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1,538 | According to Dr. Thomas G. Barnes the Moon is much younger than claimed by the mainstream scientific community, by many orders of magnitude. The Giant impact hypothesis , one of the primary mainstream scientific theories on the creation of the moon, says that the Moon is billions of years old. Dr. Barnes claims that the Moon is far younger than this. While he does not explicitly claim exactly how old the Moon is, I believe that he is implying that the Moon is at most a few thousand years old so that it's age is inline with some creationist beliefs. Barnes gives 5 reasons why his theory of a Young Moon is correct : The age of the earth and moon can not
be as old as required in the doctrine
of evolution, as has been shown when
the great laws of physics are applied
to observed large scale phenomena such
as: The recession rate of the moon and the Roche limit The faster earth spin rate in the past. The rate of lunar dust build-up. The decay of the earth's magnetic field. The pleochroic halos in the earth's basement rock. The first point "The recession rate of the moon and the Roche limit." is sited by others who also claim that the Moon is young. Conservapedia's article on the Moon states: Rate of recession The Moon currently recedes from the
Earth at a rate of 1.5 inches (3.8 cm)
per year, and is believed by
atheistic scientists to be 4.6 billion
years old, The Moon could never
have been closer than about 11,000
miles or it would have been broken up
by tidal forces. If the rate of
recession stayed constant at 3.8 cm
per year, it would take 9.6 billion
years for the lunar distance to
migrate from 11,000 miles to the
present distance of about 240,000
miles. It should be noted that Barnes believes that if the Moon was not young it would be much further away, while Conservapedia is claiming that it would take much longer for the Moon to reach the same position. But both say the Roche Limit and the Rate of recession prove that the Moon cannot be as old as mainstream science claims. So is this theory of a Young Moon correct? Does evidence backup their claims? Must the Moon be much further away if it is billions of years old? | A great source for answers to myths like this that keep circulating around is Talkorigins.org . Some quotes from the moon section : The moon is receding at about 3.8 cm per year. Since the moon is 3.85 ×
10 10 cm from the earth, this is
already consistent, within an order of
magnitude, with an earth-moon system
billions of years old. The magnitude of tidal friction
depends on the arrangement of the
continents. In the past, the
continents were arranged such that
tidal friction, and thus the rates of
earth's slowing and the moon's
recession, would have been less. The
earth's rotation has slowed at a rate
of two seconds every 100,000 years
(Eicher 1976). The rate of earth's rotation in the
distant past can be measured. Corals
produce skeletons with both daily
layers and yearly patterns, so we can
count the number of days per year when
the coral grew. Measurements of fossil
corals from 180 to 400 million years
ago show year lengths from 381 to 410
days, with older corals showing more
days per year (Eicher 1976; Scrutton
1970; Wells 1963; 1970). Similarly,
days per year can also be computed
from growth patterns in mollusks
(Pannella 1976; Scrutton 1978) and
stromatolites (Mohr 1975; Pannella et
al. 1968) and from sediment deposition
patterns (Williams 1997). All such
measurements are consistent with a
gradual rate of earth's slowing for
the last 650 million years. and: The high number for dust accumulation (14 million tons per year
on earth) comes from the high end of a
single preliminary measurement that
has long been obsolete. Other higher
estimates come from even more obsolete
sources, although they are sometimes
incorrectly cited as being more
recent. The actual influx is about
22,000 to 44,000 tons per year on
earth and around 840 tons per year on
the moon. The story that scientists worried
about astronauts sinking in moon dust
is a total fabrication. As early as
1965, scientists were confident, based
on optical properties of the moon's
surface, that dust was not extensive.
Surveyor I, in May 1966, confirmed
this. | {
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1,550 | In movies and television shows, you often see law enforcement (or hacker types) attempting to trace a phone call that they have received. The typical scene plays out with one party trying to keep the other party on the phone long enough for them to get a trace on the location. Veteran bad guys know this and usually hang up just before the other side get a lock on the location . I realize that some of this may have changed over time, as phone systems have evolved. It may also be different with landlines and cell phones. I'm curious if this is accurate now and if it was ever accurate. Can you trace a phone call like this at all? Is there a specific time that the call has to last? If so, why? | "I'm curious if . . . it was ever accurate." The short answer is "yes." Today, of course, it's ridiculous as others have pointed out. The original electro-mechanical switches were called "step-by-step" switches in the US, or " Strowger " switches in the UK. Later, electro-mechanical switches were called " crossbar " switches. Both set up a continuous metallic path through the switch which lasts the duration of the call. In fact, many of the dialing and numbering conventions - dialing "0" for the Operator, dialing "1" for Long Distance, dialing "011" for international, and no area codes or telephone numbers starting with "0" or "1" - directly resulted from the way these switches were designed and wired. The telephone network was a hierarchical (5-level) network . Only "Class 5" switches connected to telephone lines - all other levels were "tandem switches" designed to connect two switches together with "trunks". The equipment required to automatically bill calls ("Automatic Message Accounting") was very expensive, so it was usually concentrated in Class 4 or Class 3 "Toll Centers" where it could serve multiple Class 5 offices (and that's why we got free local calling in the US). Row 1 of the SXS "Selector" or crossbar (corresponding to the dialed digit "1") was wired directly to a "CAMA trunk" (Centralized AMA) to a tandem switch where the details were recorded before the call was set up. (Similarly, row 10, corresponding to dialed digit "0", was directly connected to trunks to the operator center). So tracing a call in an all electro-mechanical network would literally require working backward from the receiving telephone line, to either the originating line (if the call originated in the same Class 5 office) or to the incoming trunk line, etc., etc. But it wasn't "digit by digit." It would be analagous to following a piece of string to its point of origin, then making a note of the telephone number associated with the tin can the string is tied to. The 1ESS switch was introduced in the 1960s. It was a computer-controlled mechanical switch. True digital switches like the 5ESS and the DMS100 came along in the 1970s. Digital switching made billing and services like Caller ID a function of software, not hardware, so tracing a call in an ESS network is much simpler. But steppers and crossbars remained in service well into the 1980s, and many were only replaced because the state Public Service Commission required it. As to any differences between wireline and wireless: let's ignore the radio-based IMTS and talk about AMPS and digital (GSM, TDMA, CDMA). All of these systems were based on digital switching fabric, and all calls were billed (so calling party number was automatically captured), so tracing a call would have been relatively simple. One additional distinction: there's a difference between information available in the modern network (billing information, tower ID, GPS coordinates), and information shared with the user (Caller ID). | {
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1,555 | It is a common myth that, if you're stung by a jellyfish, then pouring urine on the wound is an effective way to treat the injury or ease the pain. That belief is deeply entrenched in the American popular culture. So deeply, in fact, that in Survivor: Marquesas, one of the contestants asked one of his teammates to pee on his wound to relieve the pain after being stung (though, this time, it was sea urchin rather than a jellyfish). Is there any truth to that belief? | From The Telegraph - Use seawater or vinegar to treat jellyfish stings, not urine : ... according to the British Red Cross, the widespread belief that urine
can lessen the pain of venom injected by the marine creatures is
misplaced. Joe Mulligan , head of first aid at the British Red Cross , said: “ A sting from a jellyfish can be extremely painful, but trying to treat it with urine isn’t going to make your day any better ." “ Urine just doesn’t have the right chemical make-up to solve the problem.... slowly pouring seawater over the sting will help ease the pain. Doing the same thing with vinegar can be even more effective as the acid helps neutralise the jellyfish sting. ” From Scientific American - Fact or Fiction?: Urinating on a Jellyfish Sting is an Effective Treatment : Urine can actually aggravate the jellyfish's stingers into releasing more venom. The concentration of salts and other compounds people have in their
urine changes. If it is too dilute it will be similar to
freshwater and cause those stingers to fire. Other liquids and compounds, however, can help. Most stings in North American waters can be assuaged by vinegar, or 5 percent acetic acid . For stings from a few species, Cyanea capillata and Chysaora quinquecirrha , a baking soda and seawater paste is even better. " Urine is worthless ," says Joseph Burnett , a dermatologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who is part of the school's Consortium of Jellyfish Stings , which tracks jellyfish injuries worldwide. From ABC News - Old Wives' Tale? Urine as Jellyfish Sting Remedy : Urine has not been scientifically proven to help in jellyfish stings ,
said Dr. Paul Auerbach , an emergency physician at Stanford University
Hospital and an expert on jellyfish stings. The best thing to use is acetic acid, or regular household white vinegar , Auerbach said. ... the beaches of Australia are lined with vinegar stands, says Dr. Suzanne Shepherd , a travel medicine specialist and emergency physician at the University of Pennsylvania. Shepherd also recommends avoiding fresh water to treat a jellyfish sting because it could just cause the remaining nematocysts to fire. More: MSNBC - Urine doesn't ease jellyfish stings, after all ABC Science - Should vinegar be used on all jellyfish stings? | {
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1,569 | Lots of times, when some great tragedy occurs, one often hears journalists and bystanders alike softening the blow of having some person die by saying something like "at least they died instantly" or "they died instantly, so they didn't suffer." I've always wondered whether there was in fact a scientific way to determine whether or not a certain method of death is instant or not. Would dashing one's head having fallen from a high distance lead to "instant death"? What about a high velocity hollow-point bullet? Complete decapitation, such as found in the guillotine? Is there a technical definition for the requirements of "instant death" available somewhere? I'd appreciate anyone making the science more clear for me. | Well, part of the problem is that when we talk about death, there are multiple definitions. Medically, you have " clinical death " and " brain death ." There is also the definition of death which means " the end of life ." The latter is even more of a problem because where most people consider "life" to mean a certain level of functioning, science defines life based on more than organ functions . Starting at a very young age, in schools, we are often taught that the basic way that science defines life is that life is something that can: Reproduce Grow Move Have a metabolism (obtain and use
energy) So, starting with brain death, yes, it is possible for the brain to cease functioning almost instantly. While we don't have many details on what the experience is like when the brain is shutting down, we do have studies on the activity in the brain afterward . It is most likely the case that during death, the brain will send signals based on external stimuli, as that is its main function, and because those stimuli are extreme, the brain's activity will probably also be pretty high. Because instant injuries, such as the one mentioned, create irreversible damage to parts of the brain that send and receive signals, instant brain death is possible because it would be much like ripping conductive wires apart that support a larger, electrically-driven apparatus, the parts of the brain affected by the injury would instantly turn off. Clinical death is a little bit different and is vaguely defined. Generally, clinical death involves stopped breathing, but it can also involve cardiac arrest and the failure of various organs and biological systems. Clinical death is often not considered actual death because someone who is clinically dead can sometimes be revived. So, while someone may suffer injuries that causes clinical death to be sudden, because the brain hasn't necessarily shut down in the event of clinical death, they may actually experience something while they're unconscious and dying. This is what scientists think is responsible for near death experiences which many claim are related to the afterlife. Instead, though, these reports of near death experiences are likely similar to lucid dreams , in which it is difficult to differentiate between what is happening in one's head while sleeping and what is actually happening while awake. Approaching the question of death as the end of life, as defined by science, is a whole different realm than defining brain death and clinical death. For at least a short time after we die, cellular processes can sometimes continue, even when the heart has stopped, breathing has stopped and the brain no longer is functioning. The cells function as long as their basic structures are in tact and the nutrients they are surviving on are still available. Thus, some of an individual's metabolic processes, like storing fat, will continue to happen for over an hour (probably more) after the brain, lungs and heart have completely shut down. Reproductive cells will function for a while after death and the process of death, itself, will cause an individual to move, sometimes. Because of this, a corpse still satisfies the definition for life that we're often given in grade school science classes. If consider death at this level, the only way instant death could occur is if the cellular structures of the body, including our symbiotic microbes, were instantly destroyed. When people refer to "instant death," though, in the sense that you describe, they're usually talking about what level of awareness someone has as they're dying. Did they feel pain for some time or did they experience some emotional state as they passed away? In that sense, instant death is not uncommon. Certain types of brain injuries do damage the brain to the point that it can no longer send signals related to processing stimuli. Decapitation may be another matter, though, because the brain may be severed from the body, but it can still send signals for a very short time. There are, in fact, anecdotes about decapitated heads responding to stimuli after being separated from their body (not that anecdotes are great evidence, but that's what we have. I know of no brain scan done on a decapitated head right after it was severed from the body). There's no technical definition for "instant death." Instead, that is a term used in everyday jargon and not in the medico-science community as some official term. Death is too complex for that, as you can see. | {
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1,576 | The airwaves and Internet are full of advertisements for "male enhancement" products: magic pills "guaranteed" to enlarge your penis and increase your sex drive. For example, ExtenZe , perhaps the most commonly advertised product of this nature, purports to do the following: Generates Rock Hard Erections Stop Premature Ejaculation Increase Stamina and Endurance Treats Erectile Dysfunction Increase Size And Girth Generate Mind Blowing Orgasms Increase Your Libido Many of these claims are testable. Obviously you can measure size differences, but things like premature ejaculation, stamina, and endurance can be tested by measuring the amount of time it takes to ejaculate before and after using the product, with normalization of the related external factors. Of course, others aren't. I know what a "mind blowing orgasm" is, but I certainly couldn't explain it scientifically. (Nor have I ever needed to take anything to experience one!) Regardless, none of these products are FDA approved, and there doesn't seem to be much research proving or refuting their claims. Some even say many of these products are dangerous. But, many such sites appear to be veiled advertisements for a different product or technique that they purport to not be dangerous. For instance, an organization called Male Enhancement Research , which is one of the top Google hits for male enhancement , states the following: “Do male enhancement products really work? The fact is that many male enhancement companies are trying to sell products that do not work, and these so called natural male enhancement products have actually been known to cause harmful side effects such as high blood pressure, or worse!” Yet, the very next page shows this table that lists one product as 98% successful with results "up to 48%": Between websites offering these products and websites of dubious objectivity, like the aforementioned, it is incredibly hard to find independent research on products like these. Is there any evidence that these products work? On the other hand, is there any research that indicates that these products might be harmful? Note: This doesn't refer to FDA-approved erectile dysfunction medications such as Viagra or other techniques like penis pumps or surgery, which are the subject of another question . | In order to look at this question with a good, critical eye, let's first talk about what these claims actually mean . One of the big problems with products that claim to help male performance is that they claim to be able to deal with things related with multiple biological systems. For example, blood flow to the penis requires other parts of your body to perform well that are unrelated to the aspect of your sexual functioning that helps you last longer. When male enhancement products make the claims you're talking about, they are actually claiming that they can: Increase the size of tissue
structures in the penis, which has
several parts: The corpus
cavernosum, corpus spongiosum,
glans, and the foreskin, outer skin,
etc . Increase time that an erection can
last by altering the variables that
affect the erection and prolonging
the amount of time between initial
stimulation and ejaculation. Change the person's physiology so
that they can perform better in the
act of copulating. Address issues that could cause
erectile dysfunction. Alter the individual's physiology so
that their orgasmic experience is
different. Increase an individual's sex drive. The first item, alone, is a pretty significant medical task . The penis may seem like a pretty basic structure on a creature, but there are multiple types of tissues in there. Medical science struggles with diseases that can be treated by altering tissue on very basic levels. Infants who are born with weak hearts or lungs would benefit tremendously if we could simply give them a medication and make them all better by strengthening just their heart or just their lungs. Instead, though, because we can't target the heart, specifically, we give them a general medication that alters their entire body, usually, steroids. So, the very first claim that male enhancement products make is that they've accomplished something that doctors have needed for years: growing only a specific region of the body without altering the rest. Not only does the claim that these products make target a specific part, they claim they've managed to find a single medication that targets only a specific group of organs on only one region of the body. That's kind of like saying they could give you a pill and make only your left hand grow and nothing else. The second claim is even more complicated than the first. The length of time that a man can hold an erection relies heavily on multiple factors from what he's thinking about, at the time, to if he's being stimulated and how sensitive his penis is in the moment. Genital sensitivity, itself, is inconsistent. This is why extended stimulation of the same pattern does not produce consistent biological responses. In other words, if an individual touches their penis in the same exact way for several minutes, the penis will become desensitized and the erection won't stay unless something changes. The effects of sensitization and desensitization can be seen in Pavlov's work with dogs , but the same mechanisms exist in humans and can happen, similarly, to any stimuli, from tactile senses to smell. Beyond that, most men experience variation in their erection just based on what they're thinking . While erections can be unpredictable, so can moments when an erection fails. Furthermore, during pauses in a sexual experience, the stimulation of the man's genitals is likely to vary as well, so that it is common for a man to lose and regain his erection while he's having sex. The main problem with the third claim is that it is making a claim about something that is barely related to the act of having sex. A person's stamina and endurance, even during sex, has to do with their overall health. A person in poor health is less likely to have very good stamina or endurance during sex, whereas a person in excellent health is more likely to last longer. By claiming that they can improve something like this, the claim that is really being made is essentially that this is an overall miracle drug, capable of, at least for the short-term, curing what ails ya. Erectile dysfunction is typically a side-effect of various types of medical conditions from diabetes to prostate cancer. Typically, treatment for erectile dysfunction is treatment for the possible causes plus a treatment of the symptom. In order to treat erectile dysfunction, the main approved treatments are Viagra and Cialis. These two medications are not automatic cures for the problem, though. They only make the process of getting an erection easier. Other factors, such as stimulation, as mentioned above, still apply to the variations in the kinds of erections one might get when using a drug that treats erectile dysfunction. Even drugs designed and approved by the FDA to treat problems with penile function don't make claims as extreme as penis enhancement drugs. Viagra blocks a chemical that is responsible for reversing an erection. In order for someone to obtain an erection, stimulation is still necessary and blood still has to enter the penis. It is more difficult to think critically about the sensation one feels during orgasm from one sexual experience to the next (requiring most studies on male orgasm to involve internal devices, like anal probes ). Little variations from what is said to how it is said to what position a couple is using can change the sensations one feels during sex and even affect orgasm. This isn't surprising, since vocalizations have shown to be factors that can change if a mate ejaculates or not in a range of species from mice to macaques . Furthermore, the claims made regarding orgasm sensations ignore the fact that males have different phases of orgasm which, if interrupted, can also change the sensation of their orgasm. Men are capable of blocking the second phase of orgasm, which is suspected (but still needs tested) to result in additional pressure below the bladder, due to the pooling of liquid, to increase the sensation of another orgasm if it is attempted very soon after. The last claim, that sex drive will increase with use of a penis enhancer is also difficult to test. There is no evidence that a penis enhancer can do this. Again, multiple factors can affect sex drive, including one's mental and physical health. Anything from blood sugar levels (1) to iron levels to depression can affect an individual's sex drive. A doctor trying to address the issue of someone's sex drive is more likely to look into those factors before ever suggesting a treatment of just the symptom of a decreased sex drive. With all that said, you're correct that there haven't been many studies on the effectiveness for these treatments. The reason, though, is because of what I've stated above. The claims made by those producing these pills are pretty unreasonable. That's why Steve Warshack and some of his family were found guilty of crimes related to the production and distribution of Enzyte, an herbal pill which claimed to be capable of penis enhancement and famous for the Smilin' Bob commercials. To complicate matters, the FDA has more relaxed rules when it comes to "natural remedies" and "herbal" supplements, which makes it easier for a company to make claims about a product and face fewer penalties, even when their claims are found to be wrong (which is why the Enzyte case was triggered by the Better Business Bureau and not the FDA). Because most of the products claiming to be male enhancement products are unregulated, they fall into the same categories as other types of herbal treatments and should be approached with caution because of lack of testing and the consequences of introducing things into your body that could be potentially dangerous or that your doctor may not have enough information about. This study addresses some of that problem well: Unfortunately there is no universal regulatory system in place that insures that any of these plant remedies are what they say they are, do what is claimed, or most importantly are safe. Data will be presented in this context, outlining how adulteration, inappropriate formulation, or lack of understanding of plant and drug interactions have led to adverse reactions that are sometimes life-threatening or lethal. As far as potential harm that these products may cause, we don't yet know. These products do prey on individual insecurities, but if we use that as a measure of harm, we'd have to also consider many cosmetics to be harmful as well (though, many cosmetics do exactly what they claim, so there is at least that difference in favor of them over male enhancement products). Most male enhancement products are very expensive and a person particularly concerned with their sexual performance is vulnerable to companies which may sell him ineffective products as he ignores the possibility that his sexual concern may be an indication of a medical problem. So far, this type of harm is not easily measured and we're not likely to ever find the kind of data we would need to confirm or deny it. So, basically, the answer is that we can't really know if male enhancement products work, but it is very unlikely when we consider the claims that are made. Also, with lack of proper studies on the products, we can't really know what kind of harm they may cause to individuals, physically, and other possible harmful elements are, thus far, not even measurable. (1) A recent study has found that the decrease in sex drive in diabetics is possibly related to the decrease in sexual function and may not be a symptom, itself. | {
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1,590 | Are there any differences in either sex which are provably beneficial and/or detrimental to their driving abilities? Also, is it possible that stereotypical gender roles make any difference in driving ability? For example: Men stereotypically tend to take women on dates where the man drives the car and pays for the meal. A greater number of dates could make them accustomed to driving while distracted (if they're interested in the girl, they're probably distracted). For balance: Women have less testosterone and are stereotypically less aggressive than men, which may prevent them from succumbing to "road rage". Are there any studies showing that either gender is more prone to accidents? | Sex differences in driving and insurance risk (by The Social Issues Research Centre , 2004) Men and women exhibit different
driving behaviours that affect their
attitudes, safety and insurance risk.
Many factors underpin these
differences, including neurochemical
structures and hormonal processes
shaped by evolution, and global
socialisation practices. Each plays a
part in explaining why men and women
drivers have very different records in
relation to accidents and insurance
claims . Differences between male and female drivers in terms of crash rates are
evident in a wide range of countries, including the United States, Europe,
Asia and Africa, with males being significantly more at risk than females . There is extensive evidence to show that men , and young men in
particular, tend to be more
aggressive than women (in all known
cultures) and they express aggression
in a direct, rather than indirect, manner. Levels of deviant (rule-breaking) behaviour are significantly higher in
men than in women . This manifests
itself in a greater frequency of
violation of traffic regulations,
including speed limits, traffic controls, drink-driving, etc. Men also exhibit, on average, higher levels of sensation-seeking
and risk-taking in a wide variety
of settings. The basis for this
well-established sex difference has a
hormonal and neurochemical basis – it
is not simply a product of
socialisation or experience. A report published by the Department of Gender and Women’s Health at the World Health
Organisation has called for recognition of these fundamental
differences between men and women
drivers and the development of gender-differentiated policies in
relevant areas. [...] Conclusion Men and women are different . In terms
of driving behaviour, the differences
can be seen clearly in the greater
propensity of males to take risks,
exhibit aggression and seek thrilling
sensations. The results of these
differences are highlighted very
clearly across the globe in higher
accident statistics, more expensive
and frequent insurance claims and
higher rates of convictions for
offences such as dangerous and
drink-driving . These differences may be shaped by
socialisation, but they are rooted in
more fundamental factors . Evolutionary
psychology provides a strong basis for
sourcing many of these back to the
little-changed cognitive structures
required by our hunter-gather
ancestors. the authors believe there is
overwhelming evidence that
propensities towards certain types of
behaviour, including less-safe
driving, are ‘hard wired’ in men. The paper cites a lot of studies. They are referenced on the last six pages. Way too many to include them here. | {
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1,624 | Regardless of whether you believe or not... What is the non-Biblical evidence regarding his existence around the time he is commonly thought to have lived? That is, are there other historically accurate documents from the time period which corroborate the biblical story or falsify it? Again, this question does not have anything to do with anyone's personal belief or disbelief, and certainly has nothing to do with divinity. It simply asks for a consideration of available evidence regarding the historical existence of a particular person by a particular name at particular place in time. | With respect to written historical references to Christ, here are some examples: The Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus wrote in his Antiquities of the Jews , written around 93–94 AD: Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works - a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and Many of the Gentiles.* He was (the) Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those who loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to themn alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning hiim; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day" (Antiquities, XVIII, III)* ( source ) Tacitus, a Roman historian mentions Jesus in a passage about Nero in his final work Annals written in 116 AD: Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus [Christ], from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition [Christ's resurrection] thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular ( link ) Will Durant, a agnostic historian (from what I can find), wrote on historical content: ...the argument took the existence of Christ for granted. The denial of that existence seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity A couple of examples of indirect evidence from historical writing: comments in a letter by Roman Pliny the Younger written around 112 AD about the willingness of many Christians to be killed rather than change their beliefs; this would probably be difficult to produce on any scale for a fictional figure various quotations of eyewitness accounts of Jesus in Bible sections writings; the tone, context and use of the quotations presume that Jesus existed Scientific evidences would be a little more difficult for any historical figure. For example using DNA or fingerprints to prove that someone existed in history is heading toward logically impossible. It seems you would need sample of biometric information from a person for comparison; but then you would, by definition, already know they existed. Chapter 9 of Gary Habermas' book "The Historical Jesus" addresses this question extensively. | {
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1,669 | I have yet to make up my mind regarding the theory of evolution. Whilst doing some reading on dnafish I read that DNA itself provides evidence for the theory of evolution: Yeast, trees, flowers, corn, mice, frogs and humans share the same DNA. We know this is true the DNA code has been decoded and the closer evolutionary relative, the more the DNA matches. But does the theory of evolution say that trees evolved from the same organisms as mammals, reptiles, etc? | When Darwin developed the theory of evolution by natural selection, he was at that time not able to identify the underlying mechanism responsible for the hereditary of traits. Of course, the hereditary of traits is something we can directly observe, and exploiting such a mechanism is exactly what a person breeding dogs, horses or roses does. The discovery of genes and DNA revealed the underlying mechanism. This is an important point, because for scientists to be really satisfied you need both a verified observation and a plausible mechanism. Since evolution occurs through the gradual change of traits, which is reflected by gradual changes in the genes, the theory of evolution makes a prediction: The closer two species are related in their evolutionary history, the more similarities in the genetic code we should expect. Molecular phylogenetics (i.e. inferring relatedness from DNA sequences) produces results that are consistent with other methods of inferring relatedness among species: morphology, geography, and the fossil record. Therefore, it adds credibility to the only theory that predicts these patterns, evolution from a common ancestor. It extends the theory of evolution by allowing inferences to be drawn even in the absence of geographic and fossil-based evidence. While in science, one does not deal in absolute truths and proofs, but merely with hypotheses and validations or falsifications thereof, this discovery lends credibility to the theory of evolution. Life only had to happen once, and from that single point of origin, all else diversified. So yes, plants and animals indeed are hypothesized to share a common ancestor and DNA sequencing is continuing to generate more and more proof: '29+ Evidences for Macroevolution' | {
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1,678 | The 2007 conspiracy theory film Zeitgeist: The Movie ( Website , Watch online , Wikipedia Entry ) states in Part I "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" that major points of the story about Jesus Christ's birth, life, death and resurrection are not original but are shared with multiple other gods or deities of older religions. The film first (at around 16min:34sec) presents Horus an Egyptian God representing Light, worshiped around 3000 BC. It list the following attributes which as for I know all also apply for Jesus Christ. The attributes are numbered so they can be referenced later. Born on December 25th Born of a virgin Birth was accompanied by a star in the east After his birth was adored by three kings Teacher at 12 Baptized/Ministry at 30 Had 12 disciples he traveled about with Performing miracles: 8a. healing the sick, 8b. walking on water Known by many names: "Lamb of God", "The Truth", "God's begotten(?) Son", "The Light", "The good Shepard" After being betrayed: was crucified Dead-for 3 days Resurrected The film then claims that these attributes influenced other gods in other cultures over time. It follows a lists of gods/deities together with a listing for each including many but not always all of the above attributes. The listed gods/deities are: Attis (Greece, 1200 BC) — Attributes 1, 2, 11, 12, 13 Krishna (India, 900 BC) — Attributes 2, 3, 8, 13 Dionysos (Greece, 500 BC) — Attributes 1, 2, 8b + Turning Water into Wine, 9 ("God's son", "Alpha and Omega", ...), 13 Mithras (Persia, 1200 BC) — Attributes 1, 2, 7, 8, 12, 13, 9 ("The Truth", "The Light"), Day of worship: "Sunday" Then it is represented as a fact that there are even more, numerous saviors which have (some of) these attributes. The following list scrolls quite fast over the screen: Krishna of Hindustan Buddha Sakia of India Salivahana of Bermuda Zulis, or Zhule, also Osiris and Horus, of Egypt Odin or Thor of the Scandinavians Crite of Chaldea Zoroaster and Mithra of Persia Baal and Taut, "the only Begotten of God", of Phoenicia, Indra of Tibet Bali of Afghanistan Jao of Nepal Wittoba of the Bilingonese Thammuz of Syria Attis of Phrygia Zalmoxis of Thrace Zoar of the Bonzes Adad of Assyria Deva Tat, and Sammonocadam of Siam Alcides of Thebes Esus of the Druids Kadmos of Greece Ptahil of the Mandaeans Gentaut and Quexalcote of Mexico Universal Monarch of the Sibyls Ischy of the island of Formosa Divine Teacher of Plato Holy One of Xaca Fohi and Tien of China Adonis, son of the virgin Io of Greece Ixion and Quirinus of Rome Prometheus of Caucasus The film than claims these common attributes to astronomical elements (virgin = new moon, three kings = three stars of Orion's belt, 12 disciples = 12 signs of the zodiac, ...). However, these claims should be asked as separate questions. The question here: Is there historical proof or dis-proof of the claimed similarities between Jesus Christ and Horus as well the other gods? | The movie Zeitgeist greatly overstates the case for mythological similarities between Jesus in the Bible and those predecessors. Conspiracy Science has a detailed takedown of the Horus material . Here's the most important part: Horus was not born on December 25th,
he was born on the 5th day of the
"Epagomenal Days" 3 , which does not
even take place in December on the
modern or ancient calendars, but
rather between August 24th and 28th,
but in terms of the rising of Sirius
(August 4), they are July 30th through
August 3rd[4]. His mother was also not
a virgin. Horus's father was Osiris,
who was killed by his brother Seth.
Isis used a spell to bring him back to
life for a short time so they could
have sex, in which they conceived
Horus[5]. I, as well as several others, as
well as several Egyptologists you can
find on the Internet, know of no
reference anywhere to a "star in the
east" or "three kings" and "new-born
savior"; it is simply made up. I
cannot find any source or information
proving he was a "teacher when he was
12 years old", that he was "baptized
at age 30", that he "walked on water"
(but on the Internet, I did find
several places that suggest he was
"thrown in the water", but I have no
direct source at this time for that).
