Is radioactive decay triggered by quantum fluctuations?

Question: The radioactive decay is caused by the instability of the nucleus. It is a random process in which an unstable nucleus loses energy by emitting radiation and goes into a lower and more stable energy state. Are quantum fluctuations responsible for triggering the decay?
Comment: Please define what you mean by "quantum fluctuation".
Comment: The value of a quantum field in any point in space is always jiitering around a bit. When I say quantum fluctuation, I am referring to this kind of fluctuation. We can't precisely determine the value of the field and precisely how it is changing.
Comment: The value isn't "jittering around" - like most quantum observables, it simply isn't well-defined until you measure it, just like the position of an electron in an atom is not jittering around, but undetermined. It is indeed this indeterminacy that can be seen as responsible for decays - this is the tunnelling John Rennie's answer refers to - but calling it "quantum fluctuation" obscures the issue more than it clarifies it.
Answer: Quantum fluctuations don't exist, or at least not in the way typically described in popular science articles. For more on this see Are vacuum fluctuations really happening all the time?
Radioactive decays fall roughly into two classes: those that occur by tunnelling and those that don't.
Some decays require a large reorganisation of the nucleus. These would typically be fission decays, as in uranium, or alpha decays. In these cases there is usually a large potential barrier to the decay and the kinetics of the decay are best described by calculating the tunnelling probability through the barrier.
With other decays, such as beta and gamma emission, there is no barrier and in this case the kinetics are best described by a Fermi's golden rule calculation. (For beta decay we'd use the Fermi calculation but this is still essentially a golden rule calculation.)
In neither case are quantum fluctuations involved.


When was the term "plate tectonics" first used in geology?

Question: The Merriam-Webster online dictionary writes that the first known usage of plate tectonics in the sense of the geological theory was in 1969. Encyclopedia Britannica credits Alfred Wegener with an early conception of the theory in 1915, and then cites Harry Hess in 1960 as conceiving of seafloor spreading, an integral aspect of plate tectonics. The encyclopedia cites other geologists (McKenzie, Parker, Morgan, le Pichon) with developing the theory in the 1960s and the geologists Isacks, Oliver, and Sykes with coining the term "new global tectonics." But no source I can find describes where "plate tectonics" was published for the first time. Please, does anyone know when this term was first used?
Answer: D. Davies and D. P. McKenzie, "Seismic Travel-Time Residuals and Plates."
Geophysical Journal International, Vol. 18, No. 1, Sep. 1969, pp. 51-63 (my bolding):

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that some seismological observations which have not yet appeared to have any obvious cause are explicable in terms of the 'plate tectonics' developed in the last year or two by McKenzie & Parker (1967), Morgan (1968) and Le Pichon (1968). That seismological information is relevant to a critical examination of plate tectonics is testified by Isacks, Oliver & Sykes (1968) who produce a formidable amount of evidence on global plate behaviour.

The publications referenced are:
Dan P. McKenzie and Robert L. Parker, "The North Pacific: An example of tectonics on a sphere." Nature, Vol. 216, Dec. 1967, pp. 1276-1280
W. Jason Morgan, "Rises, trenches, great faults and crustal blocks." Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 73, No. 6, Mar. 1968, pp. 1959-1982
Xavier Le Pichon, "Sea-floor spreading and continental drift." Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 73, No. 12,  Jun. 1968, pp. 3661-3697
Bryan Isacks, Jack Oliver, and Lynn R. Sykes, "Seismology and the new global tectonics." Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 73, No. 18, Sep. 1968, pp. 5855-5899
None of these references seems to use the term "plate tectonics", but the last of these refers to (p. 5879) the "plate model of tectonics", which could be considered a precursor term:

The plate model of tectonics provides, in a simple way, for the termination of an island arc by the abrupt or gradual transition to a transform fault, by a decrease in the rate of convergence to zero, or by some combination of these.
Comment: *OED* has a 1966 quote from *Bulletin of Geological Society of America* with the term "raft tectonics".
Comment: Thanks for the clear and detailed answer, njuffa!


Visualization of GraphML graph?

Question: What are the best options to visualize a graph defined in GraphML on Mac OSX or Linux ? R + iGraph seems to be a valid solution according to gremlin-users group but I'm wondering if there is any easier solution, ideally a simple "graphml2png" command line application. Any idea ?
Comment: GraphMl viewer for network visualization [example](https://github.com/Abhi5h3k/graphml-viewer)
Answer: I use yEd and it works on Linux, Windows and OSX.
Plus it can export to several formats such as PDF, PNG, SVG, BMP, etc
Unfortunately, no command line support AFAIK
Comment: Good! it seems a bit buggy as it will not show some things when we click on them, other times will show after a few retries. The main tip is to "focus node", at "neighborhood" or "predecessors" right click and "convert to document", that will let us zoom in to further analyze. thx!
Answer: I don't have a complete recipe, but I can share my thoughts on it.
Since the graph can be visualized in a lot of ways, you should be able to manage its appearance somehow. Simply drawing nodes and edges without any pre-processing is not a good option - this approach will give you a random bunch of edges and nodes, especially on large graphs.
Here's an example algorithm to get a clean and visually attractive representation of a graph:

Run some force-directed algorithm on the graph.
Calculate graph modularity and color each node by its modularity class.
Change size of each node based on its degree.
If graph is too big, filter out nodes you're not interested in (probably nodes with low degree).
Change edges thickness based on their weights.
Add labels to nodes and edges.

You can do stuff like that with Gephi (in manual mode). They also offer a Gephi Toolkit that should be able to automate such things (unfortunately, I myself didn't try it yet). So I'd try to wrote simple console Java program that uses this toolkit.
Here's an example of a graph visualized with the algorithm above:
Comment: do we have any solution for web applications? I want to make an Angular App to visualize with either D3.js or Cytoscpae but all work with CSV or JSON, do you  know any library that converts GraphML to JSON or CSV ?
Comment: GraphMl viewer for network visualization [example](https://github.com/Abhi5h3k/graphml-viewer)

Visualization of GraphML graph?


Is it legal to publish a ''copy" of the Constitution with fake text added?

Question: Would it be legal to publish a copy of the Constitution with an extra article that is not part of the real constitution, with no indication that it was added, i.e. intending to mislead readers?
Comment: With no further details about the content of the extra article, why wouldn't the answer always be "it depends"?
Comment: @PeterMortensen I wouldn't have been surprised if the answer was "no, it's not legal to try to convince people that the Constitution says something it doesn't."
Answer: Yes
The US constitution is in the public domain. Anyone may publish a version of it, including an altered version. No US law forbidding publication of an altered version would itself be constitutional -- the First Amendment would prevent such a law.
However, if an altered version were sold under such conditions that a customer might reasonably believe it to be an unaltered version, that might be false advertising, or perhaps fraud, because the seller would be deceiving the customer as to what the product is.
Comment: @DavidSchwartz If I sell something as A Copy of the Constitution of the United States, and it is _not_ in fact a copy of the US constitution, I'm claiming to sell one thing and I'm actually selling something else.
Comment: @wizzwizz4 _exact_ is certainly a matter of degree: "and secure the Blessings of Liberty" (modern s) and "and secure the Bleſsings of Liberty" (original long s) are slightly different transcriptions yet no deception.
Comment: I doubt that could be prosecuted as fraud without violating the First Amendment. That is no different from prosecuting someone for selling a book that contains intentional falsehoods that are not clearly identified as such on the grounds that it deceives or defrauds the customer who paid for truths and got lies, which is clearly unconstitutional. See cases like Winter v. Putnam for the proposition that you cannot prosecute fraud or product liability when the crux are about the false/erroneous content of speech that is sold.
Comment: @wizzwizz4 See Winter v. Putnam (and many other cases). When the supposed "fraud" relates to the falsity or inaccuracy of the speech, the First Amendment prevents the government from punishing it whether by civil liability or otherwise. This is no different from suing Fox News because you don't agree that what they're broadcasting is news. Even if you are objectively right, the First Amendment is an absolute bar to civil liability for paying for speech you later find you don't like, even if for objective and provable reasons.
Comment: @wizzwizz4 Feel free to cite a case to the contrary, but you won't find one. This First Amendment exception, were it recognized by courts, would permit the government to punish any false speech that people paid for. That would include things like false political claims at paid dinners (such as contradicting the CDC's authoritative medical claim that masks don't help the public stop the spread of COVID). It's simply not the law in the United States nor could it be if the First Amendment is to have any teeth.
Answer: Merely publishing it as provided wouldn't be actionable or a crime, but if it caused economic or legal harm to someone, or was used by someone knowing of its alteration in a legal matter, this would probably be actionable by someone in a manner that would depend upon the way that the issue presented itself.
Comment: @GlenYates Vague questions get vague answers and the law doesn't work in generalities. I could probably imagine at least a dozen ways with materially different legal analyses for how it could play out in half an hour.
Comment: "...would probably be actionable by someone in a manner that would depend upon the way that the issue presented itself." Well that certainly pins down exactly what could happen.
Comment: 'twas meant in jest.
Comment: FAAFO....... +1
Comment: @GlenYates :) Cool.
Answer: This Has Happened Before—The Government has Even Done it
According to a law review article by Jol A. Silversmith, "Well into the second
half of the nineteenth century, some textbooks, state compilations of
law, and even on one occasion a compilation of law published under
the auspices of Congress erroneously included" a proposed-but-never-ratified "titles of nobility amendment."
It is not Illegal to Misquote the Constitution, in and of Itself
To this day, there are some people who mistakenly believe that the TONA was ratified, or that various other amendments never properly were.  There's no law against being wrong.
It's also not against any law, for example, to give a bogus quote of the Constitution as a joke.  (It's right there in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press, or making me work on my birthday.")
What You Do with Your Fake Constitution Might be a Crime
For example, if you claimed to be selling authentic copies of the Constitution, and you knowingly sold your customers something else, that could be fraud.  Or, if you printed up a fake copy of the Constitution to show clients and deceive them into paying you to file a frivolous lawsuit, you could get in serious trouble for that too.
Comment: @DavidSiegel You might be thinking of thee 27th Amendment. That regulates Congressional pay raises.
Comment: If I am not mistaken, the TONA **did** eventually get ratified, more than 200 years after it was proposed.


