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Why are people so drawn to shiny things like minerals and gems, especially to the point where they're used in things like fine jewelry and crowns?

Shiny things are usually rare and/or valuable. We put them with other shiny things as a show of wealth or status, like the British Crown Jewels or the Hope Diamond.

Gemstone A gemstone (also called a gem, fine gem, jewel, precious stone, or semi-precious stone) is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli and opal) and occasionally organic materials that are not minerals (such as amber, jet, and pearl) are also used for jewelry and are therefore often considered to be gemstones as well. Most gemstones are hard, but some soft minerals are used in jewelry because of their luster or other physical properties that have aesthetic value. Rarity is another

What does growth mean in terms of a countries economy?

The way I learned economic growth, the ways economic growth is measured is by increasing the production capacity the country has (or, in other words, produce more stuff, which then brings in more money when the country exports it). War is famously known to help production (although it also has its downfalls), as the government wants every ounce of resources it can get to produce weaponry and other goods, and hence WWII is usually credited with officially ending the Great Depression. There's also growth that's caused by better quality of life for the residents, such as technological advances (such as from horse-and-buggy to cars), increased literacy rates, decreased poverty rates, lower unemployment rates, better environments, etc. With these, people are more eager to spend money rather than to spend (such as the "world is ending" mindset many people had during the last years of the Cold War in the '80s), and of course, with more spending, there's typically a healthier economy which leads to more growth.

growth depends on policies to increase investment, by increasing saving, and using that investment more efficiently through technological advances. The model concludes that an economy does not "naturally" find full employment and stable growth rates.

please ELI5 what the sound is when i put a cup near my ear

[Source](_URL_0_) The cup (or shell) amplifies the ambient noise, which is the thing you hear. Many people believe it's an echo of your blood, this can easily be disproved. Try to exercise and put the cup to the ear. The noise is no louder, even if you hearth is beating faster.

there are vibrations in the air, the eardrum is stimulated. The eardrum collects these vibrations and sends them to receptor cells. The ossicles which are connected to the eardrum pass the vibrations to the fluid-filled cochlea. Once the vibrations reach the cochlea, the stirrup (part of the ossicles) puts pressure on the oval window. This opening allows the vibrations to move through the liquid in the cochlea where the receptive organ is able to sense it. Pitch, loudness and timbre There are many different qualities in sound stimuli including loudness, pitch and timbre. The human ear is able to detect differences

Why do you often feel to hot/cold when you want to sleep?

Your body temperature decreases to initiate sleep. The recommended temperature for a good night’s sleep is 60 to 67 degrees. That’s a lot lower than what I think most houses are at right now. So if your house feels too warm and you’re noticing it when you lay down for bed that’s probably why. I know the first sign every year for me to break out my a/c is when I lay down at night even though it was most likely hotter during the day

temperature: a very excited person often has an elevated temperature. Wearing more clothing slows daily temperature change and raises body temperature. Similarly, sleeping with an electric blanket raises the body temperature at night. Sleep disturbances also affect temperatures. Normally, body temperature drops significantly at a person's normal bedtime and throughout the night. Short-term sleep deprivation produces a higher temperature at night than normal, but long-term sleep deprivation appears to reduce temperatures. Insomnia and poor sleep quality are associated with smaller and later drops in body temperature. Similarly, waking up unusually early, sleeping in, jet lag and changes

Is it possible to make an app that is a scale for an iPhone? Since we have pressure sensitive touch, is there a reason we can’t have it measure just how much pressure for small items?

It is entirely possible and definitely a thing, such apps and sites did pop up when 3D touch became a thing with the iPhone 6 release, but IIRC Apple labeled the use of the phones in this way a liability and these apps were removed from the app store, but some websites are still around such as TouchScale.

complex gestures using multi-touch. Android's interaction techniques enable moving up or down by a touch-drag motion of the finger. However the buttons on the front of the device will also require frequent use throughout various applications in Android OS as the buttons play an important part in the user interface. 30 frames per second cap Some users have experienced noticeable graphics lag and/or slowness while using the phone. Various reports throughout the Internet indicated that the device may have a 30 frames per second cap. An HTC representative announced that it was a hardware cap, not subject to software updates.

when is space where there is nothing but emptiness, what do rocket engines thrust against that make them move forward?

The rocket engines push against the exhaust that is being expelled. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It's exactly the same as if you were wearing ice skates (standing on ice, obviously) and holding a bowling ball. If you throw the ball forward, you'll slide backwards. This is not because the bowling ball is pushing against the air. It's because when you push the bowling ball forward, you're also pushing yourself backward. With a rocket, the exhaust from the engines is the bowling ball.

space between the top of the propellant load and the top of the tank is known as "ullage space". Ullage pressure is a critical measurable during powered rocket flight, because it affects tank structural integrity and engine Net Positive Suction Pressure (NPSP). In the weightless condition in space without engine thrust, empty space occurs in partially filled tanks, and the liquid floats away from the engine intake, which is undesirable for stable engine operation. Small rocket engines are sometimes used to provide enough acceleration to settle the propellant to the bottom of the tanks prior to ignition of the

Why does the law allow companies to purchase or merge with other companies? Why aren't all purchases/mergers viewed as a consolidation within an industry and a step closer to monopolization?

Having a monopoly is not inherently bad or illegal. What is illegal is using your control over a market to stifle competition. That's when the government steps in and companies are broken up.

Community Merger Regulation This usually means that one firm buys out the shares of another. The reasons for oversight of economic concentrations by the state are the same as the reasons to restrict firms who abuse a position of dominance, only that regulation of mergers and acquisitions attempts to deal with the problem before it arises, ex ante prevention of creating dominant firms. In the case of [T-102/96] Gencor Ltd v. Commission [1999] ECR II-753 the EU Court of First Instance wrote merger control is there "to avoid the establishment of market structures which may create or strengthen a dominant position

Why doesn't the United States FDA create a daily multivitamin they approve of?

Vitamins are not food and they are not drugs. They cannot regulate them because currently they do not have the authority to do so. They (or some other part of the government, I am not sure) would have to reclassify all vitamins to make them a drug and therefore able to be regulated. Edit: Also the FDA does not make any drugs, they regulate the companies that makes drugs. I am not sure how the FDA changing the classification of vitamins would magically make them more beneficial.

generic formulation is available in the US and none has appeared due to the fact that the FDA approval process was ongoing. If rifaximin receives full FDA approval for hepatic encephalopathy it is likely that Salix will maintain marketing exclusivity and be protected from generic formulations until March 24, 2017. In 2018, a patent dispute with Teva was settled which delayed a generic in the United States, with the patent set to expire in 2029. Rifaximin is approved in 33 countries for GI disorders. On August 13, 2013, Health Canada issued a Notice of Compliance to Salix Pharmaceuticals Inc. for the

Why is Quebec still French speaking?

> why is it the only French speaking region of Canada? It's not. It's only the only province where French speaking people are a majority. > How come since Quebec was British owned and subsequently part of an independant Canada, English was not able to replace French? To avoid uprisings, the British accepted that it would keep its laws, language and religion thinking they would eventually assimilate. People decided they wouldn't and made efforts to preserve those. To this day, Quebec still works on a different legal system than the other provinces. > Is French still realy the dominant language of Quebec? Yes. > Do most people speak it there? Yes > What are the languages though in school/shown on tv/ radio etc.? School teaches some English but not enough to qualify as bilingual. Media produced in Quebec are in French.

the fact that Quebec French diverges from the standard form of France have caused linguistic insecurity among Quebec speakers. Due to the separation from France after the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and the multilingual environment, Quebec French become more anglicized through English pronunciations and borrowings. Though French Canadian speakers were aware of the differences between Quebec French and French, the foreign perception of Quebec French as "non-standard" was not an issue until the mid 19th century. The opinions of the French elite that Quebec French was "far removed from the prestigious variety spoken in Paris" had spread through the general

Why does rain make people tired?

It's probably a combination of reasons. Humans like to be awake all day and sleep all night. And we take our cues from the sun. If it's raining it's darker, so our bodies think, hey almost time for bed! Let's get sleepy! The other reason is ( I'm not to sure about this one so other redditors feel free to debunk me! ): When we're in our mommy's belly we're constantly surrounded by the sound of her body, her digestive system gurgling but mostly the sound of her blood circulating. Which is a constant rushing sound. Rain kinda sounds like that, just like a rolling car, or vacuum cleaner. This makes us feel safe and comfortable. And again sleepy. Fun facts about this: If you drive a long way and don't have any distracting sounds like a radio the sound of your car can cause 'highway hypnosis' causing you to relax and fall asleep behind the wheel. Babies, when they're tired fall alseep very easily in the car or when a vacuum cleaner is running. Because it reminds them of being inside mommy's belly.

and dry seasons. Seasonal conditions are often very contrasting. In the rainy season, rain will fall almost daily while in the dry season, rain will not come for months, causing widespread drought and water shortages. These problems have been compounded with the loss of forest and other green areas. Teak forest once covered much of Bojonegoro, but has since considerably reduced due to over exploitation. Floods in the rainy season of 2007 were bigger than in previous years. The water level of Solo River rose due to heavy rain, especially in the upper valley in Central Java, forcing the Gajah

How come if I put a lot of pressure on my fingers or toes (i.e. rest my head on my hand) they go "numb" and lose all feeling?

You reduce the circulation dramatically meaning the blood isn't being supplied to the cells including the nerves and therefore they shut down. Restore the circulation and they start up again deluging you with all your missed messages.

of peripheral neuropathy. There is a range of ways that damage to the nerve can occur. Leaning on the elbow can lead to long-term wear and tear due to the prolonged pressure of the weight of the upper body. Symptoms resulting from leaning on the nerve can include numbness and tingling fingers. Causes Common occupations such as cyclist, motorcyclist, and desk jobs prolong movement and elbow leaning. These activities involve pressure to the palms, which leads to cumulative damage to the nerve. When using a pizza cutter or similar hand tools which require downward pressure during use, applying upper body

If nuclear waste is the biggest concern over the power plants, why couldn't/wouldn't we just launch the waste into space and into the sun to dispose of it? Or even just into space. Isn't there plenty of radiation there, already?

The rule of thumb, (I think according to Phil Plait's book), given current technology, the estimated cost for launching something into space is roughly the cost of the weight of that thing in Gold, and the cost to get it to the moon would be the weight in diamonds. To be more mathematical, according to this sourced Yahoo [answers page](_URL_2_) the cost is about $5,000 per kilogram to get something into orbit. Now, getting something into orbit is not enough, since orbits decay and that would just put the junk right back on earth. Likewise, that $5,000 is based on a space plane that isn't going to scale quite the same. But, combining those too let's say it only costs twice as much to get material permanently out of earth's orbit. (my guess is I am off by an order of magnitude) The U.S. generates 2,300 metric tons of waste [per year](_URL_1_). That's 2.3 million kilograms. At our unbelievably conservative estimate, that means the minimum cost for launching that material into space is 23 billion dollars per year, just for the United States. For comparison, NASA's budget in 2012 was 17 Billion dollars. for comparison: > It’s been estimated that Yucca Mountain – the United State’s current plan to store nuclear waste – will cost about $58 billion to store waste over the course of 100 years.[space.](_URL_0_] that's only 5.8 billion per year. And, that's without considering the risk of an accident. Imagine the impact if a rocket full of metric tonnes of radioactive waste exploded two miles above the surface of the earth, spreading highly radioactive material over an enormous area. ***TLDR;*** It is too expensive, and too dangerous.

Consequently, high-level radioactive waste requires sophisticated treatment and management to successfully isolate it from the biosphere. This usually necessitates treatment, followed by a long-term management strategy involving permanent storage, disposal or transformation of the waste into a non-toxic form. However, many nuclear power by-products are usable as nuclear fuel themselves; extracting the usable energy producing contents from nuclear waste is called "nuclear recycling". Governments around the world are considering a range of waste management and disposal options, usually involving deep-geologic placement, although there has been limited progress toward implementing long-term waste management solutions. This is partly because

Why does smoking preserve food?

Smoking by itself is actually insufficient to properly preserve foods. Smoke is an antimicrobial and an antioxidant but only protects the outside of food, so it is usually combined with other processes like salt-curing and drying which protect the interior of food from bacterial growth.

and refrigeration. Chemical preservation and physical preservation techniques are sometimes combined. Nonsynthetic compounds for food preservation Citric and ascorbic acids target enzymes that degrade fruits and vegetables, e.g., mono/polyphenol oxidase which turns surfaces of cut apples and potatoes brown. Ascorbic acid and tocopherol, which are vitamins, are common preservatives. Smoking entails exposing food to a variety of phenols, which are antioxidants. Natural preservatives include rosemary and oregano extract, hops, salt, sugar, vinegar, alcohol, diatomaceous earth and castor oil. Traditional preservatives, such as sodium benzoate have raised health concerns in the past. Benzoate was shown in a study to cause

Why when you stare at a moving pattern for an extended period of time and then look up, why everything's wavy.