More so, I cannot find any evidence he
was referred to as "The Truth", "The
Light", Lamb of God", "the Good
Shepherd", etc. Also lacking is any evidence that he
was betrayed by Typhon. In fact, Horus
never died, at any time, he later
merges with the sun god, Ra -- but
never dies and certainly never is
crucified, and therefore could not
have been buried for 3 days and
resurrected. If you want to look it up
yourself, you can find documentation
of Horus and Isis and Osiris here [6]
and here [7]. As you can see Peter Joseph has a tendency to make long lists that conform to his theory, but few of the items on the list are true or real evidence of anything. Conspiracy Science has a full accounting of the Zeitgeist movie and related subjects. It's well worth checking out, even if navigation of the site is a little tricky. More generally, did the literary Jesus take on attributes from previous savior characters? Absolutely. That's a natural process. Does this mean Jesus didn't exist as a historical person? I'd say no. Around the same time similar supernatural acts were attributed to many Roman emperors and even the mathematician Pythagoras , and we don't use that as evidence that they were fictional. When it comes to that long list of saviors, it helps to remember that much of what we know about other religions has been distorted by the lens of Christianity. Even if it's not on purpose, we tend to highlight those attributes of other religions that resemble our preconceived notions, and downplay those that are different. Most of those on the list don't resemble Jesus's story nearly so closely as Joseph would have you think, especially the ones from non-European cultures. | {
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1,700 | There is a ton of anecdotal evidence that adding more screen estate (more or larger monitors) leads to an increase in productivity, especially for programmers. For example, where I work, all programmers have either two 20" screens or a single 24" screen. There is no agreement on which is the optimal setup. The question has been extensively debated by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky : More usable desktop space reduces the amount of time you spend on window management excise. Instead of incessantly dragging, sizing, minimizing and maximizing windows, you can do actual productive work. — Jeff Atwood Debugging GUI code with a single monitor system is painful if not impossible. If you're writing GUI code, two monitors will make things much easier. — Joel Spolsky Unfortunately, it seems to me that there is no indication that these effects are real, measurable and properly studied. The papers linked by Jeff (and around other blog posts), are all sponsored by monitor making companies (NEC, Apple ...) The papers disagree on their conclusions: one says that a 30" monitor is better than smaller monitors, the other that there are diminishing returns. Even the bloggers do not agree whether increasing the size or the number of monitors is the correct thing to do in order to increase productivity (Jeff thinks that very large monitors are bad , but a three monitor setup works, others say exactly the opposite ). What are some reliable, unbiased studies that describe correctly the relationships between number of monitors, size of monitors and productivity of software developers? Is there a set up which is proven to work better than the others, or is this an unclear effect that needs more studies? | This is a valid question, and something that I'm partially looking into for my thesis. Based on some initial investigation, Microsoft has done quite a bit of research in that area. Most of the papers show that increased screen estate and multiple monitor setups can indeed improve productivity by reducing detrimental effects of interruptions. Modality of interruptions seems to be a very important aspect since spatial memory and visual cues are important for reducing primary task resumption times. The paper by Baudisch especially focuses on various ways that multiple monitors can be used, and which ones are most effective for particular use cases. Here are some paper titles that I have come across so far: Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Displays (Desney S. Tan1 and Mary Czerwinski) PDF Partitioning Digital Worlds: Focal and Peripheral Awareness in Multiple Monitor Use (Jonathan Grudin) PDF Toward Characterizing the Productivity Benefits of Very Large Displays (Mary Czerwinski) PDF Keeping Things in Context: A Comparative Evaluation of Focus Plus Context Screens, Overviews, and Zooming (Patrick Baudisch) PDF Display Space Usage and Window Management Operation Comparisons between Single Monitor and Multiple Monitor Users (Dugald Ralph Hutchings) PDF Using Peripheral Processing and Spatial Memory to Facilitate Task Resumption (Raj M. Ratwani) PDF | {
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1,706 | Will drinking a cup of coffee before I sit down to work improve my concentration, compared to drinking a cup of water? | Caffeine is a stimulant which makes you feel less tired and, for athletes, delays exhaustion . So if the alternative is being asleep, caffeine cetainly helps. The other issue is that the regular use of caffeine leads, as with other psychoactive substances, to dependency ( tolerance or addiction are other words used). In such cases, lack of caffeine leads to withdrawal symptoms such as drowsiness and irratability. For dependent individuals, a cup of coffee will remove these symptoms in the short term, aiding concentration , though it is less clear whether this is an improvement on never having taken caffeine. | {
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1,744 | Supposedly, just one man built the Coral castle . Jilted by the woman who would be his wife, and miraculously recovering from a terminal case of tuberculosis, Edward Leedskanlin built the structure in Florida City, Florida sometime around 1923. He is said to have worked at night, by lamplight when he could not be seen, moving and carving stones which weighed up to several tons each. It remained until around 1936, when he decided to move. He then packed the whole structure (approximately 1,100 tons) up and took it with him. Using material from a nearby quarry, he would continue to work on it at his new location until he died of advanced stomach cancer in 1951. At no point was he witnessed using modern machinery. The coral castle remains standing at this location in Homestead, Florida where it can be viewed today. In addition to the claims Leedskanlin himself made regarding various phenomena as "magnetic currents" there have been numerous supernatural claims made as to how this structure would have to have been built. Is there any way one man, working alone, mostly at night, could have made this structure without using modern equipment? Its website is here. | Caffeine is a stimulant which makes you feel less tired and, for athletes, delays exhaustion . So if the alternative is being asleep, caffeine cetainly helps. The other issue is that the regular use of caffeine leads, as with other psychoactive substances, to dependency ( tolerance or addiction are other words used). In such cases, lack of caffeine leads to withdrawal symptoms such as drowsiness and irratability. For dependent individuals, a cup of coffee will remove these symptoms in the short term, aiding concentration , though it is less clear whether this is an improvement on never having taken caffeine. | {
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1,746 | It's not hard to find claims like these in the media or on the web from time to time. Is there any scientifically verifiable evidence that prayer (in addition to appropriate medical/surgical treatment) has a benefit for a patient? Please keep answers to demonstrable evidence, such as: Do prayed-for patients heal faster after surgery? Do they have lower rates of post-operative infection? Do they statistically demonstrate better outcomes? | The American Heart Journal has published a three-year study of the therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer of 1800 patients undergoing heart bypass surgery. The study divided subjects into three groups: those receiving no intercessory prayer, those that did, but didn’t know about it, and those that did and did know about it. Its conclusion is very clear indeed: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications. In other words: prayer doesn’t help . And if you know that you are prayed for, you do worse . Only slightly, but statistically significantly. Scientific American has published a break-down of the study and its results. | {
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1,790 | According to Wikipedia , Vegetarians tend to have lower body mass index , lower levels of cholesterol , lower blood pressure , and less incidence of heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, renal disease, osteoporosis, dementias, [and lower risks of] cancers of the esophagus, liver, colon, and the lungs. [...] A 2010 study [showed] vegetarians scored lower on depression tests and had better mood profiles . Of course, correlation =/= causation - all of this can be explained by the fact that people who eat only (or just more) vegetables tend to be more health-conscious in other ways: eat better, sleep more, exercise more, less likely to smoke or drink alcohol/caffeine, etc. Are there any studies which show positive causal effects of giving up meat, or is this all just correlational propaganda? I always hear vegetarians talk about how when they gave up meat, they suddenly felt their body and mind working so much better. I've been eating a strict vegetarian diet for three weeks now, and the only thing that's working more are my bowels. | From your comments, I am guessing that you will be a hardened skeptic. You've come to the right place. Let me address a couple of points. First, I agree with you that correlation is not causation. But my guess is that you are not looking for causation (for example, the biochemical processes that causes a higher incidence of heart disease in meat eaters). After all, who knows what causes heart disease? There are experts who might guess, but I don't think any researcher has come up with a single, definitive cause. (EDIT start: heightening the contrast between correlation and causation.) Let's turn our attention to the causation / correlation contrast for a different health-related matter: Smoking (perhaps unhealthy) verses Non-Smoking (perhaps healthier). Here is a proposition, turned into a parallel of the vegan/healthier argument. Does non-smoking cause not-lung-cancer? OR is non-smoking correlated to not-lung-cancer? (I apologize for the Aristotelian flip here, but just think "absence of lung cancer" as a parallel to "healthier.) To ask for causation is to ask too much. Some non-smokers get lung cancer. See http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/5/875.short . Therefore, there is no causal link between not-smoking and absence of lung cancer. In contrast, science has asserted that smoking is correlated with an increased incidence of lung cancer. Now that is a different question. Even a skeptic would say there is a correlation. Non-smoking correlates to lower lung-cancer incidence. It would be scientific, but unethical, to cage humans and force one group to smoke and not have another group smoke. It would be scientific, but unethical, to cage humans and force-feed one group meat and force-feed another group vegetables. (EDIT ends.) A scientifically accepted way to test humans is to do an epidemiological study. One type of epidemiological study would be to monitor many people over a long period of time. It turns out that protein intake has been studied for both monozygotic (identical) twins and vegetarianism for an epidemiological survey of a homogeneous group. The first study is called “Dietary protein and blood pressure in monozygotic twins” by
Richard J. Havlik M.D, et. al, published in Preventive Medicine (Vol 19, Issue 1, pp. 31-35). It shows that Using differences in monozygotic
twins, a direct association of dietary
protein intake and diastolic blood
pressure was identified and persisted
after adjustment for known covariates
of blood pressure. Adjusting for known
covariates and holding total calories
constant, a 9-g difference in daily
protein intake was directly associated
with a 1 mm Hg difference in diastolic
blood pressure. Simply put, what they found was that after adjusting for differences other than genetics (because monozygotic twins have the identical genetic makeup), more protein correlates to higher blood pressure. As you have noted, vegetarian diets tend to be poorer in protein. You might object that this study shows a relationship between protein and BP, not meat and BP. All that an inveterate skeptic would conclude is that this study shows a link between vegetarian diets and lower BP, but perhaps not a strong link. On to the second study. The epidemiological study may be found in Am J Clin Nutr September 1988 vol. 48 no. 3 739-748, which you may read in full, online . It compares a large number (n=27,529) of Seventh-Day Adventists. The Adventists are prohibited from using tobacco, alcohol, and pork. They are discouraged from consuming other meats, fish and eggs. Because eating a vegetarian diet is optional, this made for an ideal epidemiological study in that the meat-eaters and the vegetarians have similar life styles and all live in the same US state (California). Before I discuss the study’s conclusions, let me observe that it addresses almost all of your objections. It is a large study. It draws scientific conclusions, based on well known statistical methods. It minimizes lifestyle differences and geographic differences of the participants. It was published in a peer-reviewed journal. (The reviewers are, in a sense, skeptics-for-hire. Their job is to ferret out any design flaws, incorrect inferences, and confounding factors.) The conclusion is: Within this population, meat
consumption was positively associated
with mortality because of all causes
of death combined (in males), coronary
heart disease (in males and females),
and diabetes (in males). Egg
consumption was positively associated
with mortality because of all causes
combined (in females), and cancers of
the colon (in males and females
combined) and ovary. Milk consumption
was positively associated only with
prostate cancer mortality, and cheese
consumption did not have a clear
relationship with any cause of death. “Positively associated with” means more x correlates with more y. (x = meat, eggs, milk; y=death for all causes, death by colon cancer, death by heart disease). If you delve into the article, you will see that the tests are very statistically significant. For the case of all-cause mortality in males, the significance (p < .0001) means that only in 1 case out of 1000 would you find that the results were due to chance. This significance is much higher than that you would see for drug trials, for instance. The author, Dr. Snowdon, has done his job of showing correlation. (Remember, the standard is to show correlation to a given significance, not to show causation.) He even has a section about the limitations of the study. (There were three: 1) Gathering a lot of data means a simpler survey; 2) Dietary habits may have changed since the study began; 3) He did not study what substituted for meat (e.g., fruits and vegetables substituted for meat may be the cause for lower mortality).) His only grant was from the US National Cancer Institute, so the paper was not sponsored by PETA or the Dairy industry, for example. If you compare the scientific studies of smoking correlating with lung cancer (for example, http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/54/22/5801.short ), you will see that for some studies, the statistical significance levels are still very high (P = 0.001), but not as high as the Adventist study. The relationship between eating meat and these major diseases is more strongly linked. | {
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1,806 | I have heard that it is possible to unlock a car using the remote key-fob over a cell phone network. Scenario: Adam locks his keys in his car. He uses his cell phone to call his wife, Betty, who is at home with a cell phone. Adam holds his cell phone close to the car while Betty holds the spare remote close to her cell phone and pushes the UNLOCK button. Will this unlock the car door? | According to HowStuffWorks' page on How Remote Entry Works : The fob that you carry on your keychain or use to open the garage door is actually a small radio transmitter. When you push a button on the fob, you turn on the transmitter and it sends a code to the receiver (either in the car or in the garage). Inside the car or garage is a radio receiver tuned to the frequency that the transmitter is using (300 or 400 MHz is typical for modern systems). And, from Telephone on Wikipedia: The telephone [...] is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sound, most commonly the human voice. And again, from HowStuffWorks on Cell Phones : To start with, one of the most interesting things about a cell phone is that it is actually a radio -- an extremely sophisticated radio, but a radio nonetheless. But, nevertheless, a cell phone intentionally transmits on frequencies specifically assigned for mobile phone use . So, even though both cell phones and keyless entry remotes are radios, there are two main reasons why this is not possible: From the transmission end of the call, only audio is transmitted onto the phone network (via microphone into an analog signal and then via electronic components to a digital signal, if a digital cell phone is used). Radio signals are light, and are not audible. That audio is transmitted to your cell phone via cell phone frequencies. Your cell phone speaker only emits sound. As mentioned above, though your cell phone is a radio transmitter, and does emit radio signals, it only emits radio signals on cell phone frequencies for the purpose of transmitting audio. It has no functionality for transmitting on any other frequency (like the band used by your remote), let alone for any other purpose. (See the Wikipedia page on Frequency allocation for information about regulation of radio frequencies) Subjective and speculative footnote: Looking at the technologies being used by cell phones and key fobs, it seems reasonable to believe that a cell phone could be built for this purpose. However, it certainly wouldn't be a "mystery" function, since the device would have to have explicit approval from the FCC (in the US) to function on that band (check your key fob for its FCC approval ID). I can't imagine any cell phone maker building this functionality, getting it approved, and then not advertising it. Also, it's probably unlikely that it ever will be made due to more advanced, reliable, and propietary methods of unlocking cars (like GM's OnStar) are already in development or in use. | {
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1,825 | Is it true that anyone on the planet is connected to any other person on the planet through six degrees of separation? Why, or why not? | Well, it just so happens that there has been an experiment done on this. The original study was from Milgram back in the 1960s (same guy that did shock experiments). Orginal paper can be found here: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/teaching/NetworkedLife/travers_milgram.pdf However, the results are contentious. A Dr. Judith Kleinfeld has a good rundown on this . Her abstract starts out: The idea that people are connected through just "six degrees of separation," based on Stanley Milgram's "small world study," has become part of the intellectual furniture of educated people. New evidence discovered in the Milgram papers in the Yale archives, together with a review of the literature on the "small world problem," reveals that this widely-accepted idea rests on scanty evidence. Indeed, the empirical evidence suggests that we actually live in a world deeply divided by social barriers such as race and class. An explosion of interest is occurring in the small world problem because mathematicians have developed computer models of how the small world phenomenon could logically work. But mathematical modeling is not a substitute for empirical evidence. At the core of the small world problem are fascinating psychological mysteries She concludes with: Nothing is so useful as a good problem. The "small world problem" remains eternally fascinating and even more so in the digital age. Milgram has not shown that we live in a world of "six degrees of separation." How we are connected to each other remains an important mystery....and a researchable one. I also recall watching a television program a while back where Mark Vidal of the Faber Institute distributed packages all over the world with instructions on how to get the package back to him by only sending it to people you knew (basically a repeat of the Milgram study). I do recall that he did get his packages back, and often in less than six steps. Although that may have been assisted for the TV show's production values. I also found this paper from Cornell (The Small-World Phenomenon: An Algorithmic Perspective) that starts out as: Long a matter of folklore, the "small-world phenomenon" -- the principle that we are all linked by short chains of acquaintances -- was inaugurated as an area of experimental study in the social sciences through the pioneering work of Stanley Milgram in the 1960's. This work was among the first to make the phenomenon quantitative, allowing people to speak of the "six degrees of separation" between any two people in the United States. Since then, a number of network models have been proposed as frameworks in which to study the problem analytically. One of the most refined of these models was formulated in recent work of Watts and Strogatz; their framework provided compelling evidence that the small-world phenomenon is pervasive in a range of networks arising in nature and technology, and a fundamental ingredient in the evolution of the World Wide Web. This paper makes a more mathematical look at it versus an experimental look, and thus concludes: Algorithmic work in different settings has considered the problem of routing with local information; see for example the problem of designing compact routing tables for communication networks [15] and the problem of robot navigation in an unknown environment 3 . Our results are technically quite different from these; but they share the general goal of identifying qualitative properties of networks that makes routing with local information tractable, and offering a model for reasoning about effective routing schemes in such networks. While we have deliberately focused on a very clean model, we believe that a more general conclusion can be drawn for small-world networks: that the correlation between local structure and long-range connections provides fundamental cues for finding paths through the network. When this correlation is near a critical threshold, the structure of the long-range connections forms a type of "gradient" that allows individuals to guide a message efficiently toward a target. As the correlation drops below this critical value and the social network becomes more homogeneous, these cues begin to disappear; in the limit, when long-range connections are generated uniformly at random, our model describes a world in which short chains exist but individuals, faced with a disorienting array of social contacts, are unable to find them. I also found some further studies, however, the sites require subscriptions: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp? nfpb=true& &ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ744252&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ744252 So as I started off with, the results are contentious. A final conclusion may need more research. | {
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1,840 | There has been numerous videos online claiming that Einstein as a student had a debate with an atheist professor about God. I read the text version of this story in forums and via hearsay, but I just discovered that apparently the Macedonian Ministry of Education used this story in an ad promoting religious studies in schools: The "Does God Exist?" Macedonia Commercial Is this story supported by factual evidence or is it merely an anecdote to exemplify a point? | The fact that this very same debate, or with slight modifications, is found all over the internet but with different protagonists (e.g. atheist professor, Muslim student http://www.myiwc.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-3067.html ) should be strong evidence that this is a myth. If you do a quick google search on "Atheist Professor", you will get countless variations of the same theme: Smug, arrogant atheist professor is humiliated by Einstein/Evangelical Christian/Muslim scholar. The Einstein version was debunked by Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp Although 2004 tellings of the legend name Albert Einstein as the faith-driven student, there is no reason to suppose the renowned physicist had anything to do with the fictive incident. Biographies of the man are silent on his having dealt one of his teachers such a comeuppance. Moreover, this famous scientist gets used in legends whose plots call for a smart person, one whom the audience will immediately recognize as such (i.e., modern tellings of an ancient legend about a learned rabbi who switches places with his servant feature Albert Einstein in the role of esteemed scholar). This venerated cultural icon has, at least in the world of contemporary lore, become a stock character to be tossed into the fray wherever the script calls for a genius. (Thankfully, contemporary lore has other uses for him too. In a legend of entirely different character, Albert Einstein was rumored to have made a guest appearance on the television western Gunsmoke.) EDIT: Doing a Google search for each year since 1990 individually, the first hit I got was in 1997. It tells the story, but does not name Einstein: "Things on Which to Reflect" This, of course, still does not prove that the story is wrong, but , if Einstein genuinely said this, there should be an earlier reference, given that he died in 1955. Add to this that the only sites that mention this have a clear religious intention and do not cite a source for their claim. I believe this is more than sufficient to demand evidence from the other side, and, lacking this, refusing to believe that Einstein really said this. | {
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1,853 | It has been said that the human race has basically hit a point where any further evolution is essentially unnecessary: protection from most harmful diseases is provided by medicine, we have very few natural predators, and we are very good at what we do (colonising the planet.) Is there any sign that human evolution (at least in the first world) is slowing down, or that it has stopped, or are these claims bogus, and we are still evolving at a rapid rate? | Very short version Evolution is not slowing down, nor it can. Intuitive version Suppose there's a lot of selection pressure on height: tall people make more children. Thanks to evolution, people will get taller on average. Suppose there's no selection pressure on height: tall and short people make the same number of children. Thanks to evolution, the variety of heights will increase. In both cases, evolution is at work. It does not slow down. Lengthy version There will be only Wikipedia linking here because this stuff is textbook biology. Evolution is an established scientific fact. It's a lack of understanding of how modern evolution works. Mutation The best way to understand evolution is by understanding that our genetic characteristics have no physical way to remain static. Our genetic code mutates via the following mechanisms: The major sources of such variation are mutation, genetic recombination and gene flow. Mutation occurs because of transcription errors and other radiation or chemically induced mutations happen randomly. Genetic recombination happens as part of the way we reproduce. Gene flow is the mixing of genes that happens when people with very diverse gene sets reproduce -- think about interracial marriage. The important points to understand here are the following: Mutations are inevitable Natural Selection What happens when there are mutations? In most cases, nothing much - our DNA system is resilient to changes, our "program" is very stable and works anyways as expected. In some cases, everything breaks, and you have genetic disease or death. In some other cases there will be differences. The important point to note here is that some mutations will be necessarily correlated with having more offspring , some other will be necessarily correlated with having less. This is called natural selection . Natural selection is the term in biology for the process by which biologic traits become more or less common in a population due to consistent effects upon the survival or reproduction of their bearers Favourable mutations will take a large number of generations to propagate across the entire population , and unfavourable mutations will also. This is because the favourable mutation happens rarely, but being favourable, it grows exponentially over time until it saturates the gene pool or becomes less favourable. Conclusion Mutations keep on happening as they are intrinsic in the process of reproduction. The gene pool "evolves" by allowing variety in the directions not suppressed by natural selection, and enforcing uniformity in the directions where natural selection is active. In either case, evolution is at work. See a very good article here for more info. | {
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1,855 | I've been extremely sceptical of this new concept of a cyber war. That is, a malicious country or organisation could attack another country by bringing down their network through, say a DDoS or a well targeted virus attack on vulnerable systems. Part of the reason I am sceptical is I don't see it being feasible for a country to cripple another countries' internet systems. Have there been any recorded cases of this actually happening? Or is it just hype and fear? | Attacking and disabling an entire country's internet system is not that hard. You don't need sophisticated equipment or even a computer to do it. An elderly Georgian woman was
scavenging for copper to sell as scrap
when she accidentally sliced through
an underground cable and cut off
internet services to all of
neighbouring Armenia, it emerged on
Wednesday. The woman, 75, had been digging for
the metal not far from the capital
Tbilisi when her spade damaged the
fibre-optic cable on 28 March [2010]. (The news broke today, how could I ignore it?) More seriously, there are examples of real cyber attacks on level of national conflicts. Perhaps the best documented and most sophisticated is the Stuxnet worm, which was apparently engineered to find its way into facilities associated with the Iranian nuclear program. Wired magazine writes : The Stuxnet worm was discovered in
June in Iran, and has infected more
than 100,000 computer systems
worldwide. At first blush, it appeared
to be a standard, if unusually
sophisticated, Windows virus designed
to steal data, but experts quickly
determined it contained targeted code
designed to attack Siemens Simatic
WinCC SCADA systems. SCADA systems,
short for “supervisory control and
data acquisition,” are control systems
that manage pipelines, nuclear plants
and various utility and manufacturing
equipment. Researchers determined that Stuxnet
was designed to intercept commands
sent from the SCADA system to control
a certain function at a facility, but
until Symantec’s latest research, it
was not known what function was being
targeted for sabotage. Symantec still
has not determined what specific
facility or type of facility Stuxnet
targeted, but the new information
lends weight to speculation that
Stuxnet was targeting the Bushehr or
Natanz nuclear facilities in Iran as a
means to sabotage Iran’s nascent
nuclear program. According to Symantec, Stuxnet targets
specific frequency-converter drives —
power supplies used to control the
speed of a device, such as a motor.
The malware intercepts commands sent
to the drives from the Siemens SCADA
software, and replaces them with
malicious commands to control the
speed of a device, varying it wildly,
but intermittently. The malware, however, doesn’t sabotage
just any frequency converter. It
inventories a plant’s network and only
springs to life if the plant has at
least 33 frequency converter drives
made by Fararo Paya in Teheran, Iran,
or by the Finland-based Vacon. Even more specifically, Stuxnet
targets only frequency drives from
these two companies that are running
at high speeds — between 807 Hz and
1210 Hz. Such high speeds are used
only for select applications. Symantec
is careful not to say definitively
that Stuxnet was targeting a nuclear
facility, but notes that “frequency
converter drives that output over 600
Hz are regulated for export in the
United States by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission as they can be
used for uranium enrichment.” While the exact author of Stuxnet may not be known, it's tough to imagine any reason a non-nation state actor would engineer such a thing. Therefore, it probably should be considered a cyber war attack. So will countries ever really declare war over these kinds of attacks? I'm not sure. Cyber attacks are very hard to trace. It's not like planes and tanks emblazoned with flags are rolling over borders. Instead, we're talking about pieces of code that spread themselves to hundreds of thousands of computers - and on most of them, doing nothing. It could be a really interesting field of international law, once one of these attacks actually kills people or otherwise compromises some nation's security. | {
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1,870 | I have heard that it will "wash away the nutrients", that it dilutes stomach acid and all kinds of things. Is this just an old-wives tale? | This positively reeks of old-wives-tale and pseudo-science. It appears to be widespread online, mainly in 'e-health' forums. It makes sense - water dilutes acid, right? Right. But diluting an acid doesn't make it weaker. It may slow the rate of reaction, but gastric juices are strong stuff: a glass of water will hardly touch them. It takes an alkali or amphoteric like sodium bicarbonate to neutralise them effectively. And it so happens that sodium bicarbonate is exactly what the body secretes to neutralise the gastric juices. It's also what antacid tablets are made of. See this answer from the Mayo Clinic: There's no concern that water will dilute the digestive juices or interfere with digestion. In fact, drinking water during or after a meal can actually improve digestion. Water and other liquids help break down the food in your stomach and keep your digestive system on track. I'd rather believe a qualified gastroenterologist than a web-full of random forum posts. | {
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1,872 | (Image: Source ) It's no secret that casinos are designed to encourage visitors to stay (and hopefully gamble). But how far do casinos really go? 10 Tricks Casinos Use On you : free drinks no clocks no windows labyrinth design alluring sounds ... This BBC article seems to confirm at least some of these tricks. But I'm especially interested in the " extra oxygen " claim: No ordinary air-con for US casinos,
where extra oxygen may be pumped in to
help players stay alert. The
manufacturer of oxygen boxes used in
Las Vegas casinos has recently
launched the product [in the UK]. Has there ever been a report about a casino pumping extra oxygen into their rooms? Wouldn't that be illegal, due to the increased fire hazard? According to L. Vincent Poupard : In every state in the United States,
it is illegal for an establishment to
pump oxygen into the air ducts. All
states enforce this law by threatening
to take away a company's business
license if it is found that they are
doing this kind of act. Occasionally, members of the Las Vegas
Gaming Commission will enter a casino
to test the oxygen levels. This is to
ensure the general populace that this
action is not happening. | No they don't. http://www.snopes.com/luck/casino.asp LEGEND: Casino Windsor pumps oxygen or some kind of scent into the gaming rooms, making patrons gamble more. REALITY: Mundy has heard this legend many times. "You can't convince people it's not true," he said. Pumping oxygen or anything else into a casino to make people gamble would be a felony, Mundy said. Mundy believes the legend has its roots in a failed experiment in an Atlantic City casino, where a scientist asked permission to study the effects of different scents on patrons. The results were inconclusive. And yes, that would increase the fire risk, and probably would be illegal in most countries. Also, as I understood it, oxygen doesn't make you more alert. That's an old myth, as assumption based on that lack of oxygen makes you tired and dizzy. But I couldn't find any references to that, except Wikipedia saying that any effects of Oxygen is likely due to the placebo effect. | {
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1,896 | The movie Idiocracy suggests that intelligence is hereditary; this idea has also been perpetrated by German author Thilo Sarrazin , who claims that due to the higher fertility of Islamic immigrants and their allegedly lower intellect, Germany was dumbing down. My question: Is IQ (mainly) a genetically inherited trait? | From http://www.iq-tests.eu/iq-test-Genetics-versus-environment-400.html The role of genes and environment (nature vs. nurture) in determining IQ is reviewed in Plomin et al. (2001, 2003). The degree to which genetic variation contributes to observed variation in a trait is measured by a statistic called heritability. Heritability scores range from 0 to 1, and can be interpreted as the percentage of variation (e.g. in IQ) that is due to variation in genes. Twins studies and adoption studies are commonly used to determine the heritability of a trait. Until recently heritability was mostly studied in children. These studies find the heritability of IQ is approximately 0.5; that is, half of the variation in IQ among the children studied was due to variation in their genes. The remaining half was thus due to environmental variation and measurement error. A heritability of 0.5 implies that IQ is "substantially" heritable. Studies with adults show that they have a higher heritability of IQ than children do and that heritability could be as high as 0.8. The American Psychological Association's 1995 task force on "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" concluded that within the White population the heritability of IQ is "around .75" | {
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1,908 | Over the course of your life time, the average person eats X spider/insects/whatever whilst they are sleeping. X tends to vary according to who you ask. Is this just an urban legend? | This is an utter fabrication. It is thought to have started with an article in PC Professional Magazine regarding ridiculous facts circulating via e-mail. In a 1993 PC Professional article, columnist Lisa Holst wrote about the ubiquitous lists of "facts" that were circulating via e-mail and how readily they were accepted as truthful by gullible recipients. To demonstrate her point, Holst offered her own made-up list of equally ridiculous "facts," among which was the statistic cited above about the average person's swallowing eight spiders per year, which she took from a collection of common misbeliefs printed in a 1954 book on insect folklore. In a delicious irony, Holst's propagation of this false "fact" has spurred it into becoming one of the most widely-circulated bits of misinformation to be found on the Internet. From Snopes.com However, the Snopes article itself has been called into doubt, with claims that Snopes made up the reference . | {
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1,915 | Has there ever been a double-blind study of homeopathy in which the null hypothesis was rejected? I'm not looking for a blanket validation. Just a single study where the null hypothesis (that there is no difference between homeopathy and placebo) was rejected. | Yes, loads. Here is one: Homeopathic treatment of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled crossover trial I don't know enough about medical trials to tell if this is common or not, but it seems weird to me. They first put the patients on open-label homeopathic treatment. Those who respond well to it then goes on to a double-blind cross-over study. Sounds like the biggest selection bias this side of the Rio Grande to me. And this is the problem with most of these studies, they have a selection bias, or they have a small sample size, etc. And most damning of all: Nobody seems able to reliably repeat them. Although few even try. And here is a meta-study that lists studies, some of them also positive: Homeopathy for Childhood and Adolescence Ailments: Systematic Review of Randomized Clinical Trials The way to find these studies is probably through meta-studies, of which there are many (which do not show better than placebo effects). These studies, as well as cold fusion, show the importance of the word "repeatable" in "Controlled, repeatable experiments". | {
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1,924 | My city, like many, has a recycling program, which I believe is supposed to reduce pollution and create some positive economic activity. But I've heard many people argue that recycling programs are a waste in and of themselves. Essentially that most recycling programs are having the opposite effect than they were intended to have. Not only are they bad for the economy, they are also bad for the environment. Recycling on Conservapedia contends: Critics dispute the net economic and
environmental benefits of recycling
over its costs , and suggest that
proponents of recycling often make
matters worse and suffer from
confirmation bias. Specifically,
critics argue that the costs and
energy used in collection and
transportation detract from (and
outweigh) the costs and energy saved
in the production process; Are critics of recycling correct? Do recycling programs usually have a net negative effect on the environment and the economy ? | According to Popular Mechanics , who I assume probably did their homework, it's worthwhile recycling newspaper and a couple of types of plastic in addition to aluminum (that aluminum recycling is wise should be utterly uncontroversial--aluminum refining is amazing, but not a low-energy process!). There was an article in the Economist a few years ago that also supports the idea that recycling (at least of most things) is a net win (it also adds steel to the "good idea" category). Even if you assume that not all factors have been taken into account (e.g. carbon produced by people working at the recycling plant who otherwise could do something else productive), the fraction of energy saved and large amounts of CO2 saved strongly suggest that recycling is a net positive. Whether any individual recycling program is worthwhile is harder to judge, but see the article in The Economist for a suggestion of an affirmative answer (actually, an answer of "usually", 83% net positive). | {
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1,943 | I've heard that rhubarb leaves are poisonous, and that you can even die from rhubarb poisoning. Is that true? | The green leaves of the rhubarb contain large amount of oxalic acid and probably toxic anthraquinone glycosides. Eating the leaves can lead to acute poisoning and also death . The anthraquinone glycosides are thought to be the main cause for rhubarb leave poisoning. On the website of the Canadian Poisonous Plants Information System you find the following about rhubarb: The stalks are widely used as
preserves and are also eaten raw,
without problems. The toxic content is
much lower in the stalks. Humans have
been poisoned after ingesting the
leaves. Human poisoning was a
particular problem in World War I,
when the leaves were recommended as a
food source in Britain. To summarize, the rhubarb stalks are safe, but you should never eat the rhubarb leaves . | {
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1,948 | It if often cited that Adolf Hitler designed the VW Beetle . Is there any truth to this myth, did he perhaps commission it? It seems strange that a car supposedly designed in the 30s could have been in production for so long. | No, he did not design it . It was designed by Ferdinand Porsche. It was however commissioned by Hitler. Hitler met with Porsche in 1933 and asked him to develop a cheap good car affordable for everybody, a "Peoples Car". Porsche was a natural choice for this, because he in fact already had developed such a car, the Porsche Type 12, produced by Zündapp from 1931. In 1932 he produced the Porsche Type 32, a car quite strikingly similar to the Volkswagen, including having a 4-cylinder air cooled engine. Claiming that Hitler designed the Beetle is hence nonsense, as Porsche's Type 32 has most of the striking design and many of the Beetle's technical elements in place, well before Hitler and Porsche ever met, and looks more like a Beetle than the alleged sketches by Hitler . Further reading, and sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Beetle http://newbeetle.org/forums/rumors-insights/31170-porsche-type-12-a.html | {
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1,951 | I was travelling by air today, and I realized that there's an important difference between safety belts in cars and planes. A safety belt in a car moves from the chest on one side to the hip on the other side, while safety belts in a plane move from one hip to the other. Safety belts on the plane also seem to be quite flimsy compared to those in cars. So what is the real purpose of safety belts in a plane? Is it just a design feature they forgot to change? | The purpose of seat belts on aircraft are to keep you secure in case of turbulence. You become an airborne projectile once this happens so not only can you hurt yourself but you could hurt others. Here is an example The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into what caused a United Airlines jetliner that departed from Dulles International Airport to experience severe turbulence. A United Airlines spokesman said 25 people were injured, including four crew members. The crew members were flight attendants. A spokeswoman for one Denver hospital said it treated seven people Tuesday from the United flight. Dee Martinez, a spokeswoman for Denver Health Medical Center, said all of the patients were treated and released. They suffered from "moderate head, neck and back injuries," Martinez said. This article mentions that according to the FAA on average 60 people a year are injured a year because of turbulence. According to Capt. Lim, each year about 58 U.S. passengers and flight attendants are injured by not wearing their seat belt. | {
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1,954 | This video discusses the idea that religious people are happier . Are there: any sources that support or contradict the claims? any scientific papers that address the issue? | It depends on where you look. And exactly as people have said, what defines happiness. According to some studies , religious people tend to be happier. Researchers accidentally discovered that people with religious beliefs tend to be more content in life while studying an unrelated topic. While not the original objective, the recent European study found that religious people are better able to cope with shocks such as losing a loved one or getting laid off of a job. But then you look at overall country happiness, and very secular, irreligious nations like the Scandinavian nations are rated as the happiest . "The Scandinavian countries do really well," says Jim Harter, a chief scientist at Gallup, which developed the poll. "One theory why is that they have their basic needs taken care of to a higher degree than other countries. When we look at all the data, those basic needs explain the relationship between income and well-being." I think it is safe to say that religiousness may not be the main factor in determining happiness, rather other factors , and the correlation is incidental. People searching for a specific correlation and causation will find what they are looking for. In general, a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy at work in both cases. For instance, in the religious community, there is a ready made support structure in place for religious people . It's not their spirituality, belief in heaven, or even the ritual act of praying or going to a house of worship that leads the pious to happiness. Rather, the study found, it's the close friends people gain through their religions that makes a difference. This may be a bigger contributor to happiness than religion or no-religion. | {
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1,976 | I ask this question because in school, students are always told "do not quote wikipedia" or that "Do not believe everything you see on Wikipedia, we are teachers and we know when something is wrong there". (The latter being more common in my case) Anyway, Wikipedia does have an article about it here . Still the question stands about whether it is reliable, and if it is, when or if it will be permissible in the classroom. Have any studies been made on the reliability of Wikipedia? | In December 2005, the science magazine Nature conducted a study to determine whether Wikipedia was as accurate as traditional encyclopedias, namely the Encyclopedia Britannica . In Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica , Daniel Terdiman summarizes the study results: Wikipedia is about as good a source of accurate information as Britannica, the venerable standard-bearer of facts about the world around us, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature. ... For its study, Nature chose articles from both sites in a wide range of topics and sent them to what it called "relevant" field experts for peer review. The experts then compared the competing articles--one from each site on a given topic--side by side, but were not told which article came from which site. Nature got back 42 usable reviews from its field of experts. In the end, the journal found just eight serious errors, such as general misunderstandings of vital concepts, in the articles. Of those, four came from each site. They did, however, discover a series of factual errors, omissions or misleading statements. All told, Wikipedia had 162 such problems, while Britannica had 123. That averages out to 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia. Of course, what makes Wikipedia different from a standard encyclopedia is that it can be updated by anyone and those updates appear immediately. When there's a particular hot topic item in the news, it's not uncommon for its Wikipedia entry to be updated rapidly, both by level-headed and factual participants and by more extreme, agenda-driven actors on both sides of the issue at hand. Consequently, when you read an entry at Wikipedia it's important to bear in mind that what you are reading now might include some dogmatic if not outright incorrect statements. As Bibhas noted, it's important to check the sources and references. I also would encourage you to note the history of the piece you are reading. If there were many edits in a short window of time that may be a sign that there is some back and forth going between two "sides," which could imply that the information presented might not be as objective as it was prior to the volley of edits. | {
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2,024 | The Wikipedia article on this is littered with [citation needed] and a commenter on hacker news linked to it while stating: Chernobyl cost several hundred thousand lives. Let's hope and pray Fukushima will not exact a similar cost. However I read a recent article in the Guardian about a journalist that was seemingly desperately trying to figure out what research backs up such claims. In the link-bait titled article The unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby has misled us all he states: For the last 25 years anti-nuclear campaigners have been racking up the figures for deaths and diseases caused by the Chernobyl disaster, and parading deformed babies like a medieval circus. They now claim 985,000 people have been killed by Chernobyl, and that it will continue to slaughter people for generations to come. These claims are false. The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (Unscear) is the equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Like the IPCC, it calls on the world's leading scientists to assess thousands of papers and produce an overview. Here is what it says about the impacts of Chernobyl. Of the workers who tried to contain the emergency at Chernobyl, 134 suffered acute radiation syndrome; 28 died soon afterwards. Nineteen others died later, but generally not from diseases associated with radiation. The remaining 87 have suffered other complications, including four cases of solid cancer and two of leukaemia. In the rest of the population there have been 6,848 cases of thyroid cancer among young children – arising "almost entirely" from the Soviet Union's failure to prevent people from drinking milk contaminated with iodine 131. Otherwise "there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health effect in the general population that can be attributed to radiation exposure". People living in the countries affected today "need not live in fear of serious health consequences from the Chernobyl accident". Is the probably widespread belief that Chernobyl disaster has caused hundreds of thousand, or even tens of thousand deaths true when examining the literature? | From the World Health Organisation (2005) The total number of deaths already
attributable to Chernobyl or expected
in the future over the lifetime of
emergency workers and local residents
in the most contaminated areas is
estimated to be about 4000. This
includes some 50 emergency workers who
died of acute radiation syndrome and
nine children who died of thyroid
cancer, and an estimated total of 3940
deaths from radiation-induced cancer
and leukemia among the 200 000
emergency workers from 1986-1987, 116
000 evacuees and 270 000 residents of
the most contaminated areas (total
about 600 000). These three major
cohorts were subjected to higher doses
of radiation amongst all the people
exposed to Chernobyl radiation. The estimated 4000 casualties may
occur during the lifetime of about 600
000 people under consideration. As
about quarter of them will eventually
die from spontaneous cancer not caused
by Chernobyl radiation, the
radiation-induced increase of about 3%
will be difficult to observe. However,
in the most highly exposed cohorts of
emergency and recovery operation
workers, some increase in particular
cancers (e.g., leukemia) has already
been observed. Confusion about the impact has arisen
owing to the fact that thousands of
people in the affected areas have died
of natural causes. Also, widespread
expectations of ill health and a
tendency to attribute all health
problems to radiation exposure have
led local residents to assume that
Chernobyl related fatalities were much
higher than they actually were. 'Several hundred thousand' may not have died, but More than 350 000 people have been
relocated away from the most severely
contaminated areas , 116 000 of them
immediately after the accident. Even
when people were compensated for
losses, given free houses and a choice
of resettlement location, the
experience was traumatic and left many
with no employment and a belief that
they have no place in society . | {
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2,029 | I had an argument with a friend in college who claimed that it was possible to remain awake with little to no detrimental affects for an arbitrarily long period of time. I am wondering, has anybody ever tried to measure the effects of extreme sleep deprivation? Can death result? | Yes. Fatal Familial Insomnia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia#Treatment It's extremely rare, but I saw a video in a Psychology class about a man who was observed (can't find the link I'm afraid) during the 6 months of the disease activating. Within that 6 months, they tried to drug him, which didn't make him sleep, and over due course his body degraded so rapidly that just before his death he looked like he had aged decades. Wikipedia identifies 4 stages of the disease: The patient suffers increasing insomnia, resulting in panic attacks, paranoia, and phobias. This stage lasts for about four months. Hallucinations and panic attacks become noticeable, continuing for about five months. Complete inability to sleep is followed by rapid loss of weight. This lasts for about three months. Dementia, during which the patient becomes unresponsive or mute over the course of six months. This is the final progression of the disease, resulting in death. Voluntary Lack of Sleep Randy Gardner currently holds the record for voluntary lack of sleep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Longest_period_without_sleep He went 11 days, and if I recall correctly he was studied throughout by psychologists who wanted to measure the effects of it. There is a lot of dispute over the results about the after effects however. Other The question stated, 'Death by lack of sleep — is it possible?' and, yes it can. Tiredness is also proven killer for drivers, as it is in other high risk jobs/environments. | {
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2,039 | I heard this claim and burst into laughter assuming it was a joke, but the person said he was being serious. Is this true that Red Bull contains bull's sperm? | The rumor about bull sperm originates from the the fact that Red Bull advertises that it includes taurine, a name that if broken into its constituent parts sounds enough like "taur" (as in bull) and "urine" to create a cute little urban legend. In fact taurine is just an amino acid , and the version added to food isn't an animal product at all. The Red Bull brand addresses this urban legend on a FAQ page on its website : IS RED BULL® ENERGY DRINK SUITABLE FOR
VEGETARIANS? Red Bull® Energy Drink is suitable for
vegetarians. Red Bull® Energy Drink
does not contain any animal products
or substances derived from animals. IS RED BULL® ENERGY DRINK GLUTEN FREE,
VEGAN, WHEAT FREE, DAIRY FREE? Yes, Red Bull® Energy Drink is gluten
free, vegan, wheat free, dairy free! IS TAURINE MADE FROM BULLS' TESTICLES?