How to view POP mail in a web browser

Question: I have an email account with my hosting package. Is there a web service that will allow me to view my emails from any web browser (to simulate a Gmail like experience). So far I only know how to do it via the Mac Mail app and my iPhone.
Answer: You can still use gmail and add your hosting email account as a POP3 account: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13287
Comment: The other answers I'm sure were good, but this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Answer: Check out mail2web.com

mail2web.com offers a variety of
  services, including our flagship
  mail2web Webmail service which
  provides secure and anonymous access
  to your POP or IMAP email accounts
  from any browser or hand-held device.
  With mail2web Webmail you can pick up
  your email from any internet enabled
  device from anywhere in the world.
Comment: Good but I won't give you a +1 on top of the one you have, because you pathetically just quoted their marketting blurb.    Anyhow, yes it is a good site i've used it many times, been around a while, I put it to good use a number of times 10 years ago.. and no doubt it's still going strong.
Comment: Thus the quote. ;)
Comment: There is no way to export emails with web2mail and I could not make pop3 to work either.
Answer: You can install a webmail client to your webserver.  Here are some clients you can look at:  http://www.noupe.com/ajax/10-ajax-webmail-clients.html
Comment: Which clients does the link talk about? Why not put them in your answer?
Comment: Giving the asker a bunch of names he wouldn't recognize didn't seem the best way to answer.  The link takes you to a page that gives a screen shot of each client's look and gives a small description.  The main point was that he could install his own webclient.
Answer: Short answer: It is impossible to view POP3 in a web browser.
POP3 protocol was created to allow a mail client to download mails from a POP3 server and then the POP3 client will have option to delete the mails. Therefore, it is impossible to read the mail over and over again, if it is deleted. Even if you do not delete it, you have to redownload all the mail and that wastes time.
Comment: Did you read the other answers

How to view POP mail in a web browser


How do I politely remind my boss about his decision?

Question: I am currently working as an intern at a mid-range startup. After the end of my first internship period , since the project that I am doing here got good results, my boss asked me to extend the internship. During that discussion he also told me the company is ready to give me a full-time role , and agreed that they will sponsor my H1B (as an international student working in the US , H1B is necessary after my OTP expires). He also agreed a certain pay (that in my opinion is good) . Last week I reminded him about the offer letter, and asked him to let me know the decision soon. He told he would let me know by this week. But I still have not heard from him about this yet. How do I remind him politely about this ? If,for some reason, they don't want to extend the offer , then I need to apply to the other companies. Given the current situation of economy ,I know job-hunt is going to be tough and I need his decision as soon as possible. Also I have only about couple of weeks remaining in my internship.
Comment: It is still "by this week"... so if you follow up do it after such time expires (weeks start on sunday/monday).
Comment: Can you clarify if you received a written offer letter or a verbal offer? How much time has elapsed since the original offer and the reminder last week? As a side point, it would be prudent to plan and execute your job hunt regardless of what you're told until you have the confirmed offer received and accepted.
Comment: Given the news about US tech layoffs this week, it's also possible that your boss thought he had a job lined up for you, had hired interns that way before, but suddenly the job's not there any more, and he's not really being told about it because the executive layer above him is getting much funnier about hiring, when previously they were all go go go ...
Comment: @McLovin, Yes, you really screwed up by waiting this long. Also, in the future, memorialize important conversations after the fact over email. Not that this changes anything. When looking for a job, you should always apply to as many employers as you can.
Comment: @DavidS , it was the verbal offer, and it's been roughly 2 months. I am starting the job hunt regardless
Answer: You MUST make alternative plans starting right now. Even if your boss is well intended and they actually want to hire you, you still have to go through the H1B process which can take many years.
Filing for H1B is relatively simple and the approval rate is generally good, however the number of applications significantly exceeds the number of number of available Visas and hence they execute each year the dreaded H1B lottery. For 2022 they predict an about a 4:1 ratio, so only 25% of all applicants will actually get a Visa. For the rest it's "try again next year" with similar chances.
You can't put your life and career on hold to wait this out.
To clarify: your boss CAN'T give you an offer to start in 3 weeks. They can only give you an offer that's contingent on you getting authorization to work in the US and to sponsor an H1B. Ideally that process should have started a long time ago, so you chances of getting even just a contingent offer are not great.
Answer:
If,for some reason, they don't want to extend the offer , then I need
to apply to the other companies. Given the current situation of
economy ,I know job-hunt is going to be tough and I need his decision
as soon as possible. Also I have only about couple of weeks remaining
in my internship.

Don't wait for an answer. Apply to other places. If you get the answer you want in a few weeks, and they give you an official written offer with no conditions that you accept, sign, and return; then you can pause the other searches.
When time is short don't hesitate to search for other opportunities. If they give you a verbal confirmation, keep looking.

But I still have not heard from him about this yet. How do I remind
him politely about this ?

So next week, ask your boss. Ask what the next step is to move to a full time role. You can ether ask in person, or just a quick note.
Answer: Your boss may have to discuss your position with HIS boss and with accounting just to make sure you can be paid what was offered. People are busy so this takes time.
In the meantime you can still apply to other jobs, just don't take them yet.
You can also ask your boss after 1 week has passed "How is the paperwork going for my full time position? Should I apply for other jobs just in case?" This will put pressure on him by telling him you have other options and will tell him you are interested in still working there.


Autofilter Using Variable Array

Question: I need to use a string of data for an autofilter field.  In the actual macro the creation of the string is more complicated and variable, but the below example recreates my problem more simply.
When I try to use a string variable into the autofilter, the autofilter hides everything.  When I use the same string but put it into the Array directly it works.  Can anyone help me with how to filter using an Array?
<code>Term = """" & APR & """" & "," & """" & MAY & """"

Debug.Print Term     'just to verify the strings are the same

Arr1 = Array("APR", "MAY")   'works in the filter
Arr1 = Array(Term)           'fails in the filter

Worksheets("Filter").Range("$A:$H").AutoFilter Field:=2, _
    Criteria1:=Arr1, Operator:=xlFilterValues
</code>
Answer: Try this
<code>    Dim APR As String
    Dim MAY As String
    Dim arr1(0 To 1) As String
    APR = "APR"
    MAY = "MAY"
    arr1(0) = APR
    arr1(1) = MAY
    Worksheets("Filter").Range("$A:$H").AutoFilter Field:=2, _
        Criteria1:=arr1, Operator:=xlFilterValues
</code>

Autofilter Using Variable Array


Are these bushes sun damaged?

