wattnurt
wattnurt t1_j0lw6y4 wrote
Reply to comment by 0xB0BAFE77 in Geckos use Van Der Waals forces to stick to walls, but how do they let go? by houstoncouchguy
>If you have a strong magnet on a fridge, you don't just grab it and pull it straight back. You pry it from one corner (usually sliding it off the edge of the fridge so you can pull up on one edge).
Slight correction, that's not really the reason for moving a magnet sideways for removing it, I.e. it's not because of mechanical leverage like you suggest. While the total amount of energy is of course the same no matter how you remove the magnet, the way the magnetic field lines run it is simply easier to impart that energy by sliding it sideways instead of pulling it straight up.
wattnurt t1_iurthvk wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in How do Palaeontologists build image of an organism from fossils? How accurate is their method? by Firm_Brother_7124
>https://external-preview.redd.it/1aIib08nONHHJ-HNABoUWlocs_vwrNtJs58e24xoAXE.jpg?auto=webp&s=0a3f619388dd232694481d68f346cc0d65e28224
I had never seen this, but man that makes so much more sense. Essentially a flightless bird with vestigial wing arms.
Similarly, this is an owl skeleton.
wattnurt t1_issx5my wrote
Reply to How do new drugs get invented for diseases etc? How do we know that a very specific combination of chemicals will get rid of a curtain illness? by DemetrioGonz
There are certainly a lot of educated guesses in the process, but it can't be overstated how much pure brute force is involved. There are warehouses full of robots sticking potential compounds into test tubes, one after the other. Millions of experiments per day.
wattnurt t1_isd79ha wrote
Reply to comment by bio_med_guy in Has an animal species ever gone extinct from a naturally occurring disease? by Jan_Sobasedski
Most bacteria and viruses have multiple hosts. Wiping out a single one won't affect its viability.
wattnurt t1_iscrmfr wrote
.... you mean fish? Of course they can smell things, sharks for example are notorious for smelling blood from very far away.
If you are asking about non-aquatic animals, they can breathe as little underwater as you can.
wattnurt t1_iscrd1m wrote
Reply to Has an animal species ever gone extinct from a naturally occurring disease? by Jan_Sobasedski
Sadly I don't have any direct evidence, but what makes you think it wouldn't be that case? Since life began it's been a fight of various organisms to get the upper hand, surely a virus or a bacteria managed to be "too successful" at some point and wiped out its host.
wattnurt t1_ir8e8ce wrote
Reply to How can we be sure that Neanderthal skeletons are Neanderthal skeletons and not human skeletons decomposing? by cent178
A picture says more than a thousand words in my opinion.
Check out this comparison of a human skull and a neanderthal skull:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_anatomy#/media/File%3ASapiens_neanderthal_comparison.jpg
I think it's pretty clear that the right is not from a human.
wattnurt t1_iqx04gh wrote
Reply to comment by yetanotheryacht in In Finance how is the value of a Derivative judged realistically? And how are Analysts suppose to use Derivatives to make fair assessments of banking solvency? by Dabbing_Squid
Related, a very influential paper from the early 2000s is partially blamed for the 2008 financial crisis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_X._Li#CDOs_and_Gaussian_copula
It gave "quants" (actuaries) a tool for estimating the inter-dependency between mortgages etc, but they placed undue trust in that formula, and when the housing market collapsed it tore down a lot of things around it with it, even though the formula suggested it shouldn't. It was a classic example of somebody creating a tool, and others picking it up but not really understanding it and then applying it in places where it wasn't reliable.
wattnurt t1_iqwhly1 wrote
Reply to comment by MimthePetty in Does talking to plants or playing music next to them have an effect? by [deleted]
What a junk paper. The researcher used something like 5 plants each for test and control, and then wildly interpreted normal growth variations as "the plant tried to bend away" etc.
wattnurt t1_j1ptwas wrote
Reply to What % of people got long covid who were vaccinated VS those who weren't? by CarrionAssassin2k9
As the other user pointed out, long Covid is incredibly problematic because until rather recently, every researcher used their own definition of the condition, that's why you would get one study saying 3% have it, and another saying 30% have it. On top of that, almost all studies I've seen have used self-assessment by patients of whether they think they have it, which of course has a ton of issues as you would imagine.