The conscious image of the world is not a direct input from your retinas. Your brain does a lot of processing to make sense of the world before your consciousness gets the image. This happens for many reasons! Your brain is built to recognize edges and borders, which helps us pick out hiding predators, prey, dangers like snakes, and tree branches to grab during [brachiation](_URL_0_). You're wired to detect faces and emotions conveyed by the expressions. Your brain automatically fixes colors based on lighting and shading. And, most importantly for the thing you're describing, your brain predicts what it should see and adjusts the picture accordingly. It takes time to process the information from your eyes, recognize the image, make sense of it, put it into context, deliver it to your consciousness, and act on it. It's really damn fast, but it's not instantaneous. To make up for that, your conscious picture of the world is not what your retinas see, it's what your brain a few milliseconds ago thought you should be seeing a few milliseconds later. That puts you in the "present", or at least, a very good approximation of the present. When you're staring at the moving bottle caps for a long time, your brain gets used to the movement and predicts that the movement will continue. This is great, because it lets you track the moving objects better, since you're anticipating it instead of trying to catch up. When you look away, though, your brain is still predicting movement, and adjusts the image accordingly. Since those things are *not* moving, they appear to wave as your brain predicts their movement, then corrects for the fact that they didn't move, then predicts they'll move again, then corrects again, and so on until it catches on to the fact that things aren't moving through your field of vision anymore.

Motion aftereffect The motion aftereffect (MAE) is a visual illusion experienced after viewing a moving visual stimulus for a time (tens of milliseconds to minutes) with stationary eyes, and then fixating a stationary stimulus. The stationary stimulus appears to move in the opposite direction to the original (physically moving) stimulus. The motion aftereffect is believed to be the result of motion adaptation. For example, if one looks at a waterfall for about a minute and then looks at the stationary rocks at the side of the waterfall, these rocks appear to be moving upwards slightly. The illusory upwards movement is the

Why are Saturday morning cartoons idealized? What’s so different about them as opposed to other days’ cartoons?

Way back when there weren't multiple channels whose only purpose was cartoons. There was a MARKET for cartoons, but not a huge market. What day and time are kids most likely to be available year-round to watch things marketed towards them? Saturday mornings. During the week they're in school. Sundays, might have church. Later in the day Saturday, might have family activities. Parents might even try to sneak in a little sleep by sleeping until 8 or 9, and kids might be able to get up early and watch cartoons.

Saturday-morning cartoon Early cartoons Although the Saturday-morning timeslot had always featured a great deal of children's programming beginning in the early 1950s, the idea of commissioning new animated series for broadcast on Saturday mornings caught on in the mid-1960s, when the networks realized that they could concentrate kids' viewing on that one morning to appeal to advertisers. Furthermore, limited animation, such as that produced by such studios as Filmation Associates, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, Total Television, Jay Ward Productions and Hanna-Barbera Productions, was economical enough to produce in sufficient quantity to fill the four-hour time slot, as compared to live-action programming. While

How do television stations know how many people are watching/ How do television ratings work?

Each TV has a tiny camera in it that is always watching you watching TV.

– TV Audience Measurement In every city where the audience is measured, MIB choose a group of homes at random to represent the population – a process known as audience measurement. With the authorization of the family members, each television is equipped with a device called a peoplemeter, which identifies and records which channels are being watched. By fixed telephone line and/or GSM the device sends out information when viewers changes channels to a central collection point managed by MIB, which processes, analyzes, and distributes the data to clients. MIB measures up to eight members of each household. Participants are from both

What is CERN and what real problems can it cause?

CERN is basically trying to find out the origins of our universe and how everything works by using a very large particle accelerator to accelerate particles to 99.99991% the speed of light and have them collide with one another. When these particles collide they break apart and that is when we can see what holds particles together and how things work. Only problem is that there is years of data to go through and experimentally proving everything will take a long time. There is no real threat from this, what you see online is just that, "conspiracy theories." People believing that smashing particles will create a black hole and destroy the world.

was called, but Amy believes it can't be very important. At CERN, they overhear Dr. Niven and the Director General arguing over safety. Dr. Niven wants the LHC to be stopped till he can assess the safety, but the Director General overrides his concerns and informs him that, once the problem is fixed, the LHC would work normally and finding the Higgs boson is of utmost importance. The Director General realizes that Connor, James and Amy are listening to them and he asks the security guard to shut the door. At the conference room they meet Lisa, who was supposed to

How can someone just walk away from a home loan?

That wasn't a cause of the subprime mortgage crisis, but more of a result. But that's too much to get into here. Walking away isn't without consequences. You will get a big mark on your credit rating, which won't go away for 7-10 years, meaning anything dependent on your credit score (including some forms of employment) can be harder than it would be otherwise. New car loans, buying another house, etc may be impossible for 7-10 years. A mortgage is a "dead loan", meaning that when the underlying security is recovered (the home), the obligation from the borrower is complete. Other type of secured loan don't have this feature, and it's possible for you to get a loan, secured by some security, be unable to repay it, have the security taken and sold, and still be liable to pay the outstanding balance. So if you bought a house for $200K, and the subprime mortgage crisis hit, dropping home prices in your area so your house is now worth $100K while you still owe $150K, your choices are (a) Keep paying your mortgage for your $200K house, (b) sell the house for $100K, and immediately owe the bank an extra $50K you probably don't have, or (c) walk away, let the bank foreclose, and deal with the consequences. Ideally, you'd do (a), but if home prices are falling because everyone in your area is losing their jobs including you, or your mortgage is structured in such a way that your payments jump (more on this later), or for some other reason you need to move (congratulations on your new promotion, half way across the country), then you can't keep paying the mortgage, and have to do one of the other choices. Walking away suddenly seems like your only choice. In the leadup to the crisis, there was a high investor-side demand for mortgages to invest in. The banks sold complicated financial products to investors based on mortgages that were virtually guaranteed to not fail. Business was good, and the banks sold a lot. This meant they had to have mortgages to sell to investors, so they really pushed home ownership and writing mortgages on homes. This lead to some really bad mortgage lending practices that were not good for the borrower at all. A lot of crappy mortgages were written -- these are the "subprime" mortgages. A "prime" mortgage must meet certain rules: no more than 80% of the assessed value of the property, the borrower can't have too much debt already, etc. Any mortgage that doesn't meet these rules is "subprime", and have a higher risk of failure. So the subprime mortgage crisis immediately implies that a lot of risky loans were being written. Loans that were interest-only for the first 5 years (so a 6% loan on a $100K house would only have payments of $500/month for the first 5 years), but jumped after that. Loans that were structured to be 5 years long, with a large balloon payment at the end, adjustable rate mortgages with a very low intro rate but jumped high after 5 years, etc. The supposed idea was that since home values always went up, a good subprime borrower would, after 5 years, qualify for a prime loan and could refinance on better terms. When housing prices fell, the subprime borrowers couldn't refinance, and the whole thing fell apart. Homeowners lost their homes, investors didn't get paid on their investments, etc.

it being believed that a homeowner will try harder to pay the loan if they risk losing their primary residence. Fraudulent representation of a person's primary residence can result in significant financial downside and potential criminal charges.

What is the process of photographers when taking pictures of the supermoon?

There's really not much to it beyond needing that longer lens to zoom in more. Since the moon is being lit up by the sun the exposure times are just like taking a picture of anything outdoors in the middle of the day so it can be a handheld shot. Think of it like wanting a picture of a specific person's face in the other side of a football stadium. As long as you have a lens that gets you close enough you can get the image you want.

Kong. For these photographs, Ahn works by gaining access to the building legitimately - it can take several months for the owners to give permission for the project - and setting a digital camera to take a large volume of high-speed images while she poses. These are then sifted to find a picture depicting Ahn looking unconcerned or distracted, captured in what she describes as "...a certain moment of time that did exist, but which we couldn't perceive with the naked eye because it happened too fast." The Guardian reported that "In the most dangerous shots, such as when she is using

Gas octanes?

The biggest misconception is that there's "more power" or something similar to higher octane gas. This is not true. In essence, higher octane means it's more stable and less easy to burn. Why does this matter, and isn't that kind of counter intuitive? It matters because many of the ways engineers improve an engine's performance requires a more stable fuel. One common example is higher compression ratios. So when your motor compresses the Air/Fuel mixture in the cylinder, the more it compresses that mixture, the more power it will get when it's ignited. However, with more compression (pressure), the mixture is more likely to ignite *before* the sparkplug actually ignites the fuel. If you use a low octane fuel, it burns more easily so the chances of you getting premature ignition of the mixture is higher in a higher performance engine. With a higher octane fuel, the mixture will be more stable and burn less easily under higher compression. The reason it matters in this case is that if your mixture explodes in the cylinder early, you will damage your motor depending on the severity. If your car calls for premium, you should put premium in it. If it doesn't, you shouldn't. In either case, putting in the "wrong" fuel will negatively affect your car's performance.

Octane Use of the term in gasoline "Octane" is colloquially used as a short form of "octane rating" (an index of a fuel's ability to resist engine knock at high compression, which is a characteristic of octane's branched-chain isomers, especially iso-octane), particularly in the expression "high octane". The octane rating was originally determined by mixing a gasoline made entirely of heptane and 2,2,4-trimethylpentane (a highly branched octane), and assigning anti-knock ratings of 0 for pure heptane and 100 for pure 2,2,4-trimethylpentane. The anti-knock rating of this mixture would be the same as the percentage of 2,2,4-trimethylpentane in the mix.

Why do we drink cow's milk instead of human milk?

Human females can't produce the same quantities of milk that female cows can. It wouldn't be very profitable. Plus, notice that we mostly drink milk that comes from animals that like to graze on grass, like cows, goat, and sheep. Humans eat a lot of junk food and other stuff that doesn't make for very good tasting milk.

that it is unnatural for humans to drink milk from cows (or other animals) because mammals normally do not drink milk beyond the weaning period, nor do they drink milk from another species. Some have criticized the American government's promotion of milk consumption. Their main concern is the financial interest that the American government has taken in the dairy industry, promoting milk as the best source of calcium. All United States schools that are a part of the federally funded National School Lunch Act are required by the federal government to provide milk for all students. The Office of Dietary Supplements

In Sci-fi movies, why are alien organisms almost always silicone based?

Silicon is the other element other than carbon that would form long complicated bonds that life could evolve around. Though it is almost certain that another life form would be carbon based this gives a way of creating a "totally new life form".

and the fictional company was changed to X-S Tech. Nevertheless, Disney had acquired the rights to use Alien, and thusly used it in The Great Movie Ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios, which featured a scene aboard the Nostromo where a frightened Ripley hides behind a wall while the Xenomorph pops out of the walls and ceiling to growl at the audience. As an original story was developed, George Lucas was brought in to work on the project. This version's storyline had X-S Tech's open house being a front for exposing human guinea pigs to an alien monster they had captured. After

LI5, the current patent controversy between the top tech companies Google, MSFT, Apple, etc.

Before the 80s software was covered by copyrights instead of patents where unless you copied something exactly you were not liable to be sued for stealing someone's ideas. However large companies wanted more protection of their software and after some court cases including some at the supreme court they changed the rules and started allowing patents of software ideas rather then just a copyright on the specific code. The idea was that it would give inventors and programmers more incentive to come up with new ideas as they would have more legal protections from having their ideas stolen. However because patents can be very vague they ended up issuing patents to lots of things that maybe were not new concepts, such as "transmitting data over the internet". So instead of encouraging innovation it led to companies getting issued patents for simple things everyone did and then sue each other for "stealing" ideas. Also some lawyers saw that big software companies would just payout settlements to avoid going to court and decided to just sue every company with big money with the hopes of getting a fat payout to make them go away. So now companies will pay lots of money for the patent rights for stuff that should not have been patented in the first place just so they can say "if you sue me for patent infringement then I have patents also and will sue you right back!". It is a huge mess.

from lawsuits and licensing of already-existing inventions, rather than from its own innovation. Intellectual Ventures has been described as a "patent troll" by Shane Robison, CTO of Hewlett Packard and others, allegedly accumulating patents not in order to develop products around them but with the goal to pressure large companies into paying licensing fees. Recent reports indicate that Verizon and Cisco made payments of $200 million to $400 million for investment and licenses to the Intellectual Ventures portfolio. On December 8, 2010, in its 10th year of operations, Intellectual Ventures filed its first lawsuit, accusing Check Point, McAfee, Symantec, Trend

How are games cracked?