Question: I have two of these bushes -I'm not sure what they are, maybe somebody knows? It looks like they might be sun damaged. I know that there used to be a tree nearby that provided some shade, which makes me think they are getting too much sun. They have small white flowers in the spring. Also, I see them around a lot so I think they are pretty common landscape bushes.
Answer: I believe these are the shrub called Burning Bush or Euonymus alatus. It might be the misnamed cultivar 'Compactus' which can still get quite large with time. The identifying keys are the paired leaves with a light sawtooth shape on the perimeter of each leaf.  A more definitive identification would be the corky wings that are seen on older growth.
This shrub is native to to central and northern China, Japan, and Korea and was introduced to North America in the 1860's. If left alone it often grows into a plant up to eight feet (2.5 Meters) wide and tall.  It is very popular due to it's good red colour in the fall if correctly located and bright pink or orange fruit.
It is a tough and hardy shrub, so much so, that it is considered invasive in eastern North America and sale is prohibited in a few states. Consider the black chokecherry, particularly some of the cultivars such as Aronia arbutifolia 'Brilliantissima' instead.
The red colour on the new growth could indicate a premature colour change due to stress or even cool temperatures given the odd summer we have had so far in Eastern North America.
Comment: +1 yup, it's a Euonymus. And it is invasive.
Comment: Thanks for the informative answer. What could be causing stress? I'm guessing it has something to do with either too much water or too little?
Answer: I agree that this is Euonomys alatus. The red color showing on the leaves is chlorosis. The red color is always underlying, but comes out when the chlorophyll loses concentration. That is what causes the red fall color.
The red on your plant might be caused by several factors, but too much sun isn't one of them. It looks like the shrub is suffering from nutrient (probably nitrogen) deprivation. Try fertilizing with a balanced fertilizer every couple weeks.
Another thing you could check is the soil pH. This often affects leaf color.
Comment: What kind of fertilizer would you recommend? Fish fertilizer.. fertilizer stake.. miracle gro?
Comment: @Ultravi01 I'd recommend using a soluble fertilizer (miracle gro is fine) for now, to green it up fast, but after the leaves look healthy, you an use a slower release fertilizer, like spikes, or something organic.

Are these bushes sun damaged?


Hamracheim or Hammerachim?

Question: In Modim in the Shmoneh Esre we say המרחם כי לא תמו חסדך the question is whether the מ in המרחם should have a daggesh or not, and thus what sort of Shva should be under said מ?
Answer: It should not have a dagesh. Throughout Tanach, most every mem with a sh'va as the first letter of present-tense verb in piel or pual has no dagesh after a he hay'dia according to the m'sora (and the same is usually true of any mem with a sh'va), and I have no reason to believe that that changed in later Hebrew (certainly not by the time "Modim" was written).
That said, I'm not sure what kind of sh'va the mem has. At least possibly, the sh'va is na anyway.
Comment: Quite possibly I can omit "most" from my answer, but I'm not sure.
Comment: My confusion stems from two siddurim, Kol Eliyahu by Rav Mordechai Eliyahu and Chazon Ovadia by Rav Ovadia Yosef who both put a dagesh in the mem.
Comment: @RabbiMichaelTzadok, if you had reasons to think both that the answer to your question is "yes" and that it's "no", you should have included those reasons in your question. I'd not have wasted my time with this answer then, since you already knew everything in it, and you'd get answers more on-point for your question.
Comment: actually I didn't know much of the information in your answer and it makes me wonder if the two siddurim I mentioned are mistaken, especially as the siddur of the Chida, Rav Kaduri's siddur(both with and without Kavvanot) and the Ben Ish Hai's siddur have it the way you do.  Thus my question stands, which is grammatically correct and which is not.
Comment: @RabbiMichaelTzadok, okay. Glad I could help (albeit slightly).
Comment: According to Tiberian masorah, such dageshim are nach unless there is a ga`ya before it, in which case they are na.
Answer: For many words in Tanakh that begin with he hayedia followed by mem-shewa, even though the mem lacks daghesh, the Masora prescribes shewa naʿ (mobile shewa), indicated by gaʿya on the preceding pathah.
We should not at all assume that the words of the siddur were pronounced as they were in the Tanakh. The language (and pronunciation) of Hazal often differed.
The preponderence of evidence suggests that unless one is carefully and holistically following an established authentic reading tradition in which the shewa is nah, the shewa should be considered naʿ.

Hamracheim or Hammerachim?


Is systemd-timesyncd.service accessible via a dbus api?

Question: I have to read the status of systemd-timesyncd.service whether to see whetther it has synchronized with the ntp . The System clock synchronized flag is not helpful since it does not show appropriate information
Answer: There is a DBUS. See the developer documentation. They have this as an example:
$ gdbus introspect --system --dest org.freedesktop.timedate1 --object-path /org/freedesktop/timedate1
node /org/freedesktop/timedate1 {
  interface org.freedesktop.timedate1 {
    methods:
      SetTime(in  x usec_utc,
              in  b relative,
              in  b user_interaction);
      SetTimezone(in  s timezone,
                  in  b user_interaction);
      SetLocalRTC(in  b local_rtc,
                  in  b fix_system,
                  in  b user_interaction);
      SetNTP(in  b use_ntp,
             in  b user_interaction);
    signals:
    properties:
      readonly s Timezone = 'Europe/Berlin';
      readonly b LocalRTC = false;
      readonly b NTP = true;
  };
  interface org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties {
  };
  interface org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable {
  };
  interface org.freedesktop.DBus.Peer {
  };
};

That is to "set" through dbus; not to "get".

I have to read the status of systemd-timesyncd.service whether to see whether it has synchronized with the ntp

Is a whole different question though. As with most (if not all?) systemd services: they use the underlying procedure to do something. systemd-timesyncd uses ntp so your question is ... not correct. From the man page:

systemd-timesyncd will look for files with a .list extension in ntp-units.d/ directories. Each file is parsed as a list of unit names, one per line. Empty lines and lines with comments ("#") are ignored. Files are read from /usr/lib/systemd/ntp-units.d/ and the corresponding directories under /etc/, /run/, /usr/local/lib/. Files in /etc/ override files with the same name in /run/, /usr/local/lib/, and /usr/lib/. Files in /run/ override files with the same name under /usr/. Packages should install their configuration files in /usr/lib/ (distribution packages) or /usr/local/lib/ (local installs).

What you want is possible with the
timedatectl

command.

timedatectl may be used to show the current status of time synchronization services, for example systemd-timesyncd.service.
status     Show current settings of the system clock and RTC, including whether network time synchronization is active. If no command is specified, this is the implied default.
show  Show the same information as status, but in machine readable form. This command is intended to be used whenever computer-parsable output is required. Use status if you are looking for formatted human-readable output.
Comment: timedatectl does show the synchronization status , but it only reads the kernel flag. Even if the ntp server is stopped, it still shows that the client is synchronized with the server. But on systemctl status systemd-timesyncd it correctly shows if the client has been synchronized or has timed out waiting for the connection. I want to know if this status is accessible via dbus?


reorder modifier/constraints stack order in python

Question: Is there any way to set a modifier or constraints index in the stack without using bpy.ops?
The idea is to easily reformat the stack order of constraint.
An example could be to re-order constraints alphabetically
Answer: Sadly no. I ran in to the same limitation when trying to sort logic bricks.
The constraints, modifiers, and logic bricks are all read only collections.
The only way to reorder them is through the ops operators, moving one at a time, up or down one place. (which stinks for any scripting)
For constraints it is:
bpy.ops.constraint.move_up(constraint="constraintName", owner='OBJECT')
bpy.ops.constraint.move_down(constraint="constraintName", owner='OBJECT')

For modifier it is:
bpy.ops.object.modifier_move_up(modifier="modifierName")
bpy.ops.object.modifier_move_down(modifier="modifierName")

For logic bricks it is:
bpy.ops.logic.sensor_move(sensor="logicBrickName", object="objName", direction='UP')
bpy.ops.logic.actuator_move(actuator="logicBrickName", object="objName", direction='UP')
bpy.ops.logic.controller_move(controller="logicBrickName", object="objName", direction='UP')

bpy.ops.logic.sensor_move(sensor="logicBrickName", object="objName", direction='DOWN')
bpy.ops.logic.actuator_move(actuator="logicBrickName", object="objName", direction='DOWN')
bpy.ops.logic.controller_move(controller="logicBrickName", object="objName", direction='DOWN')

You probably would not want to reorder constraints or modifiers alphabetically. Both constraints and modifiers work from the top down, the order effects the out come.
Here is an example with the exact same modifiers and default settings, just the order is reversed. Stack order makes a huge difference.
Comment: Seems right, nothin magic happened. Thanks again
Comment: Thanks for the answer, that's what i thought. About alphabetical order, that was just an example to explain the need ;). Waiting before validation, in case someone come with a magic solution!
Comment: I would love a "magic solution," but have looked (I made a logic brick addon) and there is none. :(
Comment: @David is there anyway I can put the modifier at the top of the stack?
Comment: @OmarAhmad short answer is yes. But it takes more python then I could fit in to a comment. ask a question, and I'll answer with the script.


