can fit at most 3 regular pentagons, but there will always be some room left over.
It all comes down to the fact that 360-degrees is not a multiple of the interior angle of any regular polygon other than the triangle, square, and hexagon.
|
[
"Triangles are sturdy; while a rectangle can collapse into a parallelogram from pressure to one of its points, triangles have a natural strength which supports structures against lateral pressures. A triangle will not change shape unless its sides are bent or extended or broken or if its joints break; in essence, each of the three sides supports the other two. A rectangle, in contrast, is more dependent on the strength of its joints in a structural sense. Some innovative designers have proposed making bricks not out of rectangles, but with triangular shapes which can be combined in three dimensions. It is likely that triangles will be used increasingly in new ways as architecture increases in complexity. It is important to remember that triangles are strong in terms of rigidity, but while packed in a tessellating arrangement triangles are not as strong as hexagons under compression (hence the prevalence of hexagonal forms in nature). Tessellated triangles still maintain superior strength for cantilevering however, and this is the basis for one of the strongest man made structures, the tetrahedral truss.\n",
"Early examples of triangles include ornamental work at the open end, often in a scroll pattern. Historically, the triangle has been manufactured from a solid iron and later steel rod and bent into a triangular shape roughly equilateral. In modern times, the scroll pattern has been abandoned and triangles are made from either steel or brass.\n",
"However, the precise geometry of these shapes is not the same. In the alternated octagonal tiling tiling, the sides of the squares and triangles are hyperbolically straight line segments, which do not link up in smooth curves; instead they form polygonal chains with corners. In Escher's woodcut, the sides of the squares and triangles are formed by arcs of hypercycles, which are not straight in hyperbolic geometry, but which connect smoothly to each other without corners.\n",
"Now, suppose we divide our triangle into eight subtriangles. For each consecutive pair of triangles, perform the same overlapping operation we described before to get four new shapes, each consisting of two overlapping triangles. Next, overlap consecutive pairs of these new shapes by shifting their bases over each other partially, so we're left with two shapes, and finally overlap these two in the same way. In the end, we get a shape looking somewhat like a tree, but with an area much smaller than our original triangle.\n",
"Some simple shapes can be put into broad categories. For instance, polygons are classified according to their number of edges as triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, etc. Each of these is divided into smaller categories; triangles can be equilateral, isosceles, obtuse, acute, scalene, etc. while quadrilaterals can be rectangles, rhombi, trapezoids, squares, etc.\n",
"In geometry, the triangular tiling or triangular tessellation is one of the three regular tilings of the Euclidean plane. Because the internal angle of the equilateral triangle is 60 degrees, six triangles at a point occupy a full 360 degrees. The triangular tiling has Schläfli symbol of {3,6}.\n",
"Every triangle is a circumgonal region because it circumscribes the circle known as the incircle of the triangle. Every square is a circumgonal region. In fact, every regular polygon is a circumgonal region, as is more generally every tangential polygon. But not every polygon is a circumgonal region: for example, a rectangle is not. A circumgonal region need not even be a convex polygon: for example, it could consist of three triangular wedges meeting only at the circle's center.\n"
] |
Question from my boy: Are some mammalian tails vestigial, and why haven't they disappeared?
|
Human tails are vestigial because there's no selective pressure against them. In order for natural selection to act to discard a body part (e.g. a tail or appendix), there has to be some evolutionary *reason* to do so. If having a vestigial tail significantly decreased an individual's ability to mate or survive, there would be selection against that trait. Since there is not selection for or against the tail bone or the appendix, they simply remain as mostly useless appendages in our bodies.
As for why they disappeared in humans, at some point there arose selection against a tail. Human ancestors moved out of the trees and thus no longer needed a tail for gripping tree branches, so the selective pressure *for* the tail disappeared and some kind of selective pressure *against* the tail arose. So it became very short. But there was never any reason to completely get rid of it. And in fact, the vestigial does actually serve to protect some of the pelvic organs, so it does have slight selective pressure in its favor.
Hope this helps!
|
[
"The coccyx, or tailbone, is the remnant of a lost tail. All mammals have a tail at some point in their development; in humans, it is present for a period of 4 weeks, during stages 14 to 22 of human embryogenesis. This tail is most prominent in human embryos 31–35 days old. The tailbone, located at the end of the spine, has lost its original function in assisting balance and mobility, though it still serves some secondary functions, such as being an attachment point for muscles, which explains why it has not degraded further. The coccyx serves as an attachment site for tendons, ligaments, and muscles. It also functions as an insertion point of some of the muscles of the pelvic floor.\n",
"Vertebrae from other sections of the tail were found. Although the tip of the tail did not fossilize, some of the smaller vertebrae recovered would have been situated near the end of the tail in life, and these were associated with ossified tendons on the upper and lower sides. In ankylosaurids, these tendons help to stiffen the end of the tail in support of a large, bony tail club. If such a club existed in \"Antarctopelta\", it has yet to be discovered. Six different types of osteoderms were found along with the skeletal remains of \"Antarctopelta\", but very few were articulated with the skeleton, so their placement on the body is largely speculative. They included the base of what would have been a large spike. Flat oblong plates resembled the ones that guarded the neck of the nodosaurid \"Edmontonia rugosidens\". Large circular plates were found associated with smaller, polygonal nodules, perhaps forming a shield over the hips as seen in \"Sauropelta\". Another type of osteoderm was oval-shaped with a keel running down the middle. A few examples of this fifth type were found ossified to the ribs, suggesting that they ran in rows along the flanks of the animal, a very typical pattern among ankylosaurs. The final group consisted mainly of small bony nodules which are often called \"ossicles\", and were probably scattered throughout the body. Several ribs were also found with these ossicles attached.\n",
"Another unusual feature was the presence of tall spines on the bones of the tail. Although these would not have been visible during life, they would have made the tail unusually deep in cross-section. Since the tail was also highly flexible, it is possible that it was used in intra-species signalling, and that the deep shape made it more visible.\n",
"A rat king discovered in 1963 by a farmer named P. van Nijnatten at Rucphen, Netherlands, as published by cryptozoologist M. Schneider, consists of seven rats. X-ray images show formations of callus at the fractures of their tails, which suggests that the animals survived for an extended period of time with their tails tangled.\n",
"The characteristic long tail of most rodents is a feature that has been extensively studied in various rat species models, which suggest three primary functions of this structure: thermoregulation, minor proprioception, and a nocifensive-mediated degloving response. Rodent tails—particularly in rat models—have been implicated with a thermoregulation function that follows from its anatomical construction. This particular tail morphology is evident across the family Muridae, in contrast to the bushier tails of Sciuridae, the squirrel family. The tail is hairless and thin skinned but highly vascularized, thus allowing for efficient countercurrent heat exchange with the environment. The high muscular and connective tissue densities of the tail, along with ample muscle attachment sites along its plentiful caudal vertebrae, facilitate specific proprioceptive senses to help orient the rodent in a three-dimensional environment. Lastly, murids have evolved a unique defense mechanism termed \"degloving\" that allows for escape from predation through the loss of the outermost integumentary layer on the tail. However, this mechanism is associated with multiple pathologies that have been the subject of investigation.\n",
"Tails are mostly a feature of vertebrates; however, some invertebrates such as scorpions also have appendages that can be considered tails. However, only vertebrates are known to have developed prehensile tails. Many mammals with prehensile tails will have a bare patch to aid gripping. This bare patch is known as a \"friction pad.\"\n",
"The tail of \"Dimetrodon\" makes up a large portion of its total body length and includes around 50 caudal vertebrae. Tails were missing or incomplete in the first described skeletons of \"Dimetrodon\"; the only caudal vertebrae known were the eleven closest to the hip. Since these first few caudal vertebrae narrow rapidly as they progress farther from the hip, many paleontologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thought that \"Dimetrodon\" had a very short tail. It was not until 1927 that a largely complete tail of \"Dimetrodon\" was described.\n"
] |
why does inhaling steam seem to clear up clogged sinuses?
|
Think of your mucous as a kind of hydrophilic (strongly attracted to water) slime. If you're sick, suffering from allergies, exposed to irritants, etc... then it can be valuable to move that mucous along faster than it would normally. By inhaling water vapor, you increase the water content of the mucous, and it becomes looser, less sticky and more subject to being cleared.
Another reality of the situation is that often what we perceive to be clogged sinuses due to mucous are actually just inflamed. Steam and warmth can be soothing, especially since dryness or the presence of an irritant is often a cause of that initial inflammation.
|
[
"Many people believe that steam inhalation reduces cold symptoms. There is no evidence suggesting that steam inhalation is effective for treating the common cold. There have been reports of children being badly burned by accidentally spilling the water used for steam inhalation.\n",
"Breathing low-temperature steam such as from a hot shower or gargling can relieve symptoms. There is tentative evidence for nasal irrigation in acute sinusitis, for example during upper respiratory infections. Decongestant nasal sprays containing oxymetazoline may provide relief, but these medications should not be used for more than the recommended period. Longer use may cause rebound sinusitis. It is unclear if nasal irrigation, antihistamines, or decongestants work in children with acute sinusitis.\n",
"Smelling salts release ammonia (NH) gas, which triggers an inhalation reflex (that is, causes the muscles that control breathing to work faster) by irritating the mucous membranes of the nose and lungs.\n",
"The use of cartridges in the contaminated atmosphere leads to saturation of the sorbent (or the dryer — when using catalysts). The concentration of harmful gases in the purified air gradually increases. The ingress of harmful gases in the inhaled air can lead to the reaction of the employee’s sensory system: odor, taste, irritation of the respiratory system, dizziness, headaches, and other health impairments (up to loss of consciousness).\n",
"Acute inhalation injury may result from frequent and widespread use of household cleaning agents and industrial gases (including chlorine and ammonia). The airways and lungs receive continuous first-pass exposure to non-toxic and irritant or toxic gases via inhalation. Irritant gases are those that, on inhalation, dissolve in the water of the respiratory tract mucosa and provoke an inflammatory response, usually from the release of acidic or alkaline radicals. Smoke, chlorine, phosgene, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and ammonia are common irritants.\n",
"If steam is released more quickly, the more vigorous boiling action that results can throw a fine spray of droplets up as \"wet steam\" which can cause damage to piping, engines, turbines and other equipment downstream.\n",
"VapoRub can be inhaled with hot steam. Since VapoRub ointment is an oil-based medication, it should not be used under or inside the nose or inside the mouth, and it should not be swallowed. Any oil-based product can get into the lungs if used improperly.\n"
] |
maslows hierarchy of needs.
|
Basically it talks about what a person can focus time and energy on as one tries to be as complete and satisfied a human as possible.
The idea is that for example it is hard for someone to worry too much about whether they have an artistic outlet if they are worried about how they are going to find food for the night. Or if their spouse is going to beat them tomorrow. Or if they are about to get evicted.
Once you have basic needs (food and shelter) then you can worry about your saftey. Once you are safe and fed, yiu can worry about being loved. Once you feel safe, fed, loved, you can worry about building a meaningful social network. Once you have all that met, you can worry about whether your job is providing a means of self actualization.
It isn't a rigid or linear framework. A kid who isn't safe at home can have even greater need for social network and creative outlet, especially the more we learn about trauma's actual physical impact on the brain and development. Feeling greater esteme can give a woman the courage to risk basic need loss in order to flee a financially secure but unsafe relationship.
But it provides a general outline of prioritization, and a way of understanding why a person may respond or not respond to a situation compared to someone else who has a different circumstance and life experience.
Basic safety social emotional actualization
|
[
"Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper \"A Theory of Human Motivation\" in \"Psychological Review\". Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. He then decided to create a classification system which reflected the universal needs of society as its base and then proceeding to more acquired emotions. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is used to study how humans intrinsically partake in behavioral motivation. Maslow used the terms \"physiological\", \"safety\", \"belonging and love\", \"social needs\" or \"esteem\", and \"self-actualization\" to describe the pattern through which human motivations generally move. This means that in order for motivation to occur at the next level, each level must be satisfied within the individual themselves. Furthermore, this theory is a key foundation in understanding how drive and motivation are correlated when discussing human behavior. Each of these individual levels contains a certain amount of internal sensation that must be met in order for an individual to complete their hierarchy. The goal in Maslow's theory is to attain the fifth level or stage: self-actualization.\n",
"Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental needs at the bottom and the need for self-actualization and transcendence at the top. In other words, the crux of the theory is that individuals’ most basic needs must be met before they become motivated to achieve higher level needs.\n",
"Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs model in 1940-50s USA, and the Hierarchy of Needs theory remains valid today for understanding human motivation, management training, and personal development. Maslow's ideas surrounding the Hierarchy of Needs concern the responsibility of employers to provide a workplace environment that encourages and enables employees to fulfill their own unique potential (self-actualization).\n",
"Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory helps the manager to understand what motivates an employee. By understanding what needs must be met in order for an employee to achieve the highest-level of motivation, managers are then able to get the most out of production. \n",
"Maslow described human needs as ordered in a prepotent hierarchy—a pressing need would need to be mostly satisfied before someone would give their attention to the next highest need. None of his published works included a visual representation of the hierarchy. The pyramidal diagram illustrating the Maslow needs hierarchy may have been created by a psychology textbook publisher as an illustrative device. This now iconic pyramid frequently depicts the spectrum of human needs, both physical and psychological, as accompaniment to articles describing Maslow's needs theory and may give the impression that the Hierarchy of Needs is a fixed and rigid sequence of progression. Yet, starting with the first publication of his theory in 1943, Maslow described human needs as being relatively fluid—with many needs being present in a person simultaneously.\n",
"The higher-order (self-esteem and self-actualization) and lower-order (physiological, safety, and love) needs classification of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is not universal and may vary across cultures due to individual differences and availability of resources in the region or geopolitical entity/country.\n",
"Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a pyramid depicting the levels of human needs, psychological, and physical. When a human being ascends the steps of the pyramid, he reaches self-actualization. Beyond the routine of needs fulfillment, Maslow envisioned moments of extraordinary experience, known as peak experiences, profound moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture, during which a person feels more whole, alive, self-sufficient, and yet a part of the world. This is similar to the flow concept of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Amitai Etzioni points out that Maslow's definition of human needs, even on the highest level, that of self-actualization, is self-centered (i.e. his view of satisfaction or what makes a person happy, does not include service to others or the common good—unless it enriches the self). As implied by its name, self-actualization is highly individualistic and reflects Maslow's premise that the self is “sovereign and inviolable” and entitled to “his or her own tastes, opinions, values, etc.”\n"
] |
Why did China recieve Veto-power at the creation of the SC of the UN?
|
They were 'granted' this at the Conference of Cairo in 1943 by FDR and Churchill. The Americans needed the Chinese to continue the fight against the Japanese on the mainland, since most of the Japanese armed forces were occupied fighting the Chinese United Front (Both the Kwomingtang and the Communists). At Cairo FDR also was already preparing his 'New Order' by trying to get all allied powers to sign off on the United Nations Idea, and by giving China the seat they also participated in the United Nations.
It's also important to note that FDR and Churchill negotiated with Chiang Kai Shek, and as such the veto power in the Security Council went to the Kwomingtang, even after they were forced in exile to Taiwan. Only after the thaw in the '70s did the Pernament seat at the Security council and veto-right go to the Peoples Republic of China, instead of the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Source:
KERREMANS, B. and LAENEN R., International Politics since 1945, Leuven, 1999.