The executable files of a game are basically just a bunch of machine code. Machine code are instructions executed by your computer. By using a so called Dissassembler, you can turn the machine code into a somewhat human readable format called "Assembler language". If you are good, you can then analyse the code and modify to circumvent copy protection mechanisms, e.g. by taking the copy protection code out or jumping over it.

then, but Crackdown is still a stellar example of the genre." Game Journalist Callum from Pixel Bedlam dubbed Crackdown as the one of the most underrated video games of all time, adding also that the game was "more than just a Grand Theft Auto clone on steroids." The second games also received positive reception in its release, although many critics pointed that it was too similar to its predecessor. While the game was inherently good, it was ranked by many to be one of the most disappointing sequels of its generation. Jim Sterling, during his time at Destructoid, reviewed the game

How carbon dating works

Assume carbon ratios in living organisms within an environment are constant (perhaps it may vary for terrestrial vs. marine). The ratio only remains constant for that orgnanism while the organism is alive (just assume this is due to respiration). Any change in the "known constant" and the currently measured value yields a number of years since the organism died.

Radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in 1960. It is based on the fact that radiocarbon (¹⁴ C) is constantly being created in the atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting ¹⁴ C combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon

Why is it taking them so long to come out with the oculus rift consumer version, when they developed it nearly a year ago, and came out with the development kits nearly two years before that?

My thoughts are because it is supposed to be a game changer(literally) and to release anything sub par could potentially hurt the concept and make it take even longer for people to get interested in it again, I for one would be extremely disappointed if it was clunky and didn't work as good as I'm imagining it will.

was that, a year after the release of the oddly out-of-place and retro-designed Apple IIc Plus, only a minor maintenance release of the Apple IIGS was introduced (mainly boasting more RAM and improved firmware) rather than any of the desperately needed hardware changes required to keep the machine viable. Prototypes of more advanced Apple II's (namely in the form of a new IIGS) were delayed and eventually cancelled as the company decided what to do with its Apple II product line. The end result was to allow it to slowly fade out into obscurity due to a lack of development

Why do different cheeses made from the same type of milk have different Calcium values?

It basically comes down to pH value of the whey and it's drained. Casein is bonded by calcium phosphate (which is where the calcium comes from) and as the pH decreases it becomes soluble and is drained away.

range of cheeses can be made using the bacteria found naturally in the milk. In most other countries, the range of cheeses is smaller and the use of artificial cheese curing is greater. Whey is also the byproduct of this process. Some people with lactose intolerance are surprisingly able to eat certain types of cheese. This is because some traditionally made hard cheeses, and soft ripened cheeses may create less reaction than the equivalent amount of milk because of the processes involved. Fermentation and higher fat content contribute to lesser amounts of lactose. Traditionally made Emmental or Cheddar might

Why does water cause a near perfect hexagon bokeh on camera lenses?

> Basically, how is this caused, and why the hexagon bokeh is always perfectly shaped? Both of those answers are because it is the shape of the lens aperture of the camera. [This link shows what structure is causing the shape.](_URL_0_)

Tanada effect The Tanada effect refers to the adhesion of root tips to glass surfaces. It is believed to involve electric potentials. It is named for the scientist who first described the effect, Takuma Tanada. The phenomenon was observed while Dr. Tanada was rinsing glassware and noticed that excised root tips occasionally stuck to pyrex beakers. Upon investigating the phenomenon closely he determined that this process could be studied in a mixture of ATP, ascorbate, auxin, magnesium, manganese and potassium. The tips would stick when the beaker was swirled slowly. Most importantly, the reaction was light dependent. Exposure to red light would

what causes that distinctive smell from electrical transformers, such as model railways? Somebody once told me it's ozone, but why would that be produced?

You get the same thing from lightning strikes. The electric potentials involved have enough energy to break the bonds in ordinary molecular oxygen (O2) and some of the free oxygen atoms can reform to ozone (O3). You need energy to do this because it tends not to happen spontaneously, as the O2 molecule is a more stable molecule than O3. The voltages provide the energy for the reaction to occur.

General Electric Co. v. Joiner Facts Joiner had worked around transformers as an electrician since 1973. During his electrical work, the dielectric fluid used as a coolant for the transformers got into his eyes and mouth, and stuck to his arms and hands. In 1983, it was discovered that the fluid in some of its transformers contained toxic PCBs. Later, in 1991, Joiner was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer. He sued General Electric, the manufacturer of the transformers and dielectric fluid. Joiner had been a smoker for eight years and there was a history of

How does insane Clown Posey have such large following, who are willing to do anything for the band?

Because persons are smart, people are dumb As some comedian said, imagine what average, I mean totally middle of the road intelligent, person is like. Now realize that HALF the population is dumber than that.

The unusual miz of trombones, trumpets, drummers, a tuba player and a rapper/snare drummer, the band performed an energetic set got the crowd jumping and dancing. Clown controversy Following on from 2005's dressing attempt, the organisers of the festival decided to make this year's theme the circus and to have everyone dressed as clowns. On 8 July 2006, it was announced that this had been scrapped as festival-goers asked for refunds as they were scared of clowns. The Scissor Sisters quite blatantly went out to court this controversy, opening their set dressed in clown costumes, in response to complaints of coulrophobia

- if pi is in between the number 3 and 4 how can it be infinite?

It is *not* an infinite amount. It is less than 4. In *does* take an infinite amount of digits to explain precisely what the amount is, but that's about being precise, not about being huge.

12. The numbers may come as close as they like to 12, including 11.999 and so forth (with any finite number of 9s), but 12.0 is not included. In some European countries, the notation is also used for this. The endpoint adjoining the square bracket is known as closed, while the endpoint adjoining the parenthesis is known as open. If both types of brackets are the same, the entire interval may be referred to as closed or open as appropriate. Whenever infinity or negative infinity is used as an endpoint in the case of intervals on the real number line,

ELI5:Why is it that a small animal will run up to a big animal and fight it and the bigger animal will run away? Do animals not know their size?

Because the question in the wild is not so much if you win, but if you get injured. If the large animal stands and fights, yes, it might kill the small animal, but maybe the small animal takes a chunk out of the big animal's leg. Then the big animal has a gimped leg, can't run, can't catch prey (or escape other predators), and it likely dies.

are able to run at speeds that exceed those of lions for great distances, lions try to attack an ostrich when its head is down. By grouping, the ostriches present the lions with greater difficulty in determining how long the ostriches' heads stay down. Thus, although individual vigilance decreases, the overall vigilance of the group increases. Predator confusion Individuals living in large groups may be safer from attack because the predator may be confused by the large group size. As the group moves, the predator has greater difficulty targeting an individual prey animal. The zebra has been suggested by the

How did the idea of weekends come to be?

Henry Ford has been credited with creating the weekend as we know it today. Apparently the normal work week used to be six days, and Sunday was the day of rest. When Ford was paying workers $2 per day (maybe $2.50, not sure), the going rate at the time, there was lots of turnover and constant hiring and training, so Ford decided to double the rate to $5 per day to reduce turnover and keep employees instead of constantly training new hires. At the same time, he also decided to make a five day work week to give his employees Saturday off, thinking they would buy more cars to ride around in for the weekend. The local business community told him he would bankrupt his business. The day after he ran a full page ad in the paper for the $5 per day jobs, there were massive lines of people applying for jobs with Ford. The idea was extremely successful, and the weekend was born.

for a days outing." The word "picnic" has entered the English language via the French term picque-nique, a term which, by the early 1700s, had come to describe "an informal communal meal to which guests brought their own food, or paid for themselves at a restaurant, but which increasingly took place outdoors". Picnicking became a popular leisure activity in Britain by the 1800s and British immigrants to Australia found that the mild climate, seemingly "boundless" opportunities for the provision of public open space, particularly in attractive settings, offered many opportunities to continue with this tradition. Picnics at public parklands or reserves

"morning hands"

When you sleep, your brain releases chemicals that essentially paralyze you so you don't hurt yourself by moving while you dream. They take a while to wear off though. Sleep paralysis is an unpleasant side effect of nightmares and waking up while the chemicals are still in effect.

Time on My Hands (song) "Time on My Hands" is a popular song with music by Vincent Youmans and lyrics by Harold Adamson and Mack Gordon, published in 1930. Introduced in the musical Smiles by Marilyn Miller and Paul Gregory, it is sometimes also co-credited to Reginald Connelly. The song was used in the Marilyn Miller biopic Look for the Silver Lining (1949) when it was performed by Gordon MacRae and June Haver at the Broadway rehearsal and during the opening night show. It was also employed in the 1953 film So This Is Love when it was sung by Kathryn Grayson.

What do medals in the Olympics actually do for the winner? Also, what happens if a country wins the most medals?

They don't "do" anything. Medalling is proof that you are among the best in the world at your sport. That can help you get sponsors and endorsements, and it can help you leverage a post-sports career in something like journalism or broadcasting if you play things right. But there are no special privileges or anything that come with having a medal.

athletes from a nation have won, where nation is an entity represented by a National Olympic Committee (NOC). The number of silver medals is taken into consideration next and then the number of bronze medals. If nations are still tied, equal ranking is given and they are listed alphabetically.

Why is there so much apparent public criticism against labor unions when they empower mostly low to middle income workers; who make up the massive majority of workers?

The media is owned by corporate capital and has been shifting culture from progressive collectivism to ineffectual individualism for decades on purposes. The real opposition to Obamacare is not over its actual impact on the economy or personal freedom, it is about squashing any impulse towards collectivism or solidarity and replacing it with self-defeating individualism. "Organized capital and vertical monopoly GOOD and organized labor BAD." Progressive movements are floundering in iterative intersectionality and back-biting while capital prospers unopposed.

complaints that ultimately yields compensation. A consequence of this outlook is that instead of simply organizing and demanding power on the shop floor, workers follow a pre-determined system that does not allow major changes in the workplace. Source of workers' problems The unions define the problems of the members' as being from the particularly greedy employers. They also blame the unfair distribution of the surplus through the work process. They are not radical in their outlook and do not blame the capitalist system as a whole for these problems. They also do not believe in a radical

Why is there so much focus on colonizing Mars and not an equal focus on colonizing the Moon?

Mars has a number of advantages over the moon, although some of them are still in the speculated-but-not-confirmed category. Mars has a lot more natural resources than the moon that we can use. Things that are on both, like ice, are more abundant on Mars and there are a number of things not present on the moon at all - notably, an atmosphere. Although the Martian atmosphere is *very* thin compared to the Earth, there's still enough to it that we can use the C02 to convert it into breathable oxygen for settlements. Over centuries, we might even be able to terraform it into a breathable atmosphere. Having an atmosphere also helps a tiny bit for landing things on Mars, as parachutes are an option to assist (although nowhere near as useful as on Earth, retrorockets would still be very much needed). The moon does have an advantage of much lower surface gravity (roughly half that of Mars), but while that makes it easier to get there, it would make permanent settlements less comfortable. Over time, humans in low-g environments develop weaker skeletal structures and muscles, so in the long run, the higher Martian gravity (compared to the moon) would be a good thing. Then there's the environment itself. First, Mars is a little better off in protecting the surface from solar radiation than the moon because of distance from the sun and its atmosphere. Again, it's nowhere near as good as Earth, but it's still something. But more importantly is dust. Because the moon has no atmosphere, it's dust is *much* more abrasive and tends to wear out moving parts much faster. Martian dust has been worn down by wind, so it's not as abrasive. Finally, there's the human element - two key factors, really. First, we've been to the moon. It's old hat. Mars is a brand new place we've never been... that gets people more interested. But also, Mars is another step *outward* and away from the Earth. Colonizing Mars shows, much more than the moon, than humans can survive elsewhere in the galaxy with minimal support from the Earth. EDIT: I forgot to add the day/night cycle. This is important because solar is probably going to be a primary source of electricity for a settlement, as it's one of a very few methods of large-scale power generation that doesn't require large amounts of liquid water (as coal, natural gas and especially nuclear all do - although some forms of solar also do), and wind isn't a great option because of how thin the atmosphere is. The Martian day is only 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, providing a similar day/night cycle. This is important to solar because you only need to store power long enough to get through the night. Contrast it to the moon, which has a 29.5 Earth-day long day. That means night on the moon is about 2 weeks long (dependent on where you are, of course), so you would have to store enough electricity to get through those two weeks. That would take a *lot* of batteries.

Colonization of Mars Mars is the focus of much scientific study about possible human colonization. Permanent human habitation on other planets, including Mars, is one of most prevalent themes in science fiction. As technology advances, and concerns about humanity's future on Earth increase, arguments favoring space colonization gain momentum. Other reasons for colonizing space include economic interests, long-term scientific research best carried out by humans as opposed to robotic probes, and sheer curiosity. Both private and public organizations have made commitments to researching the viability of long-term colonization efforts and to taking steps toward a permanent human presence on Mars. Space agencies

Why do doctors stop applying a defibrillator after a couple of tries?