How to integrate SQL Server 2008 R2 Reports on web site

Question: I am creating a site that is mainly used to view reports. The database is SQL Server 2008 R2 Express with Reporting Services. I was thinking of using Business Intelligence Development Studion to create reports since it integrates well and is easy to use. The site does not exist yet as the reports are its main feature.
I started using Visual Web Developer 2010 for the site since I thought it would work well. A Microsoft rep recommended that I use Visual Studio 2012 since it's compatible with SQL Server 2008 R2 and is the latest version. HOWEVER, it seems that report integration was stopped since Visual Studio 2008.
What tools should I be using for my reports and site? The database must be Microsoft but I am flexible about everything else. I am looking for tools that work well with the database.
I also want to use source control software that is compatible/works well with whatever IDE/software I'm using. Any recommendations?
Right now, I am the sole developer. I want to be prepared to expand to a small team once the project is underway and I want to be set up right the first time!
Answer: If predefined reports is the main feature of your site, i recommend you to go a level higher and use some tool that let you create and design reports easily, like DBxtra.


Error launching sqoop client on windows

Question: Per the installation directions I run:
./bin/sqoop.sh client
and it returns error:

could not find or load main class org.apache.sqoop.shell.SqoopShell

I'm setting up Sqoop for the first time.  I have the server up and running on Redhat Linux.  Now I am stuck running the client on Windows Server 2012.  I am running hadoop v2 and sqoop-1.99.3-bin-hadoop200.  At the command line I verified java is installed by running "java -version" at the command line and seeing "1.8.0".  Scoop is written in Java 1.6.  Does that matter?  I'm having difficulty locating an active download link to 1.6 for windows for troubleshooting.
I tried installing Cygwin and running the command.  Same error.
Answer: Locate the directory traversal for the case of client in sqoop.sh
# Build class path with full path to each library
 for f in $SQOOP_CLIENT_LIB/*.jar; do
  CLASSPATH="${CLASSPATH}:$f"
done

Just add the following search and replace params (note changes of colon to semicolon in classpath)
# Build class path with full path to each library
PARAMSEARCH="/c/"
PARAMREPLACE="C:\\"
for f in $SQOOP_CLIENT_LIB/*.jar; do
  f=${f/$PARAMSEARCH/$PARAMREPLACE}
  CLASSPATH="${CLASSPATH};$f"
done

Answer: I used the following steps to configure sqoop in a windows machine and now able to work with sqoop 1.99.3 successfully.
*Cygwin must be installed before continuing further steps. Also its just for using the native libraries, we can interact with sqoop directly from windows command prompt.

Save the sqoop package folder in "C:" drive name as sqoop
Copy the hadoop lib folder  "hadoop" from C:\hadoop\share into C:\usr\lib\hadoop [If this directory doesn't exists, then create one]
Change the hadoop configuration properties in the file "sqoop.properties" from the location "C:\sqoop\server\conf"  as below
at line:132
org.apache.sqoop.submission.engine.mapreduce.configuration.directory=C:\hadoop\etc\hadoop

Copy the sqoop.properties and sqoop_bootstrap.properties from "C:\sqoop\server\conf" into "C:\sqoop\server\bin".
Set the environment variables for sqoop home as well as path:
SQOOP_HOME = C:\sqoop
Starting the server:

Open Command prompt (run as Administrator) and enter into the $SQOOP_HOME location and type command as follows

C:\sqoop> cd server\bin
C:\sqoop\server\bin> catalina  start
The catalina server will be start and check it in the below location
http://localhost:12000/sqoop

Client Shell Command

Open the command prompt and enter the following command
java -classpath C:\sqoop\shell\lib\sqoop-shell-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\sqoop-common-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\sqoop-client-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\log4j-1.2.16.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\json-simple-1.1.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\jline-0.9.94.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\jersey-core-1.11.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\jersey-client-1.11.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\jansi-1.7.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\hamcrest-core-1.3.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\groovy-all-1.8.5.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\commons-lang-2.6.jar;C:\sqoop\shell\lib\commons-cli-1.2.jar org.apache.sqoop.shell.SqoopShell

The client shell command will be displayed as :
    Sqoop Shell: Type 'help' or '\h' for help.
    sqoop:000>

Hope this helps
Thanks
Answer: I had the same issue running on Windows 8.1. Turns out it's caused because sqoop.sh uses POSIX style directory paths. So / instead of . This results in the script being unable to set the correct CLASSPATH. This could have been remedied by using a cmd file for Windows. I don't know why they didn't do it. There are cmd files for catalina and such but not for launching sqoop!
Anyway I got around this issue by adding all the jar files in the shell\lib folder to CLASSPATH. You do have to add each & every jar file there and not just the folder path. A restart was required after this which was annoying. However the shell script will still not launch the client even after this change. The little trick I used is to just launch the client  at the command prompt from the shell\lib folder with the following command
      ***java org.apache.sqoop.shell.SqoopShell***

Now I get the groovy prompt from where I can run all the commands provided here

Error launching sqoop client on windows


PHP namespaces problems

Question: I'm trying to use an external library.
Because there are some conflicts I'm using namespaces ( php 5.3 )
The goal is not to change the external library at all ( just adding the namespaces at the top)
The problem is inside the library there are several situations that don't work

is_a($obj,'3thpartyclassname') only  works if I add the namespace in front of 3thpartyclassname
the 3th party uses native classes but they don't work only if I apped the global space (new \Exception)

Any way to make this work with no modifications ?
Update
use \Exception as Exception; fix problem 2
I only have problems with is_a and is_subclass_of. Both of them need the namespace and ignore the current namespace.
Answer: No, you have to do some modifications
namespace My\Own\Namespace;                // declare your own namespace
use My\ThirdParty\Component;               // import 3rd party namespace
$component = new Component;                // create instance of it
var_dump(is_a($component, 'Component'));   // FALSE
var_dump($component instanceof Component); // TRUE

The is_a and is_subclass_of methods require you to put in the fully qualified classname (including the namespace). To my knowledge, there is no way around that as of PHP 5.3.5. Using instanceof should solve both bases though.
Importing the native classes, like Exception should also work, e.g.
namespace My\Own\Namespace;
use \Exception as Exception;
throw new Exception('something broke');

See the chapter on Namespace in the PHP Manual for further information.
Answer: I don't think there's any way to make is_a() respect relative namespaces (such as the current namespace or a namespace imported with a use command).  This is because it takes a string argument and executes in a different context.  You'd need to switch to the instanceof syntax instead.  So no, I don't think that this will help you avoid collisions between libraries which both are written against the global namespace, you'll still have to find instances like this and address them directly.