Edit: Spelling Errors
|
[
"In 1971, the Republic of China was expelled from the United Nations, and the Chinese seat was transferred to the People's Republic of China. China first used the veto on 25 August 1972 to block Bangladesh's admission to the United Nations. From 1971 to 2011, China used its veto sparingly, preferring to abstain rather than veto resolutions not directly related to Chinese interests. China turned abstention into an \"art form,\" abstaining on 30% of Security Council Resolutions between 1971 and 1976. Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, China has joined Russia in many double-vetoes. China has not cast a lone veto since 1999.\n",
"The General Assembly vote followed unsuccessful attempts by the U.S. delegation to the United Nations to have the Security Council take action against the Chinese. Exercising his nation's veto power, the Soviet representative on the Security Council consistently blocked the U.S. effort. Turning to the General Assembly, the U.S. delegation called for the United Nations to condemn communist China as an aggressor in Korea.\n",
"In the negotiations building up to the creation of the UN, the veto power was resented by many small countries, and in fact was forced on them by the veto nations – US, UK, China, France and the Soviet Union – through a threat that without the veto there will be no UN. Here is a description by Francis O. Wilcox, an adviser to US delegation to the 1945 conference: \"At San Francisco, the issue was made crystal clear by the leaders of the Big Five: it was either the Charter with the veto or no Charter at all. Senator Connally [from the US delegation] dramatically tore up a copy of the Charter during one of his speeches and reminded the small states that they would be guilty of that same act if they opposed the unanimity principle. 'You may, if you wish,' he said, 'go home from this Conference and say that you have defeated the veto. But what will be your answer when you are asked: \"Where is the Charter\"?\n",
"At first Iran did not originally support China's bid for United Nations membership but did not veto. It wasn't until 1969 that Iran displayed open support for China's membership. Now, Iran relies on China's membership and especially Chinese veto power on the Security Council to protect it from US-led sanctions and attacks. \n",
"In October 1971, when the United Nations general assembly voted to expel the Republic of China and to give China's seat to the People's Republic of China, Chennault as one of the leaders of the China Lobby was involved in an unsuccessful effort to stop the expulsion. In a speech at the time, Chennault said \"let's hope the United Nations doesn't end up like the League of Nations...Its effectiveness is in grave doubt...Fortunately, the big events cannot be settled in the UN anyway\". Chennault told the press about the UN giving China's seat to the People's Republic: \"I consider this an anti-American vote and I question if the American people will continue to give...financial support to this world organization\". In the 1972 election, Chennault raised $90, 000 (about $375, 000 dollars in today's money) for the Nixon reelection campaign.\n",
"Debate over China's representation with the United nations began in 1949. The Communist Party of China took over the country's mainland, while the Nationalists moved to the island of Taiwan. The UN seat of China was held by the Nationalist government of the Republic of China, but conflict arose on which government should hold the China seat. The Soviet Union supported the communist party, leading to conflict with the West. The Security Council sided with the United States and saw the Communist government of People's Republic of China (PRC) as illegitimate, and prevented it from entering the UN until 1971. Before the China seat was transferred to the Communist government of PRC in 1971, the Soviet Union was one of sixteen states that viewed it as being the legitimate government.\n",
"China holds a permanent seat, which affords it veto power, on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Prior to 1971, the Republic of China on Taiwan held China's UN seat, but, as of that date, the People's Republic of China successfully lobbied for Taiwan's removal from the UN and took control of the seat, supported by Soviet Union as well as communist states, United Kingdom, France, and other Western European states, and the Third World countries like India.\n"
] |
How close could i get to building a modern day jet engine with the materials and techniques used at the time of the Wright brothers' first flight?
|
It depends on which modern day jet engine you're talking about.
A real actual [turbofan](_URL_4_) or [turbojet](_URL_2_) like on a jet airliner, no way. The tolerances for heat and stress just weren't available in 1903. [Turbine Blades are often the limiting part of the engine](_URL_1_) and are generally made form exotic materials and are processed in ways to make them more durable. Early Engine designs suffered from [issues in the combustion section of the engine](_URL_1_#Materials) which didn't get properly worked out until the 1940's
Now a [pulsejet](_URL_0_), that should have been obtainable but not really all that usefull for air travel.
*edit: Missed, a comma.
|
[
"BULLET::::- The aircraft engine that will power the Wright brothers' first airplane later in 1903 is run for the first time in Dayton, Ohio, United States. It is the first successful attempt to build a heavier-than-air aircraft engine.\n",
"The Wright brothers flights in 1903 are recognized by the \"Fédération Aéronautique Internationale\" (FAI), the standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics, as \"the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight\". By 1905, the Wright Flyer III was capable of fully controllable, stable flight for substantial periods. The Wright brothers credited Otto Lilienthal as a major inspiration for their decision to pursue manned flight.\n",
"In March 1941 Chairman of the NACA Vannevar Bush asked the then 82-year-old Durand to head a committee to study and develop jet propulsion for aircraft. The committee was composed of members from General Electric, Westinghouse, and Allis-Chalmers. The committee agreed early that the three companies would work separately developing jet engines to promote diversity in design.\n",
"The Wright brothers' flights in 1903 with their \"Flyer I\" are recognized by the \"Fédération Aéronautique Internationale\" (FAI), the standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics, as \"the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight\". By 1905, the Wright Flyer III was capable of fully controllable, stable flight for substantial periods.\n",
"Only a decade after the successful flights by the Wright brothers, there was extensive development of aeronautical engineering through development of military aircraft that were used in World War I. Meanwhile, research to provide fundamental background science continued by combining theoretical physics with experiments.\n",
"Under his guidance, the company worked on new technology for building jet engines solely from reinforced plastics. This technology was later used in the production of the RB211 engine; its fan blades were originally made from plastic reinforced with carbon fibre. However, during a test in which a chicken was thrown into the engine at high speed, to simulate birds flying into the engine during flight, the composite blades shattered and were subsequently replaced with titanium ones in the final design.\n",
"The P208.01 was developed in 1944, when in Germany there were already jet aircraft in production. The decision to fit a conventional engine to the aircraft was made because the existing jet engines had not yet reached the desired performance. Thus the project went ahead in such a way that the design could be re-fitted with a jet engine when the technical difficulties were solved, eventually leading to the Blohm & Voss P 212 jet aircraft project.\n"
] |
What number would our number system have to be based on for PI to be equal to 3.2?
|
If b is the base, then you'd need pi=3+2/b. Solve for b to get b=2/(pi-3). This is closest to 14, and in base 14 pi is 3.1D ish, where D is 13, so it's the base 14 equivalent of 3.19
|
[
"The spectator's 3-digit number can be written as 100 × A + 10 × B + 1 × C, and its reversal as 100 × C + 10 × B + 1 × A, where 1 ≤ A ≤ 9, 0 ≤ B ≤ 9 and 1 ≤ C ≤ 9. (For convenience, we assume A C; if A C, we first swap A and C.) Their difference is 99 × (A − C). Note that if A − C is 0 or 1, the difference is 0 or 99, respectively, and we do not get a 3-digit number for the next step.\n",
"It has been conjectured that there are only a finite number of numbers with only digits in the 2-9 interval whose multiplicative digital root is not 0; the largest of these is 77,333,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222 (44 digits.)\n",
"While the PiHex project calculated the least significant digits of pi ever attempted in any base, the second place is held by Peter Trueb who computed some 22+ trillion digits in 2016 and third place by \"houkouonchi\" who derived the 13.3 trillionth digit in base 10.\n",
"292 = 2·73, noncototient, untouchable number. The continued fraction representation of pi is [3; 7, 15, 1, 292, 1, 1, 1, 2...]; the convergent obtained by truncating before the surprisingly large term 292 yields the excellent rational approximation 355/113 to pi, repdigit in base 8 (444).\n",
"That is, for every prime number \"p\" greater than 3, one has the modular arithmetic relations that either \"p\" ≡ 1 or 5 (mod 6) (that is, 6 divides either \"p\" − 1 or \"p\" − 5); the final digit is a 1 or a 5. This is proved by contradiction.\n",
"The sum of the two numbers is 10 + 1. The smaller of these two numbers may be less than 10; for example with \"k\" = 4 the two numbers are 9376 and 625. In this case there is only one \"k\" digit automorphic number; the smaller number could only form a \"k\"-digit automorphic number if a leading 0 were added to its digits.\n",
"If the last digit in the number is 0, then the result will be the remaining digits multiplied by 2. For example, the number 40 ends in a zero (0), so take the remaining digits (4) and multiply that by two (4 × 2 = 8). The result is the same as the result of 40 divided by 5(40/5 = 8).\n"
] |
In this video of the tsunami in Japan there is a white cloud moving out of the water and disappearing. What is it?
|
You can see it happen at around the [10 min 32 sec mark](_URL_0_) too (just a little bit to the left of the spot in your video, under the tree).
Maybe it's a punctured tank of gas, like propane. It's venting gas all the time, it just looks like that when it's above water.
|
[
"The image depicts an enormous wave threatening three boats off the coast of the town of Kanagawa (the present-day city of Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture) while Mount Fuji rises in the background. While sometimes assumed to be a tsunami, the wave is more likely to be a large rogue wave. As in many of the prints in the series, it depicts the area around Mount Fuji under particular conditions, and the mountain itself appears in the background. Throughout the series are dramatic uses of Berlin blue pigment.\n",
"Some of the most iconic footage of the tsunami, repeatedly broadcast worldwide, was shot in Miyako. It shows a dark black wave cresting and overflowing a floodwall and tossing cars, followed by a fishing ship capsizing as it hit the submerged floodwall and then crushed as it was forced beneath a bridge.\n",
"The most famous single image from the series is widely known in English as \"The Great Wave off Kanagawa\". It depicts three boats being threatened by a large wave while Mount Fuji rises in the background. While sometimes assumed to be a tsunami, the wave is more likely to be an exceptionally large storm wave.\n",
"When the Japan Coast Guard investigates an abandoned yacht in Tokyo Bay, their boat is destroyed and the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line is flooded. After seeing a viral video of the incident, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Rando Yaguchi theorizes that it was caused by a living creature. His theory is confirmed when news reports show a massive tail emerging from the ocean. Shortly thereafter, the creature moves inland and crawls through the Kamata district of Tokyo in the midst of inadequate evacuation. The creature leaves a path of destruction and numerous casualties, and evolves into a bipedal red-skinned form before it begins to overheat and returns to the sea. The government officials focus on military strategy and civilian safety, while Yaguchi is put in charge of a task force to research the creature. Due to high radiation readings, the group theorizes that it is energized by nuclear fission. The U.S. sends a special envoy, Kayoco Anne Patterson, who reveals that a disgraced, vehemently anti-nuclear zoology professor, Goro Maki, had been studying mutations caused by radioactive contamination and theorized the appearance of the creature, but he is disbelieved by both American and Japanese scientific circles. The U.S. then prevented him from making his conclusions public. The abandoned yacht discovered in Tokyo Bay was Maki's, and he left his research notes, jumbled into a code, in it before disappearing.\n",
"In 2012 directors Philip Martin and Gaku Narita teamed up to create \"Japan in a Day\" which accounts of the aftermath from Japan's devastating tsunami in 2011 featuring YouTube videos shot by survivors living in and near the affected areas.\n",
"The music video begins with Rain in a room with a light representing the sun rising. Then he is shown coming down a helicopter with wings and looking around. The atmosphere suggests a war has just happened so he has a very pained face. The scene changes and he is walking to a clearing in the wreckage without wings and soldiers are coming out of the rubble. The rest is a dance interlude.\n",
"The video is shot as one long take, shot in a mostly dark room. Ocean sits in the room, smoking an unspecified drug. Eventually, he gets up and begins to smear an unknown substance onto his face. Random shots of pandas and rain forest imagery are also spliced into the video, and it ends with Ocean being slapped by the ghostly image of a woman. MTV further summarized the video; \"Ocean is surrounded by ghostly incarnations of beautiful women, tigers and pandas. At one point, Ocean smears what appears to be novocaine — or Procaine — on his solemn-looking face.\" Supposedly, it required several takes to achieve the correct angle for the slapping moment, and the spliced images were placed in the video because Ocean asked the director whether or not they \"can we put some kind of Asian-rain-forest stuff in there?\" \"Billboard\" wrote that the video was \"minimalist\" and \"eerie\". Pitchfork named the video amongst the best of the year.\n"
] |
why is it illegal to download movies/music/games/etc, but people can sell used copies? either way the company isn't getting a cut after the first time.
|
First off, the difference is that a digital copy is endlessly duplicable, while a physical item changes hands -- if you sell a CD, you no longer have access to that CD. But you could copy a music or video file and still have that media while also selling it.
Secondly, there are laws that define "first-sale doctrine" -- that specifically state one can sell, rent, loan, destroy, give away, etc. something once they purchase it. The company that produces it loses rights to dictate how product is used once bought. But this applies to physical items, not electronic media. So you can rent a DVD if you buy it for your video store, or your can donate that old Abercrombie logo sweatshirt to the homeless and there's nothing that the producer can do to stop that... but the law doesn't say you can duplicate an MP3.
|
[
"A 2009 court case, \"United States v. Dove,\" ruled that the content industry equation of lost sales with illegal downloads is not valid, with the judge noting \"Those who download movies and music for free would not necessarily purchase those movies and music at the full purchase price... although it is true that someone who copies a digital version of a sound recording has little incentive to purchase the recording through legitimate means, it does not necessarily follow that the downloader would have made a legitimate purchase if the recording had not been available for free.\"\n",
"Street vendors in countries where there is little enforcement of copyright law, particularly in Asia and Latin America, often sell deeply discounted copies of films, music CDs, and computer software such as video games, sometimes even before the official release of the title. A determined counterfeiter with a few hundred dollars can make copies that are digitally identical to an original and face no loss in quality; innovations in consumer DVD and CD writers and the widespread availability of cracks on the Internet for most forms of copy protection technology make this cheap and easy to do.\n",
"Another issue is that because many people in the world illegally download music because they cannot afford to purchase legitimate copies, not every illegal download necessarily equates to a lost sale. This has some effect on music sales, but as Lawrence Lessig points out, there is wide asymmetry between the estimated volume of illegal downloading and the projected loss of sales:\n",
"BULLET::::- Online stores charge for downloading songs and other content, whereas illegal file sharing does not have any fees (although illegal song downloaders may face fines and prosecution in some jurisdictions and illegal files may contain computer viruses)\n",
"Some record stores sell unauthorized copies of artists’ music for as little as $4. This has been hard on international and Chinese record industries such as the Music Copyright Society of China, with revenues dropping 90 percent and new release sales falling about 50 percent since 2005. There are also Chinese-based peer-to-peer services assisting in large-scale illegal file-sharing, according to the IFPI. In 2005, the IFPI reported more than 350 million unauthorized discs were sold and the physical copyright infringement value totalled about $410 million. Most of these illegal sites or services offer songs for free, generating\n",
"While the unauthorized copying - uploading - of complete copyrighted works such as books, movies, or software is illegal under the Act, the situation regarding music files is more complex, due to the Private Copying exemption.\n",
"\"There are websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them. This website has been permanently shut down by court order because it facilitates the illegal downloading of copyrighted motion pictures. The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity. Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft, and is not anonymous. Stealing movies leaves a trail. The only way not to get caught is to stop.\"\n"
] |
Do we know when certain food and drink pairings first became popular? Eggs and bacon? Wine and cheese? Etc
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This question has been removed because it's [an "in your era" or "throughout history" question](_URL_0_), which are not appropriate for this subreddit. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again.