Same reason you don't keep turning the ignition key for hours in your car when it won't start -- there's no point in doing it, it won't get better.

sterilized container just before it was to be implanted. Incidentally when he handed over the device to the nurse, it she lost control and dropped the device on the floor. Luckily Langer had brought duplicate for such incidents implanted this second copy successfully. Weeks later the team tested the device by inducing a potentially fatal arrhythmia. The defibrillator “took about 30-plus seconds or so” to restart the patient’s heart, says Heilman. Attending physicians were seconds away from giving up and jump-starting the heart with shock paddles when finally, says Heilman, “the device kicked in and did shock and did correct

How is it possible to program a computer? How can a clunk of metal understand lines of code?

At the very lowest level, modern semiconductor **transistors** are pieces of lead and silicon arranged so that putting a current on one electrode allows current to flow between the other two electrodes. By itself, that might not sound significant, but think about what happens when we make transistors control transistors. A transistor can be said to be "on" if current can pass, and "off" if not. The beauty of having these two states is that we can use the **binary code** to store numbers using only on/off states ([explanation](_URL_0_)). Another important thing is that these data points, individually referred to as **bits**, can be stored on wires (low/high voltage), hard discs (magnetized/inert spaces), optical disks (dots/dashes), or cards (slots/blanks). Now, as you can see, there are ways of using massive arrays of transistors to store numbers. Then, using the properties of the binary counting system, we can easily make circuits that add or subtract stored values from each other and place the result in a new memory slot. Let's get more complicated. A computer works by inputting a stream of bits that form numbers into a vast network of transistors, which do mathematical operations and then spit out new bits. The job of the programmer is to feed the correct bits into the computer's memory, so that they get manipulated by other transistors into the desired result. However, you can see how this is impossible on a modern computer with billions of transistors all connected to each other. Thus, we need **programming languages** to make shortcuts for us. Instead of individually feeding bits into the processor, we can feed it decimal numbers and operations (+,-,*,/). When the program is executed, those decimal numbers get turned into binary numbers (by a circuit that does just that purpose) before being run through the processor that performs the operation and returns a number (that then is converted back into decimal format). But modern computers have millions upon millions of memory slots, and we can't do useful stuff with just raw numbers. The purpose of programming languages is to "hide" tedious tasks like writing binary numbers and organizing memory so that the programmer can concentrate on **human-understandable concepts** like decimals, words, colors, sounds, etc. For an example on how this works, look at [ASCII](_URL_1_). Each letter is stored by the computer as just on/off states on the hard drive or in the transistors, but with enough of these bits we can store entire books in ASCII or Unicode. Everything we push into a computer gets converted into easy-to-understand easy-to-store binary numbers before it gets manipulated by silicon transistor circuits.

Low-level programming language Machine code Machine code is the only language a computer can process directly without a previous transformation. Currently, programmers almost never write programs directly in machine code, because it requires attention to numerous details that a high-level language handles automatically. Furthermore it requires memorizing or looking up numerical codes for every instruction, and is extremely difficult to modify. True machine code is a stream of raw, usually binary, data. A programmer coding in "machine code" normally codes instructions and data in a more readable form such as decimal, octal, or hexadecimal which is translated to internal format

How is it possible that we are able to find planets far away form the Earth (like Kepler-186 f or PSR B1257+12) but we don’t know if there are other planets in our solar system?

The way we find these planets is to monitor the amount of light coming from a star and then see if it drops slightly occasionally. If it does then that means the star is partially obscured by a planet transiting across the front of it. We do not have that perspective on planets beyond the orbit of earth as there is nothing bright for them to obscure. We cannot see them with telescopes because they are too dark and/or distant to detect, the best we can do is look for slight changes in the orbit of objects we can see (such as Pluto) to see if they are being affected by the gravity of something unknown.

of the Earth. So, for Corot, due to the maximum duration of 6 months of observation for each star field, only planets closer to their stars than 0.3 Astronomical Units (less than the distance between the Sun and Mercury) can be detected, therefore generally not in the so-called habitable zone. The Kepler mission (NASA) has continuously observed the same field for many years and thus had the ability to detect Earth sized planets located farther from their stars. The moderate number of exoplanets discovered by Corot (32 during the 6 years of operation), is explained by the fact that a confirmation should

Can someone explain how and why Mark Rothko's work is considered art and how I can appreciate them?

Have you ever seen a Rothko in person? It makes a huge difference. First and foremost, they're BIG paintings. Second, he always wanted people to look at them up close. IIRC he said the ideal viewing distance as 18" (45cm). When you're that close to a huge painting, you literally can't see anything else. Your entire field of vision is consumed by this intense color field. The color kind of radiates on to you. Rothko's work was important because it was a pretty big influence on this notion of "pure expression" or "direct experience". It doesn't operate through language, symbols, or cultural understands. It's mean to be just something you feel, free of associations with anything else. It's important to note that Rothko isn't just important for making this kind of work, but also for talking about it quite extensively. Rothko was a very famous painter even before he started making abstract paintings, and he was quite popular and well respected. His transitions from representational and abstract works, along with his public writing/teaching/lectures/etc. on the subject makes him an enormously important figure in the history of art and the development of contemporary art theory.

UP. Juamlon said that these spaces seem to be about his identity as well. Art cohabits a relation with spaces, and people as well, including teachers and friends who have allowed him to evolve, and share the life he has lived with them. He talks about his art as a matter of ideas that come from these everyday encounters with the world. And at this point, it is this art that seems to define him as a person who relates to his surroundings as well. Jumalon finds inspiration in anything and everything-—a candy wrapper, a moment, debris. He takes much from

Smartphone "rooting" and "crapware."

"Crapware" refers to all of the pre-installed apps that you don't want, but the device will not allow you to uninstall. "Rooting" means basically taking control of the device in such a way that you can do things that it normally doesn't permit you to do, including uninstalling "uninstallable" apps. The term comes from UNIX operating systems, where, aside from the normal user accounts, there is a "root" account that has absolute permission to do anything it wants, and will not be restricted in any way by the operating system.

vulnerability ("root exploit") and "hard-rooting" by flashing a su binary executable is sometimes made. If a phone can be soft rooted, it is vulnerable to malware. Varieties The process of rooting varies widely by device, but usually includes exploiting one or more security bugs in the firmware of (i.e., in the version of the Android OS installed on) the device. Once an exploit is discovered, a custom recovery image that will skip the digital signature check of firmware updates can be flashed. Then a modified firmware update that typically includes the utilities needed to run apps as root can

Why do radio stations only end in odd numbers?

Because of the way radio technology works. The station you pick isn't actually what you are listening to, you're listening to a range or band of frequencies, rather than just one. The name of the channel is based on the range of frequencies assigned to it, in terms of the actual frequencies being broadcast to make that channel. However, it's much easier to call a station 101.1 than "101-101.199" or what have you. 101.1 lies in the middle of the band so it makes more sense than other possibilities

Generally, numbers stations follow a basic format, although there are many differences in details between stations. Transmissions usually begin on the hour or half-hour. The prelude, introduction, or call-up of a transmission (from which stations' informal nicknames are often derived) includes some kind of identifier, for the station itself, the intended recipient, or both. This can take the form of numeric or radio-alphabet "code names" (e.g. "Charlie India Oscar", "250 250 250", "Six-Niner-Zero-Oblique-Five-Four"), characteristic phrases (e.g. "¡Atención!", "Achtung!", "Ready? Ready?", "1234567890"), and sometimes musical or electronic sounds (e.g. "The Lincolnshire Poacher", "Magnetic Fields"). Sometimes, as in the case of radio-alphabet stations,

; Bohr vs Einstein puzzle solution.

The correct answer is that you have the same amount of B in A as there is A in B. Consider this: each container has 100 units of liquids A and B. The ladle can carry 10 units. In the first scoop, you have 10 units of A in the ladle. You transferred it to container B. Now Container A has 90 units of A. Container B has 100 units of B and 10 units of A. When you take a scoop from container B, you have about 0.91 units of A, and 9.09 units of B (since that solution is 10/110 liquid A). You add this to container A. Now container A has 90.91 units of liquid A, and 9.09 units of B. However, container B still has the same proportion of liquid A and B after the first mixing - namely, 10/110 liquid A, and 100/110 liquid B. This translates to 9.09 units of liquid A, and 90.9 units of liquid B.

EPR paradox The debates between Bohr and Einstein essentially concluded in 1935, when Einstein finally expressed what is widely considered his best argument against the completeness of quantum mechanics. Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen had proposed their definition of a "complete" description as one that uniquely determines the values of all its measurable properties. Einstein later summarized their argument as follows: Consider a mechanical system consisting of two partial systems A and B which interact with each other only during a limited time. Let the ψ function [i.e., wavefunction ] before their interaction be given. Then the Schrödinger equation will furnish the

What does repertoire area mean within classical music?

Your repertoire is the body of works that you have learnt and are able to perform. You may have one or many pieces in your repertoire. In this context, it sounds like you are being asked for pieces of contrasting style, or from different periods in the history of classical music. If you fulfill the latter, then you pretty much automatically fulfill the first - for instance you could have four sonatas from the Classical period, and you would have to strive hard to make sure they all offered contrasting elements. Or you could choose four different sorts of pieces from the Classical period and show the variety that was present in just one period. Or (and this seems like the safest bet), you could choose four pieces from different periods and they would almost certainly provide plenty of contrast. I'm thinking in terms of Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th Century, and Contemporary/Modern periods. There is no end to the variety of different styles and types of work since the 20th Century.

for the selection of music for The Story of Great Music and Concerts of Great Music, a twenty-two volume set issued by Time-Life Records in collaboration with Angel from 1966-1968. The series covers the history of classical music from The Early Renaissance through The Music of Today. Sample titles include: The Baroque Era, The Age of Elegance, The Age of Revolution, and The Spanish Style. Each box set includes four to five long playing LPs with an accompanying book on the art and history of the respective era, as well as a "Listening Guide" for each

Why won't Mitt Romney release his tax returns?

Look back on the past two elections: 2008: McCain only released 2 years of tax returns. He didn't get heat for it. Nobody cared. He was rich, and was attacked for being rich. Remember his wife's comment about not knowing how many houses they owned? But only releasing two years of tax returns didn't matter. 2004: Kerry wouldn't release all of his Vietnam service records. He was pounced on, with the attitude "Obviously he has something to hide." The attack worked, it weakened his support. He lost. Everyone still believed he was hiding something. Later, Kerry later released all the remaining service records. Turns out, Kerry wasn't lying at all. He didn't have anything to hide, and he was telling the truth all along. He said he didn't release them earlier because he felt it would be wrong to cave to opponents' requests. Now here we are in 2012, apparently having forgotten recent history and created new standards. I'm going to state something anathema to Reddit. Perhaps Romney is...telling the truth. What if he doesn't want to release them because he believes in some privacy? That is most definitely a possibility. But Reddit seems to reject it. The ultimate answer is, we just don't know. Only Romney himself knows. All this speculation about what he *may* be trying to hide is the same crap that created problems in 2004. And if you think we should be upset about it now, why didn't we care in 2008?

Mitt Romney, and as "immortality". Tax returns Due to pressure from political rivals during the Republican primary campaign, Romney released an incomplete 2010 tax return in early January 2012, along with an estimate of the 2011 return. During the presidential campaign, he declined to disclose additional returns citing the matter as a distraction from more important issues, despite calls to do so by Democrats and several notable Republicans. Republicans who have urged Romney to release his tax returns include former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, Michael Steele and Bill Kristol. George Will said "The cost of not releasing the returns

When a small child cries, they often start with the initial cry followed by a long-ish pause, and then they start crying again. Why the long pause?

They need to take a breath for their next cry. Longer pauses adds more intensity when the second cry hits.

there should be a limit. As long as the tears represent a genuine release of emotion, they should be permitted to fall. But crying quickly changes from inner sobbing to an expression of protest ... Real crying usually lasts two minutes or less but may continue for five. After that point, the child is merely complaining, and the change can be recognized in the tone and intensity of his voice. I would require him to stop the protest crying, usually by offering him a little more of whatever caused the original tears. In younger children, crying can easily be stopped

How do brands manufacturing non-concentrated, natural fruit juice keep the taste constant?

I'm not so sure they do. I drink apple juice, grape juice, and orange juice and I notice they do change in taste year in and year out and also season in and season out as the source of the fruit changes as seasons change in different parts of the world. So answer is, they don't control it. Some batches are better than others.

Juicy Fruit Flavor Which fruit serves as the model for its flavor is kept vague in advertising, though in 2003, advertising agency BBDO characterized it as a combination of banana and pineapple, and some people say it resembles jackfruit. According to two books in the Imponderables series, peach is one crucial flavor among many others. It is likely that the chemical used for flavoring is isoamyl acetate (sometimes known as banana oil), a carboxylic ester, which is also found in jackfruit . Consumer demographics The average age of the typical Juicy Fruit consumer is under 20, with three to eleven year

When people talk to animals or babies, why do they tend to talk in a high pitched cutsie manner, and never talk like they would normally?

