If you can't remember whether you've read it or not, then you've forgotten it, and having it on a list serves no purpose other than to "keep score".
You may as well read it again and hope it sticks this time!
896 karma · joined October 25, 2013
You may as well read it again and hope it sticks this time!
> The cartels “don’t just fill a void, they create a market,” Mr. Dhillon said.
Bats, in general, are susceptible to coronaviruses, in general, as are all mammals. But not all mammals are susceptible to all coronaviruses.
The disease Covid-19 is caused by the specific coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and that specific mutated virus only affects certain mammals, notably humans. It is apparently contagious to some other mammals, including deer, cats, minks, but not contagious to some other mammals.
I have read that coronaviruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 have been found in Horseshoe Bats in Asia (note: there are no Horseshoe Bats in North America), but that do not have a binding protein which would allow them to infect humans; I believe the opposite is true of SARS-CoV-2, it binds to a human receptor but not to bats'. It is hypothesized that SARS-CoV-2 may have mutated from a bat-borne coronavirus, but several intermediate links between species must have been involved (Pangolins?), and it is perhaps this chain of binding mutations responsible for this difference in hosts.
Though we no longer handle bats with bare hands these days (to protect bats from us!), this was common practice for decades. Other than rabies (which can be spread by any mammal, and occurs in bats in no higher percentage than in skunks, foxes, etc), I'm not aware of any known disease which can be spread from North American or European microbats to humans. I don't have specific knowledge about megabats (fruit bats) or Asian or African species.
Detecting bats' echolocation calls, however, is much easier. A brilliant researcher in Arcata CA has a working system installed in a commercial wind farm which detects the presence of migratory bats, and brakes the wind turbines until no bat calls have been detected for some some period of time. Bats don't fly all night, and migrating bats may travel together.
Ptarmigans are fat ground-dwelling birds related to grouse and chickens. They would probably collide with the broad side of a barn. I can't imagine they spend much time flying, especially not flying high or far, but apparently they're known to migrate up to 100 miles.
We were actually prevented by the USFWS from performing winter hibernacula counts for fear that we humans might spread Covid to bats, whose immune system practically shuts down during hibernation, until it was determined that this isn't possible.
Besides, the bats which are primarily killed by wind turbines are not cave-roosting bats, but high-flying tree bats. Bats either have a strategy of hibernation or migration, and it is these larger migratory tree bats which fall prey to turbines.
Echo-reflective surfaces wouldn't make a difference. Bats aren't killed by colliding with turbine blades, they are killed by barotrauma when flying NEAR the high-velocity low-pressure turbine blades when they try to investigate the large, moving, novel objects. I repeat, the most effective way to prevent bat deaths at wind farms is to curtail (brake) turbine blades during low-wind conditions; a 25-gram bat doesn't fly in high winds, and turbines are least efficient in low winds.
Source: I perform bat echolocation surveys, including on wind farm sites.
Also, this strategy will obviously have zero impact on bat deaths, given that a white blade and a black blade are identical to echolocation at night. Curtailment of turbines in low wind condition - which is when bats are able to fly, and when turbines produce the least amount of energy - is the proven way to minimize bat deaths. But wind farms want to maximize energy production (profit), so are not fond of curtailment as a strategy.
I am philosophically opposed to "investing" in real estate, as your industry exists entirely to snatch up affordable housing from actual homeowners as a get-rich-quick scheme, benefiting those who are already rich at the expense of those who would otherwise be rising up out of their own financial situation.
Nothing personal, but I wish you - and everyone in your predatory industry - swift failure in your endeavor, for the benefit of the average homeowner.
Have a good day!Consider that the displaced water from this point event would radiate out in 360 degrees from the Canaries, dissipating with the square of distance traveled.
`str?` would be much nicer than `Optional[str]` or (new in 3.10) `str | None`
- Black Francis
My hypothesis is that when people with high mental image visualization recall an event, they are re-experiencing it in a sense, and therefore reinforcing its details (or details as remembered, at least!). A person with aphantasia recalling that event does not re-experience it in a way that triggers this feedback loop, not as efficiently or completely at least.
I have very detailed memory about facts, places that I've been and seen, including spatial models; but how many times I've visited a place, who I was with on which trip, which events occurred on which visit, these details quickly become obscured and lost.
It appears to be a sort of polyphonic hurdy-gurdy: one tuned string per key, and depressing the key engages that string with the wheel-bow. The wheel appears powered by electricity, and the foot pedals appear to either control the pressure or speed of the wheel-bow.
