Leaderboard

Citation needed. Maybe it is just compensation for the Flynn effect. I would guess the lack of a good definition of IQ and the corresponding arbitrariness of the tests accounts for a large part of it. Maybe modern communication technology and social media means that cultural change is happening faster and the tests can no longer be fudged quickly enough to compensate.

I understand how you can say that. But it's not that clear to me. First, dinosaurs, like any other megafauna, are almost anecdotal in terms of primary production, carbon cycle, etc. To give you an example, there are about ten trillion tons of methane stored in the oceanic bottoms that can't get out thanks to methane-metabolizing microscopic archaeas that are keeping it at bay. And, mind you, methane is 25 times more greenhouse-effect inducing than CO2 is. If you want to understand ecosystems you must look at microorganisms. They don't look as pretty in a theme park, but are far more important for the global chemistry. Another question is the rate at which this is happening. Back in the time of the dinosaurs the conditions were quite stable, and many big animals (quite a big bunch of them in terms of animal biomass) may have been slow-metabolism. As to the dinosaurs, we don't really know if they were or how many there were. We do know that all the plants were C3, because C4 plants did not exist. How did that affect the carbon cycle? Be aware, e.g. that RubisCO, the carbon-fixating molecule, is the most abundant organic molecule on Earth by far. In fact, C4 plants, which are more efficient at sucking up CO2 from the atmosphere, precisely evolved to adapt to the new, slowly-changing, low-CO2 atmospheric conditions. And that's the observation that leads me back to the question of rate. Organisms need time to adapt, measured in tens of millions of years, not decades, for those paradises that you picture in your mind to establish themselves. We are now pumping into the atmosphere an estimated billion tons of CO2 per year. The Earth is 100 years within a Milankovitch cycle of glaciation, and yet the glaciers are clearly melting, and fast. We are really fortunate that the Himalayas are still pushing up, because this geological process sucks CO2 from the atmosphere at an incredible rate, and sends it back to the sea. The really big question now is what will happen when the ice sheet on Greenland sloshes down to the North Atlantic, as it is sure that the salinity will go down significantly and the conveyor belt that equilibrates the water temperature will eventually stop. It is estimated that that will happen by 100 years' time. Have you thought in any depth about these and other factors?

It's also a fact that attention span is declining in most technologically advanced countries. Since a large part of IQ testing involves pattern recognition, maybe we don't have the attention span to recognize patterns as quickly. Anyway, when you find an IQ test that challenges differing cultures/economic status equitably, then maybe you can draw some conclusions.

You are, as Endy0816 says, considering the work done by an ideal gas in an isothermal expansion or compression. Following your notation, \[\tau=-\int PdV=-\int P\left(V\right)dV\] So that, \[\tau=-\int nRT\frac{dV}{V}=-nRT\log\frac{V_{2}}{V_{1}}\] The reason why that procedure is only valid for reversible processes is that if you want to be able to guarantee that the equation of state \[f\left(P,V,T,n\right)=\frac{PV}{nRT}=\textrm{constant}=1\] is valid throughout the process, it must take place under equilibrium conditions throughout. In other words, the control parameters must vary very slowly compared to the relaxation times of the gas, so that it constantly re-adapts to the "differentially shifted" equilibrium conditions. Those are called "reversible conditions". Chemists use the word "reversible" in a slightly different sense, so be careful if your context is chemistry. Exactly.

The majority of the rocks you mention are composed predominantly of silicate minerals. These are weathered by carbonic acid, converting for the most part to clays, with a portion of the carbon dioxide now "trapped" as calcium carbonate. Unfortunately, the amount of CO2 removed by weathering globally is an order of magnitude less than the amount being released by human activity. The weathering/ocean sink is important for the long term carbon cycle, but does little to help us with the rapidity of change we have introduced. This is a basic summary of the factors involved. I agree with you, it was an excellent post by joigus .

It is quite common for "retired" politicians to become much more statesman like in their words and actions. Freed of the need for political machinations they can speak more from the heart (something I thought May did not have). Taking a leaf from the fight against the virus, I wonder if we could take plasma from such politicians and inject it into the present incumbents, hoping that the antibodies would deal with the hypocrisy and kant flowing in their veins.

