The houseman at my work was using a powermop/floor buffer next to the pool. He got it as close to the edge as possible, if he was to accidently drop it in would the resulting electricity kill everyone?

Alpha-Leader · 1 day

The National Electrical Code generally requires wet areas to have outlets protected by a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI). These significantly reduce the chances of electrocution due to accidental ground.

Critical_Chicken · 1 day

This paper from 2006 did compared people with and without 24h nicotine patches undergoing polysomnography (sleep studies). Although REM sleep tended to decrease, visual imagery during REM was reported more.

Nicotine has a cholinergic effect through nicotinic receptors, which [this paper](Microinjections of nicotine in the medial pontine reticular formation elicits REM sleep) suggested could contribute to REM sleep (it's widely thought that cell populations signalling with acetylcholine promote REM).

Going just a little ways down in to this rabbit-hole makes things look much more complicated, however.

hobbes88 · 2 days

From the link:

This flat, reddish rash across the bridge of the nose and cheeks, is often the only visible symptom of this form of lupus.

Emphasis mine. Here is a site about cutaneous lupus with a subsection on skin changes in systemic lupus erythematosus.

CAkEBall · 3 days

The australopithecines, including the genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus, and all other members of Homo, most notably also including H. habilis and H. neanderthalensis.

I don't know enough to comment about Ardipithecus and the debate about its bipedalism.

TheJuniorIdiots · 4 days

Any experience can become frightening when it's associated with a chronic debilitating illness. I saw a patient during training who had orgasms just before a seizure. When she first got married, it was a very trying experience being intimate with her new beau.

TheJuniorIdiots · 5 days

This is not really correct.

Déjà vu can be part of the aura experienced by those with temporal lobe epilepsy. But the everyday kind of déjà vu experienced by everyone at some point has nothing to do with seizures or epilepsy.

WeirdFishes31 · 6 days

The eye's natural lens has a certain range of accommodation. It can increase or decrease its optical power within a certain range. So as long as one looks through relatively weak glasses without any extra cylindrical correction (ie, for astigmatism), the eye can accommodate for the extra increase or decrease of optical power. That's why it seems "just like looking at the distance then looking to a book in your hands"; changing from distance to near vision results in the accommodation reflex and a shift in optical power of the eye.

enderkinG · 7 days

Why is she standing next to a troll?

daeward · 8 days

Here Wikipedia cites HyperPhysics to note that at the bottom of the oceans, the volume change is only 1.8%.

albyrne5 · 8 days

Well, if we look at the CDC's fast stats on the subject of leading causes of death in the US, here is the breakdown:

Heart disease: 599,413
Cancer: 567,628
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021
Alzheimer's disease: 79,003
Diabetes: 68,705
Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909

Autoimmune disease will contribute to a relatively small fraction of heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, and kidney disease (what the chart means by "nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, etc.") The majority of heart- and stroke-related diseases will be primarily attributable to atherosclerosis and thromboembolism—that is, hardening and blocking of the arteries, as well as forming clots that move downstream). Although type I diabetes is a manifestation of an autoimmune reaction that destroys pancreatic islet cells, the large majority of diabetic patients are type II, which is not considered autoimmune. Although the ultimate cause of Alzheimer's dementia is not known, it is not believed to be autoimmune.

Sites like this one promote the idea that most disease is caused by autoimmunity without providing much evidence. There is a very high psychoceramic factor to it.

tarwork · 9 days

People with photosensitive epilepsy can have their seizures provoked by certain patterns of flashing lights. This is not that common, however. Some seizures (most commonly absence seizures) can be provoked by hyperventilating. More rarely, lots of different stimuli can provoke seizures in reflex epilepsy.

The things that provoke seizures in epileptics are things that lower the seizure threshold in most people. Sleep deprivation, sudden discontinuation of anticonvulsant medication, alcohol use, certain other drugs, illness.

sleepyhead12 · 18 days

By having a two-tier system, you've already created a (minimally) progressive income tax!

What's wrong with an income tax that's just a bit more progressive?

chog17 · 23 days

Alas, you're correct. I remembered reading something older about nylonase, and used the WP article as a proxy without fully reading it.

chog17 · 23 days

Some bacteria have adapted to digest nylon, a molecule which did not exist until the 20th century.

Supersnazz · 1 month

Blood normally won't contain infectious agents even if a person is infected, with certain really big gotchas. A number of virus infections can cause viremia, if the person's got one of them. If the person's really sick, there may be bacteremia (the -emia in both these cases means "present in the blood). Then there's HIV, whose primary infection often goes unnoted and then proceeds to the blood and lymph system.

But like the materials most likely to contain infectious agents (basically 100% of the time) are stool, pus, and nasal mucus.