IS TAURINE A DERIVATIVE OF BULLS'
TESTICLES OR SEMEN? The taurine in Red Bull® Energy Drink
is a purely synthetic substance
produced by pharmaceutical companies
and is not derived from animals or
animal materials. All ingredients for
Red Bull® Energy Drink are
synthetically produced by
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2,057 | Are there examples of evolution that can be demonstrated as proof that evolution occurs and is a useful mechanism for making predictions? Some examples that come to mind include: Animal husbandry (e.g. cattle, dogs, etc.); Bacteria that survive antibiotics evolving resistance; Statistics on human eye color. I'd like to know what other examples are out there, and which would be the most apparent or persuasive for convincing those skeptical of the evolutionary process. | The question is way too wide to be answered here in full, however I gathered some evidence for you to get you started. Websites Evowiki.org seems to incorporate a significant portion of the content of TalkOrigins.org (below), and continues to be updated. Evowiki is also presented in the more contemporary MediaWiki format. TalkOrigins.org is an archive of evidence behind evolution, arising out of discussion on the Usenet group talk.origins since 1986. They present no less that 29 pieces of evidence of it (confirmed by multiple studies, in principle disprovable by experiment). Note: TalkOrigins.org doesn't seem to have been updated since 2006. Summary of evidence As presented by TalkOrigins. A unique, historical phylogenetic tree Unity of life All species that we know of share the same basic biochemical building blocks of life, like polymers, metabolism, etc. Nested hierarchies We have a tree of species, not a simple list Convergence of independent phylogenies The tree of life is supported both by the morphology of the species (the phylogenetic tree, how it was originally conceived) and the molecular similarities of the DNA. Statistics of incongruent phylogenies Not only the phylogenetic tree and the molecular tree are correlated, but the correlation has a p -value ≤ 7.4 × 10 –8 . Transitional forms All fossilized animals found conform to the standard phylogenetic tree. Reptile-birds Reptile-mammals Ape-humans Legged whales Legged seacows Chronology of common ancestors Fossilized intermediates appear in the correct general chronological order based on the standard tree. Past history Anatomical vestiges The various nonfunctional or rudimentary vestigial characters, both anatomical and molecular, that are found throughout biology. Atavisms An atavism is the reappearance of a lost character specific to a remote evolutionary ancestor and not observed in the parents or recent ancestors of the organism displaying the atavistic character. Whales and dolphins with hindlimbs Humans tails Molecular vestiges Vestigial characters are also found at the molecular level. Ontogeny and developmental biology The morphological aspect of embryos. Mammalian ear bones, reptilian jaws Pharyngeal pouches, branchial arches Snake embryos with legs Embryonic human tail Marsupial eggshell and caruncle Present biogeography Because species divergence happens not only in the time dimension, but also in spatial dimensions, common ancestors originate in a particular geographical location. In fact, the spatial and geographical distribution of species is consistent with their predicted genealogical relationships. Past biogeography Past biogeography, as recorded by the fossils that are found also conforms to the standard phylogenetic tree. Marsupials Horses Apes and humans Evolutionary opportunism Anatomical parahomology Parahomology, as the term is used here, is similarity of structure despite difference in function. When one species branches into two species, one or both of the species may acquire new functions. Since the new species must recruit and modify preexisting structures to perform these new functions, the same structure shared by these two species will now perform a different function in each of the two species. Molecular parahomology The concept of parahomology applies equally to both the macroscopic structures of organisms and structures on the molecular level. Anatomical convergence Analogy is the case where different structures perform the same or similar functions in different species. Two distinct species have different histories and different structures; if both species evolve the same new function, they may recruit different structures to perform this new function. Molecular convergence Like parahomology, analogy should be represented on both macroscopic and molecular levels. Anatomical suboptimal function Evolutionary opportunism also results in suboptimal functions and structures. Molecular suboptimal function The principle of imperfect design should apply to biomolecular organization as well. Molecular evidence Protein functional redundancy The support for common descent given by studies of molecular sequences can be phrased as a deductive argument DNA functional redundancy Like protein sequence similarity, the DNA sequence similarity of two ubiquitous genes also implies common ancestry. Transposons In many ways, transposons are very similar to viruses. However, they lack genes for viral coat proteins, cannot cross cellular boundaries, and thus they replicate only in the genome of their host. They can be thought of as intragenomic parasites. Redundant pseudogenes Pseudogenes have faulty regulatory sequences that prevent the gene from being transcribed into mRNA, or they have internal stop codons that keep the functional protein from being made. Endogenous retroviruses Endogenous retroviruses are molecular remnants of a past parasitic viral infection. Change Genetic Genotype specifies possible phenotypes, therefore, phenotypic change follows genetic change. Morphological Macroevolution requires that organisms' morphologies have changed throughout evolutionary history;
in fact, we do observe morphological change and variation in modern populations. Functional The ability to occupy one niche over another is invariably due to differing functions. Thus, functional change must be extremely important for macroscopic macroevolutionary change. The strange past More recent fossils are more similar to contemporary life forms than older fossils. Stages of speciation We see all possible degrees of speciation or genetic isolation today, ranging from fully interbreeding populations, to partially interbreeding populations, to populations that interbreed with reduced fertility or with complete infertility, to completely genetically isolated populations. Speciation events The standard phylogenetic tree illustrates countless speciation events; each common ancestor also represents at least one speciation event. Thus we should be able to observe actual speciation, if even only very rarely. Morphological rates Observed rates of evolutionary change in modern populations are greater than or equal to rates observed in the fossil record. Genetic rates Rates of genetic change, as measured by nucleotide substitutions, must also be consistent with the rate required from the time allowed in the fossil record and the sequence differences observed between species. Books There's plenty of evidence in these books Charles Darwin, " On the origin of the species ". The book is mostly concerned with experimental evidence Richard Dawkins, " The greatest show on Earth " The entire book is about this. | {
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2,059 | It's a fairly common "fact" that if you make enough money, that you can hire lawyers who can hide all of your money, so that you end up paying little to no tax. Is this true? | Yes, some "rich" (meaning big and usually multinational) companies pay taxes that are significantly lower than predicted by their theoretical income tax rate for their income bracket. Examples include (from Forbes ): The most egregious example is General Electric ( GE - news - people ). Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income , but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.... In 2008 GE's effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%. Valero was zero. One can be tempted to spin a conspiracy theory out of that one... Verizon's was 10.5% HP's rate was 18.6%. Not zero, but not 35% either. IBM was 25%, Procter & Gamble 26.3% Boeing was 23% (due R&D credits, mostly) Several more companies (Bank of America, Citibank, Ford) on Forbes's list in the article has very low rates explicitly related to gigantic losses in the last couple of years. However a vast majority of the rest of the list (25 top US companies as Forbses titled it) was in close-to-maximum 30+% range, with the usual tax-loving-people's favorite whipping boys (oil companies) rates in 40+%. As far as the explanation of how that happens, an income tax code contains an enormous amount of ways for a large multinational to reduce taxes owed. Among the most impactful general principles as far as this question are the ones dealing with: Carryforward of past losses . In GE's specific case, it was large losses in its financial subsidiary during the bank meltdowns and writing off the fact that they closed 20 US factories between 2007 and 2009. assorted accounting rules allowing you to time-shift profits (see the discussion of cash vs. accrual basis here ) to whenever you will pay the least amount of taxes. Geographical shifting - e.g. accounting so that your profits are earned outside of USA (offshore). The article linked in another answer posits that this provided a large portion of tax savings, though it didn't document that statement. A very detailed laymans-terms explanation is in this Bloomberg article: " Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes " numerous other loopholes and deductions to pay less taxes. This is due to two factors: the influence of lobbyists on politicians who write the tax-affecting laws. As an example, "GE became the nation's top corporate spender on lobbying, spending more than $238 million on lobbyists over the past 12 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics" ( ABC news ). To back the article up, here's the hard #s for lobbying: 2008 - $18 million; 2009 - $26.4mm, 2010 - about $40mm (source: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?year=2010&lname=General+Electric ). Obviously, not all lobbying money relates to tax code, but it's hard to imagine that some of it doesn't influence it in some ways, sometime via specific regulation that changes how tax code could be applied (e.g. what is considered "clean" technology). And for political contributions: In 2010, GEPAC raised just over $1.4 million from more than 4,000 employees and contributed $1,276,950 to federal and $126,250 to state candidates in the United States ( GE's own data ). Non-GE numbers come from opensecrets (Center for Responsible Politics) again: $2.5mm in 2010 and a whopping $3.6mm in total political donations in 2008. the fact that US government uses taxes as an instrument of social control (e.g. tax deductions for "clean" technology consumption AND capital investment, both of which GE can play). This factor is of course related to lobbying one above. | {
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2,069 | Many news organizations (e.g. CNN , Huffington Post , etc) are referring to the Japan incident as something as severe as Chernobyl, i.e. a nuclear event with International Atomic Energy Agency rating "7". I'm skeptical of this equivalence because the radiation from Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi plants seems to be predominantly cesium and iodine, whereas Chernobyl's radiation included more dangerous isotopes such as plutonium. Is the Japan nuclear disaster as dangerous to human health as Chernobyl (both locally and around the world)? Note: This question is similar to (but not the same as) Can a “second Chernobyl” happen at the nuclear reactors damaged by the tsunami in Japan? | It has been some time since the accident and a number of comprehensive studies have been performed. I think it is worthwhile to start with one of the most authoritative articles by the Journal Nature, Fukushima’s doses tallied — Studies indicate minimal health risks from radiation in the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear disaster ( 23 May 2012 ) : Few people will develop cancer as a consequence of being exposed to the radioactive material that spewed from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant last year — and those who do will never know for sure what caused their disease. These conclusions are based on two comprehensive, independent assessments of the radiation doses received by Japanese citizens, as well as by the thousands of workers who battled to bring the shattered nuclear reactors under control. The first report, seen exclusively by Nature, was produced by a subcommittee of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) in Vienna, and covers a wide swathe of issues related to all aspects of the accident. The second, a draft of which has been seen by Nature, comes from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, and estimates doses received by the general public in the first year after the accident. Both reports will be discussed at UNSCEAR’s annual meeting in Vienna this week. The Chernobyl incident is now well documented, see e.g. Wikipedia's article "Chernobyl Disaster" . Fukushima has only just begun being studied, and much of the information still derives from contemporaneous articles (to which this article links to many). At the time of this writing, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Fukushima incident will have a fraction of the impact of Chernobyl, based on the analysis below. In particular: The amount of radiation released by Fukushima is a fraction of Chernobyl; The spread of the radiation from Fukushima is unlikely to hit highly populated areas like Chernobyl's radiation did; The types of isotopes released by Fukushima are not as dangerous as those released by Chernobyl; and The reported effects of Fukushima are significantly less than Chernobyl's reported effects; Comprehensive studies indicate that the amount of cancer developed by Fukushima may actually be at or less than background rates for cancer. The impact of Fukushima could be substantially greater in one area compared to Chernobyl: post traumatic stress disorder. From the Nature article noted above: A far greater health risk may come from the psychological stress created by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. After Chernobyl, evacuees were more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than the population as a whole, according to Evelyn Bromet, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. The risk may be even greater at Fukushima. “I’ve never seen PTSD questionnaires like this,” she says of a survey being conducted by Fukushima Medical University. People are “utterly fearful and deeply angry. There’s nobody that they trust any more for information.” There remains the possibility for Fukushima to become a significantly worse disaster if an earthquake occurs, as per noted scientist and host of the Nature of Things, David Suzuki : "Three out of the four plants were destroyed in the earthquake and in the tsunami. The fourth one has been so badly damaged that the fear is, if there's another earthquake of a seven or above that, that building will go and then all hell breaks loose. "And the probability of a seven or above earthquake in the next three years is over 95 per cent." ... "I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth plant goes under in an earthquake and those rods are exposed, it's bye bye Japan and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate," he said. It is not clear what paper Dr. Suzuki is referring to. Here is the analysis: Amount of radiation by absorbed energy The amount of radiation by absorbed energy in millisieverts per hours at Fukushima seems to have been a fraction of about a fiftieth (1/50th) of Chernobyl's at what seem to be comparable water sources. Chernobyl Sample recorded levels during Chernobyl (See: JPRS Report Economic Affairs, "Chernobyl Notebook" by G. Medvedev June 1989): Vicinity of reactor core: 300,000 mSv/h Water in Level +25 feedwater room: 50,000 mSv/h Fukushima Highest reported level during Fukushima accident: 4,000 mSv/h reported as the level at a pool of water in the turbine room of reactor two. (See: The Guardian, " Japan doubles Fukushima radiation leak estimate", June 7, 2011 ) Spread of the radiation geographically The spread of radiation from the Japan incident over human habitats is significantly less than that of Chernobyl because much of the radiation from Japan dispersed over the Pacific ocean. Chernobyl From Wikipedia's article "Chernobyl Diaster effects" The explosion at the power station and subsequent fires inside the remains of the reactor provoked a radioactive cloud which drifted not only over Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, but also over the European part of Turkey, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Estonia, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Ireland, France (including Corsica 4 ), Canada 5 and the United Kingdom (UK). 6 Fukushima Much of the Fukushima radiation has dispersed over the Pacific Ocean. (See: Christian Science Monitor, " Fukushima raised to level 7 the same category as Chernobyl but Chernobyl had10 to 100 times more radiation ", April 12, 2011) Amount and types of radioisotopes While parts of the fuel rods and graphite particles were ejected into the atmosphere at Chernobyl, only iodine, cesium and Xenon-133 have been noted in the media reports about releases from Fukushima. While some reports of plutonium have been reported in the soil, greater amounts of plutonium were discovered in Japanese soil after overseas nuclear testing. (See: The Guardian, " Japan doubles Fukushima radiation leak estimate ", 7 June, 2011) Iodine-131 Iodine released has been at a fraction of that of Chernobyl of about one fourteenth (1/14th) to one eight (1/8th). The measured amounts are: Fukushima : 770,000 terabecquerels of iodine-131 (The Guardian, " Japan doubles Fukushima radiation leak estimate ", June 7, 2011); Chernobyl : 5.2 million terabecquerels (See: The Globe and Mail article "Japan Haunted by spectre of Chernobyl" ). Cesium-134 and -137 A paper, A. Stohl, P. Seibert, G. Wotawa, D. Arnold, J. F. Burkhart, S. Eckhardt, C. Tapia, A. Vargas, and T. J. Yasunari “Xenon-133 and caesium-137 releases into the atmosphere from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: determination of the source term, atmospheric dispersion, and deposition”, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 11, 28319–28394, 2011 , states "For [cesium 137], the inversion results give a total emission of 35.8 (23.3–50.1) PBq, or about 42 % of the estimated Chernobyl emission" (the "Stohl paper"). By this estimate Fukushima has released 40% of the radioactive caesium of Chernobyl. This is significant, and by this metric Fukushima is not on par with Chernobyl, strictly speaking, but it is in the same order of magnitude. As well, Chernobyl released many much more dangerous particles, namely radioactive isotopes of plutonium and uranium. Xenon-133 According to the Stohl paper, under the metric of Xenon-133 release, Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl: Total a posteriori 133 Xe emissions are 16.7 EBq, one third more than the a priori value
of 12.6 EBq (which is equal to the estimated inventory) and 2.5 times the estimated
Chernobyl source term of 6.5 EBq The authors note that their measurements of Xenon-133 exceed inventory, and "Emissions cannot exceed 100 % of the inventory, so this may indicate that our inversion overestimates the emissions." The estimate may be revised over time. Xenon-133 has a very short half-life in the body, of "a few minutes", so it doesn't stay in the body very long. There's a well referenced post on the UC Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering on the effects of Xenon, which concludes: So the bottom line is: Xe-133 does not stay in the body very long, and it's not very dangerous even if it's in the air around you. So while Xenon-133 has been released from Fukushima in amounts greater than Chernobyl, and Xenon-133 is a radioactive isotope, the effects on human health of Xenon-133 even in amounts released from Fukushima are likely a fraction of the effects of the releases of more dangerous isotopes from Chernobyl (i.e. radioactive isotopes of plutonium, uranium, caesium, iodine). Strontium 90 Strontium 90 has been noted to be seeping into the bedrock near Fukushima, by the BBC and NBC . The latter states: Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), ..., said nearly 30 times the permitted level of the radioactive isotope was discovered in a well dug last month outside the turbine hall of Reactor No.2. The company said it had not detected any rise in the levels of Strontium-90 in sea water, and that it believed the substance was trapped during the initial 2011 nuclear fallout. It seems that not a great deal of analysis has been done on amount and effect of the Strontium. The article True facts about Ocean Radiation and the Fukushima Disaster notes: The leaking groundwater contains strontium and tritium which are more problematic than Cesium-137. But it sounds like strontium accumulates in bones and is only problem if you eat small fish with the bones in, like sardines (and it will only affect sardines caught near Japan since they don’t travel far). In general From the Wikipedia article on the Chernobyl disaster remarking on the radioisotopes released from Chernobyl: The release of radioisotopes from the nuclear fuel was largely controlled by their boiling points, and the majority of the radioactivity present in the core was retained in the reactor. All of the noble gases, including krypton and xenon, contained within the reactor were released immediately into the atmosphere by the first steam explosion. About 1760 PBq or 400 kg of I-131, 55% of the radioactive iodine in the reactor, was released, as a mixture of vapor, solid particles, and organic iodine compounds.
Caesium (85 PBq Cs-137[79]) and tellurium were released in aerosol form. An early estimate for fuel material released to the environment was 3 ± 1.5%; this was later revised to 3.5 ± 0.5%. This corresponds to the atmospheric emission of 6 t of fragmented fuel. Two sizes of particles were released: small particles of 0.3 to 1.5 micrometers (aerodynamic diameter) and large particles of 10 micrometers. The large particles contained about 80% to 90% of the released nonvolatile radioisotopes zirconium-95, niobium-95, lanthanum-140, cerium-144 and the transuranic elements, including neptunium, plutonium and the minor actinides, embedded in a uranium oxide matrix. Reported health effects Chernobyl The actual effects of Chernobyl are somewhat contested and vary dramatically. At the least, it is acknowledged that 237 people reported acute radiation sickness, with 31 deaths within 3 months. Some claim the deaths may be as high as 200,000 to 900,000. (See: Wikipedia's article: "Chernobyl disaster" ) Fukushima 21 workers have reportedly been affected by minor radiation sickness. (See: Nuclear crises: How do Fukushima and Chernobyl compare? ). In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami it may be difficult to find accurate recordings of any effects of the nuclear incident alone. Note regarding iodine: Thyroid cancer, caused by radioactive iodine, has been considered by some to be one of the main causes of death from Chernobyl. Iodine tablets are being distributed in Japan that prevent thyroid cancer. (See: Japan to Distribute Iodine Tablets Near Nuclear Plant , Newser.com, March 12, 2011; See also Wikipedia's article "Chernobyl disaster" at Assessing the diasaster's effects on human health ). It's also noteworthy that thyroid cancer is treatable with very high success. There were reports of [Caesium in baby milk]: ... tests found up to 30.8 becquerels of caesium per kilo of Meiji Step powdered milk. The milk was recalled; there was no indication of the amount of distribution before the discovery. The distribution is noted to be limited to Japan only. Around 70 sailors aboard the USS Reagan are making a claim for compensation for exposure to radiation. Update — January 2014 A number of other recent resources have cropped up, including: Nature: Fukushima’s doses tallied — Studies indicate minimal health risks from radiation in the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear disaster. Comparison of Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear accidents Snopes: Image shows radioactive seepage spreading across the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear plant True facts about Ocean Radiation and the Fukushima Disaster Other resources There are some reasonably comprehensive articles on the comparison, including: The Globe and Mail Japan Haunted by spectre of Chernobyl , Apr. 12, 2011: "The key difference between the two disasters remains that the four troubled nuclear reactors at Fukushima shut down, while Chernobyl exploded with the reactor still running, causing a catastrophic chain reaction that shot radiation into the upper atmosphere." Guardian Nuclear crises: How do Fukushima and Chernobyl compare? , April 12, 2011 Living Intentionally (blog), Radioactive Iodine And Cesium In Japan: Just The Facts , March 27, 2011 by Trane Francks How does Fukushima differ from Chernobyl? 16 Dec 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log | {
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2,080 | I have heard that the QWERTY keyboard layout was invented to get around the problem of old fashioned typewriters getting stuck if you typed too quickly. Is this story true, or was there another reason for the QWERTY layout? | The answer is No. http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html From this document: It was made to not jam typewriters and in the process type faster. Specifically, the QWERTY arrangement was selected so that letters frequently occurring together would be far apart on the keyboard, reducing the tendency to jam, and thus allowing faster typing. When Sholes built his first model in 1868, the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows. At the time, Milwaukee was a backwoods town. The crude machine shop tools available there could hardly produce a finely-honed instrument that worked with precision. Yes, the first typewriter was sluggish. Yes, it did clash and jam when someone tried to type with it. But Sholes was able to figure out a way around the problem simply by rearranging the letters. Looking inside his early machine, we can see how he did it.
.