Hi everyone ! In shops, one remaining Covid contamination path is money. An answer is to allege that money doesn't host the virus, I read that. Or we can try to tackle the problem. UV light is known to destroy virusses, including Sars-Cov2. UV LED are available for near-ultraviolet Hg wavelengths, compact, reliable, efficient. This could irradiate the money between the cashier's and the customer's hands, in both directions. The rest is mechanical design, still imprecise. The apparatus must stop the UV from exiting but irradiate both sides of banknotes and coins. Both users could introduce the money at the top, say between a pair motorised soft rolls, and grasp it at the bottom, after an other pair of rolls. UV between the pairs of rolls would be blocked by the rolls. Nice for banknotes, but the coins would fall at once. It also needs a soft material that survives UV. This shape has the smallest footprint. Or a platter would tun slowly. The customer has a sector to introduce and extract money, the cashier has an other sector, and the two sectors in between irradiate the money under a cover. Silica and variants make the platter transparent to UV. Maybe banknotes and coins should have different paths. Possibly the soft rolls for banknotes and the platter for coins. The apparatus must be easy to open, and opening must halt the UV emission. Fluorescent surroundings would reveal any UV leak. Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy

Yeah, but I can't keep up with 'modern' usage. It changes way too quick . Apparently I'm out of bed, showered, shaved and dressed, but I'm not 'woke' yet.

So a mutation can result in either of these cases or, more frequently does nothing to change the disease outcome. Most of the major mutations we have seen are either silent (i.e. not changing the amino acid sequence) or were at sites that appear less crucial for the pathogenesis. What generally happens is that strains that are less effectively transmitted or are too lethal tend to become a smaller proportion of the infections. So it is possible that less lethal ones outcompete more lethal mutations and become the dominant strain. But that is selection after the mutation, of course.

Are fire alarms "alarmist"?

I strongly suspect that is not going to be the case in manner which is significant for this discussion. The Himalaya are, as you know, vast and contain a wide - and typical - variety of rock types. Their elevation and associated deep levels of erosion expose that range of rocks. I would be surprised if the deviation was significant. Certainly, the variation could not possibly be sufficient to make a meaningful dent in the CO2 released by human activity annually, which I understand is the point you are focusing on. Or, were you heading in another directIon? I think the climate change situation is alarming. What makes it more alarming is the refusal that you note by much of the public (and interested corporate bodies) to believe there is a problem. In that setting sober, documented and justified estimates of climate change and its consequences can be seen as alarmist by those who refuse to accept that there is a significant risk. "Alarmist" then becomes a rhetorical catchphrase used to excuse acceptance of the evidence. On the plus side, evolution may one day produce an animal that is not only as intelligent as homo sapiens, but is actually able to use that intelligence in a consistent and organised way.

I'm guessing they're alarmed, because we're not dinosaurs; and like the dinosaurs, life will continue after the planet chooses to no longer sustain us.

That very much depends on how hungry you are. Some people are just happy to be; in which case it would seem the trick is, making others believe you deserve to be...

I was quasi-quoting Dan Britt in Orbits and Ice Ages: The History of Climate. Conference you can watch on Youtube. You got me: argument of authority, I should be ashamed of. Conversations with you are starting to get very stimulating. Thank you very much for the references. I'll reconnect in about 5+ hours, then learn geology in about a couple of hours, and then keep talking with you, hopefully. The bio-data I got mostly from https://www.amazon.com/Life-Science-William-K-Purves/dp/0716798565 and a wonderful MIT course by Penny Chisholm.

How would you define T in a non revesible process ?

Thank you for this potted essay, it is really good and introduces several things that were new to me. +1 However I would appreciate more information on why you think the Himalaya removes much carbon dioxide, given this description of the principal rock types There are some carbonate rocks in the Himalaya, but much has already been metamorphosed. https://mynepaltrek.com/rock-types-in-nepal/

It isn't natural. It isn't organic.