|
[
"Although the bacon and egg combination is not unique to any country, its use in modern cooking is notable in New Zealand and Canada. Recipes for it have been found as early as \"The Experienced English Housekeeper\" in 1769.\n",
"The Ancient Romans were the first to understand the binding properties of eggs. During the Middle Ages, the first custard pies, as we know them, began to appear. Initially, custards were used only as fillings for pies, pastries and tarts. Both Europe and Asia had recipes that contained custards. The word custard is derived from ‘crustade’ which is a tart with a crust. After the 16th century, custards began to be used in individual dishes rather than as a filling in crusts.\n",
"Many pairings that are considered \"classics\" today emerged from the centuries-old relationship between a region's cuisine and their wines. In Europe, lamb was a staple meat of the diet for many areas that today are leading wine regions. The red wines of regions such as Bordeaux, Greece, Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Rhone and Provence are considered classic pairings with the lamb dishes found in the local cuisines of those regions. In Italy, the intimate connection between food and wine is deeply embedded in the culture and is exemplified by the country's wine. Historically, Italians rarely dined without wine and a region's wine was crafted to be \"food friendly\", often with bright acidity. While some Italian wines may seem tannic, lean or tart by themselves they often will show a very different profile when paired with boldly flavored Italian foods.\n",
"\"While culinary historians debate its exact lineage, most agree eggnog originated from the early medieval\" British drink called posset, which was made with hot milk that was curdled with wine or ale and flavoured with spices. In the Middle Ages, posset was used as a cold and flu remedy. Posset was popular from medieval times to the 19th century. Eggs were added to some posset recipes; according to \"Time\" magazine, by the \"...13th century, monks were known to drink a posset with eggs and figs.\" A 17th century recipe for \"My Lord of Carlisle’s Sack-Posset\" uses a heated mixture of cream, whole cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, eighteen egg yolks, eight egg whites, and one pint of Sack wine (a fortified white wine related to sherry). At the end, sugar, ambergris and animal musk are stirred in. Posset was traditionally served in two-handled pots. The aristocracy had costly posset pots made from silver.\n",
"There have been some historical anecdotes that have related to food and wine pairing before modern times. One anecdote often attributed to British wine merchants is \"\"Buy on an apple and sell on cheese\"\" meaning that if a wine tastes good when paired with a raw, uncooked apple it must be truly good and pairing any wine with cheese will make it more palatable to the average consumer and easier to sell. The principles behind this anecdote lies in the food pairing properties of both fruit and cheeses. Fruits that are high in sugar and acidity (such as the malic acid in green apples) can make wines taste metallic and thin bodied. In contrast, hard cheeses such as cheddar can soften the tannins in wines and make them taste fuller and fruitier.\n",
"The addition of pineapple to the traditional mix of tomato sauce and cheese, sometimes with ham or sometimes with bacon, soon became popular locally and eventually became a staple offering of pizzerias around the world.\n",
"Bacon and eggs is a similar dish, as is Eggs Benedict, which is prepared using bacon, Canadian bacon or ham and poached eggs as main ingredients. Spanish eggs consists of ham and eggs served atop heavily seasoned boiled rice. Ham and eggs are two of the main ingredients in the Denver omelette.\n"
] |
why do pain killers help some types of pain, but not others?
|
Different kinds of pain killers (analgesics) react in the body in different ways so you need to identify what's causing the pain to effectively treat it. Basically it's a combination of the type of pain (Cancer/Inflammatory/Neuropathic/Nociceptive) and the severity of said pain.
|
[
"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",
"BULLET::::- Opioids: Morphine sulphate tablets and other opioid painkillers work by mimicking the action of naturally occurring pain-reducing chemicals called \"endorphins\". There are different long acting and short acting medications that can be used alone or in combination to provide appropriate pain control.\n",
"Various nonopioid medicines are used, depending on whether the pain originates from tissue damage or is neuropathic. Limited evidence suggests that chronic pain from tissue inflammation or damage (as in rheumatoid arthritis and cancer pain) is best treated with opioids, while for neuropathic pain (pain caused by a damaged or dysfunctional nervous system) other drugs may be more effective, such as tricyclic antidepressants, serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, and anticonvulsants. Because of weak evidence, the best approach is not clear when treating many types of pain, and doctors must rely on their own clinical experience. Doctors often cannot predict who will use opioids just for pain management and who will go on to develop addiction, and cannot always distinguish between those who are and those who are not seeking opioids due primarily to an existing addiction. Withholding, interrupting or withdrawing opioid treatment in people who benefit from it can cause harm.\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",
"Drugs of other types can be used to help opioids combat certain types of pain, for example, amitriptyline is prescribed for chronic muscular pain in the arms, legs, neck and lower back with an opiate, or sometimes without it and/or with an NSAID.\n",
"BULLET::::- Patients suffering from chronic pain that are prescribed opioid painkillers (such as morphine) may build up a tolerance to the effect of the painkillers, requiring higher doses to achieve the same pain reducing effect. This risky practice of dose escalation can lead to drug overdoses.\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"
] |
Why was Yugoslavia formed after WW1, rather than re-establishing the Kingdom of Serbia?
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My first comment here. Hope my answer will suffice!
Yes, there was strong local desire for such a state before the First World War. Yugoslavism became a distinguished segment of the wider Pan-Slavic movement around the 17th century. It was popularised by the Illyrian movement in the 19th century and afterwards, throughout the territories populated by South Slavs, the idea of Yugoslavism was growing strong, helped by the general dissatisfaction with the Austro-Hungarian government.
In Croatia, the Serbs and Croats who lived under Austro-Hungarian thrall were often grouped together as they considered one another to be cast in the same mold. In the early 20th century, these stances were most explicitly espoused by the disciples of Svetozar Pribićević, the leader of the Serb Independent Party (Serbo-Croatian: *Srpska samostalna stranka*) who advocated for the creation of a Yugoslav state, thus welcoming collaboration with Croatian politicians, which resulted in the SIP merging into the Croat-Serb Coalition. The joint interests and friendship between the two parties culminated in 1905 when two documents were signed - the Rijeka Resolution and the Zadar Resolution, which both proclaimed solidarity and equality between the Croats and the Serbs. On the other hand, the Croatian Party of Rights, led by the likes of Ante Starčević and Josip Frank, opposed the idea of Yugoslavism with zeal.
In the Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, following the Bosnian Crisis, the locals were very much dissatisfied with Béni Kállay's administration, and the Bosnian intelligentsia rallied behind pan-Serbian and anti-Austrian publications like *The Bosnian Vila* and *Zora* (Dawn), which helped preserve Serbian national identity. Such a sentiment was supported by many eminent authors, politicians and poets of the time, with the poet and politician Osman Đikić, a Serb Muslim, being an example. This was the ideological basis of the Young Bosnia organisation, frequented by many young intellectuals of the time, an organisation now famous primarily for assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
In the independent Kingdom of Serbia, the Yugoslav nationalists were influenced by the *Risorgimento* (Italian unification) and considered Serbia to be responsible of emulating the Kingdom of Piedmont by uniting all South Slavs into one state henceforth known as Yugoslavia. Slovene nationalists like Anton Korošec espoused pro-unification ideas, believing the unification to be a means of freeing Slovenia from Austro-Hungarian control. How deeply ingrained the idea of Yugoslavism was within the nationalist sentience of the time is best exemplified by this Gavrilo Princip quote: *'I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be free from Austria.'*
So, that said, the idea was rooted within the collective conscious of a majority of South Slavs of the era, but after the Great War, Yugoslavia wasn't immediately formed. The Corfu Declaration made the Serbian pro-unification intentions rather clear, and once the war ended the Kingdom of Serbia merged with the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and once the pro-Serbian Whites have outnumbered the pro-independence Greens in the Podgorica Assembly, so did Serbia merge with the Kingdom of Montenegro thus creating the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, separated into nine *banovinas*. The newly-formed state was no stranger to separatist and nationalist turmoil, which is why King Aleksandar I changed the name of the country to Yugoslavia in 1929, and started working on eradicating the national identities of Yugoslav peoples from existence for the sake of creating a unified state, not separated by neither religion nor ethnicity. This process was later continued by the communists but has evidently failed to take hold, as shortly after Tito's death, Yugoslavia again found itself divided by separatism and nationalism promoted by all the parties involved in the conflict.
Sources:
V. Ćorović - *Istorija Srba*
J. R. Lampe - *Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country*
Z. Pavlović & J. Bosnić - *Mozaik prošlosti*
Lj. Antić - *Prvi svjetski rat i Hrvati*
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[
"The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was drawn into World War II following the Yugoslav coup d'état of 27 March 1941 and the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia that followed on 6 April 1941. Yugoslavia was quickly defeated and dismembered by the Axis powers, and before the Yugoslavs had even surrendered, the Germans orchestrated the creation of a puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (, NDH). The NDH government was formed by the Ustaše, a Croatian fascist and ultranationalist movement. Italy annexed much of Dalmatia and some other parts of Yugoslav territory, and the NDH was divided into German and Italian zones of influence along what became known as the Vienna Line. The Rome Treaties of 18 May formalised the Italian annexations, largely fixed the borders of the NDH, and put in place military arrangements. These specified that a significant area in the Italian zone of influence (known as Zone II) was to be demilitarised, with only NDH civilian administration permitted. A smaller area of the Italian zone of influence (Zone III) was free from such restrictions. Once these agreements were concluded, Italian troops withdrew from the NDH, and were deployed only in the annexed areas (Zone I). The region of Lika fell within Zone II.\n",
"The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed on 1 December 1918 from the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, itself formed from the merger of Austro-Hungarian Empire territories with the formerly-independent Kingdom of Serbia. Although Catholic opinion was divided in Bosnia and Herzegovina about the union with Serbia after the unification, Catholic bishops (including Stadler) encouraged priests and the laity to be loyal to the new government. In their view, in the new state Croats would have national rights and the Church would be free. When this did not happen, relations between church and state cooled and the clergy resisted the government.\n",
"In 1944, the Soviet Red Army and Yugoslav Partisans expelled all Axis troops from Serbia and the area was included into the restored Yugoslavia. Unlike pre-war Yugoslavia, which had a centralist system of government, the post-war Yugoslavia was established as a federation of six equal republics. One of the republics was Serbia, which had two autonomous provinces: Vojvodina and Kosovo. From the 1974 Yugoslav constitution, the autonomous provinces of Serbia gained extensive political rights and were represented separately from Serbia in some areas of federal government, although they were still de jure subordinated to Serbia.\n",
"The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers in 1941 and abolished as a result of World War II. It was succeeded by Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, proclaimed in 1943 by the Yugoslav Partisans resistance movement. When a communist government was established in 1946, the country was renamed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1963, it was renamed again, becoming the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). This was the largest Yugoslav state, with Istria and Rijeka having been added after World War II.\n",
"After the Allied victory in World War II, Yugoslavia was set up as a federation of six republics, with borders drawn along ethnic and historical lines: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. In addition, two autonomous provinces were established within Serbia: Vojvodina and Kosovo. Each of the republics had its own branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia party and a ruling elite, and any tensions were solved on the federal level. The Yugoslav model of state organisation, as well as a \"middle way\" between planned and liberal economy, had been a relative success, and the country experienced a period of strong economic growth and relative political stability up to the 1980s, under the rule of president-for-life Josip Broz Tito. After his death in 1980, the weakened system of federal government was left unable to cope with rising economic and political challenges.\n",
"As the Yugoslav Wars raged through Croatia and Bosnia, the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, which remained relatively untouched by the war, formed a rump state known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in 1992. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia aspired to be a sole legal successor to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but those claims were opposed by the other former republics. The United Nations also denied its request to automatically continue the membership of the former state. In 2000, Milosevic was prosecuted for atrocities committed in his ten-year rule in Serbia and the Yugoslav Wars. Eventually, after the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević from power as president of the federation in 2000, the country dropped those aspirations, accepted the opinion of the Badinter Arbitration Committee about shared succession, and reapplied for and gained UN membership on 2 November 2000. From 1992 to 2000, some countries, including the United States, had referred to the FRY as \"Serbia and Montenegro\" as they viewed its claim to Yugoslavia's successorship as illegitimate. In April 2001, the five successor states extant at the time drafted an Agreement on Succession Issues, signing the agreement in June 2001. Marking an important transition in its history, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was officially renamed Serbia and Montenegro in 2003.\n",
"The nation of Yugoslavia was formed on December 1, 1918 as a result of the realignment of nations and national boundaries in Europe in the aftermath of World War I. The nation was first named the \"Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes\" and was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. The kingdom occupied the area in the Balkans comprising the present-day states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and most of present-day Slovenia and Croatia. The United States recognized the newly formed nation and commissioned its first envoy to the kingdom on July 17, 1919. Previously the U.S. had had an envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary who was commissioned to Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia while resident in Bucharest, Romania. Towards the end of the 1930s, the diplomatic relations between Belgrade and Washington were raised from ministerial to the ambassadorial level.\n"
] |
During the period of westward expansion, were there any U.S. or European leaders arguing against the appropriation of the land or taking up the cause of indigenous peoples?
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In the 1832 Supreme Court case Worcester v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall, in the majority opinion, ruled that the Cherokee nation was its own distinct community and not subject to the laws of a particular state. How, Andrew Jackson chose not to enforce that ruling, thus paving the way for the Trail of Tears.
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[
"In the case of Public Lands, European colonizers forcibly relocated many Southeastern Native American tribes. One argument against reparations is that in assigning public lands to African-Americans for the enslavement of their ancestors, a greater and further wrong would be committed against the Southeastern Native Americans who have ancestral claims and treaty rights to that same land.\n",
"The government, through a series of treaties, 1789-1808-1812-1842, decided to push them farther west. Walk-in-the-Water petitioned that \"they had peacefully cultivated the land they had lived on from time immemorial. They allege that they have built valuable houses and improvements on the land and have learned the use of the plow, etc., and they pray for a title which shall prevent their being dispossessed at the end of fifty years as provided by the act of Congress.\" In response to this plea, the government, in 1818, negotiated a treaty granting a tract of of land on the Huron River.\n",
"The indigenous lost most of their property rights and most of the land became haciendas, such as the Hacienda of \"San Carlos Borromeo\" and the \"Hacienda of San Nicolás\". Most would not have property rights again until 1874. However, during the rule of Porfirio Díaz in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many indigenous claims would be thwarted in favor of the haciendas. Total restoration of rights came with the end of the Mexican Revolution.\n",
"The completion of colonial conquest of much of the world (see the Scramble for Africa), the devastation of World War I and World War II, and the alignment of both the United States and the Soviet Union with the principle of self-determination led to the abandonment of the right of conquest in formal international law. The 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact, the post-1945 Nuremberg Trials, the UN Charter, and the UN role in decolonization saw the progressive dismantling of this principle. Simultaneously, the UN Charter's guarantee of the \"territorial integrity\" of member states effectively froze out claims against prior conquests from this process.\n",
"In her work \"An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States\", Dunbar-Ortiz condemns the Discovery Doctrine and the colonialism that devastated Native American populations in the United States. She compares this form of religious bigotry to the modern-day conquests of al-Qaeda. She states that with much of the current land within the United States was taken by aggression and oppression, \"Native peoples have vast claims to reparations and restitution,\" yet \"[n]o monetary amount can compensate for lands illegally seized, particularly those sacred lands necessary for Indigenous peoples to regain social coherence.\"\n",
"Beginning with the colonial era and intensifying after the South American states had gained their independence, large landowners appropriated all or most of the land and forced the native population into bondage (known in Ecuador as \"Huasipungo\", from Kichwa \"wasipunku\", “front door”). Harsh conditions of exploitation repeatedly led to revolts by the indigenous farmers, which were forcibly suppressed. The largest of these revolts occurred 1780–1781 under the leadership of José Gabriel Kunturkanki.\n",
"The young United States government, deeply in debt following the Revolutionary War and lacking authority to tax under the Articles of Confederation, planned to raise revenue from the methodical sale of land in the Northwest Territory. This plan necessarily called for the removal of both Native American villages and squatters from lands west of Appalachia, loosely, the territory called \"Ohio Country\" and beyond. Difficulties with Native American tribes and a supporting British military presence presented continuing obstacles for American expansion. \n"
] |
how to buy a house, and what "refinancing a mortgage" is or "taking out a second mortgage".
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You find a house that you like and make an offer to buy it. With that offer, you include something called "earnest money" that goes directly to the sellers, typically $1000-$2000. This money shows that you are serious about buying the house. If the seller accepts your offer, you will sign a contract to buy with a specific closing date. If you decide to break this contract for any reason other than it fails inspection, you lose the earnest money.
Between now and the closing date, you will have the house inspected. You'll also line up financing... this is the loan you'll need if you don't have enough for the house in cash. Typically you have to put down 10%, but some lenders will let you put down 3.5%. If you put down less than 20%, you have to pay PMI or private mortgage insurance every month.
On the closing day, you will go to an attorney's office and they will have drafted all of the paperwork for you, and typically done all of the bureaucratic legwork. Most of this is known as "closing costs" and typically runs around $4000. You sign the paperwork and the house is technically ready to move into.
