So this will hopefully become a surprisingly low High Brow topic. And it’s all about celebrating all sorts of obscure knowledge. Of course the usual rules apply.
First up? A quite interesting video clip. Please do note that you’re contribution doesn’t need to be a YouTube clip. But do be prepared to give your citations.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and those who are yet to decide of Dakka......off you go!
Could you at least give an idea what the video is about when you post? I didn't see it because yotube tried to ram 2 ads down my throat back to back and i don't care how short they are or what the video is, i will not watch two ads in a row, period. Sure they're 5 seconds today, then a while later they're bot 9 seconds, then 15 seconds, ad infinitum.
Now here's a video about a proven effect that seems to show some sort of time travel is possible at least on a quantum level.
Matt Swain wrote: Could you at least give an idea what the video is about when you post? I didn't see it because yotube tried to ram 2 ads down my throat back to back and i don't care how short they are or what the video is, i will not watch two ads in a row, period. Sure they're 5 seconds today, then a while later they're bot 9 seconds, then 15 seconds, ad infinitum.https://youtu.be/0ui9ovrQuKE
Thank you for your service. It's because of people like you (and me) that most ads are even as short as 5 seconds now, they used to all be longer.
That first vid was a clip about words that rhyme with orange, from Brit panel show Q.I., or Quite Interesting. On the surface it's a comedy show, but also a goldmine of interesting and surprising info, so I highly recommend it.
Now here's a video about a proven effect that seems to show some sort of time travel is possible at least on a quantum level.
Ok, that was fascinating. A few times I had questions, only to have them answered within about 30 seconds.
"Wait, surely that means that - oh. ...but how do we know which - oh. ...but wait, that doesn't prove - oh you sonnuva..."
I'm a big fan of todayifoundout.com - they take questions submitted by people and research the answers into full-form articles, with interesting results - and it's also, quite frequently, eye-opening. For instance, here's one on why it sucks to be rich.
This guy, oversimplified, did videos like this about the french revolution and hitler's rise to power. In each case it seems that when the powers that be either will not or cannot respond to suffering and desperation among the masses, something bad happens. Guess humanity as a whole has a hard time learning that lesson...
To expand a little on this video, Rasputin got into high circles thru luck. One of the Tsar's sons had hemophilia, and at the time aspirin was the literal miracle medicine of the age. Yes, at that time aspirin was relatively new and was being used for everything.
Anyone with even basic medical knowledge today knows aspirin in damn near the worst thing you can give a hemophiliac, of course.
The Tsar's doctor's didn't know this and gave the little tsarling aspirin and more aspirin. Needless to say it didn't improve his condition.
Rasputin had a reputation as a holy man who worked miracles, who was called in to treat the boy with prayer and home remedies, which were about as helpful as farting at him would have been, but they got him off the aspirin so his condition 'improved' to what it would have been untreated. For his miraculous treatment of the boy rasputin was made a member of the court and given access to high circles where his mix of charisma and fanaticism gave him possibly more influence than he should have had.
Fun fact about rasputin: Him and what we call personal hygiene today weren't really a thing. He reportedly saw bathing as possibly sinful, a trait among many religious people for a long time given the roman bathhouses were synonymous with all sorts of sexual activity. In fact there was an old joke about rasputin. If you had stubborn goats in a place you didn't want them and and they wouldn't move, just have rasputin show up and the goats would leave on their own.
Rasputin had a reputation as a holy man who worked miracles, who was called in to treat the boy with prayer and home remedies, which were about as helpful as farting at him would have been, but they got him off the aspirin so his condition 'improved' to what it would have been untreated. For his miraculous treatment of the boy rasputin was made a member of the court and given access to high circles where his mix of charisma and fanaticism gave him possibly more influence than he should have had.
Interestingly, homeopathy gained a reputation much the same way. It literally cannot work, as homeopathic "medicine" is diluted so much you need several swimming pools full of pills to have on average one molecule of the actual medicine.
But because actual medicine in the time homeopathy was invented was often more harmful than helpful, having no effect was often an improvement over actual doctors. So now we have multi-billion dollar industry that sells sugar pills and water as medicines.
Rasputin had a reputation as a holy man who worked miracles, who was called in to treat the boy with prayer and home remedies, which were about as helpful as farting at him would have been, but they got him off the aspirin so his condition 'improved' to what it would have been untreated. For his miraculous treatment of the boy rasputin was made a member of the court and given access to high circles where his mix of charisma and fanaticism gave him possibly more influence than he should have had.
Interestingly, homeopathy gained a reputation much the same way. It literally cannot work, as homeopathic "medicine" is diluted so much you need several swimming pools full of pills to have on average one molecule of the actual medicine.
But because actual medicine in the time homeopathy was invented was often more harmful than helpful, having no effect was often an improvement over actual doctors. So now we have multi-billion dollar industry that sells sugar pills and water as medicines.
Basically to reach the dilutions some homeopathy products claim, you would need to take a sample of the active ingredient the size of a grain of rice, dissolve it in a sphere of water the size of the solar system, then take a grain of rice sized sample of that water and dilute in in another solar system sized sphere of water, and repeat 7 times.
Yes, those are what you get if you use the actual numbers homeopathy talks about. If your head isn't spinning by now you're not paying attention.
I'm not sure anyone here would fall for homeopathy, but if there were any i hope this put them straight.
As to your other point yet homeopathy began in the days when official medicine was often more dangerous then doing nothing. It wasn't until agbout the 1920's that official medical treatments could usually be counted on to be more good than harm. That was about 100 years ago, guys.
After the fifth factor 100 dilution you can use the same water to dilute over and over again. You're past the number of Avogadro - there won't be any original medicine left.
Well, I've always had a suspicion that the general IQ of most war and rpg gamers is at least a l'il higher than average, and it looks like that's still a possibility. While a large enough segment of he genpop falls for the homeopathic line to keep that stuff going, it looks like the people here wouldn't fall for it.
I mean, 'water memory" ? I feel like gene hackman in superman asking "Otisburg"?
If water retained data (memories) some computer genius would have found it by now and we'd all have little jars of water in our computers with wires running into them instead of hard drives and ram sticks!
Back to increasing knowledge, would you believe you can make a functional nuclear power source at home cheap?