PHP namespaces problems


MSP430 Launchpad connection of photoresistor and concerns regarding Launchpads protection

Question: I am using the MSP430 Launchpad and I have a question regarding photoresistors. The thing is that when you connect a LED with a pin in Launchpad, which you have configured, as output I read that you must use a resistor in series as not to damage the LED. When trying to find how to connect the photoresistor every source said that one must connect a 10kOhm resistor in series as not to damage the Launchpad. Regarding both the LED and the photoresistor as a simple resistor why in the first case we connect the resistor for the protection of the LED and in the second for the protection of the Launchpad? Also why can the Launchpad be damaged by its own voltage? I mean if a pin is configured to input and one tries to use an extremely large voltage then sure it will be damaged, but when you try to use 3.3V generated from its own Vcc whay may be damaged?
Answer: I think you may be getting confused between the two devices.  With an LED a resistor is required to both protect the LED and the MCU's IO pin.
For a photo-resistor (I assume you mean something like an old Cadmium Sulphide Cell?) it is just a resistor which changes its resistance according to the incident light.  However, an MCU has no way of directly measuring that resistance, so a second resistor is required to form a Voltage Divider:

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
As the light levels change the ratio of resistance between R1 and LDR1 changes, and thus the voltage at the point between them (GPIO in this schematic) will change.  The MCU can easily measure that voltage using an analogue input.
The choice of resistor for R1 sets the light sensitivity of the LDR, and also the range of voltages the MCU sees for different light levels.  Different LDRs have different resistance ranges, and R1 should be sized to match. You may need to experiment with different values to get the light range you desire.
Answer: MSP430G2 outputs can sink about 40mA from an LED at 3.3V, so a series resistor would be required if the LED was rated for less than this. Also the maximum recommended current for all I/O pins combined is 45mA, so resistors would be required if driving multiple LEDs.
The only restriction on inputs is that the voltage must not go above Vcc or below Vss by more than 0.3V. A photoresistor is typically connected in series with a resistor between Vcc and Vss, so there is no chance of the input voltage exceeding these limits. However a small photoresistor might be damaged if it had a bright light shining on it and the port pin was set to output. Most CDS sensors are rated for 90mW or higher and so should survive such abuse (an MSP430 output can barely manage 2V * 40mA = 80mW).
Answer: An LED is not a resistor; it does not follow Ohm's law. Basically, once you exceed the drop voltage, it will draw as much current as it can, to the point that it destroys itself. This is what the resistor does: limit the current flowing through to a safe level. Try connecting an LED directly to a 9V battery - it may last long enough to give a visible flash of light before it dies. It may also become hot enough to be uncomfortable to hold.
As for the microcontroller on your Launchpad, again it's not the voltage but the current that will damage it. If you were to connect an output pin to ground and drive it high (or connect it to Vcc and drive it low), you are basically making a short circuit. Excess current will flow through the pin and can burn out the silicon of the chip or the internal wire connecting the silicon to the pin.
For the phototransistor, assuming you connect it only to an input, then the internal resistance of the input pin will greatly limit the current through the phototransistor and input pin. However, since GPIO pins can be programmed to either input or output, it's a good idea to put a current limiting resistor, just in case you accidentally set the pin as an output instead.
Comment: Thank you! Very enlightening! It is exactly what I was asking.


Structural risk minimization and SVMs

Question: I know what is SRM but I didn't understand the relation between SRM and SVMs. Can anyone explain me this? Why they say that SVMs rely on a SRM approach?
Thank you so much!
Answer: Without context it is a bit hard to say what is meant by the phase. However, I will take a guess. For the sake of the argument, let's use a linear SVM in a two dimensional case as shown in this example on Wikipedia:

While planes H1 and H2 separate the training data correctly, H2 is chosen by the SVM because it has higher margin. The greater the size of this "buffer zone" the lower the risk of a wrong classification for an unseen sample. Hence, one might say that a SVM does SRM by choosing the separator with the greatest margin.
Answer: As you probably know, structural risk minimisation normally consists of two steps

Minimise the empirical risk $R_\mathrm{emp}$ in each of the function classes
Minimise the guaranteed risk $R_\mathrm{g} = R_\mathrm{emp} + \mathrm{complexity}$

The point now is that the margin can be seen as a measure of complexity. Figure 1 in a paper from Osuna et. al provides a good intuition as to why a bigger margin is similar to lower complexity and vice versa.
When training a support vector machine, you try to find the classification border that minimises the number of misclassifications and at the same time maximises the margin. In other words, you try to minimise $R_\mathrm{emp}$ together with the complexity (larger margin). Therefore you could argue that an SVM minimises $R_\mathrm{g}$ and thus is an example of SRM.

Structural risk minimization and SVMs


What is the rating presented in the App Store?

Question: Does it show the average rating over a specific period of time? Or a cumulative average of all historical rating?
Answer: Per this thread from the Apple Developer Forums, it seems to be a source of much confusion for developers, however the default behaviour is described here, which states that the summary rating is specific to each territory and can be reset if the developer so wishes upon releasing a new version of the app
Answer: The rating is a cumulative average of all historical rating and segregated for each region (country/territory) app is sold in.
There is a minimum threshold of 5 reviews before the reviews and ratings are displayed to users.
For further details regarding App Store ratings and reviews, go through the support site set up by Apple, Ratings, Reviews, and Responses - App Store.


Can I replay heist missions in GTA V single player?

Question: I got a lot of money from the first heist mission in GTA V.  Is it possible to play it again and get the same amount of money and/or level up the abilities of my crew?
Answer: You can replay Heist missions using the Replay feature. However, doing so will not influence the rest of the game. You can neither improve your finances nor your crew by replaying Heists or any other missions.
Comment: On another note is there an option to play either choices of the heist?
Comment: Yes, you can choose your approach every time you replay a Heist mission (and no need to worry about the Heist setup missions as  those are skipped during replay.)
Answer: Navigate the start menu, and you can replay a mission.  When you choose to do so, the game will notify you that it creates a save state of your current progress, allows you replay the past mission, and then restores that save state once the mission is completed.
You can't gain additional money, or level up your crew as nothing is saved from replaying missions.  You can, however, do the heists the second way (as most of them give you two approaches) to attempt the gold medal objectives, which will save if you achieve them.
Comment: do you get to keep the money if you play the other choice in the heist?
Comment: No, as stated in the answer, you cannot gain additional money. A save state is created at your furthest progress, and you play the mission in a sort of sandbox. Then the save state is restored and you are returned to your current progress.  No money, ammo, or anything except completing secondary objectives (for gold medals) will be saved from replaying missions
Answer: Replaying missions has no influential ability on the game, anything you gain will be lost. It's just to improve if you feel you need to.
My friend tried to get into a rare car at the end of a mission, thinking he could drive away. Instead the screen faded and it loads back to the original game...


Blender doesn't update/refresh its window

Question: How can I get it to update/refresh its window the way it's supposed to? I'm using windows 8 and I was able to get blender to work before, but after reinstalling windows 8 and blender, blender won't update/refresh its window unless I move, resize, maximize, or unminimize it. This makes blender completely unusable. I have already tried reinstalling blender and turning my computer off and on again.
Comment: sounds like you need to update your video card drivers, if it worked on this hardware before, the main difference will be your drivers. -- not really a Blender specific problem..
Answer: I had a similar, but perhaps not identical issue.
In File->User Preferences->System, changing Window Draw Method to Triple Buffer from Automatic fixed it for me.
I suggest fiddling with all the Window Draw Method options, if that fails.
Answer: I encountered this exact issue, but on Windows 10. Blender started behaving that way after I turned on high contrast color mode in the Windows appearance settings, and was back to normal when I turned it back off. No idea if that is applicable to your situation, but might help someone else searching the issue.


Should we allow video editing?

Question: Per this question it was closed for off topic but the concept behind Adobe software should be similar to solve since he was requesting a mask.  Also what is our take on After Effects? Do we allow after effects question?
Answer: I don't think so, there is already a site where this is on topic:
Audio-Video Production http://cdn.sstatic.net/avp/img/logo.png

Regarding the question in question: I spoke with the AVP mods and two of them said it would be on topic. However, it turns out that Morgan had already re-posted his question to AVP anyway:

Q: How to make the rest of the mask transparent in Premier Pro CS6?
 I'm trying to highlight a part of my video. Since I'm totally new to video editing on Premier Pro - I'm not sure if this is the best way of doing that, but I'm using masks. I have a title sitting in video 2 row, in it a have a rectangular mask (100% opacity) I then apply a Track Matte Key eff...
Answer: No. There is a site for video editing, and we don't want to take on video production in general.
I don't know enough about After Effects to decide anything on that.

Should we allow video editing?


When people say I need evidence to believe in God, what constitutes 'evidence'?