Your lender then begins charging you your monthly payment for the loan. At first, your payments go mostly towards paying interest on the loan. This is bad because you're not paying down much of what you borrowed to buy the house. However, the money you use to pay interest is tax deductible, so a new home owner will see a nice tax credit. You can see how much principle you're paying down on something called an amortization schedule that you'll probably receive from your lender.
People refinance their mortgage to change from their existing mortgage to one with different and better terms. Sometimes they will refinance to get a better interest rate, as many people are doing now. There are typical closing costs involved, just like when you bought the house, so you have to weigh if paying those are worth it.
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[
"When refinancing, if the homeowner wants to refinance the first mortgage and keep the second mortgage, the homeowner has to request a subordination from the second lender to let the new first lender step into the first lien holder position.\n",
"A mortgage loan or, simply, mortgage () is used either by purchasers of real property to raise funds to buy real estate, or alternatively by existing property owners to raise funds for any purpose, while putting a lien on the property being mortgaged. The loan is \"secured\" on the borrower's property through a process known as mortgage origination. This means that a legal mechanism is put into place which allows the lender to take possession and sell the secured property (\"foreclosure\" or \"repossession\") to pay off the loan in the event the borrower defaults on the loan or otherwise fails to abide by its terms. The word \"mortgage\" is derived from a Law French term used in Britain in the Middle Ages meaning \"death pledge\" and refers to the pledge ending (dying) when either the obligation is fulfilled or the property is taken through foreclosure. A mortgage can also be described as \"a borrower giving consideration in the form of a collateral for a benefit (loan)\".\n",
"The deletion of a mortgage is only possible with the creditor's consent – in a notarized form, or on the basis of an effective court ruling. The deletion shall be made upon an application with the deed of consent or a copy of the effective court ruling attached thereto. It shall be made through entering a note in the lot of the mortgaged property. The deletion extinguishes the mortgage.\n",
"The process of remortgaging does not usually involve moving house or taking out a second mortgage on the property; it is in effect the transfer of a mortgage from one lender to another. Homeowners may choose to remortgage for various reasons, usually to reduce the overall monthly mortgage payment amounts. However, other reasons may include to reduce the size of repayments, to pay off a mortgage earlier, to raise capital, or to consolidate other more expensive short term debts.\n",
"A mortgage loan is a very common type of loan, used by many individuals to purchase residential property. The lender, usually a financial institution, is given security a lien on the title to the property until the mortgage is paid off in full. If the borrower defaults on the loan, the bank would have the legal right to repossess the house and sell it, to recover sums owing to it.\n",
"In a mortgage by demise, the mortgagee (the lender) becomes the owner of the mortgaged property until the loan is repaid or other mortgage obligation fulfilled in full, a process known as \"redemption\". This kind of mortgage takes the form of a conveyance of the property to the creditor, with a condition that the property will be returned on redemption.\n",
"Buy-to-let mortgage is a mortgage arrangement in which an investor borrows money to purchase property in the private rented sector in order to let it out to tenants. Buy-to-let mortgages have been on offer in the UK since 1996.\n"
] |
when looking at cell phone coverage maps, why is there always a drastic line that cuts vertically across the us?
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Population density. Notice the vertical line on [this map.](_URL_0_)
It's not cost effective to provide dense coverage where the population isn't also dense. Typically you'll see coverage over major roadways or cities or pockets of population.
Coverage resumes on the west coast.
|
[
"Often coverage maps show general coverage for large regions and therefore any boundary indicated should not be interpreted as a rigid limit. The biggest cause of uncertainty for a coverage map is the quality (mainly sensitivity) of receiving apparatus used. A coverage map may be produced to indicate the area in which a certain signal strength is delivered. Even if it is 100% accurate (which it never is), a major factor on whether a signal is receivable depends very much on whether the receiving apparatus is sensitive enough to use a signal of that level. Commercial receivers can vary widely in their sensitivity, thus perception of coverage can vary widely. \n",
"There are limitations inherent to the way in which data collection for coverage maps is carried out. Traditional coverage maps are based on models, constructed from readings taken by dedicated network testers. This often means that coverage maps show the theoretical capacity of the network rather than its real-world performance. In recent years companies such as OpenSignal and Sensorly have emerged that provide coverage maps based on information crowdsourced from consumer applications. The advantage of this approach is that the coverage maps show network reach and performance as it is experienced by its users. \n",
"Telecommunications companies have increasingly favored overlays even in sparsely populated rural areas where ten-digit local numbers are unnecessary, as split plans force cellular providers to reprogram millions of client handsets to reflect changes in existing mobile numbers. Customers also incur costs to publish new letterhead and reprogram stored address book data on individual devices. They have become even more popular as the proliferation of cell phones has caused area codes to exhaust fairly quickly. This is especially the case in area codes that have been pushed back to the brink of exhaustion after being recently split, as carriers want to keep their customers from having to change their numbers for the second time in a decade or less.\n",
"Because it is currently not possible to deploy wireless networks to cover all geographical areas with no \"dead spots\", services are restricted in some areas. However, by adopting vertical handovers (hand-overs between different networks), the coverage issue can be mitigated.\n",
"Typically a coverage map will indicate the area within which the user can expect to obtain good reception of the service in question using standard equipment under normal operating conditions. Additionally, the map may also separately denote supplementary service areas where good reception may be obtained but other stations may be stronger, or where reception may variable but the service may still be usable.\n",
"In addition to providing a convenient means to identify and communicate specific locations (points and areas), an overlaid USNG grid also provides an orientation, and—because it is distance based—a scale of distance that is present across the map.\n",
"WSR-88D has coverage gaps below 10,000 feet (or no coverage at all) in many parts of the continental United States, often for terrain or budgetary reasons, or remoteness of the area. Such notable gaps include most of Alaska; several areas of Oregon, including the central and southern coast and much of the area east of the Cascade Mountains; many portions of the Rocky Mountains; Pierre, South Dakota; portions of northern Texas; large portions of the Nebraska panhandle; and areas near the borders of the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles. Notably, many of these gaps lie in tornado alley. At least one tornado has gone undetected by WSR-88D as a result of such a coverage gap – an EF1 tornado in Lovelady, Texas in April 2014. As a result of the coverage gap, initial reports of tornadic activity were treated with skepticism by the local National Weather Service forecast office.\n"
] |
why does using cellular data have such a big hit on battery life?
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To get more data the radio needs to work harder, which takes more power. The radio is the second largest power consumer in your phone behind the screen, so if you're say streaming netflix you're killing your battery because you're asking the radio to do a ton of work and then using it to watch a movie.
|
[
"By the end of 2017, smartphone battery life has become generally adequate; however, earlier smartphone battery life was poor due to the weak batteries that could not handle the significant power requirements of the smartphones' computer systems and color screens.\n",
"Due mainly to the widespread loss of power, cell phone service was also significantly impacted after battery backup power for cell phone towers ran out and backup generators ran out of fuel. In an impact report by the FCC, as of 11 AM EDT on September 12, 89 of 108 (82%) cell phone towers were non-functioning in Monroe County (Florida Keys), 154 of 212 (73%) were non-functioning in Collier County (Naples), 36 of 46 (78%) were non-functioning in Hendry County, and an additional six counties had 41-60% of cell phone towers not functioning, including Lee County (Fort Myers) and Miami-Dade County.\n",
"Because the predicted environment of these devices demands maximization of battery life, the protocols tend to favor the methods which lead to it, implementing periodic checks for pending messages, the frequency of which depends on application needs.\n",
"Because of its nature data at rest is of increasing concern to businesses, government agencies and other institutions. Mobile devices are often subject to specific security protocols to protect data at rest from unauthorised access when lost or stolen and there is an increasing recognition that database management systems and file servers should also be considered as at risk; the longer data is left unused in storage, the more likely it might be retrieved by unauthorized individuals outside the network.\n",
"Button cell batteries are attractive to small children and often ingested. In the past 20 years, although there has not been an increase in the total number of button cell batteries ingested in a year, researchers have noted a 6.7-fold increase in the risk that an ingestion would result in a moderate or major complication and 12.5-fold increase in fatalities comparing the last decade to the previous one.\n",
"Many reviews have concluded that there is no convincing evidence to date that mobile phones are harmful to health. However, the widespread use of mobile phones is a relatively recent phenomenon and it is possible that adverse health effects could emerge after years of prolonged use. Evidence to date suggests that short term (less than ten years) exposure to mobile phone emissions is not associated with an increase in brain and nervous system cancers. However, regarding longer term use, the evidence base necessary to allow firm judgments to be made has not yet been accumulated. There are still significant uncertainties that can only be resolved by monitoring the health of a large cohort of phone users over a long period of time.\n",
"The Senet Network’s fully enabled two-way architecture provides data communication from sensors over long distances at a lower cost, longer range, and longer battery life than cellular networks. Battery life is determined by how often the devices are set to transmit data and how much data is being transmitted. Transceiver batteries can last as long as 10 years.\n"
] |
Are there any records of black people in medieval Prussia/Czech Republic? If so, are there any records of how they were treated?
|
[There you go](_URL_0_)
|
[
"The poet Adam Mickiewicz retells in his poem \"Dziady\" how the Black Brothers from Kražiai were the first among the Lithuanian youth to be prosecuted in the Russian Empire. In the poem there is also a scene where Mickiewicz describes how the young adolescents, handcuffed and chained, were bid farewell at the Gate of Dawn in Vilnius.\n",
"Many of the Redlegs' ancestors were forcibly transported by Oliver Cromwell consequent to his Conquest of Ireland. Others had originally arrived on Barbados in the early to mid-17th century as indentured servants. Small groups of Germans and Portuguese were also imported as plantation labourers.\n",
"Enslavement of blacks was rare in Ireland during the 18th century, although the legal position remained unclear until a judgement in England in 1772, the Somersett's Case. Others were tradesmen, soldiers, travelling artists or musicians. They were never very numerous, and most were assimilated into the larger population by the second third of the 19th century. They include the rebel Mulatto Jack (fl. 1736), the singer Rachael Baptist (fl. 1750-1775), who were both Irish. Other such as Osmond Tisani (fl. 1905–1914) were born abroad but settled in Ireland.\n",
"In 1340, a German law-code was drawn up by the Teutonic Knights for their long-settled Prussian district of Pomesania. The code defined two categories of people: the unfree, who came under peasant law (\"Gebauersrecht\") and were consigned to the jurisdiction of their lords; and the freedmen. The latter group included peasants who had the right to demand trial by the written code and could not be sentenced to death in private courts. However, an appendix to the law-code also made it clear that the Old Prussian peasant converts were discriminated against by the Teutonic Knights, and were allowed remain \"semi-pagan, uncouth and lawless\". Such treatment shocked contemporary commentators such as Saint Bridget of Sweden.\n",
"Marc Epprecht's review of 250 court cases from 1892 to 1923 found cases from the beginnings of the records. The five 1892 cases all involved black Africans. A defense offered was that \"sodomy\" was part of local \"custom\". In one case a chief was summoned to testify about customary penalties and reported that the penalty was a fine of one cow, which was less than the penalty for adultery. Over the entire period, Epprecht found the balance of black and white defendants proportional to that in the population. He notes, however, only what came to the attention of the courts—most consensual relations in private did not necessarily provoke notice. Some cases were brought by partners who had been dropped or who had not received promised compensation from their former sexual partner. And although the norm was for the younger male to lie supine and not show any enjoyment, let alone expect any sexual mutuality, Epprecht found a case in which a pair of black males had stopped their sexual relationship out of fear of pregnancy, but one wanted to resume taking turns penetrating each other.\n",
"Over twenty thousand Ukrainian Moscophiles were arrested and imprisoned in the camp and in the fortress of Terezín, Bohemia. The camp housed primarily Russophile individuals and families from Galicia. All were suspected of collaboration with the advancing Imperial Russian Army that had invaded and occupied Galicia at the outset of World War I.\n",
"Early cases show differences in treatment between Negro and European indentured servants. In 1640, the General Virginia Court decided the Emmanuel case. Emmanuel was a Negro indentured servant who participated in a plot to escape along with six white servants. Together, they stole corn, powder, and shot guns but were caught before making their escape. The members of the group were each convicted; they were sentenced to a variety of punishments. Christopher Miller, the leader of the group, was sentenced to wear shackles for one year. White servant John Williams was sentenced to serve the colony for an extra seven years. Peter Willcocke was branded, whipped, and was required to serve the colony for an additional seven years. Richard Cookson was required to serve for two additional years. Emmanuel, the Negro, was whipped and branded with an \"R\" on his cheek. All of the white servants had their terms of servitude increased by some extent, but the court did not extend Emmanuel's time of service. Many historians speculate Emmanuel was already a servant for life. While Emmanuel's status is not defined in the records, his being branded shows a difference in how white servants and black servants were treated. Though this case suggests that slavery existed, the distinction of lifetime servitude or slavery associated with Africans or people of African descent was not widespread until later.\n"
] |
Folk, Baroque, Classical, Rock & Roll... how much have musical genres varied amongst any one culture throughout history?
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I'm only qualified to give a response for european music, so I hope there is someone out there who is learned in asian and african music who can contribute as well. There were definitely different "genres" of music as far back as the late medieval period. The split between sacred music and court music is a perfect example. Consider the difference between chant and plainsong (sacred) and early lute based songs.
Does anyone have expertise in early medieval music? I am aware of the sacred musical tradition in this period, but when did folk music and dance music begin to appear?
|
[
"The field of art music, also known as \"classical music\", includes various musical styles such as Renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, 20th-century music, and post-modern music. Guatemala was one of the first regions of the New World to be exposed to European music. The Spanish missionaries and clergy introduced Flemish and Spanish liturgical music during the early 16th century as part of the Roman Catholic rite.\n",
"Musicologists have noted an attempt to fuse popular music with elements of early classical music from the mid-1960s in Britain and America, which they refer to as baroque rock or baroque pop. An interest in fusing the sounds of medieval and renaissance music with more popular forms was first evident in the British progressive folk movement of the late 1960s. This was particularly clear in the important work of The Incredible String Band from their 1967 album \"The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion\" (1967), which introduced both medieval and world music elements into their music. These continued in the highly influential \"The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter\" (1968).\n",
"Many of the major classical composers of the 20th century were influenced by folk traditions, none more quintessentially, perhaps, than Charles Ives or Aaron Copland. Other composers adopted features of folk music, from the Appalachians, the plains and elsewhere, including Roy Harris, Elmer Bernstein, David Diamond, Elie Siegmeister, and others. Yet other early to mid-20th-century composers continued in the more experimental traditions, including such figures as Charles Ives, George Antheil, and Henry Cowell. Others, such as Samuel Barber, captured a period of Americana in such pieces as \"Knoxville: Summer of 1915\".\n",
"In the 2000s, the standard concert repertoire of professional orchestras, chamber music groups, and choirs tends to focus on works by a relatively small number of mainly 18th- and 19th-century male composers. Many of the works deemed to be part of the musical canon are from genres regarded as the most \"serious\", such as the symphony, concerto, string quartet, and opera. Folk music was already giving art music melodies, and from the late 19th century, in an atmosphere of increasing nationalism, folk music began to influence composers in formal and other ways, before being admitted to some sort of status in the canon itself.\n",
"A common practice in the genre is to transcribe classical pieces and play them in a rock/metal band format. The Baroque and Classical periods have been particularly influential to the genre because of their unique sound and techniques that blend into a rock setting effectively.\n",
"The following years were mostly dedicated to produce classical music with a particular emphasis in baroque and colonial periods in Latin America. Also worth mentioning are the recordings of ethnographic music harvested in the field and gathered under the label Serie del Conocimiento and the unique recordings of literary works known as Juglaría.\n",
"BULLET::::- As Western musical influence spread throughout the world in the 1800s, musicians adopted Western theory as an international standard—but other theoretical traditions in both textual and oral traditions remain in use. For example, the long and rich musical traditions unique to ancient and current cultures of Africa are primarily oral, but describe specific forms, genres, performance practices, tunings, and other aspects of music theory.\n"
] |
why is solar power quite common here in northern england when we have very low solar potential and are one of the windiest places on the planet?