Fully fledged channel on science and futurism, mainly discussing serious theories about why we don't see aliens, how to colonize the universe and build megastructures like orbital elevators, dyson swarms, cylindrical habitats etc. using only known science*. Very uplifting.
*does usually assume fusion and mind uploading will be a thing
There is no such thing as muscle memory in regards to skills, when people state they have mastered a physical skill due to muscle memory, e.g. they can perform a physical skill unconsciously, the movement is automatic etc...
This doesn't actually happen, but just like a computer and processor speeds and ram etc etc you can upgrade your own information processing and action capability over time with practice and variations of practice. You are effectively reading and processing the variables and acting on them so quickly you do not consciously acknowledge this process.
This specifically allows elite athletes to focus on other variables when in play to achieve a high level of performance if they have the confidence to match. If they are are confident in their own abilities then their body will work as desired as it is now programmed to run the specific motor movement without taking up much cognitive processing, meaning the athlete can focus on other factors such as the opponent and what they are doing etc.
However, there is a point of contention on whether a form of muscle memory does actually exist, and this is not in the realm of cognitive information processing and motor skills such as the above, it is in relation to strength training. It seems your muscle fibres actually remember their historical maximum size and strength, meaning that if for any reason you have a significant loss in muscles mass, when you restart training those muscles, they regain their size exponentially quicker than the initial process to allow them to achieve that size in the first place. It then explains how athletes can regain fitness/size so quickly after fairly devastating injuries that can leave them performing no proper training for 12 months or so where muscular atrophy will occur.
On "through the wormhole" a breakthrough concerning evolution was documented that was a major blow to the 'irreducible complexity' argument against abortion, showing how a new trait can come into existence through evolution. It involved a 30 year experiment in evolution with e.coli bacteria.
Matt Swain wrote: Well, I've always had a suspicion that the general IQ of most war and rpg gamers is at least a l'il higher than average, and it looks like that's still a possibility. While a large enough segment of he genpop falls for the homeopathic line to keep that stuff going, it looks like the people here wouldn't fall for it.
I mean, 'water memory" ? I feel like gene hackman in superman asking "Otisburg"?
If water retained data (memories) some computer genius would have found it by now and we'd all have little jars of water in our computers with wires running into them instead of hard drives and ram sticks!
Back to increasing knowledge, would you believe you can make a functional nuclear power source at home cheap?
Water remembers all of the "good natural substances" (not "chemicals" because "chemi KILLZ" iz bad) dissolved into it, but somehow forgets ALL of the bad gak it has also had dissolved into it over the aeons. Like poop.
I had a friend whose family recommended he go to see a naturopath when he was diagnosed with inoperable stage IV bowel cancer.
It didn't go well.
We cut off contact with that family. They can believe whatever witchcraft they like, but if they seriously want me to help them spread that manure, I'm going to need a bigger rake.
Wow, that homeopathy stuff is horrifying! I was all set to defend it, but what I thought was homeopathy appears to actually be called naturopathy. I stand embiggened.
Gitzbitah wrote: Wow, that homeopathy stuff is horrifying! I was all set to defend it, but what I thought was homeopathy appears to actually be called naturopathy. I stand embiggened.
I noticed that a few years back when TV and other big names started to push back against homeopathy because "watermemory" and insane dilutions just don't work at all beyond the Placebo Effect, there was a shift by homeopathic treatment centres to basically branch out and include a lot of natural remedies into the treatment. Thing is properly done natural remedies do work, they form the foundation of modern medication. So its managed to claw back some respect for itself as a name/brand which has allowed the treatment centres to remain functional.
Heck the UK even has a homeopathic treatment centre. I recall watching a short documentary on it and the reason it "works" is basically because the average consultancy time was up to an hour; whilst for national health its far less. Basically the patients liked it because they are not just getting a swift diagnosis and out; they are being mentally cared for and supported alongside. Plus because its bolted into regular medication its more used as a support, basically placebo effect bolted onto regular medication.
It's how such concepts have managed to remain valid because they can often feel less scary than regular medication (even something as benign as Calpol or Banana Medicine for kids has a rafter of scary "side effects" on the information sheet) and it helps a persons emotional state. Even if a person is well educated they can often need support in times of extreme fear and stress.
There's also the fact that the body is good at getting healthy on its own. A lot of colds, coughs and other sickness we will recover from without medication. We take medication to take the "edge off" and to speed recovery and allow us to remain functional (eg for work). So sometimes bad herbal or homeopathic and other medications can slip in at that level. People take their homeopathic anti-cold medication and get better and have no side effects. They don't realise that its just their body doing it itself and instead think the medicine did it for them.
Of course hit it with something like cancer or any one of a rafter or other diseases/ailments and such and it won't have any impact at all. Though like faith healing, sometimes there's a short period of apparent recovery or muting of symptoms as the persons mental state adjusts; but its short term and not a real "cure", just masking some of the suffering.
And onto something else a little less scary.
Spoiler:
Here you can see the shape of the scales which make up the wing
This is a Hebrew Character, Orthosia gothica. It's common name is derived from the distinctive black saddle shaped mark on the forewing which resembles the Hebrew letter nun. This mark is distinctive to this species of moth, though it can vary considerably in shape even having the centre of the saddle cut into by the kidney mark on the forewing. Flight season varies a bit between the north and the south, with the south seeing them between March and mid May in the south; April to mid June in the north. However they can also appear in autumn and into early winter if its a particularly mild year.
The wingspan ranges from 30-50mm in width.
They will come to both sugar solutions and also light, so are often seen in moth traps. Being a common species in the UK this makes them a fairly regular appearance during their flight season when one is trapping moths.
Their food plants for caterpillars include oak (Quercus), birch (Betula) and aspen (Populus). Meanwhile adults feed on sallow catkins
Overread wrote: Being a common species in the UK this makes them a fairly regular appearance during their flight season when one is trapping moths.
I'll say - even without traps, the buggers keep invading my room and jumping on my monitor at night. Fascinating to see one so close up, though!
On muscle memory - I kind of always knew it was a mental thing and not literally memory IN the muscle. I guess I assumed most other people had figured this out too and were just using it as the common phrase, same as me, but... well... recent times have somewhat shaken my faith in average intelligence. What would we suggest as an alternate term? "Practiced reflex response"?