The first typewriter had its letters on the end of rods called "typebars." The typebars hung in a circle. The roller which held the paper sat over this circle, and when a key was pressed, a typebar would swing up to hit the paper from underneath. If two typebars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as "TH" and make sure their typebars hung at safe distances. He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes' chief financial backer. The QWERTY keyboard itself was determined by the existing mechanical linkages of the typebars inside the machine to the keys on the outside. Sholes' solution did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced. The qwerty keyboard has been so widely adopted AND there was no proof that arranging the keyboard alphabetically makes typing faster, that today it's still the qwerty that prevails. | {
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2,107 | Is there a systemic relationship between Catholic priests and sexual abuse of children? I ask because I grew up in Newfoundland, which was at the time engrossed in the abuse at Mount Cashel Orphanage (see also: Unholy Orders ). More recent headlines refer to similar abuses in Ireland and the United States, and there is a lengthy Wikipedia article on cases of Catholic sexual abuse . The recent cases have reaffirmed a suspicion that there is a systemic issue that results in sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. With great respect to Catholics on this sensitive issue, there seems to be a systemic issue. Is it fair to say that Catholic priests are systemically prone to sexually abuse of children? If there is a systemic issue by priests or their equivalent, is this issue more prevalent in Catholicism than other religions? | TL;DR: Yes , there is damning evidence that the relationship between the Catholic Church and the abuse of children has been systemic. According to a recent report by the UN (CRC/C/VAT/CO/2), as reported by CBC : The Vatican "systematically" adopted policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades , a UN human rights committee said In its report, the committee blasted the "code of silence" that has long been used to keep victims quiet, saying the Holy See had "systematically placed preservation of the reputation of the church and the alleged offender over the protection of child victims." The report itself states: 29. The Committee is
particularly concerned that in dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse, the Holy See
has consistently placed the preservation of the reputation of the Church and the protection
of the perpetrators above children’s best interests , as observed by several national
commissions of inquiry. 43. ... Well-known child sexual abusers have been transferred from parish to parish
or to other countries in an attempt to cover-up such crimes, a practice documented by numerous national commissions of inquiry. ... Due to a code of silence imposed on all members of the clergy under penalty
of excommunication, cases of child sexual abuse have hardly ever been reported to the law
enforcement authorities in the countries where such crimes occurred. On the contrary, cases
of nuns and priests ostracized, demoted and fired for not having respected the obligation of
silence have been reported to the Committee as well as cases of priests who have been congratulated for refusing to denounce child abusers , as shown in the letter addressed by
Cardinal Castrillon Hojos to Bishop Pierre Pican in 2001; 60. The Committee expresses serious concern that in dealing with child victims of
different forms of abuse, the Holy See has systematically placed preservation of the
reputation of the Church and the alleged offender over the protection of child victims. The
Committee is particularly concerned that while the Holy See recognized in its written
responses and during the interactive dialogue the primary competence of judicial
authorities, it has continued to address these cases through Canon Law proceedings which
contain no provision for the protection, support, rehabilitation and compensation of child
victims. The Committee is also particularly concerned that: (a) Child victims and their families have often been blamed by religious
authorities, discredited and discouraged from pursuing their complaints and in some
instances humiliated , as noted especially by the Grand Jury in Westchester, the Ryan
Commission in Ireland and the Winter Commission in Canada; (b) Confidentiality has been imposed on child victims and their families as a
precondition of financial compensation; and (c) Although it has extended its own statute of limitations, the Holy See has in
some instances obstructed efforts in certain countries to extend the statute of limitation for
child sexual abuse. So the answer according to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child is yes . There is a systemic relationship between Catholic priests and sexual abuse of children in that the church has: adopted policies that allowed rape and molestation of children over decades; a systematic preference for preserving the reputation of the church and sexual offenders above the best interest of those the church has abused; demoted or fired those who violated the "cone of silence" on child abuse, and congratulated those who have refused to denounce child abusers; obstructed efforts in some countries to extend the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse; blamed, humiliated, discredited or discouraged its victims of sexual abuse. I noted that the report cites the Winter Commission (Canada) regarding the Mount Cashel affair I mentioned in the question. | {
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2,117 | According to the BBC , Wine costing less than £5 a bottle can have the same effect on the palate as those priced up to six times as much, a psychological taste challenge suggests. My skeptic sense is on red alert after such a statement: "can have"? "a challenge suggests"? Photo credit: Robert S. Donovan/Creative Commons Let's get to the bottom of this, are there any quality papers on wine testing confirming or denying this piece of news? | This ties in with The Wine Trials of Robin Goldstein : In 17 brown-bag blind tastings around
America, Goldstein and his colleagues
served more than 6,000 glasses of 500
different wines, priced from $1.50 to
$150, to more than 500 people. The
results surprised even the
experimenters: the correlation between
price and preference was actually
negative, suggesting that individuals
on average enjoy more expensive wines
slightly less than cheaper wines . Goldstein suggests that the answer
lies in what he calls the "wine
placebo effect": the knowledge that a
wine is expensive can actually
influence its taste: " It doesn't mean that wine aficionados
and experts are con artists, nor does it mean that
people don't legitimately sense
pleasurable qualities in very
expensive wine, even when they taste
it blind. But it does mean that when
we don't taste blind, it's almost
impossible to know whether the
pleasure of expensive wine is coming
from its own taste, or from the taste
of money ." This study seems to concur, the sensation of pleasantness that
people experience when tasting wine is
linked directly to its price. [The] results show that increasing the
price of a wine increases subjective
reports of flavor pleasantness as well
as blood-oxygen-level-dependent
activity in medial orbitofrontal
cortex (mOFC), an area that is widely thought
to encode for experienced pleasantness
during experiential tasks . The graph above shows the activity in the brain's pleasure center; there's more activity with wine subjects think costs $90 a bottle (top line) than the same wine priced at $10. The arrow shows the moment when the subjects started tasting the wine. The chart above shows that people ranked taste of a $45 wine higher than the same wine priced at $5, and the same for a different wine marked $90 and $10. ( here is the abstract of the orignal study) I have seen something similar done on a TV-show (can't remember which). The labels of cheap and expensive wines were swaped and 'ordinary' people rated the taste of the wine with the expensive label more highly. | {
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2,150 | There seem to be a common reaction towards finding out a man is gay where people think they should keep an eye on their children. To add at least one quote from a rather inflammatory post : I believe gays should not be allowed to adopt or serve as foster parents for the simple reason gays have a greater tendency to being pedophiles than straight people. Has there been research done that examines if homosexual males are notably more sexually drawn towards children than straight ones? | Short answer: no. See this literature: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html (has further bibliography) For the present discussion, the
important point is that many child
molesters cannot be meaningfully
described as homosexuals,
heterosexuals, or bisexuals (in the
usual sense of those terms) because
they are not really capable of a
relationship with an adult man or
woman. Instead of gender, their sexual
attractions are based primarily on
age. These individuals – who are often
characterized as fixated – are
attracted to children, not to men or
women. Using the fixated-regressed
distinction, Groth and Birnbaum (1978)
studied 175 adult males who were
convicted in Massachusetts of sexual
assault against a child. None of the
men had an exclusively homosexual
adult sexual orientation. 83 (47%)
were classified as "fixated;" 70
others (40%) were classified as
regressed adult heterosexuals; the
remaining 22 (13%) were classified as
regressed adult bisexuals. Of the last
group, Groth and Birnbaum observed
that "in their adult relationships
they engaged in sex on occasion with
men as well as with women. However, in
no case did this attraction to men
exceed their preference for
women....There were no men who were
primarily sexually attracted to other
adult males..." (p.180). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#cite_note-Krafft-Ebing-32 (bibliographic entry) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24766 (Gutenberg version, French language) (Unfortunately, my French isn't good enough to scan through this quickly). From the english language edition at http://ia700301.us.archive.org/31/items/psychopathiasex00krafgoog/psychopathiasex00krafgoog_djvu.txt ( http://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854462W/Psychopathia_sexualis ): Practically speaking, acts of
immorality committed on boys by men
sexually inverted are of the greatest
rarity. | {
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2,167 | I have heard claims that anti-malware software isn't really effective and will "only catch 33% of malware", and so it's best to "get rid of them; you don't have to pay, and your system will be faster". It is right here on my favorite blog, Coding Horror : Not only does anti-virus cripple your
machine's performance, it doesn't even
protect you adequately! A quote Jeff uses in his article from here : Let me give you the answer: it is 33%.
In other words, the average detection
rate of malware from these "solutions"
was 33%, with the maximum at 50% and
the minimum at 2%. Keep this number in
mind, that shiny anti-virus product
you just bought might be protecting
you from just 2% of currently active
and common malware (not some esoteric
and custom uber-haxor stuff)! EDIT: I found this , and it looks like 60% is the highest "new malware" detection rate . I do not know if they are scanning or actually protecting you real-time, though. While it is true that the second best protection is your brain (the best being not turning your computer on at all), my PCTools SpywareDoctor with Antivirus has caught some trojans; it even cleaned it of a Rogue Antivirus application. Mind you, it definitely slows my system down noticeably, but I'm happy enough for now ( "640K ought to be enough for anybody." ) so I have switched to the best Antimalware program in history, avast!, which is the fastest program with a >95% detection rate. The brain argument doesn't always hold true for non-geeks (even if they may have some amount of brains). One I considered to be tech-savvy (somewhat, at least) stared at a web page saying "Your computer is infected!" for a minute at school, in IT class , throwing his hands up in exasperation, and getting every other student to look at it. (I of course, having been infected by Scareware before, immediately recognized it, and told him to close it.) He continued to be exasperated until the teacher came around and told him to close it. He did (too late, of course), and a few minutes later, it took over the Windows XP computer. For geeks (and other people with brains), how true are these claims [con-AV]? What about "normal" people? | The claim is mostly not true, and in my opinion perpetrated by people who just want a justification for not caring about security. Here's a test on the detection rates. Here's a snapshot from this report: Note that this graph plots the missed samples, so the worst efficiency is 82%.
The above graph applies to known viruses. Of course, it is impossible to say how effective any given anti-malware software is on zero-day attacks. To prevent these, heuristics are required that detect malicious or suspicious behavior such as one program inserting code into another executable file. While these will not prevent a dedicated and personalized attack, they can at least prevent some common pathways of attack. My attention was brought to another graph for "real world" efficiency of malware detectors: It also shows quite a high detection rate. This all being said, it is indeed highly dependent on the user's behavior how relevant anti malware software is. A professional user keeping her system up to date and avoiding potentially dangerous sites (porn- and warez-sites come to mind) might not need anti malware software. A "casual" user who does not hesitate to click on random links sent to him by email or on social networking sites and who unquestioningly install apps found wherever in the web, on the other hand, will catch some malware infection with high probability, although anti malware software might at least safe him from the most common dangers. | {
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2,202 | I drink water from my plastic cup regularly and a friend commented that it could cause cancer. He also added that I should not heat food in plastic containers or wrappings in the microwave as that could also cause cancer in the long run. He claimed that this is due to the plastic slowly entering what you are consuming when heated or by simple erosion. How much of this is true and supported by scientific evidence? | It's going to depend upon the type of plastic you're using, as they're composed of different chemical compounds. If you look at the bottom of your plastic cup (or dish, etc), there's normally a recycling symbol and a number. The number classifies the type of plastic it is. You can find the plastic classification numbers here. My opinion as an environmental chemist: if your drink cup is #2, #4 or #5, then your risk of exposure is low enough to not be an issue, as these classes of plastics do not normally contain bisphenol A (BPA) or phthalates. You should not be using #3 (polyvinyl chloride aka PVC) for anything food related; they contain bisphenol A and phthalates; both of which are endocrine disruptors. No. 6 is fine for storing foods, but you should not reheat foods in polystyrene.
No. 7 is a 'catch all' for plastics - some of these can contain BPA. It is nearly impossible to be completely BPA/Phthalate free; they're nearly ubiquitous in our lives: plastic wrap, the coating inside your canned beans, etc. There are reports which suggests that BPA causes cancer , and there are many published studies regarding phthalates impacting sperm count and quality . BPA has been tentatively linked to premature on set of puberty . Before you run off and throw out everything plastic in your house, you need to understand that you're exposed to BPA from more than just leaching from your drinking bottles & cups. BPA will degrade rapidly in air but it persists in water - this means that you're potentially exposed to BPA via your drinking water (if it's a public water supply) or through what you eat (fish) since BPA is both bioaccumulated and biomagnified . So yes, there is a risk of BPA/phthalate leaching from your cup (or container) to your water (and thus into you), however the amount leached is most likely very small. In most of the studies where laboratory rats developed cancer , they were receiving large (1000-10000 ppm) doses of BPA through their food, or via subcutaneous injections. It's why they pushed to have BPA and phthalates removed from baby bottles (which are still normally marked with a 7 code!) - there was a higher risk of BPA/Phthalate exposure to infants, who are normally given their milk warm. Higher dose given + consistent exposure = increased risk. | {
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2,203 | To quote from a comment on my recent answer (emphasis mine): Your quoting of Kinsey's bogus studies on homosexuality -- criticized heavily by famed statistician John Tukey -- makes me severely doubt the rest of your answer. Leaving aside the point that validity of Kinsey's studies has very little logical effect on validity of the answer being commented on, it was the first time I heard something negative about Kinsey's studies (mostly since I never cared enough about them to bother checking into them). Thus, a skeptical me asks: Is there any subsequent study/report which would warrant labeling as "bogus"/"debunked" either specific major parts (especially, due to the impetus of the question, the parts related to sexual orientation ), or the entire set of Kinsey's studies/reports (as far as methodology or any other criticism). P.S. For those who don't understand the context, Dr Alfred Kinsey was a mid-20th-century american researcher who studied human sexuality based on extensive questioning of people, and who published what was at some point considered the most important books on the subject ever written (sometimes referred to "Kinsey Reports") - "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female". | In 1979, Paul Gebhard and Alan Johnson of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University spent years "cleaning" the data of suspected contaminants (some of which are mentioned in dan04's answer). Their results were published in The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938-1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research (1979), portions of which are available online via Google Books . This excerpt lists some of the individuals excluded from the re-evaluation of Kinsey's data (the groups mentioned are the sample divided by college education and race): All of these groups were cleaned in the sense of removing individuals who had derived from sources with known sexual bias. By known sexual bias we mean a group which we know to be substantially biased in some sexual way before we began interviewing its members. Examples include the Mattachine Society (a homosexual orginization), the occupants of homes for unwed mothers, prostitutes employed by a famous madam, personal friends of individuals known to be sexually deviant, and patients in mental hospitals. Also, all individuals who had been convicted of any offense other than a traffic violation were excluded since we now know that such individuals (as a group) differ in terms of sexual attitides and behavior from persons who have never been convicted. However, the changes only led to a handful of differences. The authors attributed many to the improved statistical methods they were able to employ in the reevaluation, but some to the "cleaning" of Kinsey's data: In another example, the effects of the cleaning of the sample were evident. The incidence figures of homosexual activity for single and married college-educated males, Table 90 in the Male volume, are quite similar to those of this volume, but our current noncollege sample has much lower incidences than Kinsey's grade-school and high-school-educated samples. A major cause of this discrepancy is clear; Kinsey's noncollege samples included persons who had been incarcerated in jails and prisons (where homosexual activity is relatively common) whereas our present sample excluded them. Despite these differences, the authors maintained that no significant conclusions produced by the earlier Kinsey studies were debunked: Despite the flaws of our earlier pioneering publications and the difficulties of comparing them with this volume, it is clear that the major findings of the earlier works regarding age, gender, marital status, and socioeconomic class remain intact. Adding to and cleaning our samples has markedly increased their value, but has not as yet caused us to recant any important assertion. In using our new Ns in analyses, we anticipate we will discover relationships previously unknown to us and we will undoubtedly have to modify some prior statements, but we feel the important contributions of Dr. Kinsey will stand. As an example, the original Kinsey study indicated that 37% of males has had at least one homosexual experience to orgasm. The re-evaluation placed that figure at that 36.4%. The original study only found that 4% of the white male population to be completely homosexual (a 5 or 6 on the infamous Kinsey scale), while the re-evaluation placed that figure at 9.9% for the college-educated group and 12.7% for those with lesser education, astounding considering opponents expected that latter figure to be much smaller after omitting convicts. Most resources criticizing Kinsey's work fail to take this re-evaluation into account at all, so it's hard to ascertain whether they missed anything or not. All of the flaws in Kinsey's original work seem to be accounted for. Furthermore, no study of this magnitude has been conducted since. Kinsey's study is by no means perfect, but neither has it been conclusively debunked. | {
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2,215 | What's the truth surrounding the popular idea that genetically modified food is dangerous to consume? There's entire websites and institutions dedicated to popularizing the alleged dangers of eating genetically modified food, such as GMO Awareness , Food Revolution Network and the Institute for Responsible Technology . There's countless articles and even a TED Talk video. On the flipside, there are also lots of reputable articles saying that all evidences points to GM food being safe: This recent one in Forbes , Alleged Danger of GMOs Not Looking Very Real or this one from Slate , GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left . Sites such as Sense about Science point out that we've been altering plant's genetic structures for thousands of years, and genetic modification is just a new way of doing this old process. A different argument I read in the Huffington Post states that Pesticide Use Proliferating With GMO Crops is the real source of danger. So even if GMO food itself is fine to eat, what about the secondary dangers from increased/stronger pesticide use that comes as a direct result of GMO crops? So much conflicting information, but what does the scientific evidence say? | Yes, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are safe to consume. The American Association for the Advancement of Science , American Medical Association , World Health Organization , Food and Drug Administration , EU researchers all agree that GMOs are safe to eat. From the American Medical Association: Bioengineered foods have been consumed for close to 20 years, and during that time, no
overt consequences on human health have been reported and/or substantiated in the peer-reviewed literature and from the World Health Organization: GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved. Though some sources admit the possibility of risk from unexpected allergic reactions or gene transfer, they note that required testing for GMOs has meant that no GMOs on the market pose a risk to consumers. You may see people reference one study by a scientist named Séralini, which found that GMOs cause cancer in rats, but that study has been thoroughly debunked . Séralini had an insufficient sample size, used a strain of rats likely to develop cancer anyway, and released his paper to the press before he released it to peer review. His results do not match the scientific consensus. In summary: the scientific consensus is that GMOs are safe to consume, and not a single health problem has ever been attributed to genetically modified foods in the decades we've been eating them. UPDATE: The aforementioned debunked Séralini study has been retracted . | {
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2,230 | There's a claim that evolutionary explanations are nothin more then "just so stories", that is, for any trait we can find in nature, one could find a way to explain why it's adaptive. For example: "You find that people cooperate, you
say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their
genes' perpetuating.’ You find that
they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s
obvious, because it means that their
genes perpetuate and not somebody
else's. In fact, just about anything
you find, you can make up some story
for it."
Noam Chomsky In some cases, the explanations are apparently based on a mathematical proof (ESS -Evolutionarily stable strategy) - but there are many degrees of freedom when choosing the exact mathematical model, which allow selecting a model that "fits" the desired results. This question is about evolutionary explanations - how one can use evolution to explain the existence of a trait. not about proving or falsifying the theory of evolution in general An example of a evolutionary explanation that isn't a "just so story"
There are several methods of explaining altruism in evolution. Kin Selection - by helping others we believe that are related to us, we help our shared genes to survive Cooperation - We help others, and they help us. in the long run we earn at least as much as we lose Handicap Principle - By helping others we prove potential mates\enemies that we are powerful enough to survive even if we help others. Although these are explanations to the same general trait (altruism), each explanation has different predictions regarding the details of the trait - so it's possible to evaluate the validity of each explanation. | There's a claim that evolutionary explanations are nothin more then "just so stories", that is, for any trait we can find in nature, one could find a way to explain why it's adaptive. EDIT: That's actually two false claims! Claim 1: For every trait we can find in nature, one could find a way to explain why it's adaptive This claim is false for two reasons (1) Not every trait is adaptive, and (2) At the moment, it is not technically possible to test many of the explanations. Not every trait is adaptive : Evolution, as in the change in the genetic make-up of a population , is more than "survival of the fittest". The genetic make-up of a population changes due to mutations, genetic drift, recombination, and selection. Only the latter is adaptive. The three former are non-adaptive, but can still give rise to traits that we can observe now. See for example this article for a discussion of why it can be wrong to always look for an adaptive explanation for specific traits. Today, we simply can't know : With the exception of genetically engineered organisms, genomes, and the traits derived from them that we observe today are the product of evolution. However, in many cases, we cannot know the evolutionary mechanism that gave rise to the trait, especially in humans: Was it adaptive, i.e. the trait was so beneficial to the population and/or its individuals that they were able to produce more offspring? Or did the trait get fixed in the population by chance? (note that in e.g. bacteria, with their enormous populations, we can quite safely assume that every trait we observe is selected for). There are two problems often faced when trying to answer this question. (1) You need a large amount of genetic information on many individuals in order to statistically determine how the trait has been propagated, and (2) in many cases (sickle cell anemia is a notable exception), we are not able to really quantify the fitness advantage of a trait, and/or we simply don't know where on the genome it is encoded. Claim 2: evolutionary explanations are nothing more than "just so stories" This claim is false in its general scope . Yes, as mentioned above, not every trait is adaptive, and not every trait is well enough understood so that we can make a claim. Thus, some "explanations" (which should usually be labeled speculation) may be "just so stories", though many of those are simply hypotheses that are not testable yet, at least not on the level of the genome. That is likely to change as sequencing technology improves, and the $1000 genome becomes available (see here for a bit of speculation what this will do for research). However, there are plenty of examples of evolutionary explanations involving adaptive changes, even in humans, such as sickle cell anemia , lactose persistence , or the adaptation to low oxygen at high altitude . EDIT 2: Not all "explanations" are equal. There is speculation, hypothesis, and what I would call founded explanation. In the OP and my above post, "explanation" is normally understood as hypothesis or founded explanation, rather than speculation. "Speculation" is what you can just make up by purely using your superior intellect, but without needing to consult actual data. Within the realm of evolution, speculation is often resulting in just-so stories, since many people tend to not understand how evolution works. "Hypotheses" are what you propose when you actually consider the data; they are ideally haven't-gotten-around-to-do-the-experiment, rather than not-yet-testable, and should not be sorry-can't-test-this-ever. Founded explanation is once you successfully confirmed a hypothesis. This may still turn out to be wrong, since reality, and biology in particular, tends to be more complex than what we think, but it's at least consistent with what we know right now. | {
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2,282 | I think Mythbusters did padlocks, but I don't know if they did the standard door lock test. We see it in movies and tv shows, but can a locked door be "unlocked" by shooting the lock with a handgun? EDIT: Let's keep this movie related: 1 shot, direct hit (no miss). | It is possible to breach a door using bullets, but a normal handgun is normally underpowered.
Shotguns are suited for this task. The door isn't unlocked but partly broken so that it opens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_breaching#Ballistic_breaching : Ballistic breaching uses a projectile weapon to breach an opening. Weapons used can range from small arms to the 120mm cannon of a main battle tank with a HEAT round, which will breach most obstacles easily, though the force involved may violate the rules of engagement.[3] A less damaging ballistic breach needs to destroy either the latch and lock, or the hinges of the door, and the ideal choice for this is the shotgun. While in theory other firearms can be used, handguns are usually underpowered[4] and rifles are less effective than the shotgun and pose a far higher risk of ricochet and collateral injury.[3] Most shotgun ammunition can be used for breaching, though the risk of injury varies with type. [1] FM 3-06-11. US Army. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-06-11/ch3.htm . Section 3-20, Breaching [2] Don Munson. "Action Target’s Tactical Breach Door". Tactical Response Magazine. http://www.hendonpub.com/publications/tacticalresponse/forcedentry.aspx . [3] US Army. FM 7-8 INFANTRY RIFLE PLATOON AND SQUAD. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/7-8/ch6.htm . Chapter 6, Urban Operations [4] See Mythbusters Special 9 | {
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2,304 | Lemmings have become widely known for their supposed tendency to run en masse off of cliffs to their deaths. The term "lemming" has even become a commonly used metaphor to describe the behavior of those who would mindlessly follow the crowd, despite the obvious consequences. Is there any scientific evidence that mass lemming suicide is actually true? If it isn't true, then what are the origins of the myth? | According to Snopes.com it is a myth, one promoted by the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness which not only staged a lemming migration on a turntable, but then herded them off a cliff. There was an article in the Washington Post about how nature movies are made a while back that said: The lemmings that plunge to their deaths in the 1958 Disney documentary “White Wilderness” were hurled ingloriously to their doom by members of the crew, as a Canadian documentary revealed. Palmer writes that Marlin Perkins, host of television’s “Wild Kingdom,” was known to bait animals into combat [..] Lemmings do migrate in response to population density and other pressures, and can swim, so there are times when some may drown trying to cross water, but they do not commit suicide. According to The Times , the myth was supported by sudden fluctuations in lemming populations, now believed to be caused by the predator-prey cycle. | {
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2,308 | Since I was a kid, I can't remember how many times I've heard that a healthy person needs to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. There are definitely plenty of reasons to remain well-hydrated. However is there any scientific evidence of harmful effects to those who don't drink at least the "recommended" 8 glasses of water a day? Are there any documented and verifiable benefits for those who do consume the 8 glasses a day, as compared to those who do not? For example, in a blinded study, could one group be told from the other based on objective criteria? Or is this a myth? And if so how did it start? | TL;DR: drink when you're thirsty. There's no health reason to set an arbitrary goal. Snopes tackled this issue . Here's a 2003 CBC story that states: University of British Columbia nutrition Prof. Susan Barr is part of a joint Canadian and American team of doctors and nutritionists who are looking at how much water people actually need. Barr said they couldn't find any scientific evidence to support the eight to 10 glass recommendation. The confusion may have arisen because a typical adult's energy requirements call for two to three litres of fluid – but it doesn't all have to be in the form of glasses of water. All foods and non-alcoholic drinks count toward the goal. According to Heinz Valtin , a Dartmouth Medical School physician: The notion may have started in 1945 when the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended approximately “1 milliliter of water for each calorie of food,” which would amount to roughly 2 to 2.5 quarts per day (64 to 80 ounces). In its next sentence the board stated, “[M]ost of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.” But that last sentence seems to have been missed, so that the recommendation was erroneously interpreted as how much water a person should drink each day. He goes on to say: Under some circumstances, significant fluid intake — at least eight 8-ounce glasses — is advisable: for the treatment or prevention of kidney stones, for example, as well as under special circumstances, such as performing strenuous physical activity or enduring hot weather. However, most people currently are drinking enough water and, in some cases, more than enough. There is potential harm in drinking too much water (Hale, 2010). Water intoxication, a life-threatening condition, can occur when one drinks excessive amounts of water. Water intoxication occurs when the kidneys are unable to excrete enough water (as urine), which leads to dilution of blood sodium. Mental confusion and death can result. | {
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2,311 | I'm not sure how long this particular email has floated around the internet before it landed in my inbox, but it seems to claim that you can treat a mild ( First or Second degree) burn by covering it in ordinary flour. It claims that the flour will not only ease the physical manifestations (blisters, etc.) but also reduce the level of pain associated with being burned. FW: Burn Remedy My experience with burns is this: Once I was cooking some corn and stuck
my fork in the boiling water to see if
the corn was ready. I missed and my
hand went into the boiling water.... A friend of mine, who was a Vietnam
vet, came into the house, just as I
was screaming, and asked me if I had
some plain old flour...I pulled out a
bag and he stuck my hand in it. He
said to keep my hand in the flour for
10 minutes which I did. He said that
in Vietnam, this guy was on fire and
in their panic, they threw a bag of
flour all over him to put the fire
out...well, it not only put the flour
out, but he never even had a
blister!!!! SOOOO, long story short, I put my hand
in the bag of flour for 10 minutes,
pulled it out and had not even a red
mark or a blister and absolutely NO
PAIN. Now, I keep a bag of flour in
the fridge and every time I burn
myself, I use the flour and never ONCE
have I ever had a red spot, a burn nor
a blister! *cold flour feels even
better than room temperature flour. Miracle, if you ask me. Keep a bag of
white flour in your fridge and you
will be happy you did. I even burnt my
tongue and put the flour on it for
about 10 minutes. and the pain was
gone and no burn. Try it! BTW, don't
run your burn area under cold water
first, just put it right into the
flour for 10 minutes and experience a
miracle! Is there any scientific evidence to back up this claim? | There is an impossibility in there. A 2nd degree burn means that you have a blister. What the message is telling with lack of clarity, is: Get burn, put your burnt part in flour and recover instantly. If you face this kind of accident, what you are facing is dead cells. The skin in the burn area is no more. All that is possible at that point is a faster recovery. The email claims instant regeneration. When you are burnt, it's important to stop the cooking effect by using cold water for 10 minutes or more on the burnt area if the burnt area is not too large. Flour would only help bake the burning area! If the burnt area is larger than the front arm, seek medical attention. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/first-aid-burns/FA00022 http://firstaid.about.com/od/injuriesathome/ht/06_burns.htm Such emails are very stupid jokes that could put somebody's life at risk. | {
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2,314 | Of all the email I get, I don't know why this one bugged me so much. Here is an email accusing Snopes.com of deliberately "lying" and "covering up" for the Obama administration. From the look of it, this claim has been around quite a while and seems to have grown out of the "birther" movement of people who seem to think Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Skepticism 101 tells me that since this is an anonymous email which does not cite even one specific incident to back the claim, it is likely that it is completely unsubstantiated. However, it demonstrates the kind of argument skeptics are faced with all the time, and this type of email is the kind that tends to eventually wind up in every inbox on the planet. Despite its completely unsubstantiated claims, obvious political agenda, and numerous logical fallacies, people can easily end up persuaded by things like this. A web search led me to more than a few sites with similar claims. Anyway, here it is.... I have recently discovered that
Snopes.com is owned by a flaming
liberal and this man is in the tank
for Obama. There are many things they
have listed on their site as a hoax
and yet you can go to Youtube yourself
and find the video of Obama or others
actually saying these things. So it's
up to you, but what is the value of
"truth or fiction" checks if the
source is faulty? I simply can't trust
Snopes.com....ever for anything that
remotely resembles truth! I don't even
trust them to tell me if email chains
are hoaxes anymore. A few conservative speakers on Myspace
told me about snopes.com a few months
ago and I took it upon myself to do a
little research to find out if it was
true. Well, I found out for myself
that it is true. This website is
backing Obama and is covering up for
him. They will say anything that makes
him look bad is a hoax and they also
tell lies on the other side about
McCain and Palin. Anyway just FYI please don't use
Snopes.com anymore for fact checking
and make your friends aware of their
political leanings as well. Many
people still think Snopes.com is
neutral and they can be trusted as
factual. We need to make sure everyone
is aware that that is a hoax in
itself. I have found a copy of something very similar to this letter, but with a signature here I am admittedly a regular user of Snopes and a strong supporter of the site, but feel I should still ask this question if only to avoid being an A Priori skeptic and dismissing this claim out of hand, without at least considering it. In short, I think it would be more effective to disprove this claim than dismiss it. So I have to ask: Is there any validity to this claim that Snopes is biased and inaccurate? What are the facts about the
reliability of Snopes, its objectivity and its ability to self-correct? What is the best evidence skeptics can use to defend a commonly cited reference
like Snopes against claims like this? | FactCheck.org looked into a similar chain mail in 2009: This widely circulated e-mail contains
a number of false claims about the
urban legend-busting Snopes.com and
its proprietors, Barbara and David
Mikkelson, who started the site in
1995 and still run it. They're accused
of hiding their identities, doing
shoddy research, producing articles
with a liberal bent and discrediting
an anti-Obama State Farm agent out of
partisanship. [...] We asked David. He told us that
Barbara is a Canadian citizen, and as
such isn't allowed to vote here or
contribute money to U.S. candidates.
As for him, " My sole involvement in
politics is on Election Day to go out
and vote. I've never joined a party,
worked for a campaign or donated money
to a candidate ." We checked online to see if he
had given money to any federal
candidates, and nothing turned up .