Question: In the debate of whether or not God exists, which is often used to ridicule those that do believe in God as simple idiots who have no brains, the premise if often thrown out the there is no 'evidence.'  So I'd be curious to hear what exactly would qualify as evidence?
Comment: http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/596/what-would-it-take-in-a-book-to-convince-a-rational-person-that-it-had-been-writ
Comment: @virmaior, this question is simply semantically different than the question Dave referenced.  the burden of proof is on Dave or Dan to show that the questions are the same.  one question is about a *"book"* and evidence it was written by a god, the other question is about *"God"* and evidence whether such being exists at all.
Comment: Agreed this is a dupe of the question Dave pointed to. The short answer is it will depend on who you're trying to convince: some juries convict, others acquit. For me, it would be enough if the holy scripture the person was trying to sell me was (a) written long before I was born and (b)  contained clear, unambiguous, and extremely unlikely predictions (prophesies) which I then saw fulfilled with my own eyes. The prophecies would have to be along the lines of "major miracle which should be impossible given our current understanding of physics and how the world works".
Comment: Nice question. Deserves more attention. I'll have a go at completing my answer when I have a little more time. But anyway, you have my utmost respect for actually asking this question, rather than taking the usual approach of just ignoring this kind of thing altogether.
Comment: @megachuck - can you explain why this *isn't a dupe* of the question Dave mentioned ... otherwise, it seems like it should be closed.
Comment: @virmaior, I agree with Robert. These ask very, very different questions. My (currently incomplete) answer, for example, would not have much to do with the other linked question.
Comment: okay, Robert's explanation is definitely good enough for me.
Comment: I would say it depends on what claims you make about God. If you tell me that God is the entity that makes the sun rise every morning if He receives the due human sacrifices, it is one thing. If you tell me that God is the benevolent, omnipotent creator of the Universe, then it is a very different thing. The evidences that would indicate the existence of one are very different from the evidences that would indicate the existence of the other. And their existences are quite likely mutually exclusive. So we need to know what we are talking about first place.
Answer: You would presumably need some sort of internal "evidence" to justify a "belief." But justifying a personal belief in God is not the same as making a truth claim upon the beliefs of others, so the "evidence" required is very different.
In some branches of philosophy a validity claim must be grounded in a "true, justified belief," around which a great thicket of qualifiers, definitions, and controversies has arisen. In scientific matters or legal cases, "evidence" conforms to various formal specifications, the possibility of falsification or replication, and ultimately some formalized, yet conditional consensus.
But these are cases of "public" evidence, "experiential" confirmation, aiming at consensus. No such evidence can be offered for the existence of God. The existence of sacred texts, the testimony of believers, or witness of "miracles," are not instances that can be readily falsified or confirmed by repetition and collective experience. A "miracle" as Hume notes, is precisely that event which cannot be repeated, demonstrated to others, and thus confirmed as a "law of nature."
So if you ask what evidence "you" need to believe in God, the answer is simply anything that convinces you. An inner certainty, an answered prayer, a near death experience, an ontological argument, personal testimony of a loved one, a sense of dread, a startlingly apt line of sacred text, Pascal's wager, a warm feeling in the chest area, a lack of psychological alternatives.
Anything could qualify as "evidence" for "your" belief in God. But "evidence" that compels agreement from others in the manner of mathematical proofs or scientific and legal evidence is notoriously lacking in the case of divinity. And is probably not applicable even in theory. I would add, however, that John Locke, the father of modern empiricism, considered the four separate eye-witness accounts of the Gospel as good as legal evidence gets. Further historical-linguistic evidence has superseded that happy opinion.
Postscript. Since I am having trouble with "Comments" function, I'll respond here to a comment below. The "historical-linguistic evidence" is simply about the Gospels, which were not eye-witnesses, were not independent (three being traceable to "Source Q"), have proven inconsistent, and were selected from many contemporary apocrypha. None of which was known to Locke. What gives these research findings more weight than "someone's happy opinion," is simply the conventions and standards of "public" or "scientific" evidence discussed above. This may or may not have anything to do with those personal beliefs we may label "opinions" or with the "evidential" constitution of such beliefs. My point is that Locke's argument would can no longer qualify as valid "historical evidence," as it might have in his day. You seem to be equating "evidence" with "truth." The working conventions of public or scientific "evidence" are highly constrained, limited, and functional. One can argue about "absolute truth" or "God," making your case. But such arguments are simply misplaced in the laboratory or law courts with their widely adopted standards of public "evidence."
Comment: What "historical-linguistic' evidence is that?  And what makes that 'evidence' anything more than someone else "happy opinion?"
Answer:
So I'd be curious to hear what exactly would qualify as evidence?