An autonomous response, which probably still isn't the greatest of terms that can lead to confusion in itself.
However no, I cannot tell you how many people believe that your muscle actually knows the movement.... Muscle memory is banned term in all my lecturers on movement, from students and staff, unless someone is saying it is BS.
Gitzbitah wrote: Wow, that homeopathy stuff is horrifying! I was all set to defend it, but what I thought was homeopathy appears to actually be called naturopathy. I stand embiggened.
I noticed that a few years back when TV and other big names started to push back against homeopathy because "watermemory" and insane dilutions just don't work at all beyond the Placebo Effect, there was a shift by homeopathic treatment centres to basically branch out and include a lot of natural remedies into the treatment. Thing is properly done natural remedies do work, they form the foundation of modern medication. So its managed to claw back some respect for itself as a name/brand which has allowed the treatment centres to remain functional.
Heck the UK even has a homeopathic treatment centre. I recall watching a short documentary on it and the reason it "works" is basically because the average consultancy time was up to an hour; whilst for national health its far less. Basically the patients liked it because they are not just getting a swift diagnosis and out; they are being mentally cared for and supported alongside. Plus because its bolted into regular medication its more used as a support, basically placebo effect bolted onto regular medication.
It's how such concepts have managed to remain valid because they can often feel less scary than regular medication (even something as benign as Calpol or Banana Medicine for kids has a rafter of scary "side effects" on the information sheet) and it helps a persons emotional state. Even if a person is well educated they can often need support in times of extreme fear and stress.
There's also the fact that the body is good at getting healthy on its own. A lot of colds, coughs and other sickness we will recover from without medication. We take medication to take the "edge off" and to speed recovery and allow us to remain functional (eg for work). So sometimes bad herbal or homeopathic and other medications can slip in at that level. People take their homeopathic anti-cold medication and get better and have no side effects. They don't realise that its just their body doing it itself and instead think the medicine did it for them.
This is true of all alternative medicine. They "work" in as far as they do because of more personal attention - which I understand actual doctors would like to do but don't have time to because of how healthcare is structured.
The lecture series I linked to above actually decribes most of this in fairly good depth.
To be honest though, the biggest problem with these alternative medicines is that their practitioners often (not always, but often enough) also discourage visits to actual doctors or perform their trade on people who really do need medical attention without recognizing this (because they're not actual, you know, medical professionals). There's reports of chiropractors actually killing patients.
Anyway, on to less gruesome things before I hijack the thread as this is kind of a pet peeve of mine.
Evolution is driven by random mutations as most people know. What most people don't realise is that the environmental pressures that determine whether any given mutation is harmful, neutral, or beneficial aren't random and that therefore the resulting evolutionary result also isn't random.
Bran Dawri wrote: Evolution is driven by random mutations as most people know. What most people don't realise is that the environmental pressures that determine whether any given mutation is harmful, neutral, or beneficial aren't random and that therefore the resulting evolutionary result also isn't random.
A very good point, and one people often seem to forget. The main example that springs to mind is in the middle ages in the West - class divide was of course a thing, and so rich people were often... let's say "chunkier" than poor people, simply because they could actually afford to eat. This led to weight gain becoming attractive, as a sign of a mate that could support you and your offspring.
Now, it's the opposite - partly because we know about the health risks, partly because that in turn has led to wealthier people having healthier diets and exercise routines because of that knowledge, and partly (sadly) because cheap food that many working-class and poor people depend on is really bad for you.
However, there is a point of contention on whether a form of muscle memory does actually exist, and this is not in the realm of cognitive information processing and motor skills such as the above, it is in relation to strength training. It seems your muscle fibres actually remember their historical maximum size and strength, meaning that if for any reason you have a significant loss in muscles mass, when you restart training those muscles, they regain their size exponentially quicker than the initial process to allow them to achieve that size in the first place. It then explains how athletes can regain fitness/size so quickly after fairly devastating injuries that can leave them performing no proper training for 12 months or so where muscular atrophy will occur.
This is definitely the case. When I got back in the gym a few weeks back, my deadlift was woefully lacking compared to pre shutdown. It's only taken me 3 weeks to regain that 20-30kg, which originally took me a year plus to gain.
Bran Dawri wrote: Evolution is driven by random mutations as most people know. What most people don't realise is that the environmental pressures that determine whether any given mutation is harmful, neutral, or beneficial aren't random and that therefore the resulting evolutionary result also isn't random.
A very good point, and one people often seem to forget. The main example that springs to mind is in the middle ages in the West - class divide was of course a thing, and so rich people were often... let's say "chunkier" than poor people, simply because they could actually afford to eat. This led to weight gain becoming attractive, as a sign of a mate that could support you and your offspring.
Now, it's the opposite - partly because we know about the health risks, partly because that in turn has led to wealthier people having healthier diets and exercise routines because of that knowledge, and partly (sadly) because cheap food that many working-class and poor people depend on is really bad for you.
That's not evolution, that's social behaviour changing due to economic and scientific factors of a given period. Evolution is something that occurs over millions of years and results in genetic physiological changes in a species.
It's my understanding that socio-economic factors can contribute and even be the driving cause of specific evolutionary traits - but ok, that's a poor example because its effects obviously didn't last.
I'd also like to add the incredible distances that paper airplanes can now reach with the aid of some precise mathematics, materials used and a champion thrower on hand.
The current Guinness world record, set in 2012, is over 226 feet (by 10", if you must know)!
Read "the science of battlestar galactica", a book that goes into the hard science possibilities of the nBSG series.
Edit: Atomic radiation is indelibly associated with a green glow in American culture. Actual atomic radiation is invisible, but there is an eerie and beautifull blue glow associated with actual nuclear reactors called cherenkov radiation.
Cherenkov radiation is not direct nuclear radiation but the effects of high energy radioactive particles passing thru water and speeds greater than light can.
Copied from a facebook article. It's possible all protons in the universe are interconnected.
The zero-point field is a sea of energy pixelated by the smallest electromagnetic waveforms possible - so called «Planck Spherical Units» - which makes up the structure of space in much the same way as H2O molecules make up water. This Planck fluid is so dense and so highly energetic that it fractionates into multiply connected geometries at the quantum scale, conjoining the space-time manifold in a deeply interconnected matrix of non-local information exchange.