Microbiome transplant reduced core symptoms of autism by almost 50%. FDA was so impressed that it fast tracked the treatment https://www.healio.com/pediatrics/autism-spectrum-disorders/news/online/{6b8a390d-1f6a-4f24-ac73-ee831f0c20e0}/fda-fast-tracks-microbiota-therapy-for-children-with-autism There are studies of mice developing schizophrenia like behaviors after a microbiome transplant from humans with schizophrenia https://www.biocodexmicrobiotainstitute.com/en/publications/schizophrenia-and-microbiota-has-link-been-confirmed Anxious mice become less anxious after a microbiome transplant from courageous mice and vice versa https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31124390/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/politics/rick-bright-coronavirus-whistleblower.html

I've known many people with wicked skills they're not that interested in pursuing. If the skills are marketable, a lot of those folks end up doing that for a living just because it's less of a struggle in life if you're making good money. But it's easy to be miserable in that situation because everyone loves you for skills you couldn't care less about. That's not the kind of hard work that makes you value it more, is it? I think everybody has a "what I find most interesting", and I think it's an underused resource in our modern, high-density civilization. I would consider it a super-smart investment to find out how We could help you arrange your life to take advantage of the fruits of your passion. I would rather have you spend your time applying maths to our lives in the ways you find most interesting than have you spend a minute worrying about choosing between food or medicine. If you suddenly decide you want to take a break from physics to focus on your blind-sketching talents for a change, I'd rather you didn't also have to worry about basics like rent and who's going to watch your kids while you're blindfolded. What I find contradictory is making you do something for a living you don't care for. You shouldn't have to forget your passions just to live like a normal person. If you wanted to fly airplanes and travel the world and do many extravagant things, you're going to have to figure out how to make a LOT of money, but someone who just wants a modest life should be able to pursue their passions, and I'm willing to invest in that as a taxpayer to help the world change for the better.

How about it might be pragmatism and humanitarianism rising above ideology?

Your breath is cooler than the soup and warmer than the air. There is no inherent contradiction, if that’s all there was to it. Blowing on the soup promotes evaporation, which is a cooling process. Blowing through an aperture means there is expansion afterwards. If the pressure and composition of a gas remains constant and it expands, the temperature goes down. (an ideal gas follows PV = nRT, so they would be proportional under that condition) edit: see below

The 'economy' was actually the first means to re-distribute wealth. ( whatever 'wealth' meant at the time ) In pre-historic times, you exchanged 'work' for food, provided by the tribe. In medieval times, you exchanged work for a parcel of land that you worked for yourself. Today we exchange 'work' for something that takes the place of food, land, or other forms of wealth; we call it money. In all of these cases, the 'economy' is the means for survival. ( although a case could be made that you don't really need an iPhone 11 pro )

The 'economy' is not just a money making mechanism for the wealthy, Phi. It is the means by which most of us feed, clothe, house ourselves and our families; it's how we survive. I have no problem with the economy 'going for a sh*t' as long as it saves lives. But if it 'goes for a sh*t' for too long, people start losing their life for reasons other than the pandemic. That is the balance that has to be struck; dying by starvation is just as bad as dying by Covid-19. I believe that is what Danijel Gorupec meant.

Are most climate scientists alarmists? No The problem is the rate of change of CO2 and thus of climate.

Do you know the real reasons of her actions? Maybe there is something behind the scene and this is some dirty political games? Maybe she and some other country leaders are pressed by someone unknown to us?

I don't know. For a some strange reasons this humanitarianism do not apply to people with predominantly European origins. For example 95%-99% of people from Ukraine who were running from war in their country were rejected entry to Germany. https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4463192

The problem is, I think, that well educated people across the entire World do not typically have a lot of children. Partially it could be attributed to economic issues. They need to study too long and then search for a job and not always find it, then sit at the computer 8-12 hr. a day, etc. There was a lot of discussion in different countries in the recent years about Basic Guarantied Income. While I don't see any sense in Basic Income for everyone, I think that introduction of bursaries for well performing students, which would almost rival salaries of a beginner specialist in the field of study may have sense. And of course higher education could be free of cost (like in some EU countries) and anyone has to be accepted. In this case people will go to study in university without debt burdens or fear of unemployment, just like go to job, will struggle to perform as better as possible and if they will not be able to find job after successful graduation they may go to study in another university with even higher bursaries (bonus for second university degree). In this case a normal person may study all his life and receive good money for this without fear of unemployment of debt burdens. Also, some serious employment programs after graduation and large bonuses for each newborn child wouldn't be spare.

What does being well educated or having children have to do with IQ? Are we to assume from your posts that you have very many children? (But yes, there is a strong correlation between increasing education, especially of women, and falling birth rates. That is a good thing.) Nothing else in this rather incoherent post appears to be on topic either. Citation still needed. As you are unwilling or unable to hold a coherent conversation and engage in a discussion, maybe this thread should be closed as well.