The heck where are the comments? The behavior is called mirroring which we humans have accepted as affectionate behavior. When babies babble in their cute high pitch voices, we also babble back. When cats miaow, we miaow back. Same with kittens

purpose in communication between the partners. Baby talk with pets Many people speak to their dogs as if they were another human being. These actions are not providing communication with the dog, but social interactions for the speaker, usually in order to solve some problem. The speaking style people use when talking to dogs is very similar to CDL, and has been referred to as Doggerel. People tend to use sentences of around 11 words when talking to another adult; this is reduced to four words when speaking to a dog. People employ more imperatives or commands to a dog,

Why can you not see deleted comments with a permalink, but you can see deleted threads with one?

Threads tend to be deleted because they break some subreddit rule (no joke posts, post must be a question). Comments tend to get deleted because they break Reddit rules (doxxing, copyright infringement). Of course, either can be removed for the other reason.

it is possible for a user to delete their own comments. A set of tags are attached to each image which can be edited by any Pixiv user, and any tag can be added, even overly specific tags containing full sentences; however, only ten tags per image are allowed. If a submission received an image response, the five most-recent image responses are previewed as thumbnails under the comment input line with a link to the full list of image responses. Previews of submissions can be embedded into other websites such as blogs which link back to the image's page on

Why do big bags of chips have zero trans fats but the smaller version of the exact same chips contains trans fats?

Because according to FDA regulations, any foods that has 0.5 g of trans fat or less PER SERVING can be labelled as trans fat free. In big bags of chips, the manufacturer can jiggle the serving size so that each serving will have less than 0.5 g. But small bags of chips are generally considered to contain only 1 serving, and so they can't divide out extra servings to screw with the numbers.

fat, and 2.5 g of monounsaturated fat. This reformulated Crisco is claimed to have the same cooking properties and flavor as the original version of the product. According to the FDA, "Food manufacturers are allowed to list amounts of trans fat with less than 0.5 gram (1/2 g) per serving as 0 (zero) on the Nutrition Facts panel." Some nutritionists argue that while the formula has been changed to remove the trans fatty acids, the fully hydrogenated oil used to replace them may not be good for health. Crisco and similar low-trans fat products are formed by the interesterification of a

How do you move?

Our brains learn how to move, and eventually store the information in our "muscle memory"; the stuff that's so familiar to us, our mind can essentially take shortcuts to use it. This is why acrobats can do gymnastics that other people would never be able to perform, even though their actual muscles aren't necessarily any stronger. It's also why babies can't write. When we're very young, we first learn to grip things with our entire fist, then we have to learn to turn over, then we have to learn to crawl. Writing with a pen and pencil takes a certain combination of muscles that we have to consciously learn before we can unconsciously repeat.

of several kinds of movement, with the type of movement most often depending on the direction in which they move. The movement categories are: Step movers Some pieces move only one square at a time. If a friendly piece occupies an adjacent square, the moving piece may not move in that direction; if an opposing piece is there, it may be displaced and captured. The step movers are the king, prince, drunk elephant, blind tigers, ferocious leopards, the generals, go-betweens, and the 12 pawns of each side. Only the king and prince can move in all eight directions. The king and

Why does China, India, ect. have so many more people than the rest of the world?

Fertile river valleys that create a lot of good agricultural land. The same reason that the Nile delta is so much more populous than most of the rest of the area. There are lots of other similar examples around the world. It's also worth noting that China and India are *big*. In terms of land area, China is actually larger than Canada.

59 years old, and 13.26% were over 60 years old. The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%. China used to make up much of the world's poor; now it makes up much of the world's middle class. Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978. By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981. China's own standards for poverty are higher and still

Is burping/belching something you get better at with practice?

Straighten your esophagus. Back straight. Shoulders back. Use your lower abdominal muscles to apply pressure toward your spine then upward. Relax your throat. Project.

to burp out loud, and one should silence one's burp, or at least attempt to do so. Infants Babies are likely to accumulate gas in the stomach while feeding and experience considerable discomfort (and agitation) until assisted. Burping an infant involves placing the child in a position conducive to gas expulsion (for example against the adult's shoulder, with the infant's stomach resting on the adult's chest) and then lightly patting the lower back. Because burping can cause vomiting, a "burp cloth" or "burp pad" is sometimes employed on the shoulder to protect clothing. Contest The current Guinness World Record

How does electrical grounding work for ships? Why is it so complicated?

It's not about electrical safety directly. If you use a metal hull as ground, especially in salt water, electrolysis can cause corrosion.

functions of a grounding system: reducing electronic noise and preventing electric shock. From a noise perspective it is preferable to have "single-point grounding", with the system connected to the building ground wire at only one point. National electrical codes, however, often require all AC-powered components to have third-wire grounds; from a safety standpoint it is preferable to have each AC component grounded. However, the multiple ground connections cause ground loops when the components are interconnected by signal cables, as shown below. Isolation Isolation is the quickest, quietest and most foolproof method of solving "hum" problems. The signal

Poincaré recurrence theorem

You have a box of m & ms. You shake it and take them out one by one. Put them back in and repeat. If you keep doing this, eventually you will pull them out in the same order as the first time.

Poincaré recurrence theorem In physics, the Poincaré recurrence theorem states that certain systems will, after a sufficiently long but finite time, return to a state very close to (for continuous state systems), or exactly the same as (for discrete state systems), their initial state. The Poincaré recurrence time is the length of time elapsed until the recurrence; this time may vary greatly depending on the exact initial state and required degree of closeness. The result applies to isolated mechanical systems subject to some constraints, e.g., all particles must be bound to a finite volume. The theorem is commonly discussed in the

Why does 2008 still feel like a couple of years ago?

Probably because with each year that goes by, you have a longer frame of reference to what time feels like? I don't think I phrased that well, but what I mean is that if you are 5, one year is 20% of your entire existence. If you are 50, one year is 2% of your life. So, to get the same feeling of "long ago", it takes more years, the older you get. Same concept as why summers seem to fly by compared to when you were a kid.

were fully aware of the recession, yet, in a dramatic way, showing 'that regular people are coming here and having a blast'. This piqued a lot of interest which led to an increase of tourism in Las Vegas during the recession.

What makes humans want to kiss one another?

> A person receives information about the person he or she is smooching by locking lips, Fisher said. A kiss transmits smells, tastes, sound and tactile signals that all affect how the individuals perceive each other and, ultimately, whether they will want to kiss again. > Women tend to be attracted to male partners with a different immune system makeup from their own, Fisher said. They subconsciously detect information about a partner's immune system through smell during kissing, she said. > Research led by Wendy Hill, professor of neuroscience at Lafayette College, looked at how kissing affects the hormones oxytocin, sometimes called the "love hormone," which is associated with social bonding, and cortisol, a measure of stress. [Source](_URL_1_) TL;DR: There's much more to kissing than what you might think. One of those is that you subconciously pick up things about the other person through smells you won't notice. There's also this [cracked](_URL_0_) article that explains it quite well, despite being a comedy site: > It turns out Nerve 0 is directly connected to the regions of the brain associated with sex and gives your nose a direct, private highway to your genitals. Well, that's interesting. What could that be for? > Scientists theorize that when you kiss someone, Nerve 0 picks up their pheromones and warns your body to start sending blood and good vibes down to your crotch as quickly as possible. It's important to note that Nerve 0 doesn't travel through your olfactory bulb at all, which means you can't actually smell any of the things your sex nerve is designed to pick up. And since our pheromones don't carry very well, getting close enough to kiss is basically the only way your Boning Nerve can do you any good.

for emotion and passion to be passed from one partner to another, without involving the eyes of those around them like other public displays of affection would. However, it has been argued that the act of kissing a persons forehead is not romantic. Instead such an act is purely neutral and should not be used when trying to transfer feelings of emotion, lust, love, or so on. It's been said to lack certain qualities that make other kisses more romantic and therefore should not be thought of as a gesture for expressing non-platonic love. It is even stated that the kiss

How penny bidding sites (like QuiBids or Beezid) make their money?

As far as I know, QuiBids charges $0.60 a bid. So if they see something for $10, that's 1000 bids, and they've made $610. The person buying it gets a pretty good deal and everyone else who bid is screwed.

extension of the penny auction site, offering the same merchandise found in their auctions that could be purchased directly rather than having to be won in a bidding fee auction. The Beezid Store additionally allowed the members to sell their auction wins from Beezid directly. Upon winning an item, a user could choose to sell the item instead of claiming it, and other website visitors could then purchase the items in the store. Critical reception Beezid has drawn criticism of its business model for requiring the purchase of bids to participate, and for not disclosing the cost of bidding in

Difference between Special and General Relativity

I'll explain the difference between them, without going into what either form of Relativity actually *is*: Special Relativity only deals with objects (and reference frames) moving at constant speed. General Relativity extends Special Relativity, by figuring out how to deal with acceleration. (Spoiler alert: All acceleration is indistinguishable from gravity.) Special Relativity doesn't actually require complicated maths either. High-school algebra (variables, square roots) is sufficient to cover the entire subject, making it less complicated than high-school physics (which if you're not using calculus, you're not doing correctly). On the other hand, General Relativity requires ass-butt maths. As in, I have a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and I don't know enough math do to general relativity. It's a topic called Differential Geometry, which *starts* by figuring how out to draw straight lines when space itself is curved. It then goes into trying to count the number of different incompatible ways that you can do calculus to the inside of a four-dimensional sphere (lack of spoiler alert: not yet proven to be finite; generally believed to be more than 1).

Physical theories modified by general relativity Classical mechanics and special relativity Classical mechanics and special relativity are lumped together here because special relativity is in many ways intermediate between general relativity and classical mechanics, and shares many attributes with classical mechanics. In the following discussion, the mathematics of general relativity is used heavily. Also, under the principle of minimal coupling, the physical equations of special relativity can be turned into their general relativity counterparts by replacing the Minkowski metric (ηab) with the relevant metric of spacetime (gab) and by replacing any partial derivatives with covariant derivatives. In the discussions that follow,

Why do Western movies picture robots and cyborgs like evil beings, but Japan portraits them as the good guys?

This isn't correct at all. Western depictions of cyborgs/robot are often positive (Chappie, WallE, Short Circuit), and depictions in Japanese media are often negative (Bubblegum Crisis is the only one I can think of now because it's been a while since I watched anime). You are seeing a correlation where one does not exist.

systems have been portrayed in the media on many accounts. Cyborgs, seen in movies such as The Terminator and Robocop, are fantastical depictions of what human-machine systems may, one day, look like.

How are people colourblind?

Inside your eye are 3 different kinds of cells for detecting colors, one can see red, one can see green, and one can see blue. In colorblind individuals, one of those is either missing or not functioning properly, and so the number of combinations of colors you can distinguish is drastically lowered. You can still tell most colors apart because even if you may not see green properly, you'll detect the varying shades of red and blue in that color but you're missing some of the information.

the person was classified as "coloured" (of mixed racial heritage). The classification as coloured allowed a person more rights than one considered "black," but fewer rights and duties than a person considered white. An alternate version of the pencil test was available for blacks who wished to be reclassified as coloured. In this version, the applicant was asked to put a pencil in their hair and shake their head. If the pencil fell out as a result of the shaking, the person could be reclassified. If it stayed in place, they remained classified as black. Effects As

How does Southern and Northern US Border control work?

What's getting left out is where the border guards ask to see your passport, ask what you're bringing in to the country, and so on.

in North America. The United States maintains two zones in North America — the Contiguous U.S. ADIZ and Alaska ADIZ — and two more overseas — Hawaii ADIZ and Guam ADIZ. Canada operates two other sections of the North American ADIZ, one off the Pacific coast of British Columbia and another that encompasses the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and its Atlantic provinces. Under U.S. law and policy, the zone applies only to commercial aircraft intending to enter U.S. airspace. An air defense command and control structure was developed in 1950, creating five air defense identification zones around North America. If

Why do the front wheels of big trucks have such big convex hubcaps and lugnuts?

The commonality across all those big trucks having a doubled rear wheel. On a doubled wheel, you need to be able to bolt the two wheels together to be secure them. The rims budge out so they can touch each other. & nbsp; The front wheel can't be doubled because it would interfere with steering. In order to only need one spare tire, the truck using the same wheel across the entire trunk, meaning that the budged rim is used for the front wheels. edit: spelling

the rear wheels did not have to dig new "ruts" on muddy curves because most roads of the day were unpaved and often badly rutted. This four-wheel steering mechanism was integrated with Muehl limited-slip differentials on both the front and rear axles. From the transfer case, shafts led to the top of both the front and rear solid portal axles giving the trucks a very high ground clearance allowing it to drive through mud up to its hubcaps. Engine power was transmitted by half-shafts with a u-joint and bearing that was connected by a pinion gear to each of the four

What exactly is a G.E.D. and why do people keep making fun of people who take the test?