By calculating the number of Planck Spherical Units (vacuum density) within the volume of a proton we find that it contains a holographic mass/energy value of 10^55 grams – which is equal to the exact mass of the universe. This concurrence of two very large numbers is a strong indication that all protons in our universe are entangled through the internal Planck wormhole matrix. All the information of the universe is holographically present within each and every proton, thus every proton is sharing information non-locally and are continuously up to date on the state of the entire system. We live in a fractal-holographic universe where everything is elegantly and seamlessly interconnected...
Colour me curious - but also MASSIVELY skeptical. Text copied alone from a Facebook article doesn't do anything to satisfy the burden of proof.
Can we have a link please? I'm especially keen to check out that claim that we somehow know what the exact mass of the universe is.
Super Ready wrote: Colour me curious - but also MASSIVELY skeptical. Text copied alone from a Facebook article doesn't do anything to satisfy the burden of proof.
Can we have a link please? I'm especially keen to check out that claim that we somehow know what the exact mass of the universe is.
It's from a FB page called 'physics of everything".
Given the lack of progress in reconciling the four forces in a unified field theory under current models many are exploring new lines of thought to do so. New generations of physicists are having an easier time embracing new ideas, such as non locality, and are less troubled by Einstein's "Spooky action at a distance" problem with quantum entanglement now that they've grown up with it.
My personal favourites are the South Sea bubble and World War I the seminal tragedy.
However it's worth exploring, there's fascinating bite sized explanations on all sorts of subjects and peoples.
Matt Swain wrote: It's from a FB page called 'physics of everything".
Hmm... I still couldn't find the original link on that page, and the extra link you provided doesn't really go into the reasoning of what was explained in your post.
There's a lot of interesting stuff on that page though, so thanks. (Some of it needing its own pinch of salt, though. There's a clickbait, bait-and-switch, self-admitted "likely not true" Daily Mail article put up just this week...!)
Then again it also makes sense when you consider how vast Russia is and how logically speaking, getting power to some remote regions would be quite a major engineering feat to achieve.
I'd wager its also quite efficient in terms of the volume of fuel needed to generate power, when compared to other fossil fuel generators. I'd guess the only thing it might need is a ready source of water
Automatically Appended Next Post: And now for something else, time to learn about Yi Bells from Tim
Scientists have never seen this before but believe it to be a natural phenomena caused by solar radiation interacting wth gasses around a comet.
Now personally i think that earth has become such a show that comets are trying to develop force fields to keep earth probes from being able to land on them.
Heard about that about two weeks ago. IIRC it's also a problem the late Stephen Hawking was working on.
Interesting theological implications if true as well.
r_squared wrote: These guys produce some very entertaining and informative shorts on a wide variety of subjects from history, mythology, sci-fi and gaming.
My personal favourites are the South Sea bubble and World War I the seminal tragedy.
However it's worth exploring, there's fascinating bite sized explanations on all sorts of subjects and peoples.
Seconding Extra Credits and especially the South Seas Bubble and Great War episodes. I'd also throw in the Admiral Yi episodes for the sheer bollocks he had to deal with from his "superiors" at pretty much every step of his career.
@Mad Doc Grotsnik. A History of East Asia (ISBN 978-0-521-73164-5) is quite good. I didn't find it too dry and it covers pre-history to the modern day in well laid out chapters.
Some embiggening knowledge:- Rice was used as the bonding agent in the mortar that was used to build what we think of as the great wall of China. Engineers think that the elasticity that the rice starch provided is one reason that much of the wall still stands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwnWfIX3Ano
Here's an interesting video. It starts out pretty simple and common, but the last point is an interesting one that I think gets overlooked when we talk about icecap melt and I know I've read more than one article that focuses on sealevel rise being the result of land ice not sea ice and clearly has overlooked the properties raised at the end of this video (although one has to appreciate that any simple test tube experiment expanded up to the complexities of the oceans is bound to have some additional things going on that complicate the matter as well).
The frankly woefully classic Dr Who serial “Warriors of the Deep” featured a kit bashed submarine, based off a U.K. nuclear submarine. One of the modifications to the kit was adding a fin to the propeller, taking it from three to four (or maybe four to five. But you get the gist)
Allegedly, this caused a bit of a hoo-ha in British naval circles....because (again, I’m relying on external sources. Which I’ve never bothered to verify), one can tell the make of a Submarine by the sound waves of its propeller - and the base model kit had a deliberately misleading propeller design, which the kit bashing altered to be far more accurate.
I learned of this from a VHS or DVD commentary type documentary. And I swear I’m reporting accurately, and haven’t just made this up.
A similar thing happened with Doctor Strangelove, I believe, with their mock up of the interior of a B-52.
They basically used the layout of a B-29, a single photo of the cockpit of a B-52 and the fuselage geometry and managed to recreate the B-52 cockpit with remarkable accuracy.
The frankly woefully classic Dr Who serial “Warriors of the Deep” featured a kit bashed submarine, based off a U.K. nuclear submarine. One of the modifications to the kit was adding a fin to the propeller, taking it from three to four (or maybe four to five. But you get the gist)
Allegedly, this caused a bit of a hoo-ha in British naval circles....because (again, I’m relying on external sources. Which I’ve never bothered to verify), one can tell the make of a Submarine by the sound waves of its propeller - and the base model kit had a deliberately misleading propeller design, which the kit bashing altered to be far more accurate.
I learned of this from a VHS or DVD commentary type documentary. And I swear I’m reporting accurately, and haven’t just made this up.
On the topic of genetics in humans from the first page:
One thing discussed at length in one of my university courses (I want to say it was a sociology course), was that the Sickle Cell genetic trait, often ascribed in the US as being an African-American or "black" trait. . . . well, per capita more people of Greek origin and living in the Greek regions of the Med/Aegean seas. And while it certainly can cause some health problems, apparently it has the benefit that people with the trait are basically unaffected by malarial mosquitos.
Now, mind you this was a sociology course, not a genetics course, so anyone who definitely has more knowledge in this area, feel free to enlighten us on this.