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There was a time a few years ago the government has heavily subsidising solar power. The subsidy was so high that if you had a large enough roof you could not only get all your electricity for free but earn money by selling the surplus to the grid.
With house prices being very low in the North it was much easier to buy a large enough house to achieve the threshold production to make a profit.
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[
"In 2014, Imperial College predicted that Britain could have 40% of electricity from solar power in sunny days by 2020 in 10 million homes compared to a half a million homes in start of 2014. If a third of households would generate solar energy it could equal 6% of British total electricity consumption.\n",
"The United Kingdom has been estimated to have over a third of Europe's total offshore wind resource, which is equivalent to three times the electricity needs of the nation at current rates of electricity consumption (In 2010 peak winter demand was 59.3 GW, in summer it drops to about 45 GW).\n",
"Solar power only has one commercial development even though it has a great deal of public support and fits in well with hydroelectric storage, it is less well supported by the wet northern climate in BC. For regions with similar climate like the UK, solar actually produces electricity 11% of the time.\n",
"This is a hundred times less than in Finland (2 watts per inhabitant), two hundred times less than in Sweden (4 watts per inhabitant) and almost five thousand times less than in Denmark (98 watts per inhabitant). However, use of solar power is growing at an accelerated pace; in 2016, installed panel capacity grew by 366%. Proponents indicate that Norway has a surprisingly high capacity for solar energy capture. For instance, records from the city of Narvik show that the region can receive almost as much sunlight as southern Germany. However, this is still just above a third of the solar energy that an area that receives a high amount of solar energy would receive (based on received radiation from Australia.) Solar companies include Elkem Solar and NorSun. \n",
"At the end of 2011, there were 230,000 solar power projects in the United Kingdom, with a total installed generating capacity of 750 megawatts (MW). By February 2012 the installed capacity had reached 1,000 MW. Solar power use has increased very rapidly in recent years, albeit from a small base, as a result of reductions in the cost of photovoltaic (PV) panels, and the introduction of a Feed-in tariff (FIT) subsidy in April 2010. In 2012, the government said that 4 million homes across the UK will be powered by the sun within eight years, representing 22,000 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2020.\n",
"At the end of 2011, there were 230,000 solar power projects in the United Kingdom, with a total installed generating capacity of 750 megawatts (MW). By February 2012 the installed capacity had reached 1,000 MW. Solar power use has increased very rapidly in recent years, albeit from a small base, as a result of reductions in the cost of photovoltaic (PV) panels, and the introduction of a Feed-in tariff (FIT) subsidy in April 2010. In 2012, the government said that 4 million homes across the UK will be powered by the sun within eight years, representing 22,000 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2020. As of April 2015, PV capacity had risen to 6,562 MW across 698,860 installations. The latest government figures indicates UK solar photovoltaic (PV) generation capacity has reached 12,404 MW in December 2017.\n",
"At the end of 2011, there were 230,000 solar power projects in the United Kingdom, with a total installed generating capacity of 750 megawatts (MW). By February 2012 the installed capacity had reached 1,000 MW. Solar power use has increased very rapidly in recent years, albeit from a small base, as a result of reductions in the cost of photovoltaic (PV) panels, and the introduction of a Feed-in tariff (FIT) subsidy in April 2010. In 2012, the government said that 4 million homes across the UK will be powered by the sun within eight years, representing 22,000 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2020.\n"
] |
Can the internet be disabled, even temporarily? Does it have a hardware or software vulnerability that would shut it down everywhere?
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The only method I am loosely aware of to kill/shutoff the internet is if a major AS like AT & T or Level 3 were to go rogue and start advertising routes for basically every IP address and send them more or less nowhere. I wish I could tell you that I am a network engineer and I understand this in depth, but I don't.
You can read up when Pakistan did this to youtube by mistake here: _URL_0_
Basically have a more trusted actor than Pakistan do the same thing, but to a much wider array of addresses.
This method is not forever but it would shut down most/all of the internet very rapidly.
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[
"Policy makers have to take into account the cost of shutting down the Internet, if it is even possible. The loss of the network for even a day could cost billions of dollars in lost revenue. The National Cybersecurity Center was set up to deal with these questions, to research threats and design and recommend prophylactic methods.\n",
"In \"CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc.\", a California federal district court held that limitation of a process to implementation \"over the Internet\" does not satisfy the machine-or-transformation test. First, the Internet is not a \"particular machine.\" The Internet is an intangible abstraction. Second, the limitation to a particular technological environment is a mere field-of-use limitation, which does not suffice under sec. 101. Third, the use of the Internet does not impose meaningful limits on the preemptive scope of the claims. The same court held that a \"\"Beauregard\"\" claim directed to the instructions for performing a method that does not pass the machine-or-transformation test will also fail to pass that test. The court pointed out that the PTO appellate board had similarly interpreted \"Bilski\". The subsequent \"Alice\" decision appears to have substantially resolved these questions in favor of a determination of patent ineligibility.\n",
"The software operates without downloading a database to the computer and instead looks to an Internet-based database. This means that the computer only needs a very small piece of code and the user can take advantage of the database being updated constantly. On the other hand, if the computer can not connect to this database for any reason (such as a firewall blocking the connection), all web access will be disabled.\n",
"Many government and university installations blocked, threatened to block, or attempted to shut-down The World's Internet connection until Software Tool & Die was eventually granted permission by the National Science Foundation to provide public Internet access on \"an experimental basis.\"\n",
"The software is very difficult to disable or remove without an administrator password. The uninstaller requires the administrator password to run, and if the service or process is stopped all web access is disabled. Similarly, attempts to modify the program from the windows registry or file system will also lead to all web access being disabled.\n",
"BULLET::::- Internet - The Internet began as the ARPANET, a program funded by the U.S. military. The Internet is designed with the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks, but was never designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Due to the huge numbers of people using it, it would likely be jammed and unable to handle communication if it suffered a large amount of damage. During a localized emergency, it is highly useful. However, the loss of electrical power to an area can make accessing the Internet difficult or impossible.\n",
"The global capacity of the internet makes it extremely difficult to set limits or boundaries to cyberspace. Additionally, the United States' strong commitment to the First Amendment makes it impossible for worldwide internet policies to be put in place.\n"
] |
if you punched someone hard enough to knock them out whilst they were sleeping, would they wake up and pass out or stay asleep through your punch?
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Typically if you hit someone hard enough to knock them out, it’s caused some degree of brain damage. Even if very mild, you definitely gave them a concussion. I’d wager they go into a sort of deeper sleep from their brain being jarred. Unconsciousness in that way is different from sleep.
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[
"Knocking a person unconscious or even causing a concussion may cause permanent brain damage. There is no clear division between the force required to knock a person out and the force likely to kill a person. From 1980 to 2007, more than 200 amateur boxers, professional boxers and Toughman fighters died due to ring or training injuries. In 1983, editorials in the \"Journal of the American Medical Association\" called for a ban on boxing. The editor, Dr. George Lundberg, called boxing an \"obscenity\" that \"should not be sanctioned by any civilized society.\" Since then, the British, Canadian and Australian Medical Associations have called for bans on boxing.\n",
"A fighter who becomes unconscious from a strike with sufficient knockout power is referred to as having been \"knocked out\" or \"KO'd\" (\"kay-ohd\"). Losing balance without losing consciousness is referred to as being \"knocked down\" (\"down but not out\"). Repeated blows to the head, regardless whether they cause loss of consciousness, are known to gradually cause permanent brain damage. In severe cases this may cause strokes or paralysis. This loss of consciousness is commonly known as becoming \"punch drunk\" or \"shot\". Because of this, many physicians advise against sports involving knockouts.\n",
"BULLET::::11. Back Roll - Make a hard cut toward the wake. One millisecond before you hit the wake, flatten out. Ride up the wake while resisting it (see wake jump). At the top of the wake, and not before, throw your shoulders sideways in the direction of your roll. At the same time, look back over your shoulder and pull the handle to your waist. Your momentum will take you around and then you just need to land. If you are coming up short, you are most likely throwing the trick too soon, letting your arms out, or not throwing the trick sideways. If you lean forward at all, you will lose your rotation momentum.\n",
"BULLET::::- 22:11 - Indylo started moving after 20 minutes of laying of the floor with no moves. If he was drunk, as policemen claimed, he would sleep soundly. But if injuries are putting pressure on the brain, such behavior is possible.\n",
"During a fight, each boxer has a healthmeter that decreases whenever the player is hit. When the health meter reaches zero and the player is punched the player suffers a knockdown. Large amounts of punishment to the head also result in visible cuts.\n",
"If a boxer has received large amount of damage to either their head or their body, and they continue to be punched in that area, the fight will soon end in a TKO. Large amounts of punishment to the head will also result in visible cuts. A TKO will also result if a boxer is knocked down three times. However, unlike in real-life boxing matches, a boxer can be pummelled for an entire fight without throwing one punch in return, but unless they are knocked down three times, or suffer extreme damage to either their head or body, the fight will be allowed to continue. Similarly, fight judges will not score a round as 10-8 unless a fighter is knocked down. The only exception to this is if the scoring of a round as 10-9 would result in a draw. In such an instance, the round will be scored 10-8 to the fighter who won the round. This system of scoring is unrealistic, because in real boxing matches, a round is sometimes scored 10-8 if one boxer has been badly pummelled. It is also possible for boxers to pause and hurl insults during a fight, such as \"come on and fight you wimp!\".\n",
"BULLET::::- Robert Browning, on the first night the fighters are in the house, started causing problems. He began by throwing eggs at a group of fighters on the basketball court, urinating in other people's shower and trying to get people to fight him.\n"
] |
the texas bill about wrongful births.
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In Texas (and maybe other states, I'm not sure) a mother can sue a doctor for failing to properly diagnose problems with a fetus. This started in a 1975 case where a pregnant woman sued her doctor. She got rubella while pregnant and claimed her doctor failed to properly diagnose her or warn her about the effect the illness could have on her baby. She had the baby who had several medical problems. The court held that she could sue the doctor for the baby's medical expenses since the doctor negligently failed to tell her about the possible complications.
This bill would make it so that a woman cannot sue a doctor for negligently failing to tell her about potential fetal defects before birth.
Proponents of the bill argue that every life is worthwhile and people shouldn't be able to sue doctors for failing to tell them their baby isn't worth having. They also think that some doctors might be more likely to recommend abortion in order to avoid a lawsuit.
Opponents of the bill argue that doctors should fully inform their patients of everything they can and that some doctors who oppose abortion might not reveal all the risks of a pregnancy in order to encourage the mother to carry the baby to term if they don't have to worry about being sued for it.
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[
"Texas has the seventh highest birth rate in the United States, with nearly 400,000 babies born each year. Over half of all Texas births are paid by Medicaid, totaling over $2.2 billion per year in birth and delivery-related services for mothers and infants. Studies have found that infant mortality is usually caused by birth defects, pre-term birth, low birth weight, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and pregnancy complications. The average amount spent in the first year of life for a preterm birth with major complications (excluding extreme prematurity) is $19,059, and $4,019 for a preterm birth without major complications compared to $410 for an uncomplicated, term birth.\n",
"In February 2018, Turzai and State Representative Judy Ward, a nurse, introduced a bill banning the abortion of babies who have been diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb. Currently, babies can be aborted up to 24 weeks gestation in Pennsylvania, except in cases of sex selection abortion, which are banned. Turzai cited the country of Iceland in remarks about the bill, saying that Iceland has an almost zero rate of babies born with Down syndrome because almost all are aborted.\n",
"On August 29, 2014 US District Judge Lee Yeakel struck down as unconstitutional two provisions of Texas' omnibus anti-abortion bill, House Bill 2 that was to come into effect on September 1. The regulation would have closed about a dozen abortion clinics, leaving only eight places in Texas to get a legal abortion, all located in major cities. Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the state's regulation was unconstitutional and would have placed an undue burden on women, particularly on poor and rural women living in west Texas and the Rio Grande Valley.\n",
"The maternal healthcare system in Texas has undergone legislative changes in funding and the provision of family planning and abortion services, in relation to other states in the United States. The system in Texas has also received attention in regards to the state's maternal mortality ratio, currently the highest in the United States. Maternal deaths have steadily increased in Texas from 2010, with more than 30 deaths occurring for every 100,000 live births in 2014. The diverse demography of Texas has been identified as one factor contributing to this mortality rate, with mortality being higher among ethnic minorities such as African-American and Hispanic women. In 2013, Texas legislation established the Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force to begin investigating the causes of the maternal mortality rates in the state as well as suggesting ways in which it could be reduced or averted.\n",
"Rep. Doggett passed a bill into law in January 2013 setting up a national commission to examine ways to reduce the number of children who die from abuse and neglect. More children die in Texas from abuse and neglect than in any other state. The tax and spending deal approved that month to avoid a so-called \"fiscal cliff\" included an extension of a higher-education tax credit he had proposed. He also worked with Texas Republican Sam Johnson to pass a bill through the House in December 2012 to authorize the phased removal of Social Security numbers from Medicare cards to crack down on identity theft.\n",
"On June 20, 2013 Byron Cook served as chairman of the House State Affairs Committee hearing on Texas State House Bill 60. Cook's stance was for the passing of the bill and during the hearing he interrupted a testimony, saying \"Some of us do (adopt children).\" At 12:00 AM on June 21, Cook decided to close the hearing prematurely. Cook's explanation for breaching Texas State Legislature operating procedures was that the testimonies being heard had become repetitive. Twenty-four minutes later, Cook became personally offended by a testimony, ordering the cameras to be shut off and leaving the room of committee members and witnesses. Approximately 20 minutes afterwards, Cook was persuaded by colleagues to resume the hearing and continued listening to testimonies until he prematurely closed the hearing at 1:30 AM.\n",
"On August 29, 2014 US District Judge Lee Yeakel struck down as unconstitutional two provisions of Texas' omnibus anti-abortion bill, House Bill 2 that was to come into effect on September 1. The regulation would have closed about a dozen abortion clinics, leaving only eight places in Texas to get a legal abortion, all located in major cities. Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the state's regulation was unconstitutional and would have placed an undue burden on women, particularly on poor and rural women living in west Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. The legal challenge to the law eventually reached the Supreme Court in \"Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt\" (2016) which ruled that the law was unconstitutional, its burden of requiring abortion doctors to have admission privileges at a local hospital within 30 miles of the center to interfere with a woman's right to an abortion from \"Roe v. Wade\".\n"
] |
can dreams actually tell us something or are they just random head-noise
|
Don't listen to some of the ignorant comments here. The only truth we know about dreams is that we don't really know what their exact purpose is. There are many interesting theories about it, but the true purpose of dreaming is not yet understood.