Mikkelson even faxed us a copy of his
voter registration form. He asked us
not to post an image of it here, but we can confirm that it shows he
declined to state a party affiliation
when he registered last year, and also
that when he registered in 2000 he did
so as a Republican . Do the Snopes.com articles reveal a
political bias? We reviewed a sampling
of their political offerings,
including some on rumors about George
W. Bush, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama,
and we found them to be utterly
poker-faced . David does say that the
site receives more complaints that it
is too liberal than that it is too
conservative. [...] The e-mail's last paragraph advises
that everyone who goes to Snopes.com
for "the bottom line facts" should
"proceed with caution." We think
that's terrific advice, not just in
connection with material on Snopes but
for practically anything a reader
finds online — including articles on
FactCheck.org. The very reason we list
our sources (as does Snopes.com) and
provide links is so that readers can
check things out for themselves . | {
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2,335 | Is there any observable evidence of The Big Bang? | There's plenty of evidence: We see the "aftermath" of the explosion (the cosmic microwave background ) We see the other galaxies receding from ours with speeds proportional to the distance (which is consistent with an expansion of the universe) General relativity does not allow for a static universe , and general relativity is very well supported by experiment The general big-bang cosmology correctly predicts nucleosynthesis (i.e. the relative abundances of atoms in the universe). On the other hand there are still particulars we don't understand: Did the universe have an inflationary period? Why? Why did the big bang have such a low entropy? Why is the expansion of the universe accelerating? | {
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2,339 | According to Pulitzer prize -winning journalist Gary Webb in his controversial article series The Dark Alliance For the better part of a decade, a San
Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons
of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and
funneled millions in drug profits to
an arm of the contra guerrillas of Nicaragua run by the Central
Intelligence Agency , the San Jose
Mercury News has found. Essentially the claim states that the CIA sold drugs in California to generate untraceable funds to transfer to anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. The claims were taken seriously enough that in 1996 CIA director John Deutch traveled to LA to confront the claims , but the crowd he addressed remained unconvinced. Has the CIA sold drugs in the US to fund rebels or to counter the rising influence of gangs? Is there any evidence to support the claims, or the CIA's position? | There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that this is the case. With respect to the Contra affair, the Kerry inquest reached the conclusion that there was some involvement, directly by CIA or by companies employed by CIA ( full text ); The CIA itself does not deny many of the allegations ( link ); There have been many other examples of the CIA dealing drugs to generate covert funds or actually helping the drug trade to foster some higher purpose ( well sourced Wikipedia page ). Of course, people tend to infer a lot from little facts, and you are asking about a specific interpretation of the facts. We can't really address the motivations and dietrology of those theories skeptically , and the general principle is that the burden of proof is on who makes the allegations ("innocent until proven guilty!"). In other words, I cannot find any direct proof that CIA used the profits to fight gangs, although there is clear proof that the CIA was involved multiple times in drug trafficking. | {
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2,350 | Lately, I have come across numerous stories in emails, pushed by what seem to be fringe elements, discussing various aspects of Obama's private family life. Many of them seem to make fantastical claims: A couple I've run across say that his aunt was living on welfare in Boston, assert that she was at one point an "illegal immigrant", and one of the most strange I've come across recently is the claim that his brother is currently destitute and penniless living in Kenya. That last claim, in particular, is the subject of my question. Certainly, if you Google, you can find lots of articles saying that he was. But, doing a little research, I found out that they can all be mostly traced to a single story published in mid-2008 in Vanity Fair . Putting my skeptical goggles on, I inquired at another political forum I frequent, and someone told me that it was a complete hoax made up by journalists looking for a sensational story who had misinterpreted his situation, and then promoted by political operatives, despite the fact that Obama's brother apparently had refuted all these same claims when later talked to. I tried to follow up, but my search results are all cluttered up by links pointing to the original Vanity Fair article in 2008. How is Obama's brother really living, does anyone know? | The half-sibling in question is George Obama, who has lived at various times in Kenya and South Korea. (He also never knew his father, who died in a car accident shortly after he was born.) A few months after the Italian Vanity Fair piece saying he lived in abject poverty he was interviewed by CNN . The reports left him angry. "I was brought up well. I live well
even now," he said. "The magazines,
they have exaggerated everything. "I think I kind of like it here. There
are some challenges, but maybe it is
just like where you come from, there
are the same challenges," Obama said. Obama, who is in his mid-20s, is
learning to become a mechanic and is
active in youth groups in Huruma. He
said he tries to help the community as
much as he can. By American standards George is certainly living in poverty, but standards are different in many parts of Africa. The other element of these stories about Obama's half-siblings is strictly political, suggesting that Mr. Obama was somehow ignoring the plight of his own family. We should remember that Mr. Obama's father divorced his mother when he was three and both his parents remarried shortly afterwards. His mother's family was living in Hawaii and then Indonesia, his father's moved to Atlanta and then Kenya. While these half-siblings may share some of Mr. Obama's DNA, they were never family in any social context. | {
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2,359 | I've seen two competing theories on the origin of pricing products at $<desired dollar amount minus 1>.99 (i.e. charging $19.99 instead of $20, of $5.99 instead of $6): Psychological pricing scheme used by retailers to make products seem one dollar less expensive than they really are. As an anti theft measure; forcing store clerks to ring up orders and open cash drawers (to give customers their one cent change); rather than just pocketing the money. Neither of these responses seem plausible to me. In the first case, retailers are expecting people to ignore the 99 cents, but when most people check to see whether or not they have enough money in the bank are going to take these things into account. Even if there's a slight edge to be had by losing that penny, I can't believe it'd be more than the potential thousands that one cent is multiplied into when you're selling thousands of copies of a product. Plus, most mentally add a few cents for sales tax and other things anyway. In the second, I fail to see what additional security forcing someone to open the cash drawer really offers. One could easily have a bunch of pennies lying around and still be able to pull off the same theft scheme. Most retailers have computerized systems and security cameras for these purposes now anyway. Do any hard data exist which proves or disproves either of these claims, or which supports a third, heretofore unmentioned claim? | Apparently it is a psychological marketing technique that assumes consumers ignore the least significant digit, reading from left to right. This explains why you'll often see the 99 in superscript (e.g. $19 99 ). A study by Nicolas Guéguen and Céline Jacob (pdf) found that "nine-ending prices led to increase the amount of purchasing of women-customers". Interestingly, they also concluded that nine-ending prices do not increase the number of buyers, but does increase the number of sales from those who already buy: The mean purchase amount of the customers was 6.53 €uros (SD = 1.95) in the nine-ending condition and of 5.08 €uros (SD = 2.22) in the zero-ending condition. The difference between the two means was highly significant (z = 3.72, p<.001). The results of this experiment confirm Schindler and Kibarian’s results and indicate that the effect of nine-ending prices can be generalized to an other business situation. As for preventing theft, opening the till/cash register creates a record of the sale which could potentially decrease likelihood of pocketing the money given by a customer. Can't find any studies on this, though. | {
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2,360 | Is it possible during the same storm for lightning to hit the same place twice? Say hitting a large tree twice or within a reasonable area? | Unless the lightning destroys the object so there's nothing left to hit, there is no physical reason for lightning not to hit the same place twice. The Empire State Building is a nice example of this. Here is a video where it's hit thrice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKMdYbOfFzI | {
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2,391 | People often tap the top of coke cans to stop them foaming over like this: Is there any evidence to suggest that tapping the top stops this happening? | Actually, the answer to this is simpler than that. I learned it from Penn & Teller's book How To Play In Traffic . On pages 76 to 86 they describe a trick you can play on your friends called "I Am The God of Carbonation". They have also done this trick on talk shows. They credit the idea for the trick to Paul Harris (and Eric Mead) in the magic book The Art of Astonishment . The trick is immaterial to the answer, but it involves agitating one can as much as possible and then claiming you can transfer the carbonation energy from one can to the other. But what it hinges on is this: I guess they've changed the way they package soda or something. No matter how hard you shake a soda can it takes only about twenty seconds for it to completely calm down.... As long as your God of Carbonation ritual takes twenty seconds or more, the shaken can will not explode. Make sure you hold the can straight up, perpendicular to the ground, and open it all the way with one quick action. That'll get rid of any little bit of fizz that didn't calm down in the twenty seconds. The answer is that the tapping constitutes a ritual that just eats up time. As long as the can is sitting in an upright position and you wait long enough, the fizzing will die down. | {
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2,409 | Do small businesses create the majority of the jobs in the United States? I guess it would depend on one's definition of small business, but stipulating that the definition is the one used by politicians when they make that claim, I wonder if it is true. | Probably the most definitive source for this information would be the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their "Distribution of private sector employment by firm size class" Shows the following for the most current (Q1 2010) numbers: Firm size % of total jobs
1 to 4 5.31
5 to 9 6.00
10 to 19 7.42
20 to 49 10.60
50 to 99 7.96
100 to 249 10.29
250 to 499 7.09
500 to 999 6.88
1000 and above 38.41 That shows the majority working for small businesses only if we define "small" as meaning up to 499 employees. I think that's a bit larger than most people would normally think of as "small", but I guess given the raw data, you can draw your own conclusions about what descriptions to use. | {
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2,410 | There seems to be a growing movement of people who thing that praise is bad for children, as for example on the Not School blog . The thesis seems to be: A child who receives praise, rewards, and constant evaluation through testing and grading will tend to remain dependent on an authority to bestow a positive judgment. The academically successful child could grow up with the opposite of self-esteem-- we could call it other-esteem. Nor can I see how the current school system fosters intrinsic joy in learning or accomplishing tasks. And forget about independence, autonomy, and critical thinking. Too much "positive reinforcement" does not truly reinforce the individual; it engenders dependence. This doesn't seem to be a mainstream phenomenon (though I stand to be corrected on that). I understand the mainstream press typically advocates praise as a crucial role in the success of children. For example the BBC's article "The words that could unlock your child" states, i.e.: This reveals a radical new approach to the way we engage with children - that we should praise effort, never talent; that we should teach kids to see challenges as learning opportunities rather than threats; and that we should emphasise how abilities can be transformed. ... If, on the other hand, [a student] really believes that effort trumps talent - labelled the "growth mindset" - she will persevere. She will not see failure as an indictment, but as an opportunity to adapt and grow. And, if she is right, she will eventually excel. While this article is only imply that praise is good, it seems to be advocating praise of effort instead of praise for results -- in other words, I read it to be saying "not all praise is good". Leading us to my skepticism. What evidence is there to support the conclusion that certain types of praise for children are bad? Where "bad" means, as the article suggests, children forget about "independence, autonomy, and critical thinking" and the praise "engenders dependence". "Bad" also includes the consequences of this result. Further: What evidence is there to support the conclusion that only certain types of praise are good, and in particular (a) only praising the efforts? or (b) only praising accomplishment? | This is a repost of a December 2007 Scientific American article which discusses the effects of praising effort over intelligence. In particular if focuses on the importance of mindset, and how some forms of praise in earlier stages of development can affect mindset. It claims that students who were praised as intelligent became worried about continuing to appear intelligent, which, it could be argued, is 'bad' praise: We validated these expectations in a study published in early 2007. Psychologists Lisa Blackwell of Columbia University and Kali H. Trzesniewski of Stanford University and I monitored 373 students for two years during the transition to junior high school... [and] ...the students with a growth mind-set felt that learning was a more important goal in school than getting good grades. In addition, they held hard work in high regard, believing that the more you labored at something, the better you would become at it. They understood that even geniuses have to work hard for their great accomplishments. Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy for mastering the material. The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with little regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests. And from the very BBC article you cited: Carol Dweck, a leading psychologist, took 400 students and gave them a simple puzzle. Afterwards, each of the students were given six words of praise. Half were praised for intelligence: "Wow, you must be really smart!" The other half were praised for effort: "Wow, you must be hard working!" Dweck was seeking to test whether these simple words, with their subtly different emphases, could make a difference to the student's mindsets. The results were remarkable. After the first test, the students were given a choice of whether to take a hard or an easy test. A full two-thirds of the students praised for intelligence chose the easy task - they did not want to risk losing their "smart" label. But 90% of the effort-praised group chose the tough test - they wanted to prove just how hard working they were. Then, the experiment came full circle, giving the students a chance to take a test of equal difficulty to the first test. The group praised for intelligence showed a 20% decline in performance compared with the first test, even though it was no harder. But the effort-praised group increased their score by 30%. Failure had actually spurred them on. | {
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2,411 | Why should I brush my teeth in the morning? My teeth are just going to get dirty again when I eat breakfast 5 minutes later. Plus, I've already done an extensive cleaning (floss, brush, mouthwash) the night before. My teeth should not be getting dirtier as I sleep. I've heard people say their breakfast tastes better after brushing their teeth. I've never experienced bad taste from not brushing. I only care about the hygiene reasons for brushing in the morning. | Brushing at night is the most important. Saliva naturally fights the growth of bacteria on your teeth. Your mouth dries out at night and reduces your mouth's ability to do this. Ideally, you would keep your teeth clean at all times but that's of course not realistic. A while back I read many websites and opinions about this very question. The main consensus seemed to be that people brush in the morning because it makes them feel good to start their day with a clean mouth (not because it's the best time to do it). Here is a discussion about it on Ask MetaFilter : During the day, you're flapping your jaw, drinking water, chewing gum, and moving your tongue, all of which help to clean things off of your teeth. At night, your mouth is much less active, which allows bacteria more time to grow without being mechanically sloughed off. Many years ago my orthodontist told me that it was most important to brush your teeth before going to sleep (I guess either for the night, or for a nap). Saliva production is down, and if you happen to sleep with your mouth gaping open, your teeth dry out and don't have that protective layer of saliva. Just the lack of movement of your lips and tongue while sleeping gives decay more of an opportunity to do its dirty work. Here is an article by Dr. H.S. Chawla : Brushing before meals: Most people normally brush their teeth in the morning before breakfast. That is beneficial, as you have reduced the number of bacteria before exposing them to food. The amount of acid production is expected to be less, and so would be the damage to the teeth. You get an additional benefit if you use fluoride tooth paste, as the fluoride gets incorporated into the enamel and makes it strong and resistant to the effect of acid. (Fluoride converts the hydroxyl-apatite of enamel to calcium fluor-apatite). If you are going to brush in the morning, it may actually be better to brush before you eat rather than after. brushing right after eating is not at all advised, as the acid produced [by bacteria] has already begun the process of eroding enamel. If you brush promptly after a meal, you rub off part of the dissolved minerals of the enamel. | {
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2,417 | My girlfriend is excited about an allergy treatment she's about to undergo. The product is sub-lingual allergy drops with the brand name "AllergyEZ." She's told me that her allergy doctor has told her that it is not FDA approved, but that it's been in use in Europe for decades and she's researched it and is confident that it is a good product. The "not FDA approved" bit raises red flags to me as does the claim "but it's been used for decades;" these are key phrases I've heard for many snake oil products. My faith in this product isn't helped by the fact that a Google search for the brand name only yields links to the company's site, information relating to its domain name ownership, and links to doctors who support the product. Have any of you heard of this type of allergy treatment or this particular brand? If so, how substantiated are their claims? | The warning flags: They have testimonials all over the place, but extremely little reference to any actual science. The "works for everything" claim is an eerily common trait in bogus medicine, and proportionally rare among real medication You won’t find a more comprehensive allergy serum! Your daily drops will fortify you against all the world’s major allergens. No matter where you travel or how your environment changes, you’ll be protected. AllergyEZ.com The science they do reference is a Cochrance Collaboration review, that examines whether or not sublingual immunotherapy is effective for treating allergic rhinitis. It does not specifically vindicate the efficacy of the product at hand as it: Only examines the means of distributing the remedy. The fact that SLIT works at all does not validate one specific SLIT treatment. Only looks at allergic rhinitis, whereas AllergyEZ claims to have a much broader scope, as mentioned above. No side effects! The kind of bold claims they're making on their website without backing evidence is the kind of confidence you can only have if you don't have an active ingredient at all. How could a rigorous trial have been performed that found no side effects? To my knowledge, no evidence based medicine available can match that claim. All-natural and extremely safe (not associated with dangerous anaphylactic reactions). AllergyEZ for physicians ... While most traditional allergy shot programs require participants to be at least 7 years old, AllergyEasy works safely and effectively for children of all ages—infants and up! AllergyEZ for customers The resources page includes some credible authorities on the subject, but visiting all of those sites, doing a search for "AllergyEZ" (except for pollen.com, where I did not easily find a search feature), yields no results at all. AllergyEZ lends credibility from other sources, that don't validate them at all. No coverage whatsoever about the product, except for that created by themselves. All search results are about the company of the same name, and nothing except for this very page covers the validity of the treatment. Another SLIT treatment called RevaiRx is suspiciously similar. The page indexed by Google says "How long will it take for patients to see results with Allergy EZ?", but the actual FAQ says the exact same thing, only "... results with RevaiRx": This appears to be a direct copy of the AllergyEZ press material, that Google indexed before they got around to even changing the product name. The two (supposedly) companies behind the different products share the same address in Stevensville, MT ( RevaiRx , AllergyEz ). It looks like they're trying to push the same product under different brand names. What's the rationale for doing that for a legitimate product? Now, AllergyEZ.com was registered in October 2010, and RevaiRx in Jan 2011. This seems to be a rebranding issue, however. If you look at Allergyeasy.com (of which allergyez.com and myallergyeasy.com are mirrors), the website actually dates back to 2003. If we look at this brand name instead, there is at least some coverage: The serum contains extracts of pollens, dust, molds, and pet danders in a saline solution. You will start with a very weak serum and over time you will gradually increase the concentration of the extracts. Your body will gradually tolerate higher concentrations of these extracts and you notice fewer allergy symptoms as the concentration of the extracts increases. NW Integrative Medicine Also, Tacoma Naturopathic Care endorses Allergy Easy, citing the same "Endorsed by the World Health Organization as a viable, safe alternative to allergy shots", which is taken entirely out of context. The quote is not about Allergy Easy specifically but, just as with the Cochrane review, it only refers to SLIT in general: (source: myallergyeasy.com ) So there's an integrative medicine site and a naturopathy site endorsing AllergyEZ. That's all I've been able to find at the moment. Still no sight of scientific references that speficially put Allergy Easy on trial. | {
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2,425 | Does low-intensity, long-duration exercise really "burn fat" at rates higher than highly aerobic exercise? Is the academic case for this view actually strong? It seems like a lot of accepted knowledge in the exercise industry has a weak scientific basis. | From the American Council on Exercise : In a 30-minute aerobic exercise : Low Intensity (50% of maximum exercise capacity): - you'll burn approx. 200
calories, 120 of them from Fat
(60%) High Intensity (75% of
maximum exercise capacity): - you'll burn approx. 400 calories, 140 of
them from Fat (35%) So, while it is true that a higher
proportion of calories burned during
low-intensity exercise come from fat (about 60 percent as opposed to
approximately 35 percent from
high-intensity programs), high-intensity exercise still burns
more calories from fat in the final
analysis . Dummies.com concurs: ... working at a lower intensity
requires less quick energy and a
higher percentage of fat is burned.
But you'll also burn fewer calories
than you would if, for the same amount
of time, you work out at a harder
intensity (e.g. running versus walking). During the same amount of time you
don't use more calories at lower
exercise intensities. If you're trying
to lose weight and you have only 30
minutes to work out, you would burn
fewer calories walking at a moderate
pace compared to walking at a fast
pace. The conclusion is: Working out at higher
intensities may cause you to burn a
lower percentage of fat, but since you
burn more total calories, you still
use more fat calories. | {
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2,439 | An article in the NY times about microbes and their interaction with our bodies contained the following statement: We have over 10 times more microbes than human cells in our bodies I'm a bit skeptical about that statement. It compares microbes to human cells, but since the article describes DNA analysis methods to describe our microbiome, is the statement really about genetic material and not cell number? Where can I find additional material on this subject? | This is from Elizabeth Pennisi ( Science Magazine , 2010) This past decade has seen a shift in
how we see the microbes and viruses in
and on our bodies. There is increasing
acceptance that they are us, and for
good reason. Nine in 10 of the cells
in the body are microbial. In the gut
alone, as many as 1000 species bring
to the body 100 times as many genes as
our own DNA carries. Their genes and ours make up a
metagenome that keeps the body
functioning. This past decade we’ve
begun to see how microbial genes
affect how much energy we absorb from
our foods and how microbes and viruses
help to prime the immune system. The ideas of a microbiome and a virome didn’t even exist a decade ago. But
now researchers have reason to hope
they may one day manipulate the body’s
viral and microbial inhabitants to
improve health and fight sickness. From Discover Magazine (2011) There are 20 times as many of these
microbes as there are cells in the
body , up to 200 trillion in an adult,
and each of us hosts at least 1,000
different species. ... a person is not so much an individual
human body as a superorganism made up
of diverse ecosystems, each teeming
with microscopic creatures that are
essential to our well-being. Two of the largest efforts [to use genetic sequencing to explore how the diversity of the microbiome impacts our health] are the Human Microbiome Project , funded by
the National Institutes of Health, and
the European Union’s Metagenomics of
the Human Intestinal Tract . Although
these groups have only just begun to
publish their findings, it is already
clear that the microbiome is much
more complex and very likely more
critical to human health than anyone
suspected. To clarify a possible point of confusion, microbial biomass is only a small portion of a human body's mass, due to the small size of bacterial cells relative to human cells. From San Francisco Chronicle (2012): The human body carries more than 100 trillion bacteria - up to five pounds of the tiny >single-celled organisms. | {
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2,441 | I've heard of claims that aphids can be born pregnant, like tribbles in ''Star Trek''. However, doing a web search didn't provide very convincing evidence. The Straight Dope refers to being pregnant before birth as paedogenesis. The Wikipedia article on paedogenesis has no citations on pregnancy before birth (it does, however, have a citation on male offspring eating its mother!). It also states that the term also refers to animals that get pregnant before they're fully sexually mature. Wikipedia's article on Aphids refers to the phenomenon as Telescoping generations , which is a single paragraph stub article that has no citations. Searching for paedogenesis in pubmed only got 8 hits. (Is pubmed an appropriate tool for such a search?) Are animals being born pregnant well-established but little discussed, or is is yet to be well-established? (Note: I'm referring to organisms being pregnant to their own offspring, rather than accidentally being pregnant with their own siblings ) | A good tool to use for this is Google Scholar . The first hit revealed this article which claims Most aphids are born pregnant and beget females without wastrel males. ... Embryos complete development within the mother’s ovary one after another, in assembly line fashion. These developing embryos contain developing embryos of the third generation within them, like Russian dolls. The second hit is an interesting set of slides on the subject , called "Aphid biology and life history: Implications for management.", and says "Live birth, born pregnant" | {
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2,442 | I have been to astrologers couple of times. Once, whatever he said worked. Not sure if it is a coincidence. Does astrology work? | Dr. Phil Plait, and Astronomer, has a great write up that debunks astrology (I cannot encourage you enough to read that page (or the google cache of it).) Sadly his web page seems to be down, so here’s the Google Cache copy of the same page . After a long discussion and research (with sources), he concludes with There is no force, known or unknown, that could possibly affect us here on Earth the way astrologers claim. Known forces weaken too fast, letting one source utterly dominate (the Moon for gravity, the Sun for electromagnetism). An unknown force would allow asteroids and extrasolar planets to totally overwhelm the nearby planets. Astrologers tend to rely on our ability to remember hits and forget misses. Even an accurate prediction may be simple chance. Study after study has shown that claims and predictions made by astrologers have no merit. They are indistinguishable from chance, which means astrologers cannot claim to have some ability to predict your life's path. There is harm, real harm, in astrology. It weakens further people's ability to rationally look at the world, an ability we need now more than ever. Now let's look at other places. If you want to look at this scientifically though, the first questions to ask: By what mechanism does this work? Why are predictions always very vague? And if the questions are specific, why are they no better than cold reading? Emily Lu from the Palomar observatory (another Astronomy site) makes these great observations. With the scientific knowledge that we have gained in recent history, there is little reason to place much trust in the notion that the Sun, Moon, or planets will affect your day to day life. Five thoughts: 1) Distances. As anyone who has taken introductory physics should know, the force of gravity goes with the inverse square of the distance... i.e., the further a body is from you, the less it will affect you. Remember how far away Earth is from the Sun, Moon, and planets (hint: MILLIONS of miles). Though the person who delivered you at birth may be much less massive than any celestial body, they are much closer and would certainly affect you more than the positions of the planets. 2) Other influences. For argument’s sake, let’s say that there is some unknown force that far-away celestial bodies do exert. The laws of physics have yet to be completely understood, so I’ll concede that it may be possible that there is something that works independently of distance and might influence the lives of people. But if that force is not distance dependent, why aren’t stars, galaxies, quasars, or black holes included in astrological forecasts? 3) Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The three outermost planets were only discovered within the past three centuries. How does that work with the claim that astrologers make about the accuracy of their art for previous times? 4) Precession of the Earth. Due to the slight wobbling of the Earth’s axis, the current position of objects in the zodiac circle are no longer consistent with the tenets of astrology set up thousands of years ago. Your "sun sign" is actually currently shifted over by one (i.e., a Leo is really a Cancer). 5) Build me a house of ham. If you’ve thought about the human reproductive process, you know that a baby spends about 9 months gestating in the mother’s womb before it is born. Why, then, does your birth time matter? Shouldn’t it really be the time of conception that would affect who the baby is to become? Or is it that the muscular lining of the mother protects the fetus from all external forces? In that case, shouldn’t a ham enclosure do the trick? James Randi has a great video on the subject as well . Also, here is an old video from Carl Sagan's Cosmos series that deals with Astrology. Note how he is reading the same astrology sign from multiple papers. For some humour on the subject, check out this comic (not totally relevant, but funny none the less since I mentioned Carl Sagan). Keep in mind, any sort of "debunking" of this fervent wish by believers will meet with resistance. There will be explanations and rationalizations, but much like any "psychic", there is no distinguishing this from chance, or the art of cold reading (should you be visiting an astrologer). Confirmation bias will do the rest for you. Also, keep in mind that astrology has tried to legitimize itself in complexity. Thus there is no single one answer or smoking gun that can be used to talk about it. Rather, a myriad of answers are required to fully understand what is going on. The human brain's pattern recognition software is poor in this sense, and that is why people will fall for this. | {
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2,466 | What evidence is there to show conclusively that Hitler was or was not Jewish or had Jewish ancestry even if he was not a practicing Jew? | It's not known with full certainty who Hitler's father's father was (although George Hiedler is the generally accepted one). For a list of theories on the matter, see the Wikipedia article about Alois Hitler . Since Hitler's father's mother got pregnant while allegedly working for a Jewish family it has been claimed that the father is actually the 19-year old son of this Jewish family. That would make Adolf Hitler one quarter Jewish according to the race laws in Nazi Germany. However, there is not a smidgen of evidence for this theory. It has become popular because of the immense potential for irony, should it be true. But it probably isn't. Source: Frank McDonough, Hitler and the rise of the Nazi Party , Pearson Education, 2003, p. 20. | {
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2,485 | "With the terrible earthquake and
resulting tsunami that have devastated
Japan, the only good news is that
anyone exposed to excess radiation
from the nuclear power plants is now
probably much less likely to get
cancer." This is a direct quote from US right-wing pundit Ann Coulter's blog on 3/16/2011. She references a NY Times report from 2001 that claims an "increasing number" of scientists (who she fails to name) seem to think there may be a degree of exposure which can offer health benefits. "They theorize," the Times said, that
"these doses protect against cancer by
activating cells' natural defense
mechanisms." She seems to be referencing an idea known as hormesis , which is a phenomenon by which low level exposure to something that is normally toxic at higher or prolonged levels of exposure may have positive health effects. Obviously, there is documented evidence that radiation can be used to treat cancer, but is there any evidence that uncontrolled, accidental environmental exposure can yield benefits? Is there documented scientific evidence that this claim is valid, or even plausible? Have any studies been done specifically evaluating the benefits of radiation released in nuclear accidents? How would such benefits weigh against the known hazards and risks of radiological exposure? | (Note: I don't know who Ann Coulter is. I can, however, comment on the generic claim that radiation is "good for you".) There is empirical evidence that suggests that low to medium amounts of absorbed gamma radiation boosts immunity and resilience to ailments such as heart disease, though it may (or may not) increase rates of cancer. It has been suggested and that the reduction in the probability of death from other diseases offsets the increased probability of death from cancer. The reference I found on this is Lawrence Solomon's opinion piece in the Financial Times: Low exposure to the Nagasaki atomic blast resulted in longer lifespans , which states: The tens of thousands more distant from Ground Zero [of Nagasaki and Hiroshima], and who received lower exposures to radiation, did not die in droves. To the contrary, and surprisingly, they outlived their counterparts in the general population who received no exposure to radiation from the blasts. and The only evidence that exists as to the health of humans who have been irradiated at low levels points to a benefit, not a harm. Difficult though it may be to overcome the fear of radiation that has been drubbed into us since childhood, there is no scientific proof whatsoever to view the radiation emitted from the Fukushima plant as dangerous to the Japanese population These findings are supported by (and reference) the paper "Mortality of A-bomb Survivors in Nagasaki and Hiroshima", by M. MINE, S. HONDA, Y. OKUMURA, H. KONDO, K. YOKOTA and M. TOMONAGA, Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki Univ., Sch. Med., Nagasaki 852-8523, JAPAN . This paper states: From the analysis of LSS’s population, RERF, lower relative risk of mortality from non-cancerous disease than control was observed for a dose range, 0.06-0.49Gy, when city was not adjusted. But when city was adjusted, lower relative risk was not observed. Although the number of subjects analyzed in Nagasaki University was smaller than that of LSS’s population, we have obtained the lower relative risk of mortality from noncancerous disease for male at a range of low doses. These correlate with my undergraduate studies in physics and later work as a health and safety worker for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). In undergrad I recall hearing that Marie Curie and her husband wore on their arms slabs of radium and/or uranium because they were under the impression that the radiation these materials emitted boosted immunity. As a worker for AECL at a nuclear power plant, it was commonly accepted that people working at the nuclear power plant on average lived longer than the general population and had lower rates of cancer (Submission of Dr. Patrick Moore, Chairman & Chief Scientist Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. To The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Public Hearing on Potential Environmental Impacts From a License Renewal of Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, dated September 19, 2007). From that reference: A 2004 Columbia University Study of 35,000 respondents concluded that “…nuclear power plant workers in the United States…live longer and have significantly lower cancer rates compared to the general population.” While it doesn't seem to be the study being referred to above (as the sample sizes are different), there is a 2004 study from Columbia University: "Analysis of the Mortality Experience amongst U.S. Nuclear Power Industry Workers after Chronic Low-Dose Exposure to Ionizing Radiation" , which states: The cohort displays a very substantial healthy worker effect, i.e. considerably lower cancer and noncancer mortality than the general population. Based on 26 and 368 deaths, respectively, positive though statistically nonsignificant associations were seen
for mortality from leukemia (excluding chronic lymphocytic
leukemia) and all solid cancers combined, with excess relative
risks per sievert of 5.67 [95% confidence interval (CI)22.56,
30.4] and 0.506 (95% CI 22.01, 4.64), respectively. These estimates are very similar to those from the atomic bomb survivors study, though the wide confidence intervals are also
consistent with lower or higher risk estimates. A strong positive and statistically significant association between radiation
dose and deaths from arteriosclerotic heart disease including
coronary heart disease was also observed in the cohort, with
an ERR of 8.78 (95% CI 2.10, 20.0). Whether this is the study referred to or not, it supports the conclusion asserted in the paper. All that being said, there are significant deleterious effects from significant radiation exposure. For example, while the Curies strapped radioactive materials to their arms on the basis that it benefitted their immunity, they suffered significantly for it (Marie Curie: Pioneering Physicist By Elizabeth R. Cregan, p. 17). While gamma radiation is, on the above basis, understood to have some benefits, the effects of beta and alpha radiation as are known to be quite destructive to cell tissue. While these forms of radiation are less common to be exposed to and easier to protect against than gamma radiation, I strongly doubt they've any positive effect at reducing the risk of cancer. The one known exception may be exposure to Iodine-131 , a beta particle emitter, because it collects in the thyroid. While high doses will destroy the thyroid and stop iodine from collecting in the thyroid, low doses will collect there and the beta particles released by the iodine will cause thyroid cancer. Going back to the claim that those around Fukushima are "much less likely to get cancer" seems overstated. While evidence supports the existence of certain health benefits, and the evidence is mixed about whether exposure to radiation increases or decreases risk of cancer, I feel it's reasonably clear from the evidence we have at present is that the risk of cancer wouldn't be "much less likely", as claimed. As well, on whether cells have a natural defence mechanism when exposed to low or medium doses of radiation: I don't know of any studies, nor do I have any other knowledge or information, that would support such a conclusion. That being said, I think it's perfectly plausible that cells could have such an ability. I hope that's helpful. | {
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2,523 | Looking at the side of any diet soda, you can see 0 calories, 0 fat, 0 sugar, and tons more zeros. Does this mean that diet sodas are actually somewhat HEALTHY? Or at least not at all bad for you? | In diet soda you typically have carbonated water , caramel colour, aspartame , phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate , flavouring, citric acid, and caffeine . These are generally non-nutritive, but as with most food products, their health effects are variously under dispute or active research. According to reason, pure water is quite simply lower risk than diet soda, but there's been significant research into the health effects of the latter, with negative effects occurring largely via the psychological and biological trickery of artificial sweeteners. Further reading: A brief summary of studies of health effects of aspartame . Long-term clinical studies with high doses of aspartame (75 mg/kg/day for 24 weeks, or about 25 times current consumption levels at the 90th percentile) resulted in no changes in clinical or biochemical parameters or adverse experiences compared with a placebo. One of many sources of information on the health effects of caffeine . MSDS for benzoates . Also, see benzene in soft drinks . | {
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2,543 | According to IKEA The 2010 edition [of the catalogue] is the world’s third
most printed publication (next to the
Bible and Harry Potter) But Martin Roth wrote an article in 2002 where he was pretty sure that IKEA was close to beating the Bible in regard of worldwide distribution . And in a 2005 update he estimated that IKEA had actually overtaken the Bible. Is IKEA being overmodest with their statement? Has a furniture catalogue actually become more prevalent than the Bible? My question: How does the IKEA catalogue hold up against the Bible in regard of yearly prints and worldwide distribution? NOTE : I'm not aksing if the Bible is the most read book . I'm interested in yearly , not all-time numbers. NOTE 2 : After reading the comments I decided to explain my motivation behind this question. I'm aware that "more copies" is not the same as "more read" or "more popular" . But the numbers for the IKEA catalogue have increased, from 115 million in 2003 to 198 million in 2010 (see Peter's answer ). I assume IKEA wouldn't increase the number of copies if there wasn't a demand, after all printing them does cost the company money. So even though the high print run doesn't necessarily mean it's also more read or more popular, it does seem to imply that the catalogue now reaches more people than any religious (or scientific) publication. This makes me wonder: what does it say about our culture if the most distributed publication in our world is a furniture catalogue? (This is more of a philosphical question and therefore not part of my actual question) | At best, the answer to this question will be an apples and oranges comparison. Comparing the distribution of a static book to that of a constantly fluctuating periodical is unlikely to produce anything very meaningful. However it is amusing and I like both apples and oranges. So what can we do? Start with the easy apples The IKEA side of things is relatively easy. Because of their corporate business structure, the figures are centralized. Last year 198 million copies of the catalog were printed in 56 editions and 27 languages. ( source ) It is unclear what "last year" refers to. Other reports on the page run through 2009, so "last year" may refer to 2008 or 2009. On the other hand the charts might be old and the numbers might be newer. Either way, this is enough to ball park the number, which is more than we will be able to do for the second half of this comparison. One extra note before we move on is that this number is measured at the press. This is not a number of copies distributed into hands that read them. Pure business sense demands that they have some percentage of over-printing so that stock in stores doesn't run out during the year. Additionally large numbers of copies end up being put to uses other than distribution for reading. If you want to extrapolate some percentage of growth but also account for the number being print rather than received distribution, I think it's fair to ballpark a current figure in the 150-200 million copies per year range for 2012. Now what do we do about the oranges? Bible printing numbers are much harder to come by. There is no centralized organization that controls or that can even track production and distribution of printed Bibles. At best, we can identify some of the major players and extrapolate from there to arrive at an order of magnitude figure. It seem that the media is fond of throwing around the "over 100 million Bibles per year" number, but I was unable to locate a source for it. It seems somebody pulled this out of their sleeve and it stuck. On examining some of the pieces, I think I would pull the same number out of my sleeve. The 1000 pound gorilla In the world of Bible printing and distribution, the United Bible Societies is undoubtedly one of the largest players. The group is made up of 146 national Bible Societies working in cooperation to pull off large scale translation, publishing and other logistical projects. There are many printing and publishing operations around the world that are completely independent, but UBS certainly has their hands in a lot of pies. There might be more important players when it comes to translation, but as far as printing and distribution go, they are heavy weight players. In one entirely confusing piece of journalism, the LA Times reported in 1989 that the 1988 numbers for world wide Bible distribution through the UBS alone crossed the half a billion mark to hit 692,754,925. Exactly. What the article fails to do is identify the difference between "Bibles" and "Scriptures". Bizarrely, their fancy annual report for 2012 includes no useful data on distribution. There is information on training events, book fairs, translation efforts, printing and distribution centers, but no distribution numbers. More focused reports from 2009 and 2011 shed some light on the matter. In 2009, 29M full Bibles and 11M New Testaments were distributed. For the sake of this question, I think it's reasonable to lump New Testaments and full Bibles together. This makes something on the order of 40 million copies distributed by UBS during 2009. The 2011 numbers were 32M for Bibles, so there is some growth but only a percentage that won't make or break our comparison either way. What isn't lumped into that number is "Scripture" printings that are not full Bibles or even full New Testaments. It is quite common to print and distribute large numbers of selections such as The Gospel of John or the Psalms . The distribution numbers for these printed materials is easily an order of magnitude larger than full Bibles. Using the same UBS report for 2009, approximately 400 million such resources were distributed in the same year as the 40 million Bibles through UBS alone. This is still oddly less than the LA Times report two decades earlier. I think the difference is accounted for by including other non print media. By any accounting, that number is likely massively higher now. Its 950 pound cousin The UBS may be big, but they aren't the only ones in their class The Gideons International prints and distributes massive quantities of Bibles. Again, "last year" isn't clearly identified, here is what they currently report about themselves: Approximately 1.7 billion Bibles and New Testaments have been distributed worldwide since 1908, and more than 700 million Bibles and New Testaments were distributed in just the last 10 years. More than 84 million copies of God's Word were distributed last year. ( source ) Again I think it's fair to lump NT and full Bibles together, but for reference the overall ratio for the Gideons appears to be about 8 to 1 ( source , only USA distribution break down available). That would put The Gideons at about 10 million full Bibles and 70 million New Testaments per year. For ideological reasons, as an organization they are pretty focused on Bibles rather than partial printings. They do a lot more NT's than even all of UBS combined, but they don't do as many excerpt printings such as Gospel of John tracts. And some smaller fish to fry There are other players as well. Several other large Bible producers including the International Bible Society, The Catholic Bible Federation and The Trinitarian Bible Society are not part of UBS. I was unable to find concrete numbers for many of these. I think there are a couple 5 million range players. Dozens of smaller ones appear to distribute in the 0.5-2 million Bibles per year range. An oddball I couldn't place above is Zondervan publishing who sells a lot of English and some other language Bibles, but it's hard to get a breakdown of Bibles vs. other materials. The NIV translation which they own the publishing rights to used to be the highest selling translation in English, but I don't know to translate that to Bibles per year worldwide. It's hard to put a number on it, but realistically I think counting UBS and Gideons as the lions share at a total of 120 Million per year is a reasonable baseline. Those two alone do put current numbers in the "over 100M per year" ball park thrown around by the media. Trying to add up numbers for all the small fish is harder, but in order to beat out the IKEA catalog, all the small guys would need to add up to at least 60 million/year. In adding up onezyes and twozies, I got to a possible 25 million more, but was running low on sources. I can only account for up to about 150 million Bibles distributed per year. Conclusion of Rosaceae vs. Rutaceae , or "How about them apples?" Clearly 150-200 million IKEA catalogs beats out a max of about 150 million print Bibles distributed per year. Just as clearly, if you include partial printings that are portions of Scripture such as The Gospel of John booklets, the catalog figure is dwarfed by the 500+ million number of the UBS alone. If you include such partial printings from all sources, the number might be pushing a billion and IKEA catalogs aren't in the same order of magnitude. Why the question is flawed In the end it isn't the apples to oranges nature of the numbers that is this question's achiles heel. It is the implication that the numbers point to something else. Note this quote from the question: Is IKEA being overmodest with their statement? Has a furniture catalogue actually become more prevalent than the Bible? In the end it is not yearly printing or distribution numbers that determine "prevalence". [...] it does seem to imply that the catalogue now reaches more people than any religious (or scientific) publication. No, it does not. "Reaching people" with a message is not defined by, or even directly correlated to, yearly print run numbers. Even the number comparison you asked for in your question does not equate to "reaching people with a publication". Any measurement of "reaching people with a publication" must include all forms of that publication and the publications longevity. Print media is not the only way Bibles are distributed these days. Digital media formats including websites, eBooks, phone apps, audio versions, etc add up to a substantial number of Bible resources that are in peoples hands and giving them access to the same material, just in a different format. By comparison, IKEA's advertising channels don't have nearly the coverage. While we're on the subject of "reach", another relevant metric is available languages. The IKEA catalog is at 27. The full Bible is currently published in over 450 languages, with portions (including hundreds more full New Testaments) being available in over 2,400 others. Bibles are valid for more than 1 year terms. While IKEA has to get the same catalog into the hands of the same potential customers over and over, each individual print Bible goes on serving its purpose year after year, often for decades. A much higher percentage of Bibles distributed go into new hands ear year, making it's effective footprint on the ground each year much larger (and it's impact on landfills much less) than IKEA's catalog. | {