One thing discussed at length in one of my university courses (I want to say it was a sociology course), was that the Sickle Cell genetic trait, often ascribed in the US as being an African-American or "black" trait. . . . well, per capita more people of Greek origin and living in the Greek regions of the Med/Aegean seas. And while it certainly can cause some health problems, apparently it has the benefit that people with the trait are basically unaffected by malarial mosquitos.
Now, mind you this was a sociology course, not a genetics course, so anyone who definitely has more knowledge in this area, feel free to enlighten us on this.
According to Wikipedia 3/4 of Sickle Cell cases occur in Africa. Greek/Greece occurs once in that article. In my experience Wikipedia isn't ever completely off...even if it is slightly wrong, and I doubt this case is any different. It also makes sense that Africans would be the most resistant to Malaria as it is most common/relevant in that continent.
One thing discussed at length in one of my university courses (I want to say it was a sociology course), was that the Sickle Cell genetic trait, often ascribed in the US as being an African-American or "black" trait. . . . well, per capita more people of Greek origin and living in the Greek regions of the Med/Aegean seas. And while it certainly can cause some health problems, apparently it has the benefit that people with the trait are basically unaffected by malarial mosquitos.
Now, mind you this was a sociology course, not a genetics course, so anyone who definitely has more knowledge in this area, feel free to enlighten us on this.
According to Wikipedia 3/4 of Sickle Cell cases occur in Africa. Greek/Greece occurs once in that article. In my experience Wikipedia isn't ever completely off...even if it is slightly wrong, and I doubt this case is any different. It also makes sense that Africans would be the most resistant to Malaria as it is most common/relevant in that continent.
I was speaking solely of the genetic trait/marker, not sickle cell disease, which yes, occurs a lot more in Africa.
I had heard about the anemia thing before, it seems to be one of the ways in which Africans can have greater resistance to malaria. A good example of a genetic trait having multiple consequences, some good, some bad, and whether the overall effect is positive or negative depends on the environment.
Hmmm, looking at anemia vs resistance to malaria, I guess anemia in at least a minor degree is easier to survive with till you're at breeding age than malaria.
From an evolutionary pov it might make sense sine all evolution cares about is whether or not you reproduce. If anemia means you're more likely to survive to breed than being susceptible to malaria i guess from an evolution pov that works.
Place the thumb of your non-dominant hand inside a clenched fist.
Squeeze hard and look at it.
Whilst doing this you will have no to very mild gag reflex....
I have 6 year old patients able to swallow large jelly beans whole in my practice when they do this, and from that point forward they are able to have tablets and capsules.
As i read this a little light popped on over my head and i wondered if we could make bacteria with a cell wall that resembled human blood cells and put those in people to trick viuses into latchon ont it instead of blood cells and fining no suitable nucleus inside to take over and turn ito a viral replicator.
I recall seeing an article about those before. In that article they cured someone who was basically heading for death's door and where all other conventional medication had failed. The hardest part was finding just the right one to tackle the problem and once done he was cured in a very short span of time.
The potential for them to not only be a cure, but also have very little side effects is a very big thing for medication. Not just in terms of creating cures, but also in terms of marketing and acceptance. One big thing a lot of the homeopathic and herbal remedies bank on is not having half a sheet of A4 (or more) of scary sounding side effects.
This is really amazing. Of course some fools will object. Sigh.
Given this will likely only affect bacteria that have evolved to ABR form it won't do much to affect 'natural' bacteria, so that will be one less objection. Also if we can create this virus with a limited lifespan so it won't escape into the wild and do anything that will be gravy.
Matt Swain wrote: Educated, factually aware people know that bacteria are evolving resistance to antibiotics and this is a big healthcare concern for the future.
Well, scientists haven't been sitting on their hands over this issue.|
As i read this a little light popped on over my head and i wondered if we could make bacteria with a cell wall that resembled human blood cells and put those in people to trick viuses into latchon ont it instead of blood cells and fining no suitable nucleus inside to take over and turn ito a viral replicator.
Bacteriophage are going to be the future for bacterial infections for sure, at the rate they are developing resistance to antibiotics.
The interesting thing is that termites not only produce methane but hydrogen in relatively great amounts. If their digestive systems could be artificially replicated on an industrial scale it might lead to mass producing of hydrogen fuel economically.
Matt Swain wrote: Yeah, back in the days when it took a giant dish to contact a satellite...
c
Depending on terminology it still does. In the interest of embiggening knowledge there's three broad types of interaction an antenna on the ground can have with a satellite.
1 Receive only, antennas can be really small. There's most likely one in your cell phone receiving GPS signals. Not really contacting.
2 Use as a pass through. Only interaction is as a bent pipe but probably what you're thinking of. Alot of the antennas are in the 3 -10 feet range with sat phone antennas being even smaller. However smaller then antenna the slower the data rate you're passing through.
3 Establishing a command and control contact. Direct interface with the satellite itself. Still uses the larger antennas for point to point although there's an effort to used phased array to contact multiple satellites at a time with one antenna. Normally when you say satellite contact this is what satellite people think of..
One thing discussed at length in one of my university courses (I want to say it was a sociology course), was that the Sickle Cell genetic trait, often ascribed in the US as being an African-American or "black" trait. . . . well, per capita more people of Greek origin and living in the Greek regions of the Med/Aegean seas. And while it certainly can cause some health problems, apparently it has the benefit that people with the trait are basically unaffected by malarial mosquitos.
Now, mind you this was a sociology course, not a genetics course, so anyone who definitely has more knowledge in this area, feel free to enlighten us on this.
Yay my education is relevant! Here's basic run down;
-Sickle Cell disease is a recessive trait. You only get the actual syndrome if you 'double up' on that recessive trait. If you have half sickle and half normal you do not get sickle cell disease.
-Generally speaking in terms of natural survival (as in, before modern medicine) if you get sickle cell you die. Accordingly there is a strong natural selection to remove this from the gene pool, but it is still there and quite common to boot.
-Generally speaking in terms of natural survival, if you get malaria you are likely to die. BUT if you carry the sickle cell gene (read: you don't have to have full-on sickle cell, just carry it recessively) you are resistant to malaria and still don't have sickle cell.
-Thus, natural selection pushes the population to carry a recessive sickle cell gene, and this produces more adaptive fitness because the number of people who end up dying because they inherit full sickle cell disease is less than the number of people who would die to malaria were the gene not present.