That being said, you can definitely choose to find meaning behind your dreams through your own interpretations of them. But that's all it would be at this point- interpretations.
|
[
"John Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley propose that dreams are caused by the random firing of neurons in the cerebral cortex during the REM period. Neatly, this theory helps explain the irrationality of the mind during REM periods, as, according to this theory, the forebrain then creates a story in an attempt to reconcile and make sense of the nonsensical sensory information presented to it. This would explain the odd nature of many dreams.\n",
"Dream researcher Ernest Hartman comments on current dream theories proposed by biologists. One such theory suggests that dreams are basically random nonsense and are the product of a poorly functioning brain during sleep. If there is any meaning to dreams, it is added on later as our brains try to make the best of a bad job.\n",
"Lucid-dreaming advocate Stephen LaBerge has outlined a possible reason for how dreams are formulated and why nightmares occur with a high frequency. To LaBerge, a dream starts with an individual thought or scene, such as walking down a dimly lit street. Since dreams are not predetermined, the brain responds to the situation by either thinking a good thought or a bad thought, and the dream framework follows from there. Since the prominence of bad thoughts in dreams is higher than good, the dream will proceed to be a nightmare.\n",
"The lucid dream experience, which may arise as a by-product of Rigpa awareness or spontaneously due to karmic causes, assists in understanding the unreality of phenomena, which otherwise, during dream or the death experience, might be overwhelming. In the same way, we believe a nightmare to be real, but if we were to watch a similar scene within a movie, we would not necessarily be frightened.\" \n",
"Another way to describe this phenomenon is to claim that dreams are random, but the individuals have been lucky enough to interpret their dreams in an allegorical way relevant to a problem they need to solve.\n",
"Norman Malcolm in his monograph \"Dreaming\" (published in 1959) elaborated on Wittgenstein's question as to whether it really mattered if people who tell dreams \"really had these images while they slept, or whether it merely seems so to them on waking\". He argues that the sentence \"I am asleep\" is a senseless form of words; that dreams cannot exist independently of the waking impression; and that scepticism based on dreaming \"comes from confusing the historical and dream telling senses...[of]...the past tense\". (page 120). In the chapter: \"Do I Know I Am Awake ?\" he argues that we do not have to say: \"I know that I am awake\" simply because it would be absurd to deny that one is awake.\n",
"There have been a few studies conducted concerning auditory imagery generated in subjects during dreaming. There are different kinds of auditory imagery people experience in their dreams when waking up from rapid eye movement sleep. Auditory imagery is generally fairly common in rapid eye movement sleep with the majority of it being verbal auditory imagery. Studies found that the last auditory images in a dream are usually words spoken by the self-character in the dream. Some findings concerning the dream auditory imagery in patients with brain lesions and children’s dreams have been done as well but are more speculative.\n"
] |
how do lice see?
|
They see with their eyes.
Umm... I'm not sure what you really expected. They usually have two little eyes on their head which they use to look around, but they may also just navigate from the dead, cold bird towards the warm flesh of the girl who just picked it up.
|
[
"Lice can be indicators of contact with another person. Many species closely associated with humans can be easily transferred between individuals. DNA identification of multiple individuals using blood meals from body and head lice has been demonstrated in laboratory settings.\n",
"PEX is characterized by tiny microscopic white or grey granular flakes which are clumps of proteins within the eye which look somewhat like dandruff when seen through a microscope and which are released by cells. The abnormal flakes, sometimes compared to amyloid-like material, are visible during an examination of the lens of an eye by an ophthalmologist or optometrist, which is the usual diagnosis. The white fluffy material is seen in many tissues both ocular and extraocular, such as in the anterior chamber structures, trabecular meshwork, central disc, zonular fibres, anterior hyaloid membrane, pupillary and anterior iris, trabecula, and occasionally the cornea. The flakes are widespread. One report suggested that the granular flakes were from abnormalities of the basement membrane in epithelial cells, and that they were distributed widely throughout the body and not just within structures of the eye. There is some research suggesting that the material may be produced in the iris pigment epithelium, ciliary epithelium, or the peripheral anterior lens epithelium. A similar report suggests that the proteins come from the lens, iris, and other parts of the eye. A report in 2010 found indications of an abnormal ocular surface in PEX patients, discovered by an eye staining method known as rose bengal.\n",
"An ocellus is a simple eye found in invertebrates, in which pigment is distributed randomly and for which there are no additional structures. It is not to be confused with the ocelloid, a light-sensitive structure found in some dinoflagellates.\n",
"Lice have been the subject of significant DNA research in the 2000s that led to discoveries on human evolution. The three species of sucking lice that parasitize human beings belong to two genera, \"Pediculus\" and \"Pthirus\": head lice (\"Pediculus humanus capitis\"), body lice (\"Pediculus humanus humanus\"), and pubic lice (\"Pthirus pubis\"). Human head and body lice (genus \"Pediculus\") share a common ancestor with chimpanzee lice, while pubic lice (genus \"Pthirus\") share a common ancestor with gorilla lice. Using phylogenetic and cophylogenetic analysis, Reed et al. hypothesized that \"Pediculus\" and \"Pthirus\" are sister taxa and monophyletic. In other words, the two genera descended from the same common ancestor. The age of divergence between \"Pediculus\" and its common ancestor is estimated to be 6-7 million years ago, which matches the age predicted by chimpanzee-hominid divergence. Because parasites rely on their hosts, hostparasite cospeciation events are likely.\n",
"Lice are divided into two groups: sucking lice, which obtain their nourishment from feeding on the sebaceous secretions and body fluids of their host; and chewing lice, which are scavengers, feeding on skin, fragments of feathers or hair, and debris found on the host's body. Most are found on only specific types of animals, and, in some cases, on only a particular part of the body; some animals are known to host up to fifteen different species, although one to three is typical for mammals, and two to six for birds. For example, in humans, different species of louse inhabit the scalp and pubic hair. Lice generally cannot survive for long if removed from their host. Some species of chewing lice house symbiotic bacteria in bacteriocytes in their bodies. These may assist in digestion because if the insect is deprived of them, it will die. If their host dies, lice can opportunistically use phoresis to hitch a ride on a fly and attempt to find a new host.\n",
"Photophores are light-emitting organs which appears as luminous spots on some fishes. The light can be produced from compounds during the digestion of prey, from specialized mitochondrial cells in the organism called photocytes, or associated with symbiotic bacteria, and are used for attracting food or confusing predators.\n",
"Head lice are spread through direct head-to-head contact with an infested person. From each egg or \"nit\" may hatch one nymph that will grow and develop to the adult louse. Lice feed on blood once or more often each day by piercing the skin with their tiny needle-like mouthparts. While feeding they excrete saliva, which irritates the skin and causes itching. Lice cannot burrow into the skin.\n"
] |
- what is a solar/steller wind?
|
Ok
Most stars are basically giant fusion reactor which constantly spits out radiation and charged particles,
And think there are trillions of them around the galaxy and universe doing that exactly, depending on the type of star they spit out different ranges of radiation and at different strength,
those radiations cause currents of matter, particles and energy which are called "solar or stellar winds".
|
[
"The solar wind is a continuous stream of plasma that flows outwards from the Sun: near the Earth's orbit, it contains several million protons and electrons per cubic meter and flows at . The magnetic sail introduces a magnetic field into this plasma flow which can deflect the particles from their original trajectory: the momentum of the particles is then transferred to the sail, leading to a thrust on the sail. One advantage of magnetic or solar sails over (chemical or ion) reaction thrusters is that no reaction mass is depleted or carried in the craft.\n",
"The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona. This plasma mostly consists of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy between 0.5 and 10 keV. Embedded within the solar-wind plasma is the interplanetary magnetic field. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar latitude and longitude. Its particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy resulting from the high temperature of the corona, which in turn is a result of the coronal magnetic field.\n",
"On 1 November 1994, NASA launched the \"Wind\" spacecraft as a solar wind monitor to orbit Earth's Lagrange point as the interplanetary component of the Global Geospace Science (GGS) Program within the International Solar Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) program. The spacecraft is a spin axis-stabilized satellite that carries eight instruments measuring solar wind particles from thermal to MeV energies, electromagnetic radiation from DC to 13 MHz radio waves, and gamma-rays. Though the \"Wind\" spacecraft is over two decades old, it still provides the highest time, angular, and energy resolution of any of the solar wind monitors. It continues to produce relevant research as its data has contributed to over 150 publications since 2008 alone.\n",
"An electric sail (also known as an electric solar wind sail or an E-sail) is a proposed form of spacecraft propulsion using the dynamic pressure of the solar wind as a source of thrust. It creates a \"virtual\" sail by using small wires to form an electric field that deflects solar wind protons and extracts their momentum. The idea was first conceptualised by Pekka Janhunen in 2006 at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.\n",
"The solar wind consists of particles (ionized atoms from the solar corona) and fields like the magnetic field that are produced from the Sun and stream out into space. Because the Sun rotates once approximately every 25 days, the magnetic field transported by the solar wind gets wrapped into a spiral. The Solar wind affects many other systems in the Solar System; for example, variations in the Sun's own magnetic field are carried outward by the solar wind, producing geomagnetic storms in the Earth's magnetosphere.\n",
"The solar wind is a stream of plasma released from the Sun's upper atmosphere. It consists of mostly electrons and protons with energies usually between 1.5 and 10 keV. The stream of particles varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar longitude. These particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy.\n",
"BULLET::::- WIND – The Wind spacecraft is devoted to the study of the interplanetary medium. Since the Solar Wind is its main driver, solar flares effects can be traced with the instruments aboard Wind. Some of the WIND experiments are: a very low frequency spectrometer, (WAVES), particles detectors (EPACT, SWE) and a magnetometer (MFI).\n"
] |
why does our brain stop us from biting down too hard on a finger, but will allow us to willingly kill ourselves?
|
The brain does not allow us to willingly kill ourselves, on an instinctive level. If you jump headfirst out of a window, you'll be forced to try to save yourself during the fall. You will raise your arms to try and break the fall. This is analogous to preventing us from biting our fingers off.
However, both can be overcome with planning. If you put your finger on your mouth and have your friend uppercut your jaw, you can take a finger off. Similarly, all common methods of suicide rely on putting oneself in a position where your body doesn't realize you're going to die until it's too late to prevent.
|
[
"Giving the finger has resulted in negative consequences. A Malaysian man was bludgeoned to death after giving the finger to a motorist following a car chase. A Pakistani man was deported by the United Arab Emirates for the gesture, which violates indecency codes.\n",
"Nail biting usually leads to harmful effects to the fingers, like infections. These consequences are directly derived from the physical damage of biting or from the hands becoming an infection vector. Moreover, it can also have a social impact. \n",
"One key principle is uninterrupted biting, this means that you place yourself in such position that you can continue biting as long as you want, disabling your opponent from escaping your bites. It can be used to inflict pain and can be used to cut arteries which can cause severe bleeding.\n",
"Fingernail-biting that develops into fingernail-eating is a form of pica, although many do not consider nail biting as a true form of cannibalism. Other forms of pica include the compulsion of eating one's own hair, which can form a hairball in the stomach. Left untreated, this can cause death due to excessive hair buildup.\n",
"Skin chewing can be bolstered by times of apprehension and other unpleasant events. Blisters in particular can cause a feeling of desire to pull or bite off the affected skin and nails (since the skin is dead, thus easily pulled off), which could be detrimental, causing infection. Another disorder, known as excoriation disorder, the repetitive action of uncontrollably picking at one's skin, can sometimes accompany dermatophagia. Dermatophagia differs from excoriation disorder in that the repetitive motion affected persons partake in is the biting of the skin. People who have dermatophagia can also be prone to infection as when they bite their fingers so frequently, they make themselves vulnerable to bacteria seeping in and causing infection. Dermatophagia can be considered a \"sister\" disorder to trichophagia, which involves compulsively biting and eating one's hair.\n",
"Historically, many believed that problems with the bite were the sole cause for bruxism. It was often claimed that a person would grind at the interfering area in a subconscious, instinctive attempt to wear this down and \"self equiliberate\" their occlusion. However, occlusal interferences are extremely common and usually do not cause any problems. It is unclear whether people with bruxism tend to notice problems with the bite because of their clenching and grinding habit, or whether these act as a causative factor in the development of the condition. In sleep bruxism especially, there is no evidence that removal of occlusal interferences has any impact on the condition. People with no teeth at all who wear dentures can still suffer from bruxism, although dentures also often change the original bite. Most modern sources state that there is no relationship, or at most a minimal relationship, between bruxism and occlusal factors. The findings of one study, which used self-reported tooth grinding rather than clinical examination to detect bruxism, suggested that there may be more of a relationship between occlusal factors and bruxism in children. However, the role of occlusal factors in bruxism cannot be completely discounted due to insufficient evidence and problems with the design of studies. A minority of researchers continue to claim that various adjustments to the mechanics of the bite are capable of curing bruxism (see Occlusal adjustment/reorganization).\n",
"Nerve injuries occur as a result of trauma, compression or over-stretching. Nerves send impulses to the brain about sensation and also play an important role in finger movement. When nerves are injured, one can lose ability to move fingers, lose sensation and develop a contracture. Any nerve injury of the hand can be disabling and results in loss of hand function. Thus it is vital to seek medical help as soon as possible after any hand injury.\n"
] |
Do we have the technology to "rewrite" someone's DNA?
|
Allow me to parse your question into a few different ones (I'm going to interpret "rewrite" loosely, to include getting a cell or cells to express a single new gene. More complicated "rewrites" are possible using similar techniques, but may be disproportionately more complicated to carry out.):
> Do we have the technology to "rewrite" the DNA of every cell of an individual organism?
Yes. Consider bacteria: We can introduce new genes into bacteria through [transfection](_URL_4_), [transduction](_URL_13_), and other methods. On top of that, there's the recent big steps *towards* synthesizing bacteria from scratch (I say "towards" because it depends on what you mean by "from scratch"). Here's a [layman friendly (pdf)](_URL_7_) article from Science, as well as the [actual report](_URL_8_).
> OK, what about multicellular organisms?
Yes. Some techniques involve altering the DNA over a couple generations, or, to "rewrite" at the very start of an individual's life i.e. a one-cell stage. For instance, see the procedures for making knockout mice ([wikipedia](_URL_9_)), and the use of [nuclear transfer](_URL_2_) to make [Dolly](_URL_12_).
> What about a multicellular organisms that are here, now? (This starts to get to your question.)
Yes. Though don't count on getting every cell, oh, and it may or may not be permanent, depending on the technique and the cells you're targeting. One technique is biolistics (here's [wikipedia](_URL_0_), and here's an example from [PNAS](_URL_5_)).
> What about something big and complicated, like a human?
You won't get every cell, or even most of the cells. But, you *can* do a "rewrite" in a specific set of cells. ...see, another technique involves using a virus, loaded with custom DNA, to infect a cell. Viruses are picky about the cell type they infect. Also, some cells in your body replicate and are shed very quickly (e.g. most of the cells that make up your skin, or those lining your digestive tract), so doing a "rewrite" in only those cells isn't very interesting ... the effects would be as temporary as those cells' lives. On the other hand, you could infect cells that stay with an animal for most/all of its life. For instance, you can infect neurons with this technique.
This is used in optogenetics (here's [wikipedia](_URL_3_) ... Deisseroth lab is a big player in this, so [here's their website](_URL_6_) which has links to several research articles).
That technique has also been used, in humans, to treat a type of blindness called *Leber's Congenital Amaurosis*. Here's a [ScienceDaily article](_URL_10_) if you want a brief overview, and here's a journal article ([NEJM](_URL_11_)) on the topic.
For a bit more info, here's a [technical review of gene therapies at the retina.](_URL_1_)
|
[
"Baltimore recently joined with other scientists to call for a worldwide moratorium on use of a new genome-editing technique to alter inheritable human DNA. A key step enabling researchers to slice up any DNA sequence they choose was developed by Emmanuelle Charpentier, then at Umea University in Sweden, and Jennifer A. Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley. Reminiscent of the Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA in 1975, those involved want both scientists and the public to be more aware of the ethical issues and risks involved with new techniques for genome modification.\n",
"On the other hand, \"re-writers\" are synthetic biologists interested in testing the irreducibility of biological systems. Due to the complexity of natural biological systems, it would be simpler to rebuild the natural systems of interest from the ground up; In order to provide engineered surrogates that are easier to comprehend, control and manipulate. Re-writers draw inspiration from refactoring, a process sometimes used to improve computer software.\n",
"A rewrite in computer programming is the act or result of re-implementing a large portion of existing functionality without re-use of its source code or writing inscription. When the rewrite is not using existing code at all, it is common to speak of a rewrite from scratch.\n",
"Genome editing, in which nucleic acid polymers are delivered as a drug and are either expressed as proteins, interfere with the expression of proteins, or correct genetic mutations, has been proposed as a future strategy to prevent aging.\n",
"The \"copy with recursion\" permits, changing little portions of code, produce entire new and different output, filtering or updating the input. Understanding the \"identity by recursion\" we can understand the filters.\n",
"On 19 March 2015, scientists urged a worldwide ban on clinical use of methods, particularly the use of CRISPR and zinc finger, to edit the human genome in a way that can be inherited. In April 2015 and April 2016, Chinese researchers reported results of basic research to edit the DNA of non-viable human embryos using CRISPR. In February 2016, British scientists were given permission by regulators to genetically modify human embryos by using CRISPR and related techniques on condition that the embryos were destroyed within seven days. In June 2016 the Dutch government was reported to be planning to follow suit with similar regulations which would specify a 14-day limit.\n",
"While planning the next new generation of machines, PE Biosystems' president, Michael W. Hunkapiller, calculated that it would be possible for their own private industry to decode the human genome before the academic consortium could complete it. The company would decode all of the 3.5 billion chemical letters in the human DNA by 2001, at a cost of only US$200 million, about 1/10 of the consortium projected cost of US$3 billion. However, it would mean starting from scratch, eight years already into the consortium's program. It was a bold prediction, given that the consortium target date set by Watson back in 1990 had been the forward year of 2005, only seven years away, and with the consortium already half the way to the completion target date by then.\n"
] |
military redditors: what is the point of announcing ahead of time where and when we will be mounting an attack against isis? doesn't this just help the other side prepare a defense?
|
The warning is given so that civilians have an opportunity to get out of the area.