The GED is the "General Educational Development" test. It is the test that those who drop out of high school, or who fail out of high school take to show that they have learned the equivalent of a high school education. They are made fun of because they have already proven themselves failures by societal standards just having to take the test. It is not a kind thing, but society is seldom kind.

D.E.B.S. (2003 film) Plot A narrator explains that there is a test hidden in the SATs which measures an applicant's ability to fight, cheat, lie and kill. Female students who score well on this hidden test are selected to become members of the secret paramilitary group D.E.B.S. which stands for Discipline, Energy, Beauty and Strength. Focusing on one squad of D.E.B.S. composed of the team captain Amy (Alexandra Breckenridge), the tough Max (Tammy Lynn Michaels), French exchange student Dominique (Shanti Lowry), and the prissy and insecure Janet (Jill Ritchie), all of whom faces off against a ruthless villain named Lucinda Reynolds

Why is my original iPad completely useless after only a few years of ownership?

Because the software it's running is made for newer-gen models. > Is my new iPad going to do this in a couple years? Eventually, but not for much longer. The newer-gen models are magnitudes faster and more powerful than the first gen.

the iPod nano 6th generation with a Mac computer requires iTunes 10 or higher, which in turn requires Mac OS X Leopard system software, Apple will upgrade the system software of participants running earlier versions of OS X, on request but this leaves users that do not have access to iTunes without a working device (because Apple changed the hashing of the music database which prevented the 6th generation iPod Nano from being used with open source software via libgpod).

how big is the internet?

_URL_0_ Check this out. Pretty much answers your questions.

the year 2007 the Internet clearly dominated and captured 97% of all the information in telecommunication networks (most of the rest (2%) through mobile phones). As of 2008, an estimated 21.9% of the world population has access to the Internet with the highest access rates (measured as a percentage of the population) in North America (73.6%), Oceania/Australia (59.5%) and Europe (48.1%). In terms of broadband access, Iceland (26.7%), South Korea (25.4%) and the Netherlands (25.3%) led the world. The Internet works in part because of protocols that govern how the computers and routers communicate with each other. The nature of computer

How does "artificial flavoring" work, and create something so distinct as grape or other fruits?

It's all chemistry. You start with a real grape and you sit down in the lab and try to figure out what it is in a grape that makes it 'grape like' in flavor. You could physically break down the grape into a slurry, and then use mechanical processes like centrifuges, or chemical processes like solvents and acids to separate the different chemicals in the grape and then examine the individual molecules for ones that create the grape flavor, grape color, grape scent (which is not always the same chemicals responsible for the flavor). When the chemicals responsible for the flavor and odor of the grape are isolated in this way, their structure can be studied, and using chemistry you can create a method of taking other chemicals and processing them in such a way that they form these same flavor compounds. Lastly once you have something viable, you test it for toxicity and eventually palletability. While the actual grape may contain hundreds of molecules responsible for it's subtle flavors, the artificial flavoring may contain only a few that are primary influences of grape flavor. The substances that create these flavors may appear in many other fruits and flavors as well but in differing ratios so study of grape flavor may discover compounds that are also responsible for berry flavor, or cherry flavor etc. Eventually a working set of "fruit flavors" are developed and over time the secret gets out and they become industry standard flavors. Many lemon and lime flavors for instance are just citric acid and sweetener.

of the flavors used are consumed in processed and packaged food. Most flavors represent a mixture of aroma compounds, the raw material that is produced by flavor companies. In rare cases, a single synthetic compound is used in pure form. Artificial vanilla flavors vanillin and ethylvanillin are a notable exception, as well as the artificial strawberry flavor (ethyl methylphenylglycidate). The ubiquitous "green apple" aroma is based on hexyl acetate. The flavor creation is done by a specially trained scientist called a "flavorist", whose job combines scientific knowledge of the chemical palette with creativity to develop new and distinctive flavors. The flavor creation

Is there any way the U.N. can hit back at Russia diplomatically?

Nope, Russia could just veto it since they are on the security council. It's a fundamentally broken system.

the number of Russian embassy employees in Washington and indicated that the Russian government was considering retaliatory expulsion of more than thirty-five U.S. diplomats, thus evening out the number of the countries' diplomats posted. On July 28, Russia announced punitive measures that were cast as Russia's response to the additional, codified, sanctions against Moscow passed by Congress days prior, but also referenced the specific measures imposed against the Russian diplomatic mission in the U.S. by the Obama administration. Russia demanded that the U.S. reduce its diplomatic and technical personnel in the Moscow embassy and its consulates in St Petersburg, Ekaterinburg

How are wells built?

Wells are not technically built, they are drilled. In reference to a water well, a company will do some research to see if they can drill a well in the desired area. This all depends on location, ground type, and various other things. If a well is drillable they will bring out a truck, that is basically a small oil derrick, and begin drilling the well. Depending on you location and ground type the depth of the well will vary. Some places have underground "rivers" and can be relatively shallow wells, on the other had, some need to be deeper so that more water will seep into the vacant area that is created by the drilling. Once the well is drilled you can begin getting water from it using a bucket or a pump. This is all i know. I hope this answers your question. Resource: had a well drilled on old property. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Well A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn up by a pump, or using containers, such as buckets, that are raised mechanically or by hand. Water can also be injected back into the aquifer through the well. Wells were first constructed at least eight thousand years ago and historically vary in construction from a simple scoop in the sediment of a dry

What makes raindrops large sometimes but small other times? And is the size of raindrops indicative of how much longer the rain will fall?

Raindrops form when water vapour in the atmosphere clusters around microscopic solid particles (such as dust) in a process called nucleation. Nucleation is reversible. As water molecules attach themselves to cluster, other molecules are leaving. There is a point called the *critical nuclear size*, at which point the cluster of water molecules is stable. This is the point at which a raindrop forms. The critical nuclear size /critical radius is controlled by temperature. The mathematics tells us that as the temperature is lowered, the critical radius decreases. Hopefully this answers your first question, and if I'm wrong I'd very much like to be called out on it! Cunningham's Law and all that ;) Ultimately, though, the answer lies in thermodynamics.

macrodrops and the gravitational forces will dominate. Macrodrops will be 'flattened' by gravity and the height of the droplet will be reduced. Size Raindrop sizes typically range from 0.5 mm to 4 mm, with size distributions quickly decreasing past diameters larger than 2-2.5 mm. Scientists traditionally thought that the variation in the size of raindrops was due to collisions on the way down to the ground. In 2009 French researchers succeeded in showing that the distribution of sizes is due to the drops' interaction with air, which deforms larger drops and causes them to fragment into smaller drops, effectively limiting the largest raindrops to

How are space agencies sure they are not contaminating Mars/TheMoon, and why do they care?

Well, they use very rigorous clean room techniques to minimize the amount of biological contamination that is on our probes. Beyond that, the harshness of the environment is likely to whittle down at least some of what small amount they miss. But they are not sure they are not contaminating the objects, they probably miss *some* stuff. Not that either environment is especially conducive to life as we know it. The Moon especially, although some things may be able to eek out at least survival on Mars, if not prosperity. They care because we don't want to substantially alter the environment we are studying before we study it, and just in case there could *be* anything alive there, it'd be a shame to accidentally destroy it with competition. Additionally, if we go to all the work to find life and then bring samples back to Earth, it'd be a real bummer if by the time they got here it as just good ole tardigrades or something of the sort.

safe. The goal is to reduce the probability of release of a Mars particle to less than one in a million. The proposed NASA Mars sample-return mission will not be approved by NASA until the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process has been completed. Furthermore, under the terms of Article VII of the Outer Space Treaty and probably various other legal frameworks, were a release of organisms to occur, the releasing nation or nations would be liable for any resultant damages. Part of the sample-return mission would be to prevent contact between the Martian environment and the exterior of the sample

Why aren't we concerned with bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms developing resistance to alcohol, chlorine, and other substances used to sterilize medical equipment (and hands)?

It is a good question. The answer is how it works on the organism. Anti-biotics work by interfering with some important function of a bacteria cell. Think of throwing a wrench into a machine and watching it gum up the works. Cells that have different machine arrangements can be more resistant to wrenches. They'll have casings around important stuff or gears that can allow a wrench to slip through the teeth without stopping. Maybe they have extra redundant machines. Alcohol, chlorine and copper work by physically dismantling the machine. No amount of changing the machine will help when you shown up with a screw driver and start removing things.

active antimicrobials such as lactic acid, acetic acid, hydrogen peroxide, and peptide bacteriocins. Some LABs produce the antimicrobial nisin, which is a particularly effective preservative. These days, LAB bacteriocins are used as an integral part of hurdle technology. Using them in combination with other preservative techniques can effectively control spoilage bacteria and other pathogens, and can inhibit the activities of a wide spectrum of organisms, including inherently resistant Gram-negative bacteria.

How do we 'die'?

* To kill by breaking someone's neck you need to sever the spinal cord, thus breaking the link between the brain and the rest of the body thus stopping the beating of your heart and lung function * Blood carries the necessary oxygen to the cells in your body so a major blood loss can stop your cells from functioning, and enough can cause organs to stop working * Severe head injury can cause a break in the link between your brain and your heart/lungs * Dying of old age mainly is a standard infection or illness but your body is weak enough to not combat it

Death Death is the permanent cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include aging, predation, malnutrition, disease, suicide, homicide, starvation, dehydration, and accidents or major trauma resulting in terminal injury. In most cases, bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death. Death – particularly the death of humans – has commonly been considered a sad or unpleasant occasion, due to the affection for the being that has died and the termination of social and familial bonds with the deceased. Other concerns include fear of death, necrophobia, anxiety, sorrow, grief, emotional

How did the commonality of "seeing the light" originate when people are "crossing over" or passing away?

When your brain is deprived of oxygen (which is generally happening whenever the thing that's killing you is, you know, killing you), your brain shuts down different parts of itself in a given order, in an attempt to keep you alive as long as possible. Turns out, when the visual centers of the brain begin losing oxygen, you start getting tunnel vision, plus you lose the ability to see color, which means whatever light source you look at starts looking like the "light as the end of the tunnel", even if you happen to be staring at a streetlight or something.

light, meeting dead people and a feeling of well-being) have medical or scientific explanations. An awareness of being dead is known as Cotard delusion and is attributed to a brain malfunction with possible causes such as brain tumour, depression or migraine headaches. The paper suggests "that out of-body experiences result from a failure to integrate multi-sensory information from one’s body, which results in the disruption of the phenomenological elements of self-representation." Seeing a tunnel of light can be caused by a degradation of peripheral vision brought on by extreme fear or hypoxia of the eye. The experience of meeting dead

Why is it harder to be happy as we grow older?

There are a lot of possible explanations, someone might be able to link to studies but let's go for ELI5 and speculation. New things are very exciting to your mind. The first taco you eat is AMAZING. The first time you play a video game it blows your mind. The first good book you read is SO POWERFUL. So you keep doing these things. But after a while, you start running out of practical new things to do. You can try new restaurants, but eventually most of the menus have the same things you've eaten at others. You can play new video games, but after you've played a few dozen it's hard to find one with completely unique mechanics. After a few hundred books, you can't find many new plots. See the pattern? A lot of people get bitter and decide this means new things are worse than they used to be. This isn't often true. But it is true that there's no way, in 2017, to recreate the feeling you might have had playing Super Metroid for the first time in the 90s. You already played it for the first time, it's hard to be surprised in the same way again. The best thing you can do is desperately keep trying to find new experiences. Or get a really nasty case of amnesia. There are other bad things that happen to adults. We get in debt. We love, and lose. Sometimes people hurt us. Sometimes we hurt ourselves. Time isn't very nice to very many people. That tends to have a very bad impact on how "happy" you can be.

3 to 4 months. Expressions of happiness become more intentional with age, with young children interrupting their actions to smile or express happiness to nearby adults at 8–10 months of age, and with markedly different kinds of smiles (e.g., grin, muted smile, mouth open smile) developing at 10 to 12 months of age. Between 18–24 months, children begin to acquire a sense of self. This gives rise to the onset of self-conscious emotions (e.g., shame, embarrassment, guilt, pride) around that same age, which are considered more complex in nature than basic emotions such as happiness, anger, fear, or disgust. This is

Brainwaves. What are they? And can sounds of certain frequencies have an effect on them ? If so , why?