Personally, I wouldn't want to be exposed to any of this stuff. Human beings are nasty.

chickenboner · 1 month

What populartree said. Cancer is basically considered non-communicable, with a few exceptions.

Some cancers can be caused by a communicable organism, like cervical or penile cancer and certain types of human papilloma virus, or hepatocellular carcinoma and hepatitis C.

In rarer cases, tumors can be transmissible themselves. This occurs in devil facial tumor disease affecting Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) and in canine transmissible venereal tumor affecting domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris). Apparently they can be induced in the Syrian hamster (Mesocricetus auratus). I just happened on this paper (1932) about possible transmissible tumors in wild cottontail and domestic rabbits (Sylvilagus spp. and Oryctolagus spp.)

The earlier Wikipedia link tells of a case (paper here) of a surgeon accidentally injuring his hand during an operation on a man with malignant fibrous histiocytoma, said surgeon presenting a few months later with a growth at the site of injury corresponding to malignant fibrous histiocytoma (genetically linked to the original patient's tumor). The NEJM article linked to has a few interesting cases of human-to-human transmitted tumors as well.

bluecoconut · 1 month

I found this article (1974, but free to access) that did a survey of Egyptians' visual acuity. Page 250 has a table with distributions by acuity using a Snellen chart (they use the metric form of 20/20, which is 6/6).

boojr · 1 month

Solar retinopathy apparently results from photochemical damage to the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). From this paper:

Tso has studied the histopathologic features of lesions in patients who gazed at the sun for 1 hour prior to enucleation for uveal melanoma. Approximately 2 days after sun gazing, most of the injury involved the RPE. Necrosis, pigment granule irregularity, and focal detachments of the retinal pigment epithelium were described. In one patient who demonstrated early leakage on Fluorescein Angiography, a focal detachment of the sensory retina was found at the site of the lesion. The photoreceptors were intact. The RPE adjacent to the lesion lost its apical pigment granules and extended along Bruch’s membrane beneath the detached RPE. After 48 hours to 5 days, there is photoreceptor destruction. Much of this damage is reversible and may explain the ability of many patients to recover good visual function after sun gazing.

It's also called eclipse retinopathy. Wikipedia (of course) has an article.

j1ggy · 1 month

According to Wikipedia, the maximum apparent magnitude of Venus is -5. Assuming it would be the same for Earth (albedo differences be damned), an object 1/13 as bright would have an apparent magnitude of m = -2.5*log(1/13) + -5, for m = -2.2, in between the maximum apparent magnitudes of Jupiter and Sirius.

pollix · 1 month

Don't the two towers of the title refer specifically to Barad-dûr and Orthanc, the centers of power of Sauron and Saruman, respectively? It's not really a book about towers, it's a book about the forces of evil actively striking against the kingdoms of Men.

m1nku5 · 1 month

Ah, okay. Well, my expertise is in-vivo neurophysiology. I don't have much experience with this kind of bench research, so I don't feel I can comment very meaningfully.

m1nku5 · 1 month

This is the basis of diagnostic nerve conduction studies. A current is passed between two stimulator electrodes and induces an action potential in the peripheral nerve fibers. This can actually propagate in either direction, depending on how it's stimulated. (Normally, sensory nerves send signals centrally, to the brain, and motor nerves send them peripherally, to muscles.)

You can stimulate a sensory nerve and, using electrodes over the head and neck, detect the signal volley as it travels up the peripheral nerve, into the spinal cord dorsal columns, into the brainstem, and through the thalamus to the cortex. (These are somatosensory evoked potentials, or SSEPs.)

skullbeats · 1 month

The susceptibility to early male pattern baldness is X-linked. Since you don't inherit an X chromosome from your father (assuming you're a male, and not something uncommon like 47,XXY), the chance of inheritance with no affected men on the mother's side is 0.

StonedPony · 1 month

While it can enhance other tastes, salt most certainly has its own taste.

There is a technical difference between flavor and taste: a taste is a sensation purely mediated by tongue taste receptors, and is very simple, consisting only of salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and savory tastes. Flavor is the complete sensory appreciation of a food, consisting of the taste, the smell (which travels up the back of the mouth into the nouse through the nasopharynx), and the mouthfeel (texture, etc), along with sensations of irritation as with hot peppers.

m1nku5 · 1 month

What mc2222 said. The nerve fibers in the spinal cord propagate signals as waves of depolarization. Charge-carrying particles shuffle in and out of the nerve fiber radially, orthogonal to the direction of travel of the action potential, meaning no net current along the fiber.

(Note, at the synapse of one nerve fiber with another, or with a muscle, the signal propagation is by transmission of neurotransmitter chemicals, not by electricity at all, although the electrical action potential does trigger the release of the neurotransmitter.)

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