This type of warning is given in this situation because, even if they have all of the time in the world to prepare a defense, they can not win. If this were a war between equals, or an existential war, warning would not be given.
|
[
"On 4 November 2016, Fox News reported that the U.S. military ended its bombing campaign against ISIS in Sirte after three months of round-the-clock airstrikes the U.S. military conducted a total of 367 airstrikes since 1 August 2016, according to officials, no American airstrikes took place since 31 October; units taking part in the operation received orders on 1 November from AFRICOM to end offensive and collective self-defence airstrikes. A senior defense official said the U.S. military would \"continue to provide military support to the GNA ... ISIL-held territory in Sirte is down to a few hundred square meters. We'll continue to discuss with the GNA leadership what additional support they may need moving forward including air strikes.\"\n",
"On 4 November 2016, Fox News reported that the U.S. military ended its bombing campaign against ISIL in Sirte after three months of round-the-clock airstrikes the U.S. military conducted a total of 367 airstrikes since 1 August 2016. Qccording to officials, no American airstrikes took place since 31 October; units taking part in the operation received orders on 1 November from AFRICOM to end offensive and collective self-defense airstrikes. A senior defense official said the U.S. military would \"continue to provide military support to the GNA...ISIL-held territory in Sirte is down to a few hundred square meters. We'll continue to discuss with the GNA leadership what additional support they may need moving forward including air strikes.\"\n",
"American newspapers have also reported on the justifications that the United States government has for ordering the airstrikes targeting ISIL members. As the Associated Press reported, \"A U.S.-led coalition has been launching airstrikes on Islamic State militants and facilities in Iraq and Syria for months, as part of an effort to give Iraqi forces the time and space to mount a more effective offensive.\" By stating what problems that ISIS has created, the American media is portraying ISIS as deserving of the actions that the U.S. military is taking against them. This reasoning also justifies why President Barack Obama ordered another 1,500 troops to Iraq in order to stop the progress of ISIL, as CNN reported. \n",
"BULLET::::- On American television, United States Senator John McCain says that 75 percent of U.S. air combat missions against the Islamic State over Iraq and Syria return to base without firing their weapons or dropping any bombs because of a lack of U.S. special operations forces on the ground to provide targeting information.\n",
"BULLET::::- Strikes during the day bring the total of American airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria combined to 533. General Lloyd J. Austin III, the commander of U.S. Central Command, tells the press that the airstrikes on headquarters, communications equipment, and ground vehicles have disrupted Islamic State operations by forcing the groups forces to travel in smaller groups in civilian vehicles and interfering with its communications and planning capabilities.\n",
"BULLET::::- August 8 – The US begins conducting targeted airstrikes on ISIS militants in Iraq to prevent an invasion of the Kurdistan Region capital city of Erbil. President Obama warns the airstrike campaign could last for several months, but that no actual troops will be sent to Iraq.\n",
"BULLET::::- The Government of Syria warns the United States not to conduct airstrikes against Islamic State forces inside Syria unilaterally, adding that such strikes would have to be coordinated with the Syrian government.\n"
] |
Can we learn things while we sleep?
|
It is pretty unlikely that you have the capability to learn while sleeping like that. It has been theorized that your brain spends your time sleeping to unpack the information from the day and store it, so it may not be able to learn additional information because it is already at capacity.
However, this is a subject of study and there are many of us that would like to be able to retain, process and internalize knowledge both faster and during periods of sleep.
|
[
"Since the electroencephalography studies by Charles W. Simon and William H. Emmons in 1956, learning by sleep has not been taken seriously. The researchers concluded that learning during sleep was \"impractical and probably impossible\". They reported that stimulus material presented during sleep was not recalled later when the subject awoke unless alpha wave activity occurred at the same time the stimulus material was given.\n",
"Multiple hypotheses explain the possible connections between sleep and learning in humans. Research indicates that sleep does more than allow the brain to rest. It may also aid the consolidation of long-term memories.\n",
"Sleep-learning (also known as hypnopædia, or hypnopedia) is an attempt to convey information to a sleeping person, typically by playing a sound recording to them while they sleep. Although often used in pop culture as a way to introduce new information (see 'In Fiction'), sleep is considered an important period for memory consolidation.\n",
"Sleep benefits declarative learning across a range of tasks for children and young adults, however little is known of the role that sleep plays for adults when it comes to declarative learning. A study conducted by Wilson, Baran, Schott, Ivry and Spencer sought to see if sleep plays an important role in declarative learning and motor skill learning in adults. Participants were given two tasks to assess motor skill learning and another to assess declarative learning. The participants learned a motor sequence and list of word pairs during either the morning or evening. Memory tests were given to the participants twice, at twelve and twenty-four hours after training. This gap allowed for a period of sleep, a recall test, a period of normal wake, and a recall test. The study results showed that motor skills were not dependent on sleep. However, declarative learning tasks and recall increased when the participants slept before the recall test. The study also showed that a change in sleep patterns and networks activated during sleep may contribute to age related decline in motor sequences but does not affect declarative learning. This study shows that even though the role of sleep may change throughout age it is still very important to declarative learning regardless of age. \n",
"Research focusing on children has also looked at different ways of utilizing declarative learning when it comes to memorizing tasks. Backhaus, Hoeckesfeld, Born, Hohagen, and Junghanns conducted a study to see if sleeping after a task enhances declarative learning in children. Children between the ages of nine and twelve were given a word association task consisting of forty related word pairs. The lists of words were repeated continuously until the child participating could recall at least twenty words out of the forty given. The child was allowed to go to sleep for the night and was tested for recall right after they had woken up. The child was then asked to go about their day and was tested for recall later during the day. The study showed that declarative learning, memory and retention significantly increased only after an interval of sleep that immediately followed learning. This research provides evidence of sleep in the role of declarative learning, sleep consolidation, as well as stresses the importance of sleep for declarative learning during childhood.\n",
"Several studies asked whether learning takes place during practice sessions or in between, for example, during subsequent sleep. The dynamics of learning are hard to evaluate since the directly measured parameter is performance, which is affected by both learning, inducing improvement, and fatigue, which hampers performance. Current studies suggest that sleep contributes to improved and durable learning effects, by further strengthening connections in the absence of continued practice. Both slow-wave and REM (rapid eye movement) stages of sleep may contribute to this process, via not-yet-understood mechanisms.\n",
"One of the primary functions of sleep is thought to be the improvement of the consolidation of information, as several studies have demonstrated that memory depends on getting sufficient sleep between training and test. Additionally, data obtained from neuroimaging studies have shown activation patterns in the sleeping brain that mirror those recorded during the learning of tasks from the previous day, suggesting that new memories may be solidified through such rehearsal.\n"
] |
why do i get shivers when i take a shot of cheap whiskey?
|
Please tell me you are not doing shots with single malt scotch?
Cheaper blended whiskys are mixed with grain alcohol (basically vodka), more expensive whisky will be just made with malt barley and pure spring water
|
[
"BULLET::::- Stage 1 (30 minutes to 12 hours) consists of neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms and looks similar to alcohol poisoning. Poisoned individuals may appear to be intoxicated, dizzy, lacking coordination of muscle movements, drooling, depressed, and have slurred speech, seizuring, abnormal eye movements, headaches, and confusion. Irritation to the stomach may cause nausea and vomiting. Also seen are excessive thirst and urination. Over time, the body metabolizes ethylene glycol into other toxins.\n",
"Whisky is often \"chill filtered\": chilled to precipitate out fatty acid esters and then filtered to remove them. Most whiskies are bottled this way, unless specified as \"unchillfiltered\" or \"non chill filtered\". This is done primarily for cosmetic reasons. Unchillfiltered whiskies often turn cloudy when stored at cool temperatures or when cool water is added to them, and this is perfectly normal.\n",
"Chill filtering prevents the whisky from becoming hazy when in the bottle, when served, when chilled, or when water or ice is added, as well as precluding sedimentation from occurring in the bottles. It works by reducing the temperature sufficiently so that some fatty acids, proteins and esters (created during the distillation process) precipitate out and are caught on the filter. Single malt whiskeys are usually chilled down to 0°C, while the temperature for blended whiskey tends to be lower because they have lower levels of fatty acid.\n",
"Buckwheat contains fluorescent phototoxic fagopyrins. Seeds, flour, and teas are generally safe when consumed in normal amounts, but fagopyrism can appear in people with diets based on high consumption of buckwheat sprouts, and particularly flowers or fagopyrin-rich buckwheat extracts. Symptoms of fagopyrism in humans may include skin inflammation in sunlight-exposed areas, cold sensitivity, and tingling or numbness in the hands.\n",
"However, the Dark Dancer can also let her displeasure be known, and does so by making a cold breeze rise, by making the disfavored ones feel a chill in their hands or feet, through a sudden lack of inspiration or talent in any form of art, or through the failure to catch anything while hunting.\n",
"BULLET::::- – (Classed as hyperthermia if not caused by a fever) – Feeling hot, sweating, feeling thirsty, feeling very uncomfortable, slightly hungry. If this is caused by fever, there may also be chills.\n",
"Factors affecting the chill filtering process include the temperature, number of filters used, and speed at which the whiskey is passed through the filters. The slower the process and the more filters used, the more impurities will be collected, but at increasing cost.\n"
] |
why is judge an elected position?
|
Perhaps not the answer you're looking for, but electing judges (and a few other legal professions, such as district attorney) is an almost uniquely American habit. Much of the rest of the world (certainly that which is based on the British legal system) performs judicial appointments via the legislature or executive, or from within the judiciary itself. Seems to be working out fine for us so far.
|
[
"The court's judges are appointed solely by the Chief Justice of the United States without confirmation or oversight by the U.S. Congress. This gives the chief justice the ability to appoint like-minded judges and create a court without diversity. \"The judges are hand-picked by someone who, through his votes on the Supreme Court, we have come to learn has a particular view on civil liberties and law enforcement\", Theodore Ruger, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said with respect to Chief Justice John Roberts. \"The way the FISA is set up, it gives him unchecked authority to put judges on the court who feel the same way he does.\" And Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, added, \"Since FISA was enacted in 1978, we've had three chief justices, and they have all been conservative Republicans, so I think one can worry that there is insufficient diversity.\" Since May 2014, however, four of the five judges appointed by Chief Justice Roberts to the FISA Court were appointed to their prior federal court positions by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.\n",
"Judges are selected thorough a process involving the four member states where \"each member state presents a list of three candidates and the judges are selected from those lists by unanimous decision of the member states\". Qualified \"candidates must possess a good moral reputation and be competent to exercise the highest judicial roles in their respective countries or be highly competent jurists\". The judges are appointed for a six-year term, which is renewable once. The function of the Court's president rotates annually and a provision is made for the creation of an advocate-general.\n",
"Judges and judicial officers are appointed non-politically and under strict rules regarding tenure to help maintain independence from the executive government. Judges are appointed according to their qualifications, personal qualities, and relevant experience. A judge may not be removed from office except by the Attorney-General upon an address of the House of Representatives (Parliament) for proved misbehaviour.\n",
"A \"Court of the Judiciary\" is created under Alabama law, consisting of one judge of an appellate court (other than the Supreme Court), who shall be selected by the Supreme Court and shall serve as Chief Judge of the Court of the Judiciary. In addition, two judges of the circuit court are to be appointed to this body, who shall be selected by the Circuit Judges' Association; together with one district judge, who shall be selected by the District Judges' Association. Other members of the Court of the Judiciary are: two members of the state bar, who shall be selected by the governing body of the Alabama State Bar; three persons (as of 2005) who are not lawyers who shall be appointed by the Governor; and one person appointed by the Lieutenant Governor. Members appointed by the Governor and Lieutenant Governor shall be subject to Senate confirmation before serving.\n",
"The judiciary is composed of the Supreme Court (सर्बोच्च अदालत), Appellate courts, and various District courts. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was appointed by the monarch on the recommendation of the Constitutional Council; the other judges were appointed by the monarch on the recommendation of the Judicial Council.\n",
"Judges are members of the Judicial Service of the Republic. All judges, except those of the Supreme Court, are appointed by the Supreme Council of Judicature, a body composed of the judges of the Supreme Court, which is responsible for their appointment, promotion, transfer and discipline. Supreme Court Judges are appointed by the President of the Republic on the recommendation of the Supreme Court.\n",
"The appointment of federal judges for United States federal courts has become viewed as a political process in the last several decades. The tables below provide the composition of the Supreme and the Courts of Appeals at the end of each four year presidential term, as well as the District Courts at the current time, categorizing the judges by the presidential term during which they were nominated for their seat.\n"
] |
What would a battle during World War II really be like? Do any video games actually simulate this?
|
I think one thing which many downplay was just how static the soldier's experience of WWII could be. It was not all, or even mostly, aggressive attack and counterattack like popular culture implies. German offensive successes in 1940-42 (what most people call Blitzkrieg, although the Germans never called it that) and the Allied breakout from Normandy have both given the impression that such sweeping moves were routine, but attacks were almost always slow and grinding. In fact combat in WWII in my opinion bears much more resemblance to the stereotypical view of WWI than the view espoused by films and games set in WWII. It's inarguable that the belligerents of WWII went into the war with methods that had been developed in the latter stages of WWI--in particular WWII re-emphasized the necessity of tremendous amounts of supporting artillery fire to neutralise enemy defences and 'shoot' the attacking troops into enemy defences. What's more, the pattern of fighting became more slow and grinding as the war went on--the Germans abandoned anything resembling Blitzkrieg and began to build their tanks as mobile bunkers and emphasize flexible defence by groups of heavily-armed infantry; the Allies relied more and more upon the brute fire-power that their industrial superiority could supply. British troops eventually became so reliant on this support that the routine reaction to coming under fire was to go to ground and wait for fire support. The same kind of tactics used in Normandy, with any attack supported by tons of shelling and any enemy counter-attack smashed by artillery as soon as it began, resemble closely those developed on the Somme, where artillery was used in just this manner--the effect on the landscape was similarly destructive. In WWII soldiers fought in basically the same way their fathers had fought in 1918, with the addition of more mobile tanks (of which there were always relatively few compared to infantry), portable radios, reliable motor vehicles (though the only fully mechanised army at the beginning of the war was the British Army), and larger firepower.
This continuity is summed up really well by John Ellis in *The Sharp End of War*, which is a great book on the soldier's experience which I'd recommend you read if you can.