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2,555 | Do secret societies that wish to bring about a new world order still exist? Who are they, what evidence points to their existence today, and what are their overall goals? Also, who are the foremost experts on secret societies? This question originates from a reporter seeking to find experts to appear on a popular, syndicated morning radio program at 6:00 am (Central) on Thursday, May 5. If we cannot recommend an expert from the Stack Exchange community, the next best thing would be to point him to our collective knowledge and research. FYI - The program is called The Mancow Muller Radio Show, the No. 4 radio program in the country, with an average of 11 million-12 million listeners daily. The show can be heard in 200-plus markets, and segments are often replayed on FOX News. | We know that such societies exist because many have become exposed. For historical examples, consider the Freemasons , Illuminati or the Ku Klux Klan . All were, at some point, influential (more or less) secret societies consisting of people with common aims and traditions. The Wikipedia articles on these are actually very well sourced and provide a good summary. It is well documented that some of these structures have survived until today, and even remain influential, such as the infamous P2 (Propaganda Due) Lodge (source: David Yallop, In God’s Name ). The existence of P2 has also been documented in press (where it was referred to as “a state within a state”). The exposure of P2 in 1981 revealed the membership of many influential politicians – among them Silvio Berlusconi 1) – and unearthed plans “for a consolidation of the media, suppression of trade unions, and the rewriting of the Italian Constitution.” (Wikipedia; Tobias Jones, The Dark Heart of Italy ). More recently, the Christian terrorist group Hutaree was exposed in the USA, along with their aim to stage a small-scale coup d'état (source: BBC ). There is also the fear that the deregulation of the mass media market has led to a de facto control of the public opinion by very few people (who would constitute a not-so-secret society). A rigorous examination of the situation in the USA is undertaken in the film Orwell Rolls in His Grave ( online video , Wikipedia article ). … so yes , secret societies “that wish to bring about a new world order” did exist, some until very recently, and there is no reason to suspect that they suddenly ceased to exist. There are of course numerous allegations and conspiracy theories about secret societies that aren’t corroborated by facts. Being conspiracy theories, there isn’t much chance of disproving them conclusively, and nary a chance (other than by sheer coincidence) of them being true. 1) Berlusconi’s membership receipt: It is also worth noting that in many countries the political elite is a very tightly knit group of people. For instance, in France many of the top politicians went to the same University – Sciences Po – and knew each other even before that, sometimes through family ties. In Germany, most conservative politicians belong to tightly knit fraternities (“Studentenverbindung”). This of course means that without the right connections it is hard to gain footing in politics. But none of this is secret, let alone constituting secret societies. It is also, as far as I know, entirely uncontroversial. For that reason I can’t be bothered to research references. The remark serves more as an “FYI”. | {
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2,560 | When washing my hands, I was always told to use warm soapy water. However, is there any chemical or biological reason why warm soapy water is more effective to cold soapy water when trying to sanitise your hands? For example, a reason given for using warm water was that it opens your pores. | According to Hot Water for Handwashing - Where is the Proof? The initial experiment involved
testing with bland non-antimicrobial
soap at 5 temperatures from 4.4°C
(40°F) to 49°C (120°F). Independent of
soil or bacterial type (resident or
transient) there was no significant
difference in efficacy attributed to
water temperature. [...] In the second experiment antimicrobial
soaps were used having different
antimicrobial active ingredients, at
each of two water temperatures, 29.5°C
(85°F) and 43°C (110°F). In this experiment, even though
slightly higher efficacy was seen
with antimicrobial soaps at higher
temperatures, overall, there was no
statistical difference in efficacy ... at the two
water temperatures. Concomitant to the increase in
efficacy at higher temperatures was a
consistent trend for increases in
measures of skin damage, such as skin
moisture content, transepidermal water
loss and erythema. This was also found
not to be statistically significant. [...] As has been shown by many previous
researchers, overall handwashing
effectiveness is more dependent on the
vigorousness of execution than details
such as the type of soap, the length
of handwash or in this case water
temperature. For the complete text of the paper go here (it references more than 50 publications). | {
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2,561 | Sometime ago I'd heard someone trained in child psychology claim that crying for emotional reasons (as opposed to getting something in your eye for example) released toxins from the brain and/or body. More specifically, she claimed that emotionally-based tears, when collected and fed to rats in their food, resulted in a markedly increased statistical rate of disease and mortality in comparison to reflex-based tears or no tears at all. The explanation seemed a little hand-wavy, was uncited, and I was a little bit suspicious. However, I have noticed for some time that emotionally-based tears taste different depending on the "bitterness" of the experience. Then, I recently went through an extremely stressful time where I experienced levels of emotional stress higher than I ever have in my life. I found to my surprise that my tears during this period, if allowed to drain down my throat, caused extreme soreness for a short period of time (mitigated by drinking liquids); whereas if I was careful not to allow them to, no soreness resulted. A friend also experiencing extreme emotional stress found that the specific areas on her cheeks that her tears touched became visibly red and raw. Again, her experience was that the rawness correlated with contact vs no contact in specific incidents--rather than frequency. These responses seemed too specific to be psychosomatic . Now, "toxins" is very vague and it's clear that crying is an important emotional tool regardless of whether its significance is psychologically- or physiologically-based. My sample-space is unsatisfactorily small, but has intrigued me. Is there any scientific evidence that: Emotionally-driven tears contain
substances harmful to the body, and
if so which substances and by which
mechanisms. Emotionally-driven tears contain
substances which are in some way
specifically related to stress. And, if either of the above are
true, is it scientifically plausible
that the substances in
emotionally-driven tears are in any
way originating in the brain? I'm especially interested any evidence which suggests there is a good reason to fully expel emotionally-driven tears from the body, and any that suggests failure to cry under emotional stress prevents the release of a substance which ought to be released for body/brain health. Does anyone have any good research on these topics? My apologies for the length and detail of the question. Edit: I've also recently experienced stinging cheeks after an especially poignant (yet low tear volume) cry. Since this is now a topic of curiousity for me it's hard to rule out a psychosomatic effect, but it was a distinct enough feeling to bump this post with an edit. No hard sources out there, anyone? | There does seem to be a distinct difference in composition of emotional tears, compared to basal and reflex tears ( review in German ). The emotional tears were found to contain about 24% more protein than reflex tears ( Frey et al., 1981 ). Also found were increased concentrations of Prolactin, manganese, potassium compared to serum concentrations, as well as increased serotonin concentrations compared to reflex tears. This research shows that emotional tears are different from reflex tears, but it doesn't really support the claim that toxins are eliminated through crying. The german review I linked states that it is unlikely that toxin elimination through tears has a therapeutic effect. One additional aspect arguing against that is the fact that a large part of the tears is usually reabsorbed through the skin. This does not mean that there are no psychological or social effects of crying. But I could not find any evidence for specific toxins that are excreted via tears, the substances in the research I mentioned are not really toxins. | {
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2,566 | I have always been told that an open box of baking soda will "absorb" odors and make a fridge smell less. I have even seen people with three boxes in one fridge. My question is whether there is any scientific evidence for this claim. It seems entirely possible that it is purely confirmation bias; the boxes are always installed at the start of a keeping-the-fridge-decent campaign. | The science behind the phenomenon is simply that sodium bicarbonate (as baking soda is known to its friends) is amphoteric; that is, it reacts with substances that have either strong acid or base pHs. Most things that we consider bad smelling in a refrigerator are giving off a vapor of strongly acidic particles, therefore sodium bicarbonate powder, with its large surface area, will react with those particles and neutralize them by making them less acidic. And of course Arm & Hammer will be only too happy to tell you all about this. So it the science says it works in theory, but a better question might be, does it work really well? I found at least one chemist who doesn't think so : The popular "open box of Arm & Hammer®
in the refrigerator" simply provides
an adsorbent material that can soak up
odors -- but not very effectively. For
example, if some of the odoriferous
materials floating around in the
refrigerator are acidic, the alkaline
baking soda can absorb and neutralize
the acid. Even in that regard, it is
not all that effective because, as the
powder in the box contacts water
vapor, it tends to crust over an lose
a great deal of its already limited
surface activity. He goes on to suggest using activated charcoal, though I would add that activated charcoal is much more expensive and should be disposed of more carefully. So while the baking soda may not work quite as well as advertised, it may still be the best option for most people. | {
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2,603 | Over the ages there have been many accounts of ball lightning. Some accounts from Wikipedia are as follows: One of the earliest descriptions was
reported during The Great Thunderstorm
at a church in Widecombe-in-the-Moor,
Devon, in England, on 21 October 1638.
Four people died and approximately 60
were injured when, during a severe
storm, an 8-foot (2.4 m) ball of fire
was described as striking and entering
the church, nearly destroying it.
Large stones from the church walls
were hurled into the ground and
through large wooden beams. The ball
of fire allegedly smashed the pews and
many windows, and filled the church
with a foul sulfurous odor and dark,
thick smoke. The ball of fire reportedly divided
into two segments, one exiting through
a window by smashing it open, the
other disappearing somewhere inside
the church. The explanation at the
time, because of the fire and sulfur
smell, was that the ball of fire was
"the devil" or the "flames of hell".
Later, some blamed the entire incident
on two people who had been playing
cards in the pew during the sermon,
thereby incurring God's wrath. One without a religious angle: In 1954 Domokos Tar, a physicist,
observed a lightning strike during a
heavy thunderstorm. A single bush was
flattened in the wind. Some seconds
later a speedy rotating ring
(cylinder) appeared in the shape of a
wreath. The ring was about 5 m away
from the lightning impact point. The
ring's plane was perpendicular to the
ground and in full view of the
observer. The outer/inner diameters
were about 60/30 cm. The ring rotated
quickly about 80 cm above the ground.
It was composed of wet leaves and dirt
and rotated counter clockwise. After
seconds the ring became
self-illuminated turning increasingly
red, then orange, yellow and finally
white. The ring (cylinder) at the
outside was similar to a sparkler. In
spite of the rain, many electrical
high voltage discharges could be seen.
After some seconds , the ring suddenly
disappeared and simultaneously the
Ball Lightning appeared in the middle.
Initially the ball had only one tail
and it rotated in the same direction
as the ring. It was homogenous and
showed no transparency. In the first
moment the ball hovered motionless,
but then began to move forward on the
same line with a constant speed of
about 1m/sec. It was stable and
travelled at the same height in spite
of the heavy rain and strong wind.
After moving about 10 m it suddenly
disappeared without any noise. There are also videos purporting to be ball lightning available on YouTube and I have heard a hypothesis that this UFO incident could be ball lightning. So the question remains is ball lightning scientifically verifiable, or is there another explanation for all these events (e.g. meteorites, imaginative stories, video manipulation, etc). | Scientific American has an article on the topic: Ball lightning may be more exotic than microwave oven sparks, but most scientists are convinced that it is no less real. Martin A. Uman, chair of the department of electrical computer engineering at the University of Florida at Gainesville explains: "Ball lightning is a well-documented phenomenon in the sense that it has been seen and consistently described by people in all walks of life since the time of the ancient Greeks. There is no accepted theory for what causes it. It does not necessarily consist of plasma; for example, ball lightning could be the result of a chemiluminescent process. The literature abounds with speculations on the physics of the ball lightning." So, if by "scientific proof" you mean "accepted and experimentally proven natural sciences theory explaining" ball lightning, the answer is "NO". However, if you mean "is there historical proof that it exists and is not just a myth/rumor", then yes, such phenomenon is very widely documented to have been observed. In addition to SciAm article linked above, English Wikipedia has a pretty good writeup of historical evidence for it that I think the original question actually quoted from | {
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2,605 | I just viewed this interesting video about radioactive ethanol from plants as opposed to non-radioactive ethanol from crude oil. In it, the professor says he's heard it's illegal in the USA to sell alcoholic drinks if they are not radioactive from carbon-14 isotopes. Is this true? I'm not particularly worried about the implications of the radioactivity, as I indeed understand this type of radioactivity can be expected to be found in others types of food / drinks as well. Rather I am curious as to whether this is actually a way of measuring whether ethanol in drinks is not tampered with by mixing it with ethanol from petroleum. | Richard A. Muller is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley , and Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory . His course "Physics for Future Presidents" (at UC Berkley ) has been released online . In the lecture about Radioactivity he says: The US government has decided to make it illegal to make drinking alcohol out of oil. Muller reiterates this in his books Physics and Technology for Future Presidents and The Instant Physicist : The US government has decided that alcohol for human consumption must be made from "natural" materials, such as grains, grapes or fruit. That regulation rules out alcohol made from petroleum. Natural alcohol gets its carbon from
plants; the plants got the carbon from
atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is
radioactive because of the continued
bombardment of cosmic rays that
collide with nitrogen molecules and
turn it into C-14, radiocarbon. Petroleum was also made from
atmospheric carbon, but it was buried
hundreds of millions of years ago,
isolated from the radioactive
atmoshphere. Radiocarbon has a
half-life of about 5700 years, and
after 100 million years, there is
nearly no atom of C-14 left. So, a lack of radioactivity would be a giveaway that alcohol was not made from plant material. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau - Code of Federal Regulations, Title 27, Chapter 1 : Spirits or distilled spirits: The substance known as ethyl alcohol, ethanol, or spirits of wine in any form (including all dilutions and mixtures thereof, from whatever source or by whatever process produced), but not fuel alcohol unless specifically stated. The term does not include spirits produced from petroleum, natural gas, or coal. This seems to confirm that drinking alcohol must not be made from petroleum. And according to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Agriculture the standard method for measuring biobased content is ASTM D6866 : [ASTM D6866] applies to products with
carbon-based parts that can be combusted
completely into carbon dioxide,
and it uses radiocarbon , also known as
carbon 14, or 14 C. From ASTM International : [ATSM D6866 are] standard test methods for determining the biobased content of solid, liquid and gaseous samples using radiocarbon analysis | {
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2,621 | Whitehouse.gov - Birth Certificate Long Form ( Web Archive ) This is the one. I tried asking in my normal channels (hacker news, IRC) but am getting bombarded with accusations of being a Birther. I am definitely not. Someone showed me there are separate layers for the text and the rest of the document, and also that the font didn't make sense. I am just hoping you could find evidence one way or another. | It looks to me like the scanner that was used to make the PDF split the image into several layers during construction of the PDF in order to reduce the file size while maintaining sharp text. If we look side-by-side at some writing that was not separated into a separate layer and some text that was, we can clearly see the effect (note that I have moved the writing around to get a good side-by-side example): This is a very common feature of scanners that produce PDFs, since your documents tend to look horrible otherwise (or are huge). Here's an example taken from my local copier (again with text moved next to writing that was not recognized as requiring hi-res): Thus, the existence of multiple layers in no way is evidence that the document is not authentic. This is the standard way for scanners/copiers to handle scanned-document-to-PDF conversions. Upon review of the document, I can't find an instance of the font "not making sense". Looks like a typewriter to me, and the same one used for the whole document (complete with artifacts that I recall seeing before, like partially shifted caps). Edit: this site shows all the layers (thanks to geoff for finding it). You can verify them for yourself by loading the PDF into a vector graphics tool like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape and ungrouping the pieces. Another edit: This site presents the same conclusion (thanks to fred for finding it), albeit without a clear demonstration, and with some technical inaccuracies. | {
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2,625 | The Microsoft Kinect uses an IR source (laser or just diode?) to project a pattern in order to get 3D data on what it's looking at. As low-power IR is invisible and intangible, many people have concern about it, implicating it when they feel a sensation in their eyes (e.g. a feeling like eye strain), and some claim to have measured the output to be vastly higher than permitted. Has the Kinect IR source been soundly implicated to cause any sorts of health problems, or has it been measured to output more than permitted by applicable regulatory bodies? | Many factors play into this. Sadly, simple google searches do not get me much data that isn't noise regarding the very question you are asking about. That said, I am a Program Manager working on many varieties of IR lasers, so I will attempt to give you information as best as I can explain it. First of all, anything people "feel" in their eyes is purely psychosomatic. The retina does not have any pain sensors in it (the linked diagram shows no nerve endings in the eye). Any eyestrain is more than likely from spending hours in front of a TV set playing a video game as opposed to the laser. The laser itself is 780nm (visible light ending at 760 nm, thus making the Kinect laser very short wave IR, or SWIR ). Furthermore, it is not columnated, but rather diffused so that it covers a wide area. The power of the laser ends up at less than 0.4 µW once it actually reaches you, so you have even less reason to worry. It is rated as a Class 1 laser device , which means the maximum emitted power of the laser is <25 μW, spread out over a circle detection area measured in feet as opposed to an aperture of less than 1 cm. This amount of power, according to current medical and physics knowledge, is safe. For the sake of comparison, sunlight is one kilowatt per square meter and perhaps 5% of that is near infrared i.e. 700 to 1000 nanometers. Just going outside will expose you to much greater power densities of SWIR than the Kinect. As to the way the Kinect physically generates the laser, the IR laser diode itself is capable of emitting 60 mW at 830 nm. Should you break or remove the diffuser, various optics, and then stare into the laser emitting diode directly, you will cause retinal damage. However, the series of steps required to do that would indicate a willful intent to cause self harm, and be beyond simple mechanical failure. EDIT TO ADD: As previously stated, in order to be classified as a Class I laser, the emittance must be <25 μW. The reason that the diode generator is higher is because the optics required to create the dispersal pattern reduces the efficiency. Any time a laser passes through any optical element, you lose power. The beam divergence will also play into this. If the M2 (M squared) is close to 1, you will have problems. I have not found any measurement of the Kinect M squared, however, since it is already set to diverge, that optical path is established before it even leaves the device. This ends up reducing the ability of the laser to be focused in any meaningful way on your retina. I would call into question the methodology that people claim in measuring the power from this laser. | {
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2,628 | My Arabian friend showed me a video of a child getting shot. He also gave me some links after a quick search: The Independent: I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls Just Read blog: Israeli soldiers kill 1337 Palestinians I found it rather disturbing. He told me that this is rather common and wasn't accidental (i.e. more common than typical civilian casualties in any war). I know its very hard to find any unbiased sources in this controversial conflict, but does anyone have any statistics on the rate of civilian deaths? | Well, since no-one provided a complete answer so far I'll try to do it (though I am an Israeli, so I'm biased). The answer to the question in the title is yes. The data I'm about to bring is taken from B'Tselem which is the "Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories". According to the B'Tselem report , between Jan 19, 2009 (the end of "Cast Lead" operation) and Feb 28, 2011 (that is, a little over two years), 19 Palestinian minors were killed as a direct result of the armed conflict. Some of them clearly were participating in the hostilities. B'Tselem does not (so far as I could see) ask/determine whether or not the killing was accidental, but from the description it can be understood that at least some of the deaths were accidental (specifically: mortar fire isn't overly accurate.) I should say that there isn't a statistic that is acceptable to all and even B'Tselem has come under criticism . This is unavoidable due to "fog of war" and the fact that there are (usually) several conflicting descriptions of the same event. Still I believe (and it is quite generally accepted) that B'Tselem is a reliable source of information. The military police policy for investigating incidents involving the death and/or injury of Palestinians has been criticized by B'Tselem and led to the following IDF statement . B'Tselem also criticized the IDF open fire policy in 2002, but at no time was it suggested that the killing of children is an encouraged policy. I hope these two examples will be enough that this isn't the case. The Hebrew Wikipedia has partial information regarding the IDF open fire protocol if anyone cares to read it. | {
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2,644 | In other words, are the censorship & ratings of movies and other forms of art based on something more than nothing? ;) Or, in a broader sense, I am questioning the very widespread belief that kids should not be allowed to watch anything sex-related. I am talking only the ratings/censorship based on the nudity, sex, explicitness, etc., i.e. not violence, profanity, drugs and other things movies can get bad MPAA rating (or an equivalent). Please no anecdotal evidences, nor any discussions about whether kids should be interested in these things, or do they (should they?) understand them, and so forth. I am only interested in the direct and measurable harm aspect. | It seems that all of the answers have gravitated towards depictions of sex. Either because nudity equals sex (while in Hollywood, this appears to generally be the case - it's extremely rare to see a nude scene that isn't purely for titillation, rather than because someone just woke up or got out of the shower), or because it hadn't occurred to them that they might be separate. If you want to know if social nudity - namely nudity that is purely nonsexual - has any effect on children, just ask a nudist. This document explains one nudist club's stance on the effects of social nudity on children, and cites several studies. The conclusion they reach is that there is absolutely no negative effect, and there may be a positive effect on the psyche. The basic nudist philosophy is that the extreme modesty of the Victorian era was in fact harmful (which was proven by many studies before and since), and as such, perhaps its inverse - a total lack of modesty - is beneficial. Studies aside, nudists themselves have observed no obvious negative effects in children - very young children especially like to be naked, and generally the idea that there's nothing inherently wrong with the human body in its natural state promotes better body image in older children as well. See the bottom of the document above about Casler's study, and the older children's reactions in his interviews. It's generally parents' negative reactions to nudity in TV and film that are most harmful to children. Especially if that reaction is particularly unhinged and panicked - see also: Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy Edit: There was a paper written on this subject (actually, of children witnessing parental nudity and sexual activity, which of course, is different from what you see on TV, since parents have such a central and authoritative role in a child's life) in the Journal of Sex Research. The paper can be found on here . Consistent with the
cross-sectional retrospective literature (and with our expectations), no harmful main
effects of these experiences were found at age 17-18. Indeed, trends in the data that were
significant at p [less than] 0.05 but did not reach significance following the Bonferonni
correction indicated primarily beneficial correlates of both of these variables. Exposure to
parental nudity was associated with positive, rather than negative, sexual experiences in
adolescence, but with reduced sexual experience overall. Boys exposed to parental nudity
were less likely to have engaged in theft in adolescence or to have used various
psychedelic drugs and marijuana. Taken as a whole then, effects are few, but generally beneficial in nature. Thus, results of
this study add weight to the views of those who have opposed alarmist characterizations
of childhood exposure both to nudity and incidental scenes of parental sexuality. This is very likely the kind of thing (historically speaking, of course, which the paper touches on) that the MPAA and the government bases such things upon. Mostly this seems to harken back to Freud and early students thereof, who assumed that nearly every psychological disorder originated from witnessing such things as a small child. The paper linked above questions this assumption and tries to find actual clinical research to support the claim. | {
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2,667 | I was reading Superfreakanomics and the book argues that we had a global cooling period 40 years ago? Is that claim accurate? | That "myth" was started by Newsweek and irresponsible journalism more than any peer reviewed publications. Time was equally responsible. However, if you look at the number of actual papers published on the subjects of climate change, you will see that most were actually more concerned about warming: Or viewed another way: Keep in mind that climate change and global modeling was very new. Computers of the time were not equipped to handle this sort of calculation. Even so the 1975 US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Report, the most comprehensive study on climate change, and closest to scientific consensus, issued a report . Their basic conclusion was "… we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate… " This is in strong contrast with the current position of the US National Academy of Sciences: "...there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring... It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities... The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action." Now looking at the image Fabian has given us, it only shows a little over 100 years, and one may not appreciate the severity of temperature changes. While there are small dips and some areas with a downward trend, this does in no way cover geologic time. Compare this to temperature changes as derived from numerous sources for the past 1000 years: Most of these arguments come from the " Hockey Stick is broken " arguments. Most of these come from the science not having all the tools available or developed at the initial time. However, since these initial measurements were made, more and more tools have become available. And they are agreeing with the initial set of measurements. Again, with all this, you will notice statistical fluctuations. The best way to describe these would almost be to say they are weather. Weather is not climate. As shortlived humans, we have a difficult time remembering or projecting more than a few months in advance of our present time on a personal basis. Hence why weather changes seem so prevalent to us, even though they may only span a series of a few years. The overall trend is still very much upward. | {
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2,673 | Some sports drinks, and even vegetables claim to be 'more hydrating than water'. What does this even mean? How is 'hydration' even measured? If I ate enough cucumbers could I survive without ever drinking anything at all? | They seem to measure hydration by seeing how much of the fluid stays in the body instead of being secreted. For milk there a study with describes the process: Urine samples were collected before
and for 5 h after exercise to assess
fluid balance. Urine excretion over
the recovery period did not change
during the milk trials whereas there
was a marked increase in output
between 1 and 2 h after drinking water
and the sports drink. Cumulative urine
output was less after the milk drinks
were consumed (611 (sd 207) and 550
(sd 141) ml for milk and milk with
added sodium, respectively, compared
to 1184 (sd 321) and 1205 (sd 142) ml
for the water and sports drink; P <
0·001). Subjects remained in net
positive fluid balance or euhydrated
throughout the recovery period after
drinking the milk drinks but returned
to net negative fluid balance 1 h
after drinking the other drinks. | {
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2,679 | I recently saw this video, where among other things they claimed that there is no correlation between penis size and race. Is this true? I don't remember everything about the video. It was animated, gave a lot of statistics about sex, and was titled something like "All you wanted to know about sex". EDIT:To be clear, I shall use this definition from Wikipedia: Race is classification of humans into large and distinct populations or groups often based on factors such as appearance based on heritable phenotypical characteristics or geographic ancestry. | SUMMARY: There doesn't seem to be enough information to fully prove or disprove the correlation, but whatever studies ARE avaiable, for most part, support the theory that there are no statistically significant differences . Some example studies listed below: Here's a quote from one study: There are several areas where further work is needed. For instance, except for the Korean
study, there is little evidence of racial differences . This runs counter to many widely
held suppositions and needs further investigation. The study quoted is a review, conducted by Drs. Kevan Wylie and Ian Eardley of the Porterback Clinic and Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield and St. James’ Hospital in Leeds, United Kingdom, respectively, combines results from more than 50 international research projects into penis size and small penis syndrome (SPS) conducted since 1942. Drawing upon the results of 12 relevant studies, the review, detailed in the British Journal of Urology (BJU) International, finds that the average erect penis is about 5.5 to 6.2 inches long and about 4.7 to 5.1 inches in circumference. I think that the article might be available online , though it's a Google Docs URL so I'm unsure of whether it will work permanently. It's worth looking at since it contains (in Table 1) the raw data on which above-quoted conclusion was made. In addition, Google Answers has several links to other studies/statistics. One thing it did state up front (I think quoting from Wiki): The only reliable penis-size studies commonly quoted in the literature
are the Kinsey study, the UCSF study, and an Italian study, none of
which even attempted to correlate size with race. Specifically, Kinsey data - which one would have naturally started with - is noted to be problematic due to extremely small sample size for African Americans (sample in double digits). Another related data point is the following study : Should the definition of micropenis vary according to ethnicity? Cheng PK, Chanoine JP. Endocrinology and Diabetes Unit, British Columbia's Children's Hospital, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Mean length -2.5 SD was used for the definition of micropenis and was 2.6, 2.5 and 2.3 cm for Caucasian, East-Indian and Chinese babies, respectively (p < 0.05). This is close to the widely accepted recommendation that a penile length of 2.4- 2.5 cm be considered as the lowest limit for the definition of micropenis. And to round up the studies I could find quickly: " “Oversized” Penile Length In The Black People; Myth Or Reality" - Tropical Journal of Medical Research Vol. 11 (1) 2007: pp. 16-18
ISSN: 1119-0388 Design: A prospective and comparative study Setting: The Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Nigeria. Subjects and Method: Full-stretch flaccid penile lengths, and flaccid penile lengths, were measured in 115 adult men of the Black race in Nigeria. The results were compared with reported similar main studies on people of other races, which were accessible to the authors. These studies were done in Italy, Greece, Korea, Britain, and the United States of America. Result : The mean full-stretch penile length of the Nigerian Blacks was 13.37cm and the mean flaccid length was 9.36cm. Similar studies reported full-stretch penile lengths of 12.50cm in Italians, 12.18cm in Greeks, 9.6cm in Koreans, 13cm in British Caucasians, and 12.45cm in the American Caucasians. The penile length for Nigerian Blacks was longer than those of the other races, but the differences were only statistically different in comparison with the Koreans. Conclusion : There is the possibility of racial differences in penile sizes, but there is no convincing scientific background to support the ascription of bigger penile dimensions to people of the Black race | {
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2,744 | I have encountered many people in my life that believe that your blood is blue until it hits the air and only then it turns red. The blue color of our veins is also explained the same way, as the deoxygenated blood in the veins is claimed to be blue. See for example : When blood gives up oxygen to the different parts of the body, it becomes blue. The veins take blood back to the heart and lungs. They are near the surface of the skin, so you can see them. Source(s): I am a medical doctor. Is the color of human blood ever blue, and if it is not, why are our veins blue? Does the presence of oxygen change the color of blood? | This paper holds the answer: We investigate why vessels that contain blood, which has a red or a dark red color, may look bluish in human tissue. [...] To summarize, the reason for the bluish color of a
vein is not greater remission of blue light compared
with red light; rather, it is the greater decrease in the
red remission above the vessel compared to its
surroundings than the corresponding effect in the
blue. — Why do veins appear blue? A new look at an old question , by Alwin Kienle, Lothar Lilge, I. Alex Vitkin, Michael S. Patterson, Brian C. Wilson,
Raimund Hibst, and Rudolf Steiner In summary: there are other reasons why veins are blue (due to the color of the surrounding tissue), and blood is always different tints of red but never blue. | {
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2,761 | Did Martin Luther King, Jr. say I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy It's been going around the tweeterwebs today in response to Osama bin Laden's death. | The source of that particular quote was a Facebook post by someone named Jessica Dovey: @pennjillette I am the original author of the "MLK" quote. Somewhere my words got mixed with his. The post: http://i.imgur.com/cqtjw.jpg Dovey said "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy", and then quoted Martin Luther King Jr.: "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." - Martin Luther King, Jr. The Facebook post itself appeared as follows: | {
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2,785 | Did Apple "jumpstart the USB market"? An example of the claim is as follows: When Apple released their iMac there was a rush to release peripherals to support them. Before that nobody really cared about USB despite the fact that it was present on the majority of PCs. People were fine with serial and parallel ports - there was simply insufficient reasons to switch to USB. The iMac G3 was released August 15, 1998, and according to Wikipedia it was the first Mac to have a USB port . It looks as though USB 1.0 was released November 1995 , meaning the timeline correlates. How much of a factor was the iMac on the pick-up of USB, and in particular was that influence great enough to conclude that the iMac "jumpstarted" the USB Market? As an objective measure, did the number of USB peripherals measurably increase in production at the time of (and because of) the release of the first iMac? Even if there was a measurable increase in the production of USB peripherals at the time, is there any evidence to suggest that the use of he USB port would have increased anyway (i.e. for reasons other than the iMac supporting it, e.g. because of the maturity of chipsets/drivers, etc.)? Thank you for reading. | It's unlikely that Apple's support for USB had any significant impact on the adoption of the standard. There are two other events that, in combination, "jump started" USB adoption. 1. Windows 98 release provides comprehensive USB support Windows 98 was released in June 1998 . Prior to Windows 98, USB support in Windows was flaky at best. Support was hastily added to Windows 95 through a patch which was pretty universally panned at the time , with some vendors even disabling the ports if the machine shipped with Windows 95: We spent hours trying to get the Panasonic notebook's USB port to work, then found out the port had been disabled. Panasonic believes that USB with Windows 95 OSR2.1 is so unreliable that users are better off without it. If all goes well, the next version of Windows may help. " We acknowledge that support [for USB in Windows 95] is very limited ," acknowledges Stacey Breyfogle, a Microsoft product manager. Vendors must write complex drivers to make their USB peripherals work under Windows 95 OSR2.1, but Microsoft will build more of the USB technology into Windows 98. Windows 98 added this extra functionality, fixed many bugs and made it easier for vendors to write robust drivers for their devices: The Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) operating systems contain second-generation Universal Serial Bus (USB) support from Microsoft. A fundamental assumption in the PC industry is that second-generation software is always more stable and has fewer bugs than the first-generation version. This is partly because the availability of first-generation software encourages IHVs to produce a greater number and variety of devices; therefore, as the second-generation software is developed, it can be tested against many more devices. This is particularly true for USB device support; only a handful of devices were available for testing the USB support first released to OEMs in October 1996 (in the release known as OEM Service Release [OSR] 2.1). In contrast, the USB support in Windows 98/Windows Me has been tested against over 100 production, pre-production, and engineering prototype USB devices. In particular, more interoperability testing has been done, with multiple USB devices attached to the bus at the same time. In addition to stability and fewer bugs--and therefore a better user experience with USB--USB support in Windows 98/Windows Me has significantly more functionality than the first-generation release. 2. USB 1.1 Specification release The USB 1.1 Specification was released in August 1998 (though peripheral manufacturers would have had access to draft revisions much earlier than that in order to have 1.1 devices ready for market). The USB 1.1 spec had "Updates to all chapters to fix problems identified" . Texas Instruments' assessment of the adoption of USB identifies the updated standard as a key driver for vendors: The release of the USB 1.1 specification combined with the native operating system support offered by Microsoft enabled the rapid adoption of USB hosts in the PC. It also drove the conversion of many peripheral devices from legacy interfaces such as serial (RS- 232), PS-2 (mice and keyboards), and parallel ports (Centronix and IEEE-1284 for printers) to this common interface standard. ComputerWorld released an article in December 1997 which describes in more detail how peripheral manufacturers were waiting for Windows 98 USB driver support before fully backing the standard: Universal Bus awaits Windows 98 drivers ...Most notebook PCs have come equipped with a USB port since mid 1997, but most vendors aren't yet making the printers, scanners, cameras, mice or monitors that comply with the USB standard. But at Comdex/Fall '97, held recently in Las Vegas, a handful of vendors displayed USB-compliant devices. They included Eastman Kodak in Rochester, N.Y.; Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif.; Logitech Corp. in Fremont, Calif.; and Connectix Corp in San Mateo, Calif. And 3Com Corp. announced that its new 56K bit/sec voice/fax modem will have USB support. However, the "one-size-fits-all" port isn't expected to be easy to use until end users upgrade to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 98, which has the necessary drivers to support USB devices. Windows 95 doesn't fully support USB. ... "We're getting close to this being a real product and a real standard with support", said Nathan Nuttall, an analyst at Sherwood Research in Wellesley, Mass. But he said corporate adoption of USB will take two to three years. "If you've got a system [in place], you're not going to throw away all your monitors and printers", he said. "For now, you're looking at a lot of serial connections." Published just after the release of Windows 98, this CNET article does a good job of summarising the numerous benefits the new OS would bring to peripheral makers : Peripherals to surge with Win 98 Peripheral vendors--companies that specialize in modems, digital cameras, add-in cards, and the like--will likely experience an upswing in business following Microsoft's Windows 98 rollout, since the new operating system will bring built-in support for a number of emerging hardware technologies .