Matt Swain wrote: Yeah, back in the days when it took a giant dish to contact a satellite...
c
Depending on terminology it still does. In the interest of embiggening knowledge there's three broad types of interaction an antenna on the ground can have with a satellite.
1 Receive only, antennas can be really small. There's most likely one in your cell phone receiving GPS signals. Not really contacting.
2 Use as a pass through. Only interaction is as a bent pipe but probably what you're thinking of. Alot of the antennas are in the 3 -10 feet range with sat phone antennas being even smaller. However smaller then antenna the slower the data rate you're passing through.
3 Establishing a command and control contact. Direct interface with the satellite itself. Still uses the larger antennas for point to point although there's an effort to used phased array to contact multiple satellites at a time with one antenna. Normally when you say satellite contact this is what satellite people think of..
I may be wrong, but i've assumed small military units 'out in the field' had access to satellite communications, implying a 2 way satink can be carried pretty easily. Or is that just saomething seen in so many movies and tv shows it becomes 'assumed reality'?
A little bit of reality and a little bit of assumed reality. Simple answer, Comm falls under number 2 (bent pipe) although alot of times number 1 gets mixed in. (sat phone type to talk but use recieve only to send troops in field a picture for instance) and the movies just mix those together. Your general soldiers would most likely have access through vehicle mounted antennas. Special forces probably have some sort of ruggedized satellite phone that encrypts the crap out of the discussion. So Hollywood will show the everyone has the satphones but that they work as well as the vehicle mounted so modified reality.
A little more detail without going too crazy. In order for a comm path to work you have to close the link budget, by that I mean your transmitted power + gains and - losses has to be high enough for the receiving antenna and that works both ways and is heavily frequency dependent. In general the frequencies that experience less atmospheric losses use bigger antennas. Bigger antennas increase gain. Technically with enough power you can get anything to close just don't get between the transmitter and reciever or you'll get cooked. Another important factor is distance, Iridium, one of the original satcom phones is in a low earth orbit (485 miles out). Most of the comm satellites are in Geocentric orbit (22,000) miles out, that makes a huge difference in losses, you aren't going to use something the size of a satellite phone to communicate through that. If you're going to establish a C2 contact with a GEO sat, yeah you still need a big antenna.
So I made this post elsewhere but then I thought about this thread and I think it kind of fits?
PSA:
Because of COVID-19, JSTOR has made much of it's collection available for open access.
JSTOR is an online database and repository of accredited academic journals, community libraries, and university press resources. A list of associated publications is here. If you ever used the library at your college or university, you've probably come across it at some point. It's an invaluable resource because much of academia is there and easily accessible. For the seriously hardcore, it even includes out of print publications going back to the 1800s (a historiographers wet dream).
In the past, the big issue was that you needed a library to get to it. Just a few years back, JSTOR was not something you could just use. The service was explicitly designed for libraries and educational institutions and getting a subscription cost a few hundred dollars. More recently, JSTOR has started opening up the doors to the ivory tower, bit by bit. The first deal was the release of a, still pricey, but actually affordable subscription model for individual ($20/month or $199/year) granting full access to JSTOR.
In terms of dollar value, it's actually the greatest deal on Earth, if you're actually going to read that much.
IMO, one of the best things about JSTOR are that it makes scholarly journals easy to access. Big book history can be dry, long winded, boring, and a slog to get through. Individual academic articles are imo, often much more accessible for the layman. They tend to be very focused on a particular question or topic, don't spend lots of time on lengthy anecdotes or excessive detail and just... cut to the point. There's a big dividing wall between the world of academics and everything else, and it often rears it's head in bizarre or even (in politics) destructive ways. Opening up the ivory tower and making academic research more available is one of the best things I think scholars can do for the world today.
Another bonus to JSTOR is that it cuts the chafe.
An example: I searched "Viking History" on Amazon. Out of the 20 books offered on the front page, 1 was a rigorous academic work (actually pretty hardcore). Children of Ash and Elm by English Archeologist Neil Price. Three were "pop histories" written by people with academic backgrounds or baking: The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings, and Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland. These books are not complete bunk, but they're also not rigorously scholarly and are intended to try and bridge the gap between academia and lay people.
The problem is that separating those four works from the rest of the page and knowing that the rest junk history that will probably give bad information or impressions or fail to actually explain anything going on in academia is basically impossible to know without doing lots of legwork.
JSTOR saves you the trouble. They aren't carrying the entire Barnes and Noble catalogue, and while being on JSTOR isn't an assurance that a source is good, being on JSTOR at least means academics are talking about and using it and it exists within the stream of what scholars and experts are doing. No need to search Google Scholar, University faculty pages, or any of the other tips and tricks to finding good stuff.
So yeah. JSTOR is a great thing. It's still pricy but at least it's kind of affordable and if you like reading lots on economics, history, science, or what have you, JSTOR is currently the best resource there is.
I've long felt that academic publishing needs to break out of the shell of only pitching and selling to universities. I've seen a good few interesting books that are priced in the hundreds and up and are clearly only ever bought by libraries or the super keen.
Opening up knowledge to a bigger roster of the public and without them having to be at uni to use it means a huge amount to lay people. Plus I think it also helps nurture those who are out of the university system, but whom still have a core interest in those fields of study and can make use of the material.
Hopefully if they can get enough marketing behind it to make people aware, making prices cheaper will mean more users and that means price can come down.
This kind of mass market cheap monthly/annual system can work wonders - I know Adobe now uses it extensively for their software and its made it more accessible to people at the same time its brought them more constant and steady profits. I'm sure JSTOR can hopefully achieve similar.
Yeah. I never got to deep dive into Crusade history as much as I wanted because in English there's really only one source of primary sources; Oxford. Oxford publishes translations of these primary sources in massive encyclopedic collections that can cost thousands of dollars. Qatar has recently started digitizing everything in it's national archives and holy gak it's a lot, but the organization and translation are terrible. Oxford remains the best resources but it's way out of anyone's price range.
I am not made of money and while I understand the reasoning for why institutions want to cling to and control access to primary sources (they have to support themselves financially to preserve them at all) I am eternally saddened that these materials can't just be made available to people.