First you have to understand what evidence means: Empirical observations that support one explanation but disqualify other explanations.
Evidence for belief would be some feature of the world around us (something in nature, something about the way human beings are made, something about the laws of physics, etc...) that can only be explained by the existence of God, or for which the most reasonable explanation is God.
The cosmological argument and the teleological argument are basically attempts at providing evidence based arguments for God's existence (as opposed to the ontological argument which is based on pure logic).
Those who disbelieve view such arguments as unconvincing, stating that modern cosmology and the theory of evolution provide better explanations for the way the world is than the cosmological and teleological arguments.
A key difference for atheists is that science has predictive power whereas belief in God doesn't: Both science and God work as after the fact explanations for the way things are, but only science allows people to predict future events. This predictive power is seen as evidence that science is more accurate than belief in God.
Comment: Science predicts that if you swallow one substance A, it will have one effect on your body and if you swallow another substance B, it will have a different effect on your body. You can test sciences predictive power right now: First go swallow a jelly bean, and confirm the predictive effects on your mind and body, then go swallow an MDMA pill, and  confirm that it has a very effect on your mind and body.
Comment: Science allows people to 'predict' future events?  And what does that mean when the prediction is wrong? When I predict that the traffic going home tonight will be terrible what science have I used?  And when I get on the road and, lo and behold, there is nothing but smooth sailing, why/how did science fail me?
Comment: You gave me an example of the scientific method.  The experiment you suggest has to start with a hypothesis.  "Eating a jelly bean will make me happy and Eating a MDMA pill will make me sick?"  So I eat both and see what happens.  The jelly bean makes me sick and I go crazy on the Ecstasy.  How does that show the 'predictive power' of science?
Comment: How does science work with a question like: Does my wife loves me? Or Is there a God?" Or "How was the universe created?  Science can't empirically answer those questions either for or against, so how is it that the predictive power of science is any more accurate than belief in God?
Comment: Science can't answer those questions because they are subjective questions. "Does my wife love me?" can only be answered by you wife, nobody else can answer that for her. In the same way, you're showing by your question that God's existence is a subjective question. Evidence, by definition, serves the purpose of answering objective questions, not subjective ones. See @NelsonAlexander answer, he gives a better explanation of the subjective nature of God's existence.
Comment: I got ya,.. So then is the question: "How was the universe created?" a subjective or objective question?
Comment: "How was the universe created?" is an objective question. The scientific answer to that is: Modern Physics + Big Bang model. The question "Why was the universe created?" is a subjective question.
Comment: But those are all just theories physics and the big bang cannot show empirical evidence of how the universe was created can they?  They can take it so far but are still left with the question of: "Okay that's great but what was there before the big bang?  Modern physics is surely not suggesting that it is possible to create something out of nothing.  Since we are talking the physical realm that would mean, no atoms, no molecules, no quarks, no strings, no energy, etc.
Answer: mega, we all have faith in something or 'nother, whether we want to admit it or not.
for me, "evidence" of the existence of God lies simply in the existence of the Universe and of reality and our existence in this Universe as beings of consciousness, sentience, and sapience.  now "evidence" is not proof and, in this argument never will be.
this evidence is this very Universe that shows multiple signs of having been created with purpose.  this is called "teleological" reasoning or the "teleological argument".  it is not conclusive evidence that will force, from the imposition of logic, an honest doubter to adopt the belief.  but it can be sufficient, for someone who chooses to believe in God, to have confidence that their belief is reasonable.  but there will always be counter-arguments that the doubters will use to justify their doubt.  (or, if i were to be less generous, that the deniers would use to justify their denial.)
you'll never win an closed-minded doubter over with any argument regarding God.  whether the argument is weak and trite (and there are plenty of those) or reasonable (i won't say "strong", i don't believe there is an undeniably strong argument either for the existence of God or against the existence of God.)
i might point to the fine-tuned Universe and they will respond with the Anthropic Principle as a non-divine explanation.
i might point out that the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP) requires quite a leap of faith itself and they will respond with the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP) which is essentially a tautology or truism.
the WAP has to be true, because it's a tautology.  and, because it's a tautology, it doesn't say much.  it's like saying 5=5.  a kinda "empty truth" (and i know i am semantically misusing that term, but i don't care; i am trying to make a point.)  then they will say, "Well, the WAP provides a perfectly natural explanation for Fine-tuning by showing that the human perception of Fine-tuning is simply an example of selection bias.
then i will say, "For selection bias to suffice in removing any notion of the remarkability of Fine-tuning of the Universe, that requires a large collection of universes from which to select a life-friendly universe."  then they will say "Yeah! Q.E.D!"
they may even point to different mathematical models of the multiverse, some of which are logically consistent and may even be true.  but we will never know.  because, for the same reason i will never create a God-measuring-device or a falsifiable physical experiment that will show, one way or 'nother, that God exists (or not), neither will they ever create a similar falsifiable experiment demonstrating the existence of any universes outside of the observable universe.
so it's fine to believe in the Multiverse.  it might even be true (and even if true, that would only push the argument of infinite regress back a level; i would argue that God created the Multiverse).  but i don't need the existence of the multiverse to have an understanding of the existence of me.
however, what if this forever unmeasureable Multiverse doesn't exist?  what if the Universe we live in is the only one?  that appeared some 13.8 billion years ago (perhaps as a hell-of-a quantum fluctuation)?  well, for the 26 or so fundamental physical constants to come out just right so that sufficient carbon was cooked up but for the same process to not fit so well in cooking up oxygen that all of the carbon would have been converted to oxygen, for there to be the other elemental diversity so that small rocky planets such as Earth could exist for life to emerge and beings like us to evolve and wonder how we got here, for all of this to be set to happen 13.8 billion years ago, causes this conscious, sentient, and sapient being to wonder if all of this creativity must have come about from purpose.  as opposed to purposeless and "undirected processes".
they can believe in their unproveable explanation and i can believe in mine.  and, when you boil it down, both require "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen", what some unknown author 2000 years ago defined as "faith".  and that is all the proof you can hope to get out of it.
Answer: People saying that you need evidence for belief have a weird understanding of the word belief. As do people that say their belief was 'true', because truth is connected to knowledge and what you know, you don't need to believe.
See "About meaning, knowing and believing" in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, B 531-38.
People like Richard Dawkins et al. are asking for scientific evidence, see here. That contradicts the notion of belief in God, but they do not care. They question the need for religious belief in modern times in general.
The main point against them could be that belief (=faith) provides certainty beyond doubt while knowledge cannot. Empirical certainty has to be looked at as doubtful since Hume. The problem is that their certainty that they are right comes from their belief in the superiority of the scientific method, which is in fact unscientific, because science should be sceptical empiricism, as Hume was the first to state, not scientific realism.
EDIT
Inspired from @robert bristow-johnson I have an alternative reading now:
The problem that occurs between atheists and theists may also lie in the use of language and slight equivocations.
Dawkins et. al. seem to say that they would need a (scientific) evidence for the existance of God because a belief would explicitly have to be a belief about facts in the world. And the sort of certainty about facts in the world needed for this belief is only provided by science (sceptical empiricism).
On the other side, a theist may be able to dodge this attack by saying the very notion of a belief in God would be that faith is all you need to be certain. A coherence with inner sentiments and his personal being is all "evidence" there can ever be. And perhaps even more, that in the moment you are looking for evidence in the world, you lost your faith, you are doubtful and not reachable for God's voice anymore.
In this sense, they are talking about different spheres of reality and are not contradicting each other at all. And perhaps Dawkins would have to be seen as reductionalistic, because faith in fact has its reality in human experience.
On the other side, every theist saying that God would be in the sense that he is a fact in the world could be seen as counterfactual and dogmatic, because talking about "the world" means talking about the sphere of experience that is shared by all of us ("objective" nature), not only the faithful ones. It would be a residuum of ancient times where more or less all people had to be (or pretend to be) faithful, so that there was not difference between the reality of nature and the reality of God. This is what the New Atheist movement is attacking (rightfully).
But denying the existance and reality of faith is overdoing it. It is scienctific realism: only what science can "proof", is an ontological entity. And this is reductionalistic and falls through the old body-mind problem. It is falling back behind phenomenology and pragmatism, into the 19th century (of the history of philosophy).
Comment: Good points but I don't want to get too wrapped around what 'belief' means but to understand what 'evidence' means to someone who will not believe until they have evidence
Comment: @megachuck: edited to answer that point.
Comment: I am not a fan, but Plato's "knowledge is justified true belief" is still widely used, and under it you do need to believe what you know, but may not know if it is true  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#KnoJusTruBel Belief may be immune to doubt, but without justification (however defined) it confers no certainty, unless the latter is understood as a mere sentiment.
Comment: I am aware of this and I in fact think that Kant overcame the Gettier-Problem in some sense. Belief in some sense seems to be a form of sentiment: It "feels right", it matches one's own conceptual framework. I actually think that the try of justification is succeeding this inner coherence, instead of being prior to it. This inner state, however it is to be described, is in fact the only justification for belief and the reason for certainty.
Comment: In normal language (question is not specifically about Kant) first meaning of belief is "a principle, proposition, idea, etc, accepted as true" http://www.thefreedictionary.com/belief   it can be accepted as true because there is evidence.
Comment: @ch7kor: In this sense, evidence has to be meant as not only a scientific, "objective" (please do not take this notion too seriously), but also possibly as a "subjective" conviction and this is in fact the point I am after: While scientific evidence is perfect for justifying convictions rationally, taking this as the only possible evidence would mean to make belief and knowledge identical. Experience is not only experience of nature and there can be different sources ("evidences") for convictions (i.e. "beliefs" in a broader sense).
Comment: @ch7kor: As I just realized, the whole problem of that question could be the equivocations resulting from a confusal of "belief" and "faith". Because it may be very different to say that someone has a belief *about* something (a fact in the world) from saying that someone has a belief *in* something (that is: faith).
Comment: @PhilipKlöcking Yes, there is also this idea that true faith is blind. You should not require evidence. I think this is a Christian thing : the story of Saint-Thomas asking to check the hands of Jesus to believe, with conclusion "blessed are those who believe without seing.".
Comment: @ch7kor: Well, I have no idea as I myself am agnostic. But I learnt through philosophy that all intersubjective realities are facts that cannot simply be ignored by philosophy, wether they can be described by science or not. Perfect example for this taken into account are the works of Plessner and Dewey.
Comment: hey, Philip. i am not sure that ***I*** am accurately described as your "*theist* [whose] *belief in God would be that faith is all you need to be certain*". some other theist might be, i dunno. i might even be one of them theists saying that God **is** a fact in the world. but i will never claim that this fact can be decisively demonstrated by me nor anyone else sufficiently to an honest doubter. the dishonest doubters and those who are clearly grinding an ax (the New Atheists) i'm not even trying to point out "*evidence*". like an honest juror or jurist, the honest doubter can go either way.
Answer: Can't make a comment on the original question yet - but this isn't a duplicate of the other question mentioned in the comments - that one focuses strictly on how a religious text/book might be able to prove that a god wrote it.  This is much more general to any evidence

Evidence for God or god(s), other than purely philosophical constructs, comes primarily in the form of legal/historical proofs.  While there is science involved in aspects of proving the historical nature of religious artifacts, writings, etc., primarily it is based on testimony and circumstantial evidence cases.
First class - historical proof of religious artifacts / writings / people.  For example, was Jesus a real person, and what facts from the Bible can be reasonably concluded to be historically accurate from the account.  Same question for the writings and people involved in the founding of any religion.  Was Mohammed real?  What is the likelihood we have the original Quran or Bible intact, does the historical evidence (archeology, etc.) support the text, or is there doubt in it's historicity?  How much is myth, how much is real?
Second class - historical eyewitness testimony.  Mostly related to historical documents (i.e. if we believe, for example, that the Gospel of Luke is more or less historically accurate - whatever we believe of the miracles therein, then it is an account of a man who had direct eyewitnesses as sources).  The question here really goes to the veracity of the witnesses, and what you believe about whether they are telling the truth or not, and if the recorded accounts are accurate in part or whole.  What were their motives, etc.  Similar to whether a juror believes a witness in court or not (whether they were intentionally lying, misleading, omitting, telling the truth, etc.).  Any case where there is a report, but the people involved cannot be cross examined.
Third class - personal accounts from people we have direct access to, today.  If someone experienced a healing, for example, can we talk to them, access their story?  Can we follow their healer around and document new cases?  This also relates to people that have a religious experience of any kind.  If I know of people who have "become saved" and have changed their life, and I talk to them about it, their testimony is evidence to me - not just what they say, but also how their actions/life has changed can be evidence
Fourth class - personal experiences of the supernatural or "presence of God".  This class will not be a large evidence to other people (though it might have minor impact - see Third Class above), it will, however, have the largest impact on you, the one experiencing it.  This could also be true of witnessing a miracle, but not being the direct actor or receiver of it.