> Above all, perhaps, the two world war have in common the shovel and the entrenching tool. From 1914 onwards the paramount fact in war was firepower of such intensity that only in holes in the ground could the front-line soldier even begin to feel relatively secure. Armoured vehicles briefly robbed defensive tactics of their supremacy, but by 1941 at the latest anti-tank gun, the mine, and a little later the bazooka/PIAT/Panzerfaust, had done much to restore the balance. Attacking remained a hazardous and slow procedure, only to be undertaken when necessary and with the maximum amount of fire support...though World War II never had trench systems as static or elaborate as those on the Western Front, the individual soldier nevertheless spent much of his time burrowing into the ground...if defensive firepower was no longer sufficiently predominant as to make only the most trivial gains possible, it was still quite enough to make progress agonisingly slow and to necessitate constant retrenchment after each desperate bound. Even when troops were not themselves on the defensive, actual advances across the battlefield were sporadic and slow, each attack a frenetic spasm in the troglodyte routine. In the front line at least 90 per cent of the infantryman's time was spent under cover either on the defensive, often under bombardment, awaiting an enemy attack, or nerving himself to the prospect of going forward.
I'd also recommend *Time to Kill: The Soldier's Experience of War in the West, 1939-1945* for excellent, more academic assessments of the key belligerents. Otherwise there are countless works which look into the minutiae of how individual armies operated and how the precise forms of battle differed greatly, as others have pointed out.
|
[
"For many World War II wargamers, this became the ultimate World War II wargame, even if it was not possible to complete all that many games. Nearly two decades later, Decision Games published a computer version by Greg Ploussios which recreated the game, which is still played by email between enthusiasts. The main limit to the computer game is that there is no computer opponent, so it must be played by two or more human players. Decision Games republished the monster in 1999, with additional optional rules (including Western Allied production) and counters (e.g. US Marines) and significantly upgraded map graphics. Decision Games is planning on again re-publishing this game, and stating they will add counters and new optional rules. A new computer game version of the \"War in Europe\", redesigned to fit more advanced versions of Windows, appeared early in 2009.\n",
"Historically, there have even been a few rare occasions where a simulation was validated as it was being carried out. One notable such occurrence was just before the famous Ardennes offensive in World War II, when the Germans attacked allied forces during a period of bad weather in the winter of 1944, hoping to reach the port of Antwerp and force the Allies to sue for peace. According to German General Friedrich J Fangor, the staff of Fifth \"Panzerarmee\" had met in November to game defensive strategies against a simulated American attack. They had no sooner begun the exercise than reports began arriving of a strong American attack in the Hűrtgen area—exactly the area they were gaming on their map table. \"Generalfeldmarschall\" Walther Model ordered the participants (apart from those commanders whose units were actually under attack) to continue playing, using the messages they were receiving from the front as game moves. For the next few hours simulation and reality ran hand-in-hand: when the officers at the game table decided that the situation warranted commitment of reserves, the commander of the 116th \"Panzer\" Division was able to turn from the table and issue as operational orders those moves they had just been gaming. The division was mobilised in the shortest possible time, and the American attack was repulsed.\n",
"WWII mode is a game mode which allows the player to wage war across the globe in a traditional turn-based fashion. It resembles a turn-based computer variant of the \"Axis & Allies\" board games, but with the option to fight battles in RTS mode. The player fights WWII in how they see fit, effectively \"changing the course of history.\"\n",
"The game focuses battles between the 8th United States airforce and the Luftwaffe challenge during World War II, especially the American Strategic Bombing offensive against Germany, from August 1943 towards the end of war in 1945. It is focused more on action than on realistic simulation. The game sets up German secret weapons, with fast jet propulsion and a variety of missiles and bombs, against slower but more numerous American piston-engined airplanes.\n",
"War Times is a real-time strategy computer game for Windows released in 2004. It was developed and produced by Spanish company Legend Studios and distributed in USA and Canada by Strategy First. It is a World War II strategy game where the player can play as either the Allies or the Axis and usually has to complete a task that pertains to killing the opposing force or defending a base from enemies for a set amount of time.\n",
"While it has been argued that computer wargame video games lack the realism of traditional games, they may include features that are impractical for tangible games. One such approach is using fog of war, whereby players are unable to see the landscape beyond the simulating viewing distance of their units. This is made practical in digital games by the fundamental difference of competing against artificial intelligence or remote competitors with their own view of the playing field.\n",
"The five original \"Close Combat\" games were real-time tactical (RTT) war games, with a top-down perspective and two-player capabilities. Each was set in a different European theatre of the Second World War. Each game included a mixture of infantry and armoured units, whilst the later games also included artillery, mortars and air support. Although viewed from a top-down perspective, the later games modelled terrain elevation, and included buildings with multiple floors and viewable sides. The overall tone emphasised realism, and modelled the emotional or physical state of the soldiers and equipment which included, panicked, berserk, burning, incapacitated, pinned and many others.\n"
] |
When and why Viet Nam and Korea (both North and South) abandoned Chinese characters?
|
North Korea made the shift starting in the late 1940s. 1949, officially.
South Korea was still using them quite frequently as late as the 1990s, and you can still find plenty of examples of mixed script Korean in academic texts today. In the early 90's newspapers finally switched over to Hangeul. However Chinese characters (*hanja*) are still used for abbreviations and some technical terminology where they can clear up ambiguity. Officially, the teaching of *hanja* stopped in 1971 in South Korea for younger students. In both Koreas, *hanja* are still taught to high schoolers, but in limited number. It's also worth mentioning that prior to this, hangeul was only really standardised in the 1930s, and then again in the 1980s.
In Vietnam, Chinese characters (chữ nôm) were replaced in the 1920s. The system that replaced it wasn't too new. It was developed and in use by missionaries in the mid 1800s.
Why, for both languages, is a little more complicated. A big part of it had to do with national identity. A big part of it had to do with efforts to improve literacy. On those grounds even Mao Zedong made early pushes to replace Chinese characters with an alphabet, though this ultimately never happened (though it got close in some places).
Another significant factor is that at this time (early 20th century) the practice of writing all formal texts in Classical Chinese was falling out of favour across Asia. People were starting to use the vernacular to write, rather than an archaic form of another language entirely. If you're going to write the way you speak, then there's less perceived value in using an old foreign orthography to do it, especially when the list of perceived shortcomings is quite long when it comes to how that script can represent your language.
Simply put, one could say that the sort of nationalism that was developing at the start of the 20th century across the region (e.g. 五四運動) was really the key factor.
|
[
"Produced five years before the beginning of the United States' rapproachment with Mao Zedong in 1972, \"Red Chinese Battle Plan\" was made during the Vietnam War under the Lyndon Johnson administration. Despite the widening rift between the China and the Soviet Union, both powers supported the Vietnamese communists during the Indochina conflict, while the Western Bloc cultivated a myth of Chinese expansionism throughout the decade.\n",
"Before the Chinese actually annexed Vietnam, groups from present-day southern China began to move into the Tonkin Delta in order to start new lives after being forced to leave their homelands. Thus, around the 3rd century BC, changes in China began to heavily influence the Đông Sơn culture which was thriving in Vietnam. One important series of changes occurred along the Yangtze River in southern China. According to historians, in 333 BC, three cultures, the Shu, the Ch'u, and the Yueh began to fight among themselves, causing the Yueh to move south in small scattered kingdoms. At the same time, the central power of northern China, the Ch'in Dynasty, began to split so that a large number of princes and members of the aristocracy also moved south to start their own small kingdoms. Sino-Vietnamese 越 gave the name \"Viet\".\n",
"After the war, 200,000 Chinese troops under General Lu Han sent by Chiang Kai-shek invaded northern Indochina north of the 16th parallel to accept the surrender of Japanese occupying forces, and remained there until 1946. The Chinese used the , the Vietnamese branch of the Chinese , to increase their influence in Indochina and put pressure on their opponents.\n",
"Following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the Viet Minh established close ties with China. It enabled the Chinese to expand their area of influence into Indochina and the Viet Minh to receive much-needed Chinese equipment and strategic planning support. From mid-1950, PRC military advisers were seconded to the Viet Minh at battalion, regimental and divisional levels. The common border meant that \"China became a 'sanctuary' where the Viet Minh could be trained and refitted\". When the Korean War broke out, Indochina became \"an important pawn in Cold War strategy\". In December 1950, the United States, concerned about growing Chinese Communist influence, started providing military aid to the French, with a first payment of US$15 million.\n",
"When the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) withdrew from Vietnam in March 1979 after the war, China announced that they were not ambitious for \"any square inch of the territory of Vietnam\". However, Chinese troops occupied an area of , which was disputed land controlled by Vietnam before hostilities broke out. In some places such as the area around Friendship Gate near the city of Lạng Sơn, Chinese troops occupied territories which had little military value but important symbolic value. Elsewhere, Chinese troops occupied the strategic positions of military importance as springboards to attack Vietnam.\n",
"Vietnam used to write in chữ Hán or Classical Chinese. Since the 8th century they began inventing many of their own chữ Nôm. Since French colonization, they have switched to using a modified version of the Latin alphabet called chữ Quốc ngữ. However, Chinese characters still hold a special place in the cultures as their history and literature have been greatly influenced by Chinese characters. In Vietnam (and North Korea), hanzi can be seen in temples, cemeteries, and monuments today, as well as serving as decorative motifs in art and design. And there are movements to restore Hán Nôm in Vietnam. (Also see History of writing in Vietnam.)\n",
"In 1930, the Central Plains War broke out across China, involving regional commanders who had fought in alliance with the Kuomintang during the Northern Expedition, and the Nanjing government under Chiang. The Communist Party of China (CPC) previously fought openly against the Nanjing government after the Shanghai massacre of 1927, and they continued to expand during this civil war. The Kuomintang government in Nanjing decided to focus their efforts on suppressing the Chinese Communists through the Encirclement Campaigns, following the policy of \"first internal pacification, then external resistance\" ().\n"
] |
why would the government classify alien activity ?
|
It is almost guaranteed that evidence of extraterrestrial life would destabilize the planet.
We've seen how people behave at a Walmart on Black Friday - How would they act if they found out there was a superior species *out there*?
Fear, hope, riots, gatherings would occur. Everything you know and love about your society would become insignificant. We'd suddenly become a global society, finally identifying as *human* rather than American or Chinese, black or hispanic. Governments would lose control after a large portion of our species becomes unified in such a manner and the rest descend into an existentialism induced chaos.
How then would we find structure? Who is in charge of the entire planet? How do you decide?
It would be much safer to keep knowledge of extraterrestrials from the common people and avoid such an embarrassment to the visitors. We're basically still the same creature that evolved to survive on the plains of Africa. Sometimes we need to maintain this sort of control over our society.
The aliens might even realize this themselves and command us to keep it a secret. They'd have to understand the reality or else they'd simply fly some of their ships over our cities or start a broadcast on all frequencies.
Supposing this, we would presume then that Governments would decide (or be instructed) to begin unifying the planet culturally in preparation for this extraterrestrial-based social unification. Globalism would be encouraged, peace and understanding would be encouraged. Wars would slow down or vanish completely...
But instead we see that petty wars over money and territory continue to this day. We see wars against terrorism on TV, but read on the internet that we're the terrorists. We still see petty squabbles and social striations. We still let our own people die of starvation while others are forced to undergo drastic surgeries to reduce their weight. We'll force women to reproduce and then wait patiently to put that unwanted child into prison 18 years later.
If the government(s) are in contact with extraterrestrials then those extraterrestrials are probably not the ones that we'd want to meet. If they were then we would expect much different behavior from our financial elite and our governments.
We might expect those aliens to be non-benevolent anyway.
You don't end up with advanced technology from a friendly environment. Wars and struggle are what inspires intelligent beings to create technology. What use is a nuclear reactor when your food is plentiful and weather pleasant? What good is a fortress when you have no enemies?
What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots?
The idea that any star-faring civilization will be the same ones who've been forced to bend and break their environment to survive could be reason enough for the riots and chaos of an Earth now made aware of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Imagine you're a peaceful alien and humans landed on your planet. Would you be worried? You would if you knew about our history genocides, hate, and destruction.
|
[
"Alienage, or the state of being an alien, i.e. a non-citizen of the United States, is a unique category. For purposes of state law, legal aliens are a suspect class (\"Graham v. Richardson\", 403 U.S. 365 (1971)). As such, state actions are analyzed according to strict scrutiny. In contrast, because the United States Congress has the power to regulate immigration, federal government action that discriminates based on alienage will receive rational basis scrutiny. State acts that affect unlawful immigrants are generally analyzed with rational basis review unless the topic is education of children, in which case they are analyzed under intermediate scrutiny based on \"Plyler v. Doe\", 457 U.S. 202 (1982).\n",
"The usage of the term \"alien\" dates back to 1798, when it was used in the Alien and Sedition Acts. Although the INA provides no overarching explicit definition of the term \"illegal alien\", it is mentioned in a number of provisions under title 8. Several provisions even mention the term \"unauthorized alien\". According to PolitiFact, the term \"illegal alien\" occurs in federal law, but does so scarcely. PolitiFact notes that, \"where the term does appear, it’s undefined or part of an introductory title or limited to apply to certain individuals convicted of felonies.\" \n",
"According to PolitiFact, the term \"illegal alien\" occurs in federal law, but does so scarcely. PolitiFact notes that, \"where the term does appear, it’s undefined or part of an introductory title or limited to apply to certain individuals convicted of felonies.\"\n",
"The Act amended the INA to add new provisions enforcing mandatory detention laws. These apply to any alien who is engaged in terrorism, or who is engaged in an activity that endangers U.S. national security. It also applies to those who are inadmissible or who must be deported because it is certified they are attempting to enter to undertake illegal espionage; are exporting goods, technology, or sensitive information illegally; or are attempting to control or overthrow the government; or have, or will have, engaged in terrorist activities. The Attorney General or the Attorney General's deputy may maintain custody of such aliens until they are removed from the U.S. unless it is no longer deemed they should be removed, in which case they are released. The alien can be detained for up to 90 days but can be held up to six months after it is deemed that they are a national security threat. However, the alien must be charged with a crime or removal proceedings start no longer than seven days after the alien's detention, otherwise the alien will be released. However, such detentions must be reviewed every six months by the Attorney General, who can then decide to revoke it, unless prevented from doing so by law. Every six months the alien may apply, in writing, for the certification to be reconsidered. Judicial review of any action or decision relating to this section, including judicial review of the merits of a certification, can be held under habeas corpus proceedings. Such proceedings can be initiated by an application filed with the United States Supreme Court, by any justice of the Supreme Court, by any circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, or by any district court otherwise having jurisdiction to entertain the application. The final order is subject to appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Provisions were also made for a report to be required every six months of such decisions from the U.S. Attorney General to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives and the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate.\n",
"The Act also contains provisions (often referred to as the \"habeas provisions\") removing access to the courts for any alien detained by the United States government who is determined to be an enemy combatant, or who is 'awaiting determination' regarding enemy combatant status. This allows the United States government to detain such aliens indefinitely without prosecuting them in any manner.\n",
"In 1940, the Alien Registration Act, or \"Smith Act\", was passed, which made it a federal crime to advocate or to teach the desirability of overthrowing the United States Government, or to be a member of any organization which does the same. It was often used against Communist Party organizations. This Act was invoked in three major cases, one of which against the Socialist Worker's Party in Minneapolis in 1941, resulting in 23 convictions, and again in what became known as the Great Sedition Trial of 1944 in which a number of pro-Nazi figures were indicted but released when the prosecution ended in a mistrial. Also, a series of trials of 140 leaders of the Communist Party USA also relied upon the terms of the \"Smith Act\"—beginning in 1949—and lasting until 1957. Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the convictions of 11 CPUSA leaders in 1951 in Dennis v. United States, that same Court reversed itself in 1957 in the case of \"Yates v. United States\", by ruling that teaching an ideal, no matter how harmful it may seem, does not equal advocating or planning its implementation. Although unused since at least 1961, the \"Smith Act\" remains a Federal law.\n",
"Alien activity is discovered in a Kirkwood gap; the aliens are identified as self-replicating machines (von Neumann probes). Their activity is potentially an immense threat, as Malenfant notes in an earlier speech: \"A target system, we assume, is uninhabited. We can therefore program for massive and destructive exploitation of the system's resources, without restraint, by the probe. Such resources are useless for any other purpose, and are therefore economically free to us. And so we colonize, and build.\"\n"
] |
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