For JSTOR I'd really like to see something like a "History Package" where you can buy access to their History journals for like, $10-12/month. I'm not really reading the international affairs, business, economic, or physics journals. That deal would be fantastic. They've been opening up more and more the past few years so maybe we'll see something like that.
Yep and its not just that, by limiting to Universities it often means that many publications they do have often get lost. As noted above they don't really appear in Amazon or major book retailers - you might get some at somewhere like Blackwells that pitches to universities as well; but broadly speaking many key references will be basically unknown unless you're really into the academia side of things.
So its not just that there's a price barrier, but also just basically knowing the references even exist in the first place.
For JSTOR I'd really like to see something like a "History Package" where you can buy access to their History journals for like, $10-12/month. I'm not really reading the international affairs, business, economic, or physics journals. That deal would be fantastic. They've been opening up more and more the past few years so maybe we'll see something like that.
Its funny, JSTOR and EBSCO host and other journal hosting repositories already do something similar to this for universities. When I was at my uni, the librarians kept asking, "did you check this one for your history articles?" and I'd remind them, "no you didn't pay for history on that database, only this one" . . . like, it was genuinely confusing at my school which database hosted which field of study.
I'd definitely be down for it, right up until they started doing the same things that killed of cable TV: "ohh, you want the english literature articles? Well then you need the Humanities Premium Plus, it also comes with poetry, world religions, and underwater basket-weaving"
I think subdivision can be more complex than people think. Its easy to say split off the histories, but they'll include a lot of scientific elements or elements that rely on the sciences. Does radio carbon dating fit into physics or history? How much fits into each one - will you be ending up with some of the meatier discussions on the technical side being only in physics or even chemistry or such whilst users of the method in history will only be able to read about history documents that used the method etc...
IT can sound like a neat way to lower costs to the individual, until you realise how many subjects criss-cross over each other and suddenly what sounded like a cheaper deal, actually works out to be a more expensive deal.
A single access system does at least provide a simple setup for both sides of the coin. In theory it also makes it easier to access and thus more amenable to mass-market access with the view that instead of making more per-person you'd make more from a larger population. If the price is low enough even to the point where you end up with many signed up and paying users who are not currently active users.
Heck Adobe charges me £10 a month (bit less) for using Photoshop and Lightroom. If I go a month or two not doing any photography, in theory, I should cancel those months; however in reality I just overlook it. So I'm paying for a service that I'm not, at that moment, using. Journals would be the same, ideally if they target 3rd year students they can encourage many to sign up "50% off if you sign up at the end of your graduation etc....". So you're cornering them when they've an interest with the hope that many will turn into long term sleeper subscribers.
It was 2011/2012 when I first encountered it, and I think 2016 the last time I tried to use it.
Their interface was so dated. It's like they've never upgraded the site since the late 90s. It's far less user friendly than JSTOR so JSTOR became my preferred platform. Looking at it now though I does look like they've managed some upgrades but it's gone the hyper minimal route that I've never really liked XD
I think that style must be more usable for some people though because lots of sites use it and twitter is huge.
It was 2011/2012 when I first encountered it, and I think 2016 the last time I tried to use it.
Their interface was so dated. It's like they've never upgraded the site since the late 90s. It's far less user friendly than JSTOR so JSTOR became my preferred platform. Looking at it now though I does look like they've managed some upgrades but it's gone the hyper minimal route that I've never really liked XD
I think that style must be more usable for some people though because lots of sites use it and twitter is huge.
One of the things I liked about my uni library is that our computer nerds put into our library webpage an interface where you could put in your search terms and it would pull from whichever databases you checked, and then you'd open a direct link to whatever article it was, so at no point was I directly ever using JSTOR or Ebsco (although I did at a couple points jump onto JSTOR directly for history stuff, when search algorithms didn't pull up enough relevant stuff)
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Possibly a tinderbox question, so I shall simply ask and not elaborate. Please keep answers similarly.
Can anyone recommend a layman’s terms, bipartisan book (or books) on the American Civil War?
If you just want a history of the war itself, I think James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom is a good and concise narrative history of the war itself. Though it does cover other things, it's just that a lot of the books I know are focused on questions other than just retelling the events of the war. This is the one book I know off the top of my head written with layman in mind and is primarily a history of the war.
I'll offer the reading list from my post-grad class on the subject. Layman history they're not per se, but I find all but maybe Ruin Nation and War Upon the Land are very accessible.
Spoiler:
Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War by James Huston. I EXTREMELY recommend this book. It can be dry but it touches on a lot of hard truths and uses raw data to back them up. Huston proposes that the origins of the Civil War were fundamentally economic in nature, hinged on the value of slaves, the economies on which slavery operated, and how perceptions of property and rights played into the politics of the period. I think his overarcingy argument is overstated, but he's got raw data for a lot of his sub-themes and it's hard not to agree with many of his subtler points and proposals.
Shifting Grounds: Nationalism and the American South, 1848-1865, by Paul Quigley is a history that examines the trends and ideologies that would lead to succession in the Southern States and their role in the Civil War. I don't remember this book well XD
War Upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of the Southern Landscapes during the American Civil War by Lisa Brady. Brady is an environmental historian, and this book is actually really fun imo. Environmental history in general is very fun. Brady examines the impacts of the war on the southern landscape and its geography, which also means she talks a lot about the war itself. Great book as I remember it.
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 by Edward Ayers.EDIT: And I confused this with another book. In the Presence of Mine Enemies is focused on two counties, one in Pennsylvania and one in Virginia and examines their similarities and differences. I'm actually not sure what the book I was thinking of was titled. Looking to see if I can find it.
Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Drew Faust, is largely about women and the home front. I don't remember this one much either because it's a bit dry at times, but it's an interesting look at an aspect of the war that is often discussed by historians but rarely takes center stage.
Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War by Megan Nelson is specific examination of whether or not the Civil War qualifies as a total war. Nelson proposes (and I think provides a good case) that it was not, but it came very very close. It's a military history with a lot of focus on the North and its war strategies, policies on civilians and property, and how we regard and think about the war culturally. She is especially interested in how the war's destruction and physical realities have largely been forgotten with time as more ideological conceptions of the war have come to dominate perceptions of the conflict.