What do you mean when you say brain waves? If you are thinking of the readouts of machines like EEG's or similar devices what you're seeing on these machines is the electrical activity of certain areas of the brain that are picked up by the electrodes of the machine. Because most brain activity is a chemical exchange based on the electrostatic gradient, there are no "waves" or sound waves involved. What you are measuring with these machines are the minute changes in electrical activity in certain areas of the brain. Hope this helps a little.

and research has shown that synaptic noise may be a potential initiator of HFOs. HFOs between 60–70 Hz have been recorded as normal activity within the brain by EEG (electroencephalography) recordings, however frequencies within the ranges of 100–200 Hz, also called ripples, have been associated with epilepsy. Ripples, however, are not entirely abnormal nor regular. "Ripples have been used to describe both abnormal activity associated with epileptiform sharp waves and normal behaviors such as physiological sharp waves and memory consolidation." Synaptic noise is not only caused by mass signaling from surrounding neuronal impulses, but also from the direct signaling within the neuron

What is Markov Chain and why is it important?

A markov chain is a mathematical approach to disentangling several possible events that depend on outcomes before it. To stay topical, take a look at March madness brackets. You have a pretty low chance of getting your bracket right. But if we apply some really simple logic, we can increase that chance. If you fill out the bracket as a set of unorganized fill in the blank boxes, you won't do well. For instance, you could have a team that you eliminated in the sweet sixteen winning the final four. That doesn't make sense. Instead, let's create a chain of causes that predict the inputs into the next block of causes. If a team doesn't make the first round, they can't end up in the later rounds. Better right? But if we have even more information, we can do even better. We could fill out our bracket *as* the tournament is happening and expect to do really well. A player who lead scoring got injured in the elite 8? We can use that information to reduce the team's chances in the final four. That's why a Markov chain is so.good at making predictions. It refined it's approach as it gets information. In real use, Markov chains get much more sophisticated. So sophisticated that becomes hard to keep track of all the variables. That's where higher level math like *linear algebra* comes in. In a *Hidden Markov Model*, you don't actually have to know how all the pieces fit together. You just need some good relationships: - taller players do better - players have to be healthy to play - scoring early is important Using *eignevectors* a mathematical approach can take a *system of related linear equations* and figure out which variables are *independent* of the rest. You do this by mathematically rearranging all the equations so that the few that dominate the rest fall out. - taller players do better and the early scoring for this team is directly caused by their best player being tall. It's really only one variable at work here. As the Markov chain gets updated, the most important variables might shift. - Taller players do better but this team's tall player is injured so the height variable is no longer part of what contributes to their early scoring.

Chain-linked model The chain-linked model or Kline model of innovation was introduced by mechanical engineer Stephen J. Kline in 1985, and further described by Kline and economist Nathan Rosenberg in 1986. The chain-linked model is an attempt to describe complexities in the innovation process. The model is regarded as Kline's most significant contribution. Description In the chain-linked model, new knowledge is not necessarily the driver for innovation. Instead, the process begins with the identification of an unfilled market need. This drives research and design, then redesign and production, and finally marketing, with complex feedback loops between all

why is the holocaust so much more popular than other historical genocides?

Aside from having one of the highest death tolls (only the Congolese occupation has a higher average-estimate death toll), it receives attention partly because it was a new type of event. The word 'genocide' itself was only coined in 1944 to try and name what the Nazis had done. The Holocaust was a planned, deliberate attempt to completely wipe a race of people from the Earth, domestically and internationally, executed in a large-scale industrial fashion using all the tools of a developed 20th-century nation, and had the fascists not been stopped by war, they would have seen it through to completion. That's new. That hadn't happened before. That's why it's so studied. Sure, there had been lots of other mass killings and racist crimes of humanity -- but they weren't like the Holocaust. They usually fell into two categories: brutal massacres committed by invading armies (as seen in Mongol campaigns) and horrendously exploitative colonialism (as seen in the Congo Free State). The fact that Nazi Germany was a modern highly-developed nation also factors into it, I'm sure; it has a larger, more devastating impact to think of a modern educated developed country doing this, compared to say, the tyrant King Leopold and his absolute monarchy generations and generations ago. Likewise, Eurocentric views dominated as a matter of policy until very recently, so of course an event occurring in the heart of 20th century Europe has more shock value than some old business off on the (gasp) Dark Continent. Then there's the fact that we have huge amounts of recorded testimony, photographic evidence, video evidence, etc of the Holocaust. There are a lot of factors.

World War II and the Rwandan Genocide have both been cited as atrocities facilitated by a government sanctioned dehumanization of its citizens. In terms of the Holocaust, government proliferated propaganda created a culture of dehumanization of the Jewish population. Crimes like lynching (especially in the United States) are often thought of as the result of popular bigotry and government apathy. Anthropologists Ashley Montagu and Floyd Matson famously wrote that dehumanization might well be considered "the fifth horseman of the apocalypse" because of the inestimable damage it has dealt to society. When people become things, the logic follows, they become dispensable, and

Why does my stationary leg hurt when I ride a skateboard?

More to the point, it is almost like doing a one legged squat. In addition to holding all your weight up, you are lowering yourself several inches (with one leg) each time you kick/push with the other leg. I have a adult sized kick scooter where I experience the same thing. I could kick all day, but switch legs often because of the fatigue in the leg on the board.

such as in-line skates and scooters, suffer a safety problem: riders may easily be thrown from small cracks and outcroppings in pavement, especially where the cracks run across the direction of travel. Hitting such an irregularity is the major cause of falls and injuries. The risk may be reduced at higher travel speeds. Severe injuries are relatively rare. Commonly, a skateboarder who falls suffers from scrapes, cuts, bruises, and sprains. Among injuries reported to a hospital, about half involve broken bones, usually the long bones in the leg or arm. One-third of skateboarders with reported

What is the significance of the MPAA joining the W3C?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) defines the specifications of the web. It's largely an organization of technology companies and publishers trying to agree on standards to move the technology forward. As streaming audio/video is being increasingly standardized (in things like HTML5), the MPAA naturally would like to have early input into how it's works - not unlike how Bloomberg cares about RSS. The controversy is largely because MPAA has for years fought the industry rather than worked with it, so most people perceive it as a way for the MPAA to slow down tech or make a fuss about DRM (as that's how they've behaved before) rather than a step in the right direction to offer good solutions. What does that mean to the average Joe? Well, for years there wasn't a standardized way to do video on the web. So Flash emerged, and Flash sucked. For years Adobe had a monopoly on it, and it's the reason a lot of early video didn't play on your iPhone (because it was an Adobe-owned format that they couldn't come to agreement on). HTML5 streaming video (which the W3 standardized the specification of) fixed that by pushing it as a standard that every vendor could implement on largely their own. Lots of technology like that will emerge and evolve over the coming years. How it affects the day-to-day for the non engineer in the industry is usually non-obvious (like the above example). It simply means the MPAA will be present at a few tech meetings earlier than they have in the past. If you're an optimist, that means that they've learned their lesson somewhat and will try to work with the industry instead of fighting it. If you're a pessimist, it means they're going to make a short-sighted fusses that slow down the technology evolving.

partner in a duopoly involving an NBC affiliate and a "Big Four" station. Analog-to-digital conversion When the FCC released its initial digital channel allocations on April 21, 1997, it had assigned KFBT's digital companion channel to UHF channel 32. The allocations met with considerable resistance from low-power broadcasters who would be displaced by the digital channel allocations, and on February 17, 1998, the FCC issued a revised final DTV allocation table. KFBT's original allocation would have displaced low-powered K31DO (now KNBX-CD), so the FCC substituted UHF channel 29 allowing channel 32 to be assigned to Lake Havasu City, Arizona station

Why does electricity "want" to be grounded. If there was a bigger planet then Earth here would electricity jump to it instead ?

The more general rule is that a system will tend to minimize its potential energy. For example, a ball on the top of a hill "wants" to roll down to minimize its gravitational potential energy. Similarly, a circuit "wants" to minimize its electrical potential energy, or voltage (technically voltage is electric potential energy per charge aka electric potential). *Ground* is defined as voltage=0, so a circuit being grounded is like the ball reaching the bottom of the hill.

National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor Background In the United States, electricity generation is growing 4 times faster than transmission, and energy sources that would make the U.S. more energy independent cannot be built because there is no transmission capacity to carry the power to consumers. Because United States energy independence is a national priority, this problem has attracted considerable federal attention. Historically, local governments have exercised authority over the electricity grid and have little incentive to take action that would benefit other states, but not their own. States with cheap electricity have a disincentive to make interstate commerce in

What is that nasty gunky substance in your mouth after waking up? What is the cause of it and is that the reason we must brush our teeth in the morning?

If you're not brushing your teeth well enough before you go to bed, it may be plaque. But if you are, it might just be the inner lining of your mouth shedding and congealing nastily due to the nighttime dryness of your mouth. Your mucus membranes shed even faster than the rest of your skin.

waking or occurs before the first meal of the day. After several hours, the swelling goes down suddenly with a rush of foul tasting saliva. Strictures are more common in the parotid duct system compared to the submandibular duct system. Causes Chronic inflammation of the duct system (sialodochitis) may cause some segments of the duct to narrow due to fibrosis, and others to dilate. Saliva stagnates and forms a mucus plug behind the stricture during sleep when the salivary output of the parotid is reduced. Then, when salivary secretion is stimulated, the mucus plug becomes stuck in the stricture. The backlog

Who REALLY foots the bill when a corporation goes bankrupt? The unpaid bills?

Whoever those bills are owed to, as the corporation does not have to pay them, so the debtors are shit outta luck on recouping that money.

which is inability to pay debts that should have been paid. A creditor or the company itself can apply for bankruptcy. An external bankruptcy manager takes over the company or the assets of the person, and tries to sell as much as possible. A person or a company in bankruptcy can not access its assets (with some exceptions). The formal bankruptcy process is rarely carried out for individuals. Creditors can claim money through the Enforcement Administration anyway, and creditors do not usually benefit from the bankruptcy of individuals because there are costs of a bankruptcy manager which has priority. Unpaid debts

Why are textbooks so expensive?

Because only a small number are printed. If you print a million of something, the costs are divided across that large number and it can be cheaper. Print only 10,000 and the "fixed" costs are now divided across 1/100 the number of books.

books from online distribution channels outside the United States at lower prices, which may result in a loss of sales for U.S. retailers. Additionally, the availability of lower-priced textbooks through these channels has heightened distrust and frustration among students regarding textbook prices, and college stores find it difficult to explain why their textbook prices are higher, according to the National Association of College Stores. Retailers and publishers have also been concerned that some U.S. retailers may have engaged in reimportation on a large scale by ordering textbooks for entire courses at lower prices from international distribution channels. While the

Why is it when a show or movie has subtitles, we can’t help but read them?

Two things 1. Remember how you spent the first several years of your life sitting in rooms reading stuff all day? and then you go to work and read stuff all day?, etc, etc. Your brain does \- so when it sees words, even without you telling it to, it goes "ooh, I know what to do here" and reads them. The brain just gets conditioned to read words that it becomes \(somewhat\) automatic. You can notice yourself doing this in other parts of your life too where you will automatically read stuff even if you weren't specifically trying to focus on it \(e.g. signs on the side of the road\) 2. Often in movies where there's dialogue being exchanged between two characters there's not that much else going on but the subtitles are changing, so they are actually the most "interesting" thing happening. Next time your watching a movie with subtitled but not trying to pay attention to the subtitles pay attention to when you pay attention to them \(as weird as that sounds\) and you'll probably notice that you're more likely to notice what the subtitles are doing when there isn't much else going on than you are during the action sequences.

experience. Reasons for not subtitling a foreign language Most times a foreign language is spoken in film, subtitles are used to translate the dialogue for the viewer. However, there are occasions when foreign dialogue is left unsubtitled (and thus incomprehensible to most of the target audience). This is often done if the movie is seen predominantly from the viewpoint of a particular character who does not speak the language. Such absence of subtitles allows the audience to feel a similar sense of incomprehension and alienation that the character feels. An example of this is seen in Not Without My Daughter.

Why do we have to pay for internet? And why is there a limit?

You're not paying for "the internet". You're paying for a company to *connect* you to the internet. They build the infrastructure, they run a lot of very high-end, very specialised equipment, and they spent a *lot* of money on it. They're not going to let you use those for free.

Taxation of digital goods History In 1997, the United States federal government decided to limit taxation of Internet activity for a period of time. The Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) prohibits taxes on Internet access, which is defined as a service that allows users access to content, information, email or other services offered over the Internet and may include access to proprietary content, information, and other services as part of a package offered to customers. The Act has exceptions for taxes levied before the statute was written and for sales taxes on online purchases of physical goods. The statute

What and how can start a natural bushfire?

Lighting mainly. When a volcano is conveniently located that will suffice. Plus if you have a decent damp pile of plant matter as it decays it can just get hot enough to burn.

bushfires for hunting purposes) in the Adelaide Hills, which the early European settlers spotted before the Kaurna were displaced. These fires were part of a scrub clearing process to encourage grass growth for Emu and Kangaroo. This tradition led to conflict with the colonists as the fires tended to cause considerable damage to farmland. In an official report, Major Thomas O'Halloran claimed the Kaurna also used this as a weapon against the colonists by lighting fires to deliberately destroy fences, survey pegs and to scatter livestock. Due to this regular burning by the time the first Europeans arrived, the foothills'

Why must we let a steak "rest" for best flavor, but that just makes it cold?