In contrast, the hurdy-gurdy's (and nyckelharpa's) keys shorten its melody string to increase the pitch, like fretting a violin or guitar. The wheel is manually cranked, and the rhythm of the cranking is used to adjust tone and engage the buzzing of the trompette. The HG is monophonic in that you can't dynamically play chords, though you can engage multiple melody strings simultaneously (usually octaves or fifths).
Autumn Equinox are a three-piece of hurdy-gurdy (the "wheel fiddle"), nyckelharpa (the Swedish "keyed fiddle"), and upright bass. We play tunes from and inspired by Celtic and Eastern European traditions, and the hypnotic drone of the hurdy-gurdy is a common thread. We often play tunes by other hurdy-gurdy composers like Andrey Vinogradov and Nigel Eaton as well.
The counter-counter-evolutionary strategy of moth-specialist bats is to "whisper", and bats of the genus Corynorhinus for example have comically large ears so that they can echolocate at very low amplitude in "stealth mode", avoiding detection by moths until the very final approach phase.
I'm not familiar with moths producing an active "jamming" signal, and have a hard time believing it'd be very successful given that bats often produce echolocation signals as loud as 110dB (though they drop amplitude and refine frequencies as distance to a target decreases), but my experience is exclusively with US bats.
Another problem with announcing that you're searching for and homing in on food at 110dB is that any other bats nearby can hear as well. I've recorded Tadarida producing a sinusoidal FM jamming signal to try and prevent a competitor from success.
They walk into the grocery store, convenience store, or pharmacy after a sleepless night of breathing through their mouth, see the red package that says SUDAFED and a vaguely familiar-looking active ingredient, grab it, and plop their money on the counter.
PsEudoEPHedRINE
PhEnylEPHRINE
This is OTC medical fraud.
And much has been learned in this area since 1984 as well. Hofmann's discovery was vindicated; symbiotic fungi of the genus Balansia are responsible for producing the ergot alkaloids found in Ipomoea and similar species' seeds. This chemical process is only known from fungi, and turns out NOT to have surprisingly arisen in plants as was apparent when he isolated it from said plants.
These days, the most common mapping technique is a similar workflow, but with a ruggedized handheld laser distance meter with digital compass and inclinometer. They may have on-device storage, and they may transmit measurements to a PDA or tablet via Bluetooth. Some people sketch the 2D projections of the cave on that digital lineplot, some use the data to sketch with pencil on paper. A cave is a very hostile environment to electronics, so "caveman technology" is often intentionally preferred.
Lidar and photogrammetry are quite difficult in a cave. The surfaces are irregular, of varying wet and muddy conditions whose reflectivity cause problems. And shadows - both visible and line-of-sight shadows - produce "swiss cheese" 3D models in all but the simplest caves. Lava tubes are often conducive to these techniques; their basalt composition wreaks havoc on magnetic compasses, so it's a welcome update.
Having used a $75k FARO Lidar device in an admittedly clean and comfy cave before, I sure wouldn't attempt to haul it into the average "wild" cave for fear of trashing it. The promise of SLAM-based devices, a computationally-expensive technique for realtime integration of 3D data building a 3D model as you traverse the cave, is amazing; but the expense still high, the hardware still fragile, and caves are still irregular enough to never make this easy.
Stone Aerospace in Texas has done some amazing work with autonomous underwater cave mapping using sonar. Their submersible robot has the same advantage that a quadcopter would have in an air-filled cave, whereas we human mappers are still stuck standing on (or crawling on) the floor.
Neither McCarthy nor anyone else in this conversation is referring to the punctuation at the end of a sentence.
And, for the record, I was exclaiming that the takeaway is exactly the opposite of what the author suggests. That is, in fact, the precise meaning of an exclamation point.
I've kindly included some actual cognitive interruptions for you, to aid in your understanding of this discussion.
I focused on reading "Cormac McCarthy's tips" and missed that they'd been regurgitated by others. Sort of diminishes the whole point of reading it!
Thank you!
Do you not see the irony in his own use of four commas and a colon while telling us to minimize our punctuation use in this article?
> While you are writing, ask yourself: is it possible to preserve my original message without that punctuation mark, that word, that sentence, that paragraph or that section? Remove extra words or commas whenever you can.
Perhaps he merely considered the "Oxford comma" unnecessary!
I kindly urge writers to use his subjective opinion here as an argument FOR rather than against the precision application of punctuation!