What this Cruel War was Over by Chandra Manning. This is the opposite of Ruin Nation. Manning deep dives into memoirs, letters, and diaries to examine how soldiers, North and South, Black and White, viewed the war. She proposes that the war initially started with soldiers holding political views about the conflict and then gradually shifted as it went on and slavery's preservation/destruction became overarching in the minds of fighting men. It's a very good history though I remember little of it. It focuses on how common people thought and what they said.
Also on the list:
A book you'll also want to read is Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution by Eric Foner, which is the definitive history of Reconstruction and has been since it was published. This book comes in two versions because the original is MASSIVE. I recommend the second abridged version; A Short History of Reconstruction. It's got some hiccups, but it cuts a lot of the bulk data he used in the full version and just sticks to a narrative history that makes the shorter version much more readable.
Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Lousiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862-1882 by John Rodrigue, is a micro-history (see the title) that's also very fun and covers all kinds of neat stuff. Could you believe freedmen in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War managed to unionize and protect their rights for a fair while in Louisiana? This is a book about how they did it!
As for bipartiasn... I'm not sure there is one? Historians are largely in agreement about what the war was specifically about, and their disagreements are mostly in the fine details. There's been broad agreement about it since Foner first published Reconstruction in the 80s. Unfortunately the war's cultural memory and political legacy is somewhat distinct from how academics view the conflict. If you want books that avoid becoming petty political anachronisms, most of these should qualify.
According to this, a layer of graphene, which is basically just carbon, has produced measurable, storable and useful energy from the heat in it's own atoms.
This is called Brownian Motion and up till now physics has said that due to entropy brownian motion cannot directly be used as a source of usable energy.
It looks like a sheet of carbon atoms has just said "Hold my beer!"
If this is true it will make some real changes to our beliefs about the laws of physics necessary. It even appears, at this point, to possibly output more energy that seems to be put into it which definitely violates physics as we understand them today and if true means a lot of physics os going to be rewritten.
Right now this is in an early stage and may not go anywhere, but if even some of this is true there are going to be big changes in our understanding of physics and a few things we used to believe were impossible might not be after all.
A Town Called Malus wrote: As a genral rule, if something says it is going to rewrite the laws of physics then you can pretty safely ignore it.
It is an interesting design, however. It remains to be seen whether they can miniaturise it to make it useful.
Well, there was a theory that graphene could coproduce energy from brownian motion way back in like 2010. This experiment was based on some years of research. It's still unformed and some people think it may be something like a crystal radio set, but if it was that easily disimssed i think we'd have seen it exploded by now, or at least thunderfoot would have done an annoying video on it.
My good friend and fellow Northumbrian Dr Rachel Pope recently released an article on some of the research she's been undertaking on "Celts". It discusses the Iron Age peoples of Europe and the Near East and is less about the weird modern "Celtic" identity that people have fashioned for themselves out of Victorian native/savage Romantic ideals.
The abstract if anyone is interested:
"This work re-approaches the origins of “the Celts” by detailing the character of their society and the nature of social change in Europe across 700–300 BC. A new approach integrates regional burial archaeology with contemporary classical texts to further refine our social understanding of the European Iron Age. Those known to us as “Celts” were matrifocal Early Iron Age groups in central Gaul who engaged in social traditions out of the central European salt trade and became heavily involved in Mediterranean politics. The paper focuses on evidence from the Hallstatt–La Tène transition to solve a 150-year-old problem: how the Early Iron Age “Celts” became the early La Tène “Galatai,” who engaged in the Celtic migrations and the sacking of Rome at 387 BC."
A Town Called Malus wrote: As a genral rule, if something says it is going to rewrite the laws of physics then you can pretty safely ignore it.
It is an interesting design, however. It remains to be seen whether they can miniaturise it to make it useful.
A thought i've had about this breaking an established physics model is that the older model was likely based on a mass of atoms that would be 3 dimensional and thus have infinite directions to disperse the energy of the motion into. Now graphene is a single layer of atoms, a 2 dimensional plane not a 3 dimensional mass.
Hmm, i wonder if confining the brownian motion of atoms to a single plane limits the way the energy of brownian motion can disperse and makes some part of it able to be tapped to produce energy.
To be honest that just sounds like you’ll be very slowly cooling the graphene and/or the graphene is providing you a mechanism to extract heat energy from the local area by a sort of conduction. I’d believe that over breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
Of course, that’d still be incredibly useful as a replacement for low drain batteries; having stuff like remote monitoring sensors that can be indefinitely self-powered by a Brownian motion “battery” would be a big deal.
Also, props to Turnip Jedi for getting in first with the HHGTTG reference!
of course if the simpsons lasts a few more years every possible combination of words in the english language will be used on it at least once.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jadenim wrote: To be honest that just sounds like you’ll be very slowly cooling the graphene and/or the graphene is providing you a mechanism to extract heat energy from the local area by a sort of conduction. I’d believe that over breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
Of course, that’d still be incredibly useful as a replacement for low drain batteries; having stuff like remote monitoring sensors that can be indefinitely self-powered by a Brownian motion “battery” would be a big deal.
Also, props to Turnip Jedi for getting in first with the HHGTTG reference!
Why miniaturize it? Why not enlargenize it? (Reff to the embiggen bit.)
if graphene can be made dirt cheap eventually by industrial processes can you imagine having say the walls, floors and ceilings of you house fitted with several hundred square feet of it possibly to produce limited emergency power in a blackout? Or just supplement your normal electrical needs?
On one hand if you have a wifi in your house and don't want people hacking it this could be good. On the the hand if it keeps your cellphone from working yeah that could suck majorly. I see it as a possible good security for areas where you don't want people hacking your wireless.
I do now wonder if this stuff could be folded up rolled up and stored to be deployed to keep a cellphone working in a power outage.
Jadenim wrote: There’s lots of these; you can be overwhelmed and underwhelmed, but never just “whelmed”. I think it’s the more verbose form of “meh”.
Whelm is an old word that comes from boating. Generally used when a boat took on water from waves cresting the sides of the boat. To be "overwhelmed" meant you were at serious risk of sinking if not actually so.
It's because of people like you (and me) that most ads are even as short as 5 seconds now, they used to all be longer.
Guess humanity as a whole has a hard time learning that lesson... 
show that comets are trying to develop force fields to keep earth probes from being able to land on them. 