... By far the most practical addition to Windows 98 is built-in support for the universal serial bus (USB) connector. ... "Up until now, there has been no reason to implement [USB] on low-end products because it adds to cost," Bursley noted. "That said, we expect within the next year some inkjet printers will offer USB connections. Many already offer USB printers in Japan," she added. But peripherals manufacturers are working on USB devices as PCs, toward the day when Windows 98 and USB connectors become more common. Eventually, economies of scale will help persuade companies to come out with more USB products. "There will be a pretty impressive showing of peripherals this summer," said Rob Bennett, group product manager for Windows 98. "There are 250 devices due to be launched around Windows 98 and 100 in development [to be] released in the next year," he said. John W. Koon's book USB: Peripheral Design summarised the landscape for USB peripheral manufacturers in 1998: According to Dataquest and Intel's projectsion (USB conference, July 1996), USB PC shipments were estimated at 20 million units in 1997 and 100 million units in 1999. In addition, the Bishop Report stated that the USB connector market would hit $400 million in 1999. The estimated ratio of peripheral use per host PC is four to one. Mid 1998 saw an explosion of USB devices onto the market. According to the USB implementers forum chair at the time, Stephen Walley: Three main factors are credited for the large volume of development activity, according to Whalley. These include: USB becoming mainstream on all consumer desktop and most notebook PCs, the wide availability of building blocks for developing products (such as silicon and development tools), and the upcoming availability of Windows '98 . What About Apple? Apple's release of the iMac spurred the recovery of the company, but it's difficult to argue that a single computer model (accounting for less than 5% of private desktop computer sales at its peak) influenced the adoption of USB in any great way. In 1997, Steve Jobs had recently been re-hired as Apple CEO and was trying to put the company back on the path to success. He slashed their product line and penned a deal with Microsoft to get Office on the Mac for at least 5 years, and announced the iMac which did away with all Apple proprietary ports and offered only USB. USB at the time didn't support high speeds - the aim was for Apple to be interoperable with the world of PC peripherals that was largely incompatible at the time. Apple users had to buy Mac-specific scanners, printers and webcams, and Apple moving to USB would make it easy for peripheral manufacturers to make their products cross compatible, which made the Mac a more attractive platform and made it easier for PC users to switch and keep all of their PC peripherals. The earliest public hint at Apple support for USB was in October 1997 : Jobs' keynote, meanwhile, offered many promises and few details for the bedraggled company's recovery.
... He also said that in 1998 the company will support FireWire, Apple's high-speed technology for linking Macintoshes with devices such as printers and cameras, and Universal Serial Bus, which links peripherals like scanners and monitors. However, prior to any indication that Apple would support USB, the following had been ocurring : Jan 1996 - USB Specification 1.0 released, authored by Compaq, Intel, Microsoft and NEC , see also the full USB 1.1 Specification (PDF) Nov 1996 - PCWorld deems USB a " radical rethink " and "grand idea", and eagerly anticipates devices being made available Jan 1997 - Microsoft , in addition to previously helping to develop the USB standard, releases an updated version of Windows 95 enabling the use of USB devices Feb 1997 - Kodak demonstrate the first Digital Camera with USB connection for power and data Feb 1997 - Xirlink demostrated a USB Webcam which went on sale in Sept 1997 June 1997 - Philips demonstrated a USB hub enabled monitor, USB infrared port (for already existing wireless mice and keyboards) and USB speakers June 1997 - Thrustmaster demonstrated a USB Joystick June 1997 - Sony began producing laptops, these had both USB and Firewire ports as standard July 1997 - HP announced future computers would be USB enabled , and showed off PCs with USB keyboards which included multimedia buttons, as well as USB printers and scanners July 1997 - Canon had functional USB Printers available for testing July 1997 - Dell, Gateway, NEC, and Panasonic were selling consumer PCs with USB ports Oct 1997 - Connectix (now Logitech) QuickClip USB Webcam available for purchase for $99 Nov 1997 - Connectix (now Logitech) QuickCam VC USB Webcam available for purchase . Over 1 million Connectix units sold before the release of Win98. This camera didn't work with the iMac until September 1998 1997 (Month unknown) - USB-IF membership increased to more than 400. Over 500 products were in development worldwide. First third party USB developers' conference held. Essentially, all of the major technology players had decided to support USB as a standard and peripheral makers were switching over. Prior to the release of the first Apple with USB support, USB devices and computers with USB ports (for example: the Dell GXa, one of the best selling business PCs of the era, IBM's PC 300 Series) were both widespread. There were well over 50 USB peripherals on the market prior to the launch of the iMac in 1998 , and hundreds more came onto the market throughout that year Another reason that Apple likely had little impact on adoption of USB was their tiny market share at the time. In November 1998, over 84% of retail sales were PCs just from the top 4 brands at the time, with Apple coming in at under 5%. This also doesn't take into account business PC sales, which were at the time even more heavily lopsided in the PCs favour. | {
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2,790 | I was discussing some things with a psychology major, and he insisted that people always use a language to think. This is quite opposed to my own experience. I agree that I am capable of formulating my own thoughts in a kind of internal monologue, which is certainly in a language. But this is just one kind of my thought process. Sometimes my thoughts seem to be less language-bound. And what I think is the most important, it happens to me sometimes that I am speaking and suddenly notice that the word I am going to say is in a different language (almost always it happens just before I say it, but after the sentence has been formed and said up to the word). I don't mean the cases where I have learned a concept in another language and I am grasping for the correct word in the language I am currently speaking, I mean perfectly everyday words, like saying "I saw the book " and realizing that the word which I am going to say next is "gestern" instead of "yesterday". But at the time I realize this, I have already spoken the preceding part of the sentence. In very rare cases, I only notice it after I have said it, and hear my own wrong sentence. I interpret such occasions as follows: I must have thought of the time reference without using a word in a language, after that constructed a sentence without consciously choosing words (else I would have noticed that "gestern" is wrong), and only made use of my vocabulary after that, practically at the point of commanding the mouth to form the words. But he claimed that this isn't true, and that humans always use a language for thinking, not just for communicating. He couldn't point me to sources, or even tell me about an author researching such problems. He just claimed that he knows it for a fact, and must have learned it in a lecture. Do you know of research in that area? And what is its conclusion? Skivvz's comment about off-topic makes me think that maybe I didn't state my question clear enough. The claim I am disputing is: People always use a language in their internal thought processes. I provided an example which I interpret as anecdotal evidence against the claim. I also explained my interpretation. I am not asking how good my interpretation of this example is (this is probably the content suited to a psychology forum). But if you know of research which proves or disproves the claim, I'd like to hear about it. | No. Human thought precedes language. The anecdotal evidence for this should suffice, but you cannot be trusted (as you already have language skills). Short Answer: Prelingual infants think. In 2004 researchers Hespos and Spelke explored Korean language concepts with a group of five-month-old (human) infants from English-speaking homes... The example they used to explore this
question was differences between how
different languages describe space.
For example, the distinction between a
tight fit versus a loose fit is marked
in Korean but not in English. A cap on
a pen would be a tight fit
relationship, while a pen on a table
would be a loose fit relationship.
English does not mark this distinction
in the same way, instead emphasizing
the “containment” versus “support”
relationship, for example: the coffee
is in the mug or the mug is on the
table. - source ...the infants showed an understanding of events that represented a change in "fit"... Because this capacity is observed well
before the acquisition of a natural
language in infants whose ambient
language does not mark the
distinction, this capacity does not
depend on language experience.
Instead, the capacity seems to be
linked to mechanisms for representing
objects and their motions that are
shared by other animals and therefore
evolved before the human language
faculty. - source In other words... Learning a particular language may
lead us to favor some of these
concepts over others, but the concepts
already existed before we put them
into words. - source More: Why would you think language is required ? On one hand we can claim that we can
even think in pictures or on the other
hand one has to think to learn a
language. In terms of neurosciences it
has been proved that thinking without
language is possible. However the
philosophical references often deny
that one can think without language. - source These philosophical discussions have been going on for sometime... When people have begun to reflect on
language, its relation to thinking
becomes a central concern. Several
cultures have independently viewed the
main function of language as the
expression of thought. Ancient Indian
grammarians speak of the soul
apprehending things with the intellect
and inspiring the mind with a desire
to speak, and in the Greek
intellectual tradition Aristotle
declared, “Speech is the
representation of the experiences of
the mind” (On Interpretation). Such an
attitude passed into Latin theory and
thence into medieval doctrine.
Medieval grammarians envisaged three
stages in the speaking process: things
in the world exhibit properties; these
properties are understood by the minds
of humans; and, in the manner in which
they have been understood, so they are
communicated to others by the
resources of language. Rationalist
writers on language in the 17th
century gave essentially a similar
account: speaking is expressing
thoughts by signs invented for the
purpose, and words of different
classes (the different parts of
speech) came into being to correspond
to the different aspects of thinking.
- source Wilhelm von Humboldt : Credited as an originator of the linguistic relativity hypothesis (aka: the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). Benjamin Lee Whorf : Widely known for his ideas about linguistic relativity, the hypothesis that language influences thought. Noam Chomsky : Well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics. On the one hand, most people, after
hearing evidence that language is an
innate faculty of humans, would not be
surprised to learn that it comes from
the same source that every other
complex innate aspect of the human
brain and body comes from — namely,
natural selection. But two very
prominent people deny this conclusion,
and they aren't just any old prominent
people, but Stephen Jay Gould,
probably the most famous person who
has written on evolution, and Noam
Chomsky, the most famous person who
has written on language. They've
suggested that language appeared as a
by- product of the laws of growth and
form of the human brain, or perhaps as
an accidental by-product of selection
for something else, and they deny that
language is an adaptation. I disagree
with both of them. - Pinker, Language Is a Human Instinct Steven Pinker : Argues that language is an "instinct" or biological adaptation shaped by natural selection. ...These scholars, ranging from
Aristotle to Freud, took these
specific instances to be exceptional,
marginal eruptions of meaning, curious
and suggestive. But none of them
focused on the general mental capacity
of blending or, as far as we can tell,
even recognize that there is such a
mental capacity. Attentive to the
specific attraction - the painting
,the poem, the dream , the scientific
insight - they did not look for what
all these bits and pieces have in
common. The spectacular trees masked
the forest. - Turner -Fauconnier, The
Way We Think More... Does language shape what we think ? How does our Language shape the way we think ? Background: Why is language important ? Before Homo sapiens came on the scene 150 kya innovation and change amongst the genus of the family Hominidae was pretty dull. Homo habilis showed up 2.4 mya and stayed around for a million years. They had one, and only one, great idea: Stone tools. Next up was Homo erectus (1.5 – 0.2 mya). Erectus was a slow starter but about 400,000 years ago they hit pay-dirt: Controlled use of Fire. Great. For 2.2 million years of effort we have some sharp rocks and a barbeque. Then things get really interesting..... Any innovation must take place within
a species, since there is no place
else it can do so. Natural selection
is, moreover, not a creative force. It
merely works on variations that come
into existence spontaneously—it cannot
call innovations into existence just
because they might be advantageous.
Any new structure or aptitude has to
be in place before it can be exploited
by its possessors, and it may take
some time for those possessors to
discover all the uses of such
novelties. Such seems to have been the
case for Homo sapiens in that the
earliest well-documented members of
our species appear to have behaved in
broadly the same manner as
Neanderthals for many tens of
thousands of years. It is highly
unlikely that another species
anatomically indistinguishable from
Homo sapiens but behaviorally similar
to Neanderthals was supplanted
worldwide in an extremely short span
of time. Therefore, it seems
appropriate to conclude that a latent
capacity for symbolic reasoning was
present when anatomically modern Homo
sapiens emerged and that our forebears discovered their radically new
behavioral abilities somewhat later in
time. A cultural “release mechanism” of some
sort was necessarily involved in this
discovery, and the favoured candidate
for this role is language , the
existence of which cannot be inferred
with any degree of confidence from the
records left behind by any other
species but our own. Language is the
ultimate symbolic activity , involving
the creation and manipulation of
mental symbols and permitting the
posing of questions such as “What if?”
Not all components of human thought
are symbolic (the human brain has a
very long accretionary, evolutionary
history that still governs the way
thoughts and feelings are processed),
but it is certainly the addition of
symbolic manipulations to intuitive
processes that makes possible what is
recognized as the human mind . The origins of this mind are obscure
indeed, especially as scientists are
still ignorant of how a mass of
electrochemical signals in the brain
gives rise to what we experience as
consciousness. But the invention of
language would plausibly have released
the earliest of the cultural and
technological innovations that
symbolic thought makes possible—in the
process unleashing a cascade of
discoveries that is still ongoing. One
of the most striking features of the
archaeological record that accompanies
the arrival of behaviorally modern
Homo sapiens is a distinct alteration
in the tempo of innovation and change.
Significant cultural and technological
novelties had previously been rare,
with long periods of apparent
stability intervening between
relatively sudden episodes of
innovation. But once behaviorally
modern Homo sapiens arrived on the
scene, different local technological
traditions—and, by extension, other
forms of cultural diversity—began to
proliferate regularly, setting a pace
that is still gathering today . - source The Bottom Line When you look into the eyes of the one you love and think of what they mean to you... What language do you think in ? Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs, Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet. - Bill What language was he thinking in ? | {
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2,795 | There is a myth saying that having a BAC in the 0.129% - 0.138% range can improve your cognitive abilities. This effect is called the Ballmer Peak (a reference to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft) and is pictured nicely in this xkcd . Is there any truth in this myth? | This article by Norlander specifically studies the relationship between moderate alcohol consumption (1.0ml/kg body weight) and creativity. According to my very rough calculations, this would correspond to a BAC in the range of 0.12–0.14 for a 73kg human. The paper concludes ...modest alcohol consumption inhibits aspects of creativity based mainly on the secondary process (preparation, certain parts of illumination, and verification), and disinhibits those based mainly on the primary process (incubation, certain parts of illumination, and restitution). In other words, moderate alcohol consumption does improve certain types of creative thinking, while inhibiting other types of creative thinking. Since the skills required for computer programming are solely cognitive in nature (discounting the motor skills required to type, of course), and given that creativity is a large part of computer programming, it is at least plausible that one might gain some amount of improvement from alcohol consumption. There have also been studies on the relationship between alcohol consumption and creative output . That study examined 34 well known, heavy drinking, 20 th century writers, artists, and composers/performers. It concludes: Analysis of this information yielded a number of interesting findings. Alcohol use proved detrimental to productivity in over 75% of the sample, especially in the latter phases of their drinking careers. However, it appeared to provide direct benefit for about 9% of the sample, indirect benefit for 50% and no appreciable effect for 40% at different times in their lives. Creative activity, conversely, can also affect drinking behavior, leading, for instance, to increased alcohol consumption in over 30% of the sample. Because of the complexities of this relationship, no simplistic conclusions are possible. So for a small portion of people there was a notable increase in creative output as a result of alcohol intake. It does appear that the study did not control for the quantity of alcohol intake, though, so this may not be directly applicable to the Ballmer Peak. The best study I was able to find on the subject was by Lapp, Collins, and Izzo . They gave subjects vodka tonics of varying strengths (by varying the ratio of tonic to vodka), some of which did not even contain any alcohol. The subjects believed that they were drinking a standard-strength vodka tonic. The subjects then were asked to perform a number of cognitively and creatively challenging tasks. Here is what they conclude: The present results support the idea that creative people probably gain inspriation from consuming alcohol ..., but show that this effect may be due to the expected rather than the pharmacological effects of the drug. ... A convergence of evidence supported the idea that creativity is enhanced (at least in some aspects) by the expected effects of alcohol. In other words, alcohol can improve certain aspects of one's cognitive ability, but this effect is not likely due to any pharmacological process ( i.e. , it is often sufficient to merely believe that one is drinking alcohol in order to achieve the same benefit). And remember: The Ballmer Peak, as it is currently understood, is but a two dimensional projection of what in reality is a higher dimensional space, vi&. , ;-) | {
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2,799 | According to reports, there were 4 helicopters used in the raid on Osama Bin Laden. Is it conceivable that even one helicopter could be flown so close to the capital of another country without raising alarm bells? Considering these were military helicopters and there were four of them, I am skeptical that this would be allowed. Surely the airspace in Pakistan is monitored just as well as other countries? | EDIT TO ADD INFORMATION REQUESTED. If a helicopter is flying low, and not "squawking", there is no way that any civilian radar will pick it up. Especially in a mountainous region such as Pakistan. Simple mechanics of radar as illustrated by this picture from Answers.com . Note that mountains between the radar site and aircraft will further block the ability of the radar to detect an aircraft. Keep in mind that if they can't be seen, they can't get shot at either. And these are some of the best helicopter pilots on the planet. Most radars are unable to detect anything flying contours, but I would wager that for part of this they were flying nap of the earth . The below image is taken from the Global Security Website ( the exact image is from Figure 28 on this page ) where they discuss many modes of flight for helicopter safety from enemy fire. Even larger aircraft like the FB-111 would use this technique to avoid detection without the need for stealth technology. So even though the airspace is monitored, if they can't be seen, it doesn't matter. Also, I don't think this was "allowed" or "disallowed" by the Pakistani government. Some covert operations are carried out, and then back-briefed if the target (such as Osama bin Laden) is important enough. ADDED INFO: Now, several folks have asked about the helicopters used, and some of their performance characteristics. The most likely aircraft (as reported in a couple of other answers as well) is the MH-60 Pave Hawk (a Blackhawk variant modified for special operations). Again, to quote Global Security, the performance characteristics are: Primary Function Infiltration, exfiltration and resupply of special operations forces in day, night or marginal weather conditions. Power Plant Two General Electric T700-GE-01C engines Thrust 1,630 shaft horsepower, each engine Length 64 feet, 8 inches (17.1 meters) Height 16 feet, 8 inches (4.4 meters) Rotary Diameter 53 feet, 7 inches (14.1 meters) Speed 184 mph (294.4 kph) Maximum Takeoff Weight 22,000 pounds (9,900 kilograms) Range 445 nautical miles; 504 statute miles ( unlimited with air refueling ) Armament Two 7.62mm mini-guns Crew Two pilots, one flight engineer and one gunner In particular, note that these aircraft are mid-air refulable from a KC-130 (NOT KC-135), thus they have a nearly unlimited range. I highly doubt that they took off from anywhere inside Pakistan (i.e. Ghazi) but rather originated in Afghanistan. I cannot say where exactly though, but no matter where they took off from, if they received refueling prior to entering Pakistan, the range is more than adequate to get to Abbottabad and back on one tank of gas (looking at google maps, it appears that the distance is less than 350 KM from Kabul, or about 200 miles). So a little less than 400 mile round trip, at about 200 MPH would be about 2 hours total (add in the actual assault and there you have your timeline). These figures are approximate though because things change with load-out and other configurations. These aircraft would probably have flown in a formation that would probably helped to disguise their true numbers. Someone mentioned that ATC must have a squawk to paint these aircraft. That is overstated, however as previously mentioned, they were probably well below the radar, and aided by the mountainous terrain. Add in they were most likely using EMCON 4 procedures, and then it would be even more difficult to pick them up by any means. As the cited article also mentioned, the noise reduction and additional radar absorbent paint just added to the stealthiness of these aircraft (as if SPEC OPS flight patterns were not enough). And thanks to Kit Sunde, we have further info: Here's Pakistan denying having known about the raid, "Bin Laden: Pakistan intelligence agency admits failures" , BBC which also states: "US helicopters entered Pakistani airspace making use of blind spots in the radar coverage due to hilly terrain." Feel free to leave more questions if you have them. | {
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2,802 | I was reading Conservapedia's article on John Maynard Keynes and pederasty: Keynes and his friends made numerous
trips to the resorts surrounding the
Mediterranean. At the resorts, little
boys were sold by their families to
bordellos which catered to
homosexuals. The article references an external source, KEYNES AT HARVARD - Economic Deception as a Political Credo : He and his fellow leftist reformers
however, had no compunction in
exploiting human degradation and
misery in Tunis, Algeria, Morocco,
Egypt and Constantinople (Istanbul).
These served as convenient spawning
grounds for the establishment of
enclosed brothels filled with
children, who were compelled to
satisfy the unnatural lusts of
high-born English socialists Zygmund Dobbs is his article SUGAR KEYNES for The Review of the News wrote: His particular depravity was the sexual abuse of little boys . . The idea that Keynes was a child molester sounded a little strange to me, so I looked on Wikipedia's article on John Maynard Keynes . I couldn't find any hint of child molestation allegations. Is there any truth to the claims that Keynes was a child molester? | Your definition of "molesting" and "pederasty" are likely based on your personal beliefs, so I do not know if this is helpful or not. There is a reference in the original Conservapedia article to this article in the Economist That article examines Keynes' own sex diaries: The first diary is easy: Keynes lists his sexual partners, either by their initials (GLS for Lytton Strachey, DG for Duncan Grant) or their nicknames ("Tressider," for J. T. Sheppard, the King's College Provost). When he apparently had a quick, anonymous hook-up, he listed that sex partner generically: "16-year-old under Etna" and "Lift boy of Vauxhall" in 1911, for instance, and "Jew boy," in 1912. Born in mid 1883, he would have been about 28 in 1911. So, according to his diaries, he had sex with a 16-year-old, while aged 28, and others that he described as "boys" (which can be a broad term for ages). I don't know if the age of consent has changed recently in Italy (which I assumed is the Etna referred to), but it is currently 14 years old , so if he did that today, he would not be committing a crime. Judging historical figures' behaviour by today's/local social mores is often tricky. (Somehow, I don't think he would have written it in his diary if he knew, a century later, the semantics would be debated in public.) And, of course, his ideas should be argued on their merits, not on his taste in sexual partners. | {
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2,839 | If you didn't grow up in a tropical climate, you probably heard something like this as a child... Put on a hat before you go out because
you lose the most heat through your
head. Some say that the reason you lose more heat through your head is because "heat rises" and most of your body heat naturally escapes though your head. Is this true? Does more body heat escape from our heads than from other parts of the body? | Apperently... You can lose 40 to 45 percent of body
heat from an unprotected head and even
more from the unprotected neck, wrist,
and ankles. These areas of the body
are good radiators of heat and have
very little insulating fat. The brain
is very susceptible to cold and can
stand the least amount of cooling.
Because there is much blood
circulation in the head, most of which
is on the surface, you can lose heat
quickly if you do not cover your head.
- FM 21-76 US ARMY SURVIVAL MANUAL , BASIC PRINCIPLES OF COLD
WEATHER SURVIVAL, PG 148. Can this be right ? Does more body heat escape from our heads than from other parts of the body ? Short Answer: No. In general, heat loss is essential to
provide thermoregulation and prevent
excessive heat build-up in the body to
avoid the consequences of heat stroke.