You just need to let it rest for 5-10 minutes before cutting into it. When you cut it right away after removing from heat, you will notice the plate will fill with liquid. That liquid is full of flavor that the steak loses.

is half of the vertebral foramen. Preparation T-bone and porterhouse steaks are suited to fast, dry heat cooking methods, such as grilling or broiling. Since they contain a small amount of collagen relative to other cuts, longer cooking times are not necessary to tenderize the meat. The bone also conducts heat within the meat so that it cooks more evenly and prevents meat drying out and shrinking during cooking. The meat near the bone will cook more slowly than the rest of the steak, and the tenderloin will tend to reach the desired temperature before the strip. Bistecca alla fiorentina

How do food companies determine the expiration date for a product?

It is calculated by measuring the rates of breakdown under less than ideal storage conditions. With ice cream, the limiting factor is likely to be the time it takes for ice crystals to grow, as well as the oxidation of some fats, degrading the taste and texture of the product. Because of this, it is likely to be called a 'Best Before' than an 'Expiry' date. All of this is very complex, but is reduced to a certain number of days, from which is subtracted a safety margin, again carefully calculated. This is added to the date of production to give an expiry date. If it has been in your properly functioning freezer, and is a few days over, then chow down and enjoy.

and Drug Administration (FDA) administers do not preclude the sale of food that is past the expiration date indicated on the label. FDA does not require food firms to place "expired by", "use by" or "best before" dates on food products. This information is entirely at the discretion of the manufacturer. Most expiration dates are used as guidelines based on normal and expected handling and exposure to temperature. Use prior to the expiration date does not guarantee the safety of a food or drug, and a product is not necessarily dangerous or ineffective after the expiration date. According to the United

Why can you hear the voices in the apartment above you so easily, but not the voices in the apartment below you?

Because sound travels through the solid medium ( the floor slab). On the floor above, people are directly in contact with the surface; while on the floor below, you're only depending on the noise traveling through air and noise traveling in air is divided into reflected, absorbed and transferred, major percentage of which, is reflected.

to find out where the voice comes from, she finds an old hidden, big ventilation system with tunnels that seem to run throughout the building. She can now clearly hear something moving through the ventilation-tunnels. She grabs into one of the ventilation gutters and pulls out a decomposed, human foot! As the mysteries about the murders in the house start to unravel, she finally starts to realize in what horrible danger she truly is... Reception The film was generally poorly received by critics. Variety's writer Jay Weissberg criticized the direction of Avati, marked as "incapable of turning the gothic

If you were confined in a small space with limited oxygen that you were trying to conserve, would it be more efficient to take continuous short breaths, or fewer breaths while holding your breath for longer periods of time?

You would want to lower your metabolic rate. Decrease heart rate. Calm down. Take long deep breaths. Make each breath last as long as possible....... I think.

of artificial respiration can be greatly increased by the simultaneous use of oxygen therapy. The amount of oxygen available to the patient in mouth-to-mouth is around 16%. If this is done through a pocket mask with an oxygen flow, this increases to 40% oxygen. If either a bag valve mask or a mechanical ventilator is used with an oxygen supply, this rises to 99% oxygen. The greater the oxygen concentration, the more efficient the gaseous exchange will be in the lungs.

How comes different phone chargers take widely different time to charge the same phone,despite all being rated 5V 1A?

The usb standard originally allowed for only 500mA to be drawn per port. This isn't really enough for smartphones and especially power hungry tablets etc., so the manufacturers came up with a way for chargers to indicate they were willing to supply more power to the device. The device charging circuit can then draw more power than that safely - without that signaling the device could try to draw more than the charger/port can supply and possibly burn it out. Sadly there were different methods chosen - some short together the data leads, some use different resistors between them or between them and the ground pin etc. The wrong charger/cable with the wrong device won't step up to the higher current. I've just bought a small gadget from dealextreme which sits in the usb port and tells you how much current is being drawn from it. My cables vary from 0.3 to 0.95A to the same device - I'm in the process of labeling them and exploring the various combinations of charger, cable and device. Tl;Dr it's complicated.

These are geared for consumers who wish to have smaller chargers that would be located in common areas and blend in with the current décor of their home. Due to the adoption of the Qi standard of wireless charging, any of these chargers will work with any phone as long as the phone is Qi capable. Stationary In one inductive charging system, one winding is attached to the underside of the car, and the other stays on the floor of the garage. The major advantage of the inductive approach for vehicle charging is that there is no possibility of electric

Why is mace (pepper spray) illegal in the UK?

There is no such concept as "defensive weapon" in any of the UK legal systems. Anything carried with the sole or primary intent of causing injury upon another is always considered an offensive weapon in the UK. Note that the perceived intent of usage is important. If you were carrying a baseball bat outside a town park at 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning you'd be highly unlikely to be stopped by the police. If you had the same bat outside the same park at 2am the police would almost certainly consider it an offensive weapon. Also note that defending yourself in a threatening situation is perfectly legal in the UK, as long as you use "proportional force" and that you haven't pre-armed yourself with a weapon.

Phenacyl chloride Riot control agent It was investigated, but not used, during the First and Second World Wars. Because of its significantly greater toxicity, it has largely been supplanted by CS gas. Even though CN is still supplied to paramilitary and police forces in a small pressurized aerosol known as “Mace” or tear gas, its use is falling as pepper spray both works and disperses more quickly than CN and is less toxic than CN. The term "Mace" came into being because it was the brand-name invented by one of the first American manufacturers of CN aerosol sprays. Subsequently, in the United

Can I take any antibacterial medicine for any bacterial infection?

To answer your questions: no, and yes. Bacterial infections treated by antibiotics vary widely. There are gram negative and positive, cocci and bacilli and several other ways to isolate or classify organisms. A physician will order a culture/sensitivity test which takes several days to determine what cootie you're growing and what antibiotic it is most sensitive to. Antibiotic stewardship follows treating the infection with the least broad spectrum medicine available to avoid creating more resistant strains. Also remember the common cold is a virus which are not affected by antibiotics.

engineering Many researchers are developing methods that use bacteria to deliver drugs. These bacteria can be “programmed” to perform a specific task, and can be directed to go to targeted locations in the body. However, the bacteria may damage healthy organs or fail to deliver the medicine to the sick organ in the case of a malfunction. In such cases, a fail-safe mechanism is required to neutralize the bacteria and prevent damage. An antibiotic is generally suitable as the fail-safe agent.

What is the force that causes you to think of someone moments before they call or text you?

Coincidence, confirmation bias and faulty memory. There are no special forces. Rather, sometimes when you happen to think of someone they will contact you soon after. More frequently when you happen to think of someone, they won't contact you at all. Human memories are fairly flawed. Some of us might think we are masters of remembering stuff, but really, we aren't. Maybe rough lines, but details? Nope. And our memories are quite easy to influence as well, both by others and by ourselves. All of this leads to the situation where you are more likely to remember those times you were thinking of someone and they just happened to call you. That makes you believe someone is always calling you as you think of them (because you don't remember the more frequent times when they don't) and you confirm your bias with your flawed recollection. Just grab a notepad and start marking down every time someone crosses your mind, even for a moment. Write down when these people call you. Do this for a week, and you'll quickly see that you think of people far more often than they call you, and them calling you is not related to you thinking about them.

situations in which a person’s thoughts do not fully do justice to what they are actually thinking. When having conversations, people may tend to say “That’s not what I had meant to say” or may wonder why they said something, when they realize that they are saying something which might not accurately depict what they are thinking internally. People will do this all the time, and this was a topic that Wundt used Völkerpsychologie to study. When someone disagrees with a statement that someone has made in conversation, we may find ourselves interrupting with a “What? Wait a minute, you

how rumble strips work

They provide step inputs to your suspension that can't be completely soaked up by the shock absorbers, causing the vehicle and its contents to vibrate at an audio frequency that most people are sensitive to. Here is what the [US Federal Highway System](_URL_0_) has to say about them.

it can be quickly torn by hand, and its tight weave of cotton fibers allows for straight tearing without stretching. In addition to creating spike marks in performance areas, spike tape also makes a good material for bundling, decorating and labeling. Spike tape may also be fluorescent (in which case it is made of plastic or vinyl rather than cotton) so that it can be easily seen by the running crews moving set pieces during a dark scene change. This is usually referred to as "glow tape" or "glo-tape". Glow tape is notoriously less sticky than spike tape and

Why does the U.S. military use exciting action commercials and other fanfare for recruiting rather than just telling us what the threat is?

Why does Bud Light have commercials of a guy playing ping-pong with Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of advertising its price and alcoholic content? Like any other advertiser, the Army spends millions trying to find the best way to sell themselves. The simplest answer is likely the exciting action commercials are the result of a group of very intelligent people studying data and crafting a pitch they think will attract the largest group of people. As with any commercial reaching millions, the results tend to be generic and inoffensive. There are many reasons I think they'd avoid a "Hitler is killing all these people" commercial: * It's a complex situation. We're talking about a fifteen second commercial designed to grab your attention, not a WWII newsreel. * A commercial focusing on the enemy subconsciously reinforces the danger of serving in the armed forces. The single biggest downside to joining the military is that you could end up dead, and they obviously want to avoid anything that could reinforce that idea. * Hot-headed assholes yelling "Let's go kill us some ISIS!" is NOT what the military wants. The keywords they use instead (bravery, commitment, service, etc.) are the more important indicators of military success that they're looking for. * Our enemy isn't exactly the most... politically correct. The White House [refuses to even use the term "radical Islam"](_URL_0_) when referring to people like the Charlie Hebdo murders, for fear of alienating American Muslims and Muslim allies. The armed forces are likewise strongly recruiting Arabic-speakers and Muslim-Americans, and angry faces with turbans on your commercials won't help.

Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP) worked with the Hollywood movie studios to produce films that advanced American war aims. According to Elmer Davis, "The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized." Successful films depicted the Allied armed forces as valiant "Freedom fighters", and advocated for civilian participation, such as conserving fuel or donating food to troops. By July 1942 OWI administrators realized that the best way to reach American audiences was to present war films

What are the differences between the North and the South Pole?

The North Pole is in the middle of the water, usually covered by ice (less so nowadays because of climate change), and has polar bears, but no penguins. The South Pole is on land (Antarctica) and has penguins, but no polar bears. Also, the North Pole is in the Northern Hemisphere and the South Pole is in the Southern Hemisphere.

South Pole Geography For most purposes, the Geographic South Pole is defined as the southern point of the two points where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface (the other being the Geographic North Pole). However, Earth's axis of rotation is actually subject to very small "wobbles" (polar motion), so this definition is not adequate for very precise work. The geographic coordinates of the South Pole are usually given simply as 90°S, since its longitude is geometrically undefined and irrelevant. When a longitude is desired, it may be given as 0°. At the South Pole, all directions face north. For this

What exactly makes some genes dominant and others recessive?

I remember that this was explained on Ask Science a year ago (Don't know why I know about it, but eh...); here's the link to the answer given, as it's really nice: _URL_0_ To paraphrase the analogy: Genes code for different things. Some genes code for different structural proteins. You can think of these genes as coding for bricks. Our "good" alleles (b) code for rectangular bricks, and bad alleles (B) code for spherical bricks. If you have one gene for each, you're going to be making both spherical bricks & rectangular bricks. But that's a problem - your building needs all rectangular bricks, and having some spheres and some rectangles doesn't build your building. You have loss of function, so that negative trait is dominant. (the bad allele B is the dominant one) In contrast, if a gene codes for an enzyme, it's likely to be recessive. These are like building trucks. A good truck works, and a bad one doesn't work. But, if you have some good trucks (good alleles, T) and some bad trucks (bad alleles, t), you might just have enough good trucks in total to transport the material you need from one place to another. Thus, we say that the bad trait is "recessive", because you're not going to experience full loss of function unless you have two bad alleles (only the tt case shows total loss of function, so the good allele T is dominant over the bad one t). Now, you might have some negative effects, particularly if you need a lot of the enzyme, but it's not going to be a total loss for the most part, and you may well be able to function on a day-to-day basis without major issues.

effect. Due to their reduced phenotypic expression and their consequent reduced selection, recessive genes are, more often than not, detrimental phenotypes by causing the organism to be less fit to its natural environment. Another mechanism responsible for inbreeding depression is the fitness advantage of heterozygosity, which is known as overdominance. This can lead to reduced fitness of a population with many homozygous genotypes, even if they are not deleterious or recessive. Here, even the dominant alleles result in reduced fitness if present homozygously (see also hybrid vigour). Currently, it is not known which of the two mechanisms is more prevalent in nature.