However, heat loss in the head is the
same as for any exposed body part. The
exposed surface area of the body,
along with relative humidity and
temperature, determines heat loss
primarily through evaporation and our
head makes up only 10 percent of body
surface area. So, at rest , heat
loss through the head accounts for
only 7-10 percent of total heat
dissipation. - source See below: General heat loss through the head. EXCEPT... As you begin
exercise, cerebral blood flow
increases due to increased cardiac
output and the percentage of heat lost
through the head accounts for about 50
percent of total body heat loss. As
exercise continues, more oxygen is
directed toward muscle and blood flow
to this tissue increases. Core
temperature has to be maintained and
as body heat increases, the skin
arterioles expand, or vasodilate,
redirecting blood flow to the skin
which cools the blood. Hence, total
blood flow to the brain is decreased
and the percentage of total body heat
lost through the head is reduced to
about 10 percent. The percent lost
through the scalp returns to 7 percent
after sweating begins. - source Shivering is exercise... But, this is important, if they are
shivering, the percent of heat loss
via the scalp can increase to upwards
of 55% , so protecting the head well is
a very important part of treating the
hypothermia patient. And as you can
imagine, the primary defense against
the cold and hypothermia is
vasoconstriction of the peripheral
circulation, this shunts blood to the
core, reduces circulation to the skin,
and increases the percent of heat loss
through the scalp. - source General heat loss through the head source: Thermal effects of whole head submersion in cold water on nonshivering humans One hypothesis predicts a substantial
heat loss through the head due to the
great amount of surface blood flow in
the scalp and because scalp blood
vessels do not vasoconstrict in
response to cold as do surface vessels
in other body areas (8). An
alternative hypothesis predicts
minimal heat loss from the head
because submersion of the head and
neck would only involve 7–9% more of
the body surface area (20). As well,
mathematical modeling predicts minimal
conductive heat loss directly through
the scalp and skull (27). The present results are consistent
with previous data (9) in that the supposition of proportionately greater
heat loss from the head was not
supported. Whole body cutaneous heat loss
(n = 8) values for baseline (20 min)
and immersion (30 min) periods. * Greater than body-insulated conditions, P <
0.001. †Greater than head-out in the same subconditions, P < 0.05. The measured heat loss from the head
in both head-in conditions was only
100 kJ (compared with 17 kJ in the two
head-out conditions). In contrast,
total heat loss in the body-exposed
configurations was 914 and 988 kJ, for
head-out and head-in conditions,
respectively. In the latter case, the
head accounted for only 10% of the
total body heat loss when both the
head and body were submersed. The
surface area of the submersed head is
7% of the total surface area of the
body. Energy
production and loss during 30 min. of
immersion in 17°C water (n = 8). Total
loss includes whole body cutaneous and
respiratory heat loss. Body loss
includes trunk, legs, and arms. * Greater than body-insulated conditions, P < 0.001. †Greater than
head out in the same subconditions, P
<
0.005. ‡Greater than head-out conditions, P < 0.001. These results thus indicate that heat loss from the head is not
disproportionately increased over what
would be expected from the head’s
contribution to total body surface
area. However... With the body exposed to cold water
and shivering intact, additional
dorsal head immersion increased core
cooling from 3.8 to 9.4°C/h (250%) in
1–2°C water. The Bottom Line... Oliver_C is correct: "No, mom, Science says I don't need to wear a hat !..." "...Ok, mom, I'll bring one along just in case I get cold !" Cited and worth a read... (8) Froese G and Burton AC. Heat loses from the human head. J Appl
Physiol 10: 235–241, 1957. (9) Giesbrecht G, Lockhart T, Bristow G, and Steinman A. Thermal
effects of dorsal head immersion in cold water on nonshivering humans.
J Appl Physiol 99: 1958–1964 2005. (20) Layton R, Mints WJ, Annis J, Rack M, and Webb P. Calorimetry with
heat flux transducers: comparison with a suit calorimeter. J Appl Physiol
54: 1361–1367, 1983. (27) Xu X, Tikuisis P, and Giesbrecht G. A mathematical model for human
brain cooling during cold-water near-drowning. J Appl Physiol 86: 265–
272, 1999. | {
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2,849 | I was tempted to go drop $8500 on these awesome speaker cables so I could be like Whiplash (see customer pictures), but I'm curious, if I use them for my audio system, will they actually make a perceptible difference over some low gauge copper wire? At what point do speaker cables start to suffer diminishing returns, and do "audiophiles" actually have the uncanny ability to detect the differences? | The only perceptible difference will be the tilt of your seated body due to a substantially smaller wallet. Unless you require speaker cable runs of 50+ feet, where shielding is actually important, there are no benefits to the exorbitantly expensive speaker cabling. There have been anectodal, supposedly blind tests confirming that Monster(tm) cables sound no better than a coat hanger. We gathered up a 5 of our audio buddies. We took my "old" Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker cables [ed. Monster Ultra Series THX 1000 Audio Interconnects] (decent cables according to the audio press). We also rigged up 14 gauge, oxygen free Belden stranded copper wire with a simple PVC jacket. Both were 2 meters long. They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing blind fold testing. Volume levels were set at 75 dB at 1000KHz. A high quality recording of smooth, trio, easy listening jazz was played (Piano, drums, bass). None of us had heard this group or CD before, therefore eliminating biases. The music was played. Of the 5 blind folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster cable. (I was not one of them). This was done 7 times in a row! Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat hangers, reconnected them and twisted them into a pair of speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed them in a closet within the testing room so we were not privy to what he was up to. This made for a pair of 2 meter cables, the exact length of the other wires. The test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, however, when A-B tests occurred, it was impossible to determine which sounded best the majority of the time and which wire was in use. This site also lists some double blind tests where listeners could not pick the difference between $990 "T2" Speaker Cable and cheap 16 Gauge Zip Cord. | {
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2,853 | A couple of people have told me that it's a bad for plants to be watered in the middle of a sunny day, i.e. it's not just that you waste more water due to evaporation, but that there are actually bad effects on the plants itself. I've heard this claim specifically for watering grass. The explanation I heard is that it causes the plants to open up pores or otherwise behave as if it were raining, but the fact that the sun is actually shining leads to burning or other damage. But there are certainly other possible explanations. Can it cause harm to plants to water them under a hot sun? | The argument as I know it goes somewhere along the lines of "water drops act like lenses that focus sunbeams so that they burn the plant". Several experiments have failed to reproduce this , though (link in German, sorry) - a drop of water, even a perfect half-sphere simply doesn't act as a lens. However, there are circumstances where it might happen , and that appears to be if the structure of the leaf surface is not flat but irregular or hairy. In that case, water drops might "hover" above the actual leaf surface, and sunbeams might be focused enough to cause damage. This is not to be expected with grass, though. | {
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2,863 | This is a quite famous quote : 640k ought to be enough for anybody. Did Bill Gates say this? | Bill Gates himself addressed this in 1996 in a column he wrote: I've said some stupid things and some
wrong things, but not that. No one
involved in computers would ever say
that a certain amount of memory is
enough for all time … I keep bumping
into that silly quotation attributed
to me that says 640K of memory is
enough. There's never a citation; the
quotation just floats like a rumor,
repeated again and again. Excerpt from: CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN COMPUTING -- AND MORE , New York Times Syndicate, 1996 He actually addressed it again in 2001: Do you realize the pain the industry went through while the IBM PC was limited to 640K? The machine was going to be 512K at one point, and we kept pushing it up. I never said that statement — I said the opposite of that. | {
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2,867 | The Earth in the famous Pale Blue Dot image (below) is claimed by NASA to be "0.12 pixel in size" . How can something be visible on a digital screen which is smaller than a pixel (or sub-pixel, which is still only a third of a pixel)? | The image was taken 4 billion miles from Earth, according to NASA. The camera is a narrow-angle camera, with the following specifications: The Narrow-Angle camera optics is a
1500mm diameter focal length
all-spherical, catadioptric cassegrain
telescope (a modified MVM 1973 design)
consisting of five elements plus an
additional dust lens located between
the shutter and the vidicon. The f
stop number is 8.5. (VGR ISS
Calibration Report, 1978, an internal
JPL document available from JPL vellum
files). [ source ] Assuming the image is not cropped or scaled in any way (325x441 pixels)... 4 billion miles away is about 6.44×10 12 meters. Now, techically, the 1.5m telescope compared to 6.44×10 12 meters is virtually nothing. What we can do is work out what the field of view would be at Earth. Assuming the Earth is truly 0.12 pixels, that would make 0.12 pixels approximately 12,735,000 m, or the entire image about 3.44×10 10 meters across. (At the distance of Earth.) At 6.44×10 12 meters away, this would make the camera's FOV cos -1 (3.44×10 10 / 6.44×10 12 ), or about 58 degrees. For a narrow angle lens, this sounds about right. Anyone want to verify my trig? I've probably made a mistake somewhere. | {
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2,884 | I have a friend, who adamantly believes that water calcification causes a number of problems, including poor health. He also said it made the water taste disgusting. He had recently installed a demagnetiser (or whatever it is - some kind of quack device) which is supposed to filter out the calcium by magnetically attracting it. Ignoring for now the fact that calcium isn't magnetic, of course, and magnets wouldn't have any effect. Let's presume the magic device does actually filter out calcium. I didn't want to tell him he had been take for a ride (he paid about £200 for the unit), but I did agree to a taste test. I couldn't taste a difference between the uncalcified and calcified water. I've always drunk straight from the tap, with no ill effects so far. What evidence is there that this water calcification, a) contributes to poor health, and/or b) makes tap water taste bad (apparently.) | What makes water hard is calcium carbonate (limescale) . Not only it is not unhealthy, but it is also prescribed as an antacid . The myth that hard water favours kidney stones has been disproved by a study , which has actually found that the opposite is true: a calcium-carbonate-poor diet increases the risk of kidney stones: A slightly lower dietary calcium intake (683 versus 711 mg/day, P = 0.04) was noted in case subjects versus control subjects, but interpretation was confounded by the study of prevalent rather than incident cases. Supplemental calcium intake >500 mg/day was inversely associated with stone occurrence. | {
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2,903 | Traditional folklore suggests women have a higher pain tolerance than men. I have seen a few sites suggesting otherwise. Naturally, plenty of anecdotal accounts of wussy men or women get tossed around whenever the subject is brought up which makes it a little difficult to sift through the crap. Does either sex have a higher pain tolerance than the other? | According to the test by Psychosomatic Medicine journal (2003), men on average have higher pain tolerance and pain threshold than women. METHODS : To examine the influence of
motivation on perceptual and
cardiovascular responses to pain among
women and men, different levels of
monetary incentive (high vs. low
incentive) were provided to a group of
81 healthy young adults undergoing the
cold pressor pain procedure. It was
anticipated that men would have
greater endogenous motivation and
would therefore be less affected by
the external incentive RESULTS : Men had higher pain
thresholds and tolerances and lower
pain ratings than women, but the
incentive condition produced no
significant effect on pain responses.
Resting blood pressure was positively
correlated with pain tolerance among
the low incentive group, whereas blood
pressure reactivity to the cold
pressor predicted pain tolerance in
the high incentive group. | {
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2,904 | This question has probably been asked by almost everyone at some point in their lives. But the answers we receive vary from "it is very good" to "it is very bad". I can understand that becoming obsessive about it is bad (in fact becoming obsessive about anything is bad). But this seems a psychological effect, not one that brings actual physical harm. Is there any definite evidence to say that it is good or bad ? By bad, I mean do we see any definite physical effects like impotency, nerve weakness (some people say your nerves weaken), etc? | Masturbation is in NO way bad for your health. Just keep in mind... Masturbation is very safe -- but not entirely safe. But masturbation safety isn't
guaranteed. "Masturbation is just
about the safest sex there is," says
Cornog. "But the laws of physics and
biology don't stop operating just
because someone is masturbating." In certain extremely rare instances,
masturbation and partner sex alike can
cause penile fracture, which is a medical
emergency that often necessitates
surgery - source General Health Benefits Muscle relaxation Helps you to fall asleep Promotes release of the brain’s opioid-like neurotransmitters (endorphins), which cause feelings of physical and mental well being. Reduces stress Enhances Self-Esteem source Bonus Health Benefits for Females Building resistance to yeast infections. Combating pre-menstrual tension and other physical conditions associated menstrual cycles, like cramps. Relieving painful menstruation by increasing blood flow to the pelvic region. This will also reduce pelvic cramping and related backaches. Masturbation is associated with improved cardiovascular health and lower risk of type-2 diabetes. Prostate Cancer Some interesting research... Whereas frequent overall sexual
activity in younger life (20s)
increased the disease risk, it
appeared to be protective against the
disease when older (50s). Alone,
frequent masturbation activity was a
marker for increased risk in the 20s
and 30s but appeared to be associated
with a decreased risk in the 50s,
while intercourse activity alone was
not associated with the disease. - Sexual activity and prostate cancer
risk in men diagnosed at a younger
age However... The researchers theorize that it may
not be the masturbation itself which
is increasing risk of prostate cancer
in men who masturbate frequently in
their 20s and 30s. Men who masturbate
more may do so because they have high
levels of male sex hormones -- and
young men genetically predisposed to
have hormone-sensitive prostate cancer
will be at higher risk if they have
more male hormones. In men over age
50, the researchers theorize, frequent
masturbation helps drain the prostate
of fluids that may contain
cancer-causing substances.. - WebMD The Bottom Line... Masturbation is in NO way bad for your health. Sources... FOXSexpert: The Health Benefits of Masturbation The decloseting of masturbation ? Masturbation - Better Health Channel: Victorian Department of Health Masturbation: 5 Things You Didn't Know Health benefits of self cultivation | {
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2,929 | I was reading about the Law of Thermodynamics, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics really interested me because the Law apparently stated that in any isolated system, the entropy of that system will increase. Entropy , is the amount of energy not available for useful work. It can also be measured as an amount of disorder. So, in a closed system, as the disorder increases, it needs external energies to be applied to it in order for the entropy to decrease , apparently. Dr John Ross of Harvard University states: … there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems. … There is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself. The source is: Chemical and Engineering News , 7 July 1980, p. 40; Since the universe is a closed system, entropy will continually increase,and consequently, the disorder in our universe will be on an uphill run. How does evolution answer this? Do we have to change the law of entropy? Or is the Theory of Evolution flawed? | This is a throughly debunked canard by creationists. Look up in the sky on a sunny day, and look at an incredible source of energy for the earth. For a basic primer on evolution, go to this page and then avail yourself of the many links available . You do seem to have a severe case of misunderstanding and just plain bad information that you have been exposed to. As a UNIVERSE, things are indeed overall going to more entropy, but locally, we see entropy decreasing all the time . Or do you doubt that you were born? Going from an egg and sperm, to a full grown adult would seem to violate your understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. As has been repeated, the earth is not a closed system. Local entropy is decreasing all over the globe, all the time. Of course, on the whole, in our solar system, because of the way our sun works, and all the other elements of the universe, we are still seeing a net increase of entropy in the universe. And in several trillions upon trillions of years, the ultimate fate of the universe (as best as we can tell) will be ultimate entropy, known as heat death . Since this is a tiresome canard, I shall refer to a rebuttal written by a Science Writer that goes by the pseudonym Calilasseia who has this to say (forgive the writing style, he is British, and slightly miffed at having to drag up such an inane argument) ( Also, this large block of text is reproduced with permission at any location on the internet, as noted originally on the cited web page ): [27] Tiresome canards about evolution and the laws of thermodynamics. And how tiresome these canards are. Not least because they've been debunked in the past, even without reference to relevant scientific literature, by people who pay attention to the scientific basics. Once the relevant scientific literature is consulted, these canards become visibly asinine. I'll deal with the Second Law of Thermodynamics to start with, because that one is a creationist favourite, though when creationists parrot this specious nonsense, they merely demonstrate that they know nothing about the relevant physics, and certainly never paid attention to the actual words of Rudolf Clausius, who erected the Laws of Thermodynamics, and who was rigorous when doing so. Therefore, let us see what Clausius actually stated, shall we? Rudolf Clausius erects this statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: In an isolated system, a process can occur only if it increases the total entropy of the system. Now Clausius defined rigorously what was meant by three different classes of thermodynamic system, and in his work, specified explicitly that the operation of the laws of thermodynamics differed subtly in each instance. The three classes of system Clausius defined were as follows: [27a] An isolated system is a system that engages in no exchanges of energy or matter with the surroundings; [27b] A closed system is a system that engages in exchanges of energy with the surroundings, but does not engage in exchange of matter with the surroundings; [27c] An open system is a system that engages in exchanges of both matter and energy with the surroundings. Now, Clausius' statement above clearly and explicitly refers to isolated systems , which, thus far, have been found to be an idealised abstraction, as no truly isolated system has ever been found. Indeed, in order to create even an approximation to an isolated system in order to perform precise calorimetric measurements, physicists have to resort to considerable ingenuity in order to minimise energy exchanges with the surroundings, particularly given the pervasive nature of heat. Even then, they cannot make the system completely isolated, because they need to have some means of obtaining measurement data from that system, which has to be conveyed to the surroundings, and this process itself requires energy. Physicists can only construct a closed system, in which, courtesy of much ingenuity, energy exchanges with the surroundings are minimised and precisely controlled, and to achieve this result in a manner that satisfies the demands of precise work is time consuming, expensive and requires a lot of prior analysis of possible sources of energy exchange that need to be minimised and controlled. However, the Earth is manifestly an open system. It is in receipt not only of large amounts of energy from outside (here's a hint: see that big yellow thing in the sky?) but is also in receipt of about 1,000 tons of matter per year in the form of particles of meteoritic origin from outer space. Some of these 'particles' are, on occasions, large enough to leave craters in the ground, such as that nice large one in Arizona. That particular dent in the Earth's surface is 1,200 metres in diameter, 170 metres deep, and has a ridge of material around the edges that rises 45 metres above the immediate landscape, and was excavated when a meteorite impacted the Earth's surface, generating a blast equivalent to a 20 megaton nuclear bomb. Hardly a characteristic of an isolated system. Indeed, physicists have known for a long time, that if a particular system is a net recipient of energy from outside, then that energy can be harnessed within that system to perform useful work. Which is precisely what living organisms do. Indeed, they only harness a small fraction of the available incoming energy, yet this is sufficient to power the entire diversity of the biosphere, and the development of organisms of increasing sophistication over time. Scientists have published numerous papers (twelve of which are known to me, and this is an incomplete inventory of the extant literature) in which calculations have been performed demonstrating that the utilisation of energy by the biosphere, and by evolution, is orders of magnitude too small to violate thermodynamic concerns. Relevant papers in question being: Entropy And Evolution by Daniel F. Styer, American Journal of Physics, 78(11): 1031-1033 (November 2008) DOI: 10.1119/1.2973046 Natural Selection As A Physical Principle by Alfred J. Lotka, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 8: 151-154 (1922) full paper downloadable from here Evolution Of Biological Complexity by Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria and Travis C. Collier, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97(9): 4463-4468 (25th April 2000) Full paper downloadable from here Order From Disorder: The Thermodynamics Of Complexity In Biology by Eric D. Schneider and James J. Kay, in Michael P. Murphy, Luke A.J. O'Neill (ed), What is Life: The Next Fifty Years. Reflections on the Future of Biology, Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-172 Full paper downloadable from here Natural Selection For Least Action by Ville R. I. Kaila and Arto Annila, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Part A, 464: 3055-3070 (22nd July 2008) Full paper downloadable from here Evolution And The Second Law Of Thermodynamics by Emory F. Bunn, arXiv.org, 0903.4603v1 (26th March 2009) Download full paper from here All of these peer reviewed papers establish, courtesy of rigorous empirical and theoretical work, that evolution is perfectly consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I cover several of these in detail in this post , and it should be noted here that the notion that evolution was purportedly in "violation" of the Second Law of Thermodynamics was rejected in a paper written in 1922 , which means that creationists who erect this canard are ignorant of scientific literature published over eighty years ago. While covering this topic, it's also necessary to deal with the canard that entropy equals 'disorder'. This is a non-rigorous view of entropy that scientists engaged in precise work discarded some time ago. Not least because there are documented examples of systems that have a precisely calculated entropy increase after spontaneously self-organising into well-defined structures. Phospholipids are the classic example of such a system - a suspension of phospholipids in aqueous solution will spontaneously self-assemble into structures such as micelles, bilayer sheets and liposomes upon receiving an energy input consisting of nothing more than gentle agitation. In other words, just shake the bottle. Moreover, the following scientific paper discusses in some detail the fact that entropy can increase when a system becomes more ordered, a paper that was published in 1998, and hence, has been in circulation for over a decade now: Gentle Force Of Entropy Bridges Disciplines by David Kestenbaum, Science, 279: 1849 (20th March 1998) Kestenbaum, 1998 wrote:Normally, entropy is a force of disorder rather than organization. But physicists have recently explored the ways in which an increase in entropy in one part of a system can force another part into greater order. The findings have rekindled speculation that living cells might take advantage of this little-known trick of physics. Entropy, as rigorously defined, has units of Joules per Kelvin, and is therefore a function of energy versus thermodynamic temperature. The simple fact of the matter is that if the thermodynamic temperature increases, then the total entropy of a given system decreases if no additional energy was input into the system in order to provide the increase in thermodynamic temperature. Star formation is an excellent example of this, because the thermodynamic temperature at the core of a gas cloud increases as the cloud coalesces under gravity. All that is required to increase the core temperature to the point where nuclear fusion is initiated is sufficient mass. No external energy is added to the system. Consequently, the entropy at the core decreases due to the influence of gravity driving up the thermodynamic temperature. Yet the highly compressed gas in the core is hardly "ordered". STOP PRESS: as if to reinforce this point, my attention has just been drawn to this scientific paper: Disordered, Quasicrystalline And Crystalline Phases Of Densely Packed Tetrahedra by Amir Haji-Akbari, Michael Engel, Aaron S. Keys, Xiaoyu Zheng, Rolfe G. Petschek, Peter Palffy-Muhoray and Sharon C. Glotzer, Nature, 462: 773-777 (10th December 2009) The abstract is suitably informative here: Haji-Akbari, 2009 wrote: All hard, convex shapes are conjectured by Ulam to pack more densely than spheres1, which have a maximum packing fraction of φ = π/∫18 ≈ 0.7405. Simple lattice packings of many shapes easily surpass this packing fraction2, 3. For regular tetrahedra, this conjecture was shown to be true only very recently; an ordered arrangement was obtained via geometric construction with φ = 0.7786 (ref. 4), which was subsequently compressed numerically to φ = 0.7820 (ref. 5), while compressing with different initial conditions led to φ = 0.8230 (ref. 6). Here we show that tetrahedra pack even more densely, and in a completely unexpected way. Following a conceptually different approach, using thermodynamic computer simulations that allow the system to evolve naturally towards high-density states, we observe that a fluid of hard tetrahedra undergoes a first-order phase transition to a dodecagonal quasicrystal7, 8, 9, 10, which can be compressed to a packing fraction of φ = 0.8324. By compressing a crystalline approximant of the quasicrystal, the highest packing fraction we obtain is φ = 0.8503. If quasicrystal formation is suppressed, the system remains disordered, jams and compresses to φ = 0.7858. Jamming and crystallization are both preceded by an entropy-driven transition from a simple fluid of independent tetrahedra to a complex fluid characterized by tetrahedra arranged in densely packed local motifs of pentagonal dipyramids that form a percolating network at the transition. The quasicrystal that we report represents the first example of a quasicrystal formed from hard or non-spherical particles. Our results demonstrate that particle shape and entropy can produce highly complex, ordered structures. So as if the Kestenbaum paper on entropy driving ordered systems, and the empirical evidence from phospholipids were not enough, we now have this. Consequently, the message to creationists is simple: don't bother wasting your time posting the "evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics" canard, because it is now well and truly busted. Some creationists, however, erect a related, and in some respects, even more asinine canard, that evolution somehow violates the First Law of Thermodynamics. Guess who provided us with rigorous statements about this law? That's right, Rudolf Clausius again. Let's see what he actually stated with respect to this, shall we? The Clausius formulation of the First Law of Thermodynamics is this: The increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy input into the system via heating, minus the energy lost as a result of the work done by the system upon its surroundings. The mathematical expression of which is: dU = δQ - δW If the process is reversible, then this can be recast in terms of exact differentials by noting that δW is equal to PdV, where P is the internal pressure, and V the volume occupied, and that δQ is equal to TdS, where T is the thermodynamic temperature and S is the entropy of the system. Therefore this becomes dU = TdS - PdV. Oh look. Clausius explicitly framed the First Law of Thermodynamics in terms of energy exchanges within a system. He did NOT assume constancy thereof. Indeed, the rigorous framing of the First Law of Thermodynamics explicitly takes into account the possibility of a system being a recipient of energy that can be used to perform useful work. Therefore creationist canards erected about the First Law of Thermodynamics are null and void for the same reasons as those erected about the Second Law of Thermodynamics - said canards not only ignore completely Clausius' original and rigorous formulations of those laws, and ignore completely that Clausius framed his formulations around energy exchanges between a system and its surroundings , but rely upon outright misrepresentations of those laws. Indeed, Clausius had energy exchanges in mind with respect to the Second Law of Thermodynamics as well, which is why the statement on entropy was framed in terms of an isolated system, which engages in no such exchanges with the surroundings. When energy exchanges are taking place, the operation of the Second law of Thermodynamics within such systems is subtly different. I also wanted to add a bit about your silly assertion that it's only a theory... Trust me, it's a fact, and is rejection of reality on a wholesecale level to assert anything but. The mechanisms by which evolution happen are also quite well understood, but there are fine points that are still being worked out. Evolution is a theory in the same way gravity is a theory, only that we actually know a great deal more about evolution than we do gravity. 6 Scientific theories are NOT guesses . This is a favourite (and wholly duplicitous) canard beloved of creationists, and relies upon the fact that in everyday usage, English words are loaded with a multiplicity of meanings. This is NOT the case in science, where terms used are precisely defined. The precise definition apposite here is the definition of theory. In science, a theory is an integrated explanation for a class of real world observational phenomena of interest, that has been subjected to direct empirical test with respect to its correspondence with observational reality, and which has been found, via such testing, to be in accord with observational reality. It is precisely because scientific theories have been subject to direct empirical test, and have passed said empirical test, that they ARE theories, and consequently enjoy a high status in the world of scientific discourse. As a consequence of the above, anyone who erects the "it's only a theory" canard with respect to evolution will be regarded with well deserved scorn and derision. If you want a good visualization of evolution, maybe this picture will help you with some shorthand: THAT is a logical process that seems to escape people who deny evolution. Again, I suggest you read up more at one of the earlier links provided . | {
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2,962 | According to some (e.g. the documentary film Who Killed the Electric Car? ), car and oil companies have actively tried to suppress electric cars' development. Electric cars seem to have technological benefits so indeed I wonder why they're virtually nonexistent. Is it due to a market conspiracy, normal "honest" competition, technical reasons or something else? | It comes down to a few factors. I'll answer from a US perspective. Lack of infrastructure 1 . Could the US power grid sustain the charging of millions of electric cars? One article says so 3 , but this paper disagrees. Also, individual home electric systems simply aren't built to charge electric cars, which require massive currents (80 to 100 amps) to do so. Also, consider what incentive is there for a fuel station to provide a charging point which would directly compete with their own product. The answer is little to none. Battery technology is still behind the times. The average EV battery pack costs around $500/kWh 2 , typically more. The GM Volt has a 16 kWh battery pack, and that only goes 40 miles per charge; $8,000 for that isn't really much. Also, battery packs are almost always lithium ion, but this only has an energy density of 0.9 MJ/kg, compared to 44.4 MJ/kg for petrol/gasoline. (It's important to note though that electric motors are about 2-3x more efficient than internal combustion engines, but that still doesn't account for the massive shortfall in energy density.) Is it really good for the environment? It's debatable. About 55% of the power in the US is derived from coal; and burning coal puts CO 2 into the atmosphere. Although it's likely to result in a reduction of CO 2 , it's still going to be putting a substantial amount into the atmosphere. One article cites only a 5% reduction 3 from 180 million EVs being on the road. Sources: A Discussion Paper from Scuderi Group July 2010 Electric Cars - see section "Impact of EVs on the US electric power grid", pages 4-5 Plug-in Hybrid and Battery-Electric Vehicles... - page 12 Report: U.S. Power Grid Can Fuel 180 Million Electric Cars | {
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2,979 | I've read the above factoid many times, but sources are conflicting as to whether or not its true; that is, some say there's a set timer on door openings and closings that can't be budged by pressing the button others say that manufacturers provide a button, but some landlords choose to disable it and yet others say, it's just an archaic holdover from earlier days before elevator automation. Is there anything definitive out there known on whether door-closing buttons in elevators work, and who's enabling and disabling what? | No. Elevator manufacturers do not purposefully provide a door close button that doesn't actually work. Elevator manufacturers provide door open and close buttons because they are required by code. (in the US) CHAPTER K1 MODIFICATIONS TO
ASME A17.1 - 2000, SAFETY CODE FOR
ELEVATORS AND ESCALATORS SECTION 2.27 EMERGENCY OPERATION AND
SIGNALING DEVICES 2.27.3.3.1 When the Phase II switch is in the "FIREMAN SERVICE"
position, the elevator shall be on
Phase II operation, and the elevator
shall operate as follows: (d) Open power-operated doors shall
be closed only by momentary
pressure on the door close
button. On cars with two entrances,
a separate door-close button shall be
provided for each entrance if both
entrances can be opened at the same
landing . (e) Opening and closing of power
operated car doors or gates that are
opposite manual swing or manual slide
hoistway doors shall conform to the
requirements of §2.27.3.3.1(c) and
(d). Door opening and closing buttons
shall be provided in the car-operating
panel . New York New York City Administrative Code The code requires that the buttons exist and defines their functions when the elevator is in the "FIREMAN SERVICE" operation mode. What the buttons do otherwise is of no interest to the code. [S]ome say there's a set timer on door openings and closings that can't
be budged by pressing the button . This is correct... 4.10.7 Door and Signal Timing for Hall Calls. The minimum acceptable time from
notification that a car is answering a
call until the doors of that car start
to close shall be calculated from the
following equation: T = D/(1.5 ft/s) or T = D/(445 mm/s) where T total time in seconds and D
distance (in feet or millimeters) from
a point in the lobby or corridor 60 in
(1525 mm) directly in front of the
farthest call button controlling that
car to the centerline of its hoistway
door. For cars with in-car lanterns, T
begins when the lantern is visible
from the vicinity of hall call buttons
and an audible signal is sounded. The
minimum acceptable notification time
shall be 5 seconds . ADA Evaluation: ThyssenKrupp . The Bottom Line... Once all the code requirements are met: Five seconds is a long time when waiting in a elevator. | {
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3,028 | There was a recent controversy about a police officer who is reported to have suggested: Women can avoid sexual assault by not dressing like a “slut.” If we leave out the derogatory word and focus on the substance of the claim, is there any research that supports his claim or debunks it? | This is a touchy issue. I think it is important to note that the question of "Is a woman who dresses sexually suggestively more likely to get raped, at least in some instances" which is the question being asked from "Is a woman who dresses sexually suggestively at all to blame if she suffers from rape" which is often the question people respond to. There are many studies showing that people will be more likely to attribute blame to women who are provocatively dressed without saying anything about whether or not the chances of rape are increased in some situations. Those studies are linked in the other answers to this question. Some studies have shown that provocative dress can have an affect on the likelihood of sexual assault, at least in some instances. Antecedents of sexual victimization: factors discriminating victims from nonvictims. Synovitz LB, Byrne TJ., J Am Coll Health. Jan;46(4):151-8. (1998) Partial abstract: The variables found to be related to women's being sexually victimized
were (a) number of different lifetime sexual partners, (b) provocative
dress, and (c) alcohol use. An Examination of Date Rape, Victim Dress, and Perceiver Variables Within the Context of Attribution Theory Workman JE, Freeburg EW., Sex Roles, Volume 41, Numbers 3-4, 261-277 (1995) This study found in part that the way a woman choose to dress is sometimes taken as a statement about her character including vulnerability, desire and/or willingness to have sex and provocation of males which consequently affects the likelihood of rape, including date rape. The effects of clothing and dyad sex composition on perceptions of sexual intent: Do women and men evaluate these cues differently. Abbey, A., Cozzarelli, C., McLaughlin, K., & Harnish, R. J. (1987) Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 17, 108–126. Partial abstract: A laboratory study was conducted in which subjects viewed a photograph
of two students in a classroom. As predicted, male subjects rated
female targets as more sexy and seductive than did female subjects.
Also as predicted, female targets who wore revealing clothing were
rated as more sexy and seductive than those wearing nonrevealing
clothing. Female targets were rated higher on sexual traits regardless
of the gender of their partner. The study went on to infer that provocative dress can lead to an increased chance of date or spousal rape in some situations (primarily spousal and/or date rape). Conclusion While it is an unpopular view, I think it is safe to say that provocative dress may increase the chance of rape in some situations . At the moment it is hard to say anything for sure, as there are too many variable factors. Rape statistics are often misreported or not reported at all. We don't know enough about how people interpret or respond to clothing. There also seems to be a lack of studies focusing on this area, which is understandable given the problems in obtaining data. | {
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