Basically, historical/legal arguments require that a case be built up, and each person will have to determine separately what their level of proof is.
For more information on the general theory (i.e. legal/historical proof of religion), plus a large amount of historical / legal evidence specifically related to Christianity / the Bible, see "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell.
Answer: Let me summarize Wittgenstein's position on this as spelled out in this Aeon article.
Let us say that China and S. Africa have a disagreement.
And we have two persons: a strictly monolingual Mandarin and a strictly monolingual Zulu speaker together at a table. Can they talk?
To not befuddle the question, lets put them together alone at a table on a remote island without any outside — translation! — services available.

Can they agree?
Or disagree?
Can they at least communicate (outside of sign language)?
Can they at least understand that they don't understand each other?

Wittgenstein would say that we would all agree(!) that the first 3 above get a No for answer and the last a tentative yes — with his help!

If you ask me whether or not I believe in a Judgment Day, in the sense in which religious people have belief in it, I wouldn't say: 'No. I don't believe there will be such a thing.' It would seem to me utterly crazy to say this.
And then I give the explanation: 'I don't believe in …', but then the religious person never believes what I describe.
I can't say. I can't contradict that person.
From Lectures

Wittgenstein is widely interpreted as saying that, not only can non-believers not contradict what the religious believe, they can't refute those beliefs either!

There's a fairly broad consensus that Wittgenstein supposes the religious person and the atheist use sentences such as God exists, Jesus rose from the dead and There will be a Judgment Day very differently, and consequently with different meanings.

[One interpretation of W:]

Sentences such as God exists and Jesus rose from the dead are not used by the religious to make claims at all!

For example, God exists might be used to express an intense form of optimism or a feeling of awe and reverence. Perhaps when religious people say God exists, they are in effect saying Oh wow! in amazement that the Universe exists at all. But if that's how God exists is used, then to ask But how do you know that God exists? and What's your evidence for God existing? is to ask questions that get no grip. Yet these are the questions to which atheist critics demand answers.

The article goes on to offer other ways in which W can be read but they all point to a fundamental level of non-communication between believer and non-believer as the norm not the exception.
So the Chinese and S African can at least agree to share tea and biscuits and smile sweetly at each other rather than making mutually indecipherable noises!

Having said this, there is a problem. Its not with the substance of W's argument but with the context.  If we take someone like William Lane Craig, he's clearly an evangelizing Christian. To evangelize means to convert others to your viewpoint. You cannot do that and at the same time claim to make no claims at all!
This is not strictly a problem with W's argument but with a surrounding default Christian context in which it occurs.
Comment: Maybe atheists need to learn how to say, "*Oh, Wow!*" more convincingly? If non-theistic explanations just had *better marketing* and were *more compelling*, I think the problem would resolve itself in a few generations. Having good food at the marketing events is a great suggestion.
Answer: The nature and extent of the evidence required depends upon the degree of skepticism you are trying to overcome. Many people hold the view that there is already more than ample evidence of the existence of a god.
If you are trying to convince someone such as myself, who is agnostic in principle but atheist in practice, you might need evidence for God that could not be explained in any other way. For example, I suppose I would believe in God if a giant figure appeared in the sky, declared itself to be God and performed bona fide miracles, such as instantly turning the Sahara into a giant garden, reshaping all the constellations or making my books bestsellers.
Comment: @Rushi I make a point of never channeling any ideas but my own.
Comment: Are you here channeling [Craig or Parsons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyZKjIyQfNM)?
Comment: You'd be surprised
Answer: [This answer is currently incomplete.]
I will concentrate on the Christian God, since this is the one that I know best. However, similar comments apply to many other religions and their deities. Hereafter, by "God," I mean the Christian God.
To create a case.
To create a scientific case that God exists, you would have to perform five basic steps.

Step 0. Identify a body of phenomena that science cannot currently adequately explain.
Step 1. Find out whether these phenomena really do occur, either by reading the existing literature or by going out into the field and conducting the experiments yourself. Basically, make sure you're not just deluding yourself. Be sure to maintain a healthy disregard for anecdotal garbage (ah, sorry I mean anecdotal evidence) at all times.
Step 2. Specify a Christianity-inspired scientific theory that purports to explain the aforementioned phenomena. Lets call this theory T.
N.B. The specification of T has to be done very clearly, and you have to list your basic assumptions. For example, these might include the assumption that God exists, that he/she has certain specific motivations, and certain specific abilities, etc. No evidence is required at this stage. What is required is a great deal of clarity. You have to be so very clear, that at no point do I ever have to consult the Christian bible or learn any Christian doctrine in order to understand what your theory T is claiming or predicting.
Step 3. Use theory T to convincingly explain the aforementioned phenomena. This explanation should be so clear and insightful, that it produces new predictions about the relevant phenomena. It should also be so clear and insightful, that it suggests the existence of new phenomena that nobody ever thought of.
Step 4. Go out into the real world and perform experiments until you've ascertain whether or not theory T's new predictions/phenomena actually match up with reality.

To attack such a case.
Even if you successfully get this far, and all the evidence so far accumulated seems in favor of theory T, there's still some avenues of attack that critics may take.

Avenue 0. Show that theory T makes contradictory predictions e.g. it both predicts that we will observe P, and also that we will not observe P.
Avenue 1. Find an alternative explanation. For example, perhaps a Hinduism-based (or Buddhism based, or biology-based, or psychology-based...) explanation is able to make equally-good, equally-accurate predictions. Perhaps it does even better.
Avenue 2. Show that God is non-essential to the success of theory T. For example, perhaps we can use Occam's razor in order to cut away a new theory T' that also makes all the correct predictions, but without assuming that God exists. If so, then God wasn't integral to the success of the original theory, and hence the correctness of the predictions of the original theory can't be taken seriously as evidence in favor of God's existence.

How it plays out in practice.

Step 0. Lets try to explain how it is that people are able to heal other people by prayer. In short, the phenomenon we're interrogating is: "prayer works." But, we're discounting prayer for one's self due to the obvious issues arising from the placebo effect.
Step 1. We read the literature, taking care to only trust reputable studies. So in particular, we only trust randomized controlled double blind trials, and only when the experimenter's are neither especially religious nor especially anti-religious and don't appear to have a conflict of interests. We observe that the occasional study finds that praying for someone else does cause an increase in the probability of that person achieving positive health outcomes, but not by very much; the effect is tiny. The occasional study finds that prayer has a negative effect on the probability of achieving positive health outcomes; but again, the effect is tiny. Most studies fail to find any effect whatsoever. Hence, it appears that there is little to no overall ability of prayer to cause more positive (or negative) health outcomes, and the occasional studies to the contrary are easily explained as statistical outliers. Perhaps overall, the literature seems to be detecting a slight tendency of prayer to help more than hinder, but this is easily explained by the massive problem of publication bias. You go on to read some meta-analyses that confirm your suspicions that prayer has little to no effect on actual health outcomes, and these analyses also cite publication bias as the likely cause of the tiny effects that they have found.

At this point, we're starting to feel discouraged, our eyes are blurring and its hard to function. You burn your toast in the morning, and its too late to try again. Even asking the local waitress for the drink you want ends up being a prolonged struggle, and you keep mis-ordering and having to correct your order. Then when you go to pay her, you drop your change everywhere and the baby nearby nearly eats it, and you just feel really bad about the whole thing. In practice, this is how you realize that its time to give up on this particular plan of attack. Perhaps its time to create a whole new case for the existence of God based on explaining an altogether different set of phenomena. In any event, you're done!
But. Just for the sake of argument. Lets pretend that contrary to everything I've just said, we actually find that prayer does work; more precisely, that the effect is so large, that neither publication bias nor poorly controlled experiments nor scientific corruption can explain it.
Hallelujah!
Prayer works!
Its a miracle!
But, as it turns out, our celebration was incredibly premature.
To be continued...
Comment: The entire answer seems to be contingent on the belief that some doctrine of God is trying to be science. You should add more to explain that rather than pontificating about how you would respond to that.
Comment: @virmaior, obviously, some doctrine of God is not "trying" to be anything, since doctrines don't try things. And quite frankly, I don't give a darn what God is "trying" to be, what I care about is evidence and its connection to truth. Please speak more clearly. What, *precisely,* is your suggestion?
Comment: I guess if I were to say it more *precisely* , you do work on a project addressing "create a scientific case that God exists" ... but it's not at all clear to me that this is identical to what is being asked. So after that, it seems to be windmills and then windmills inside of windmills. Or state it differently, I think this answer and http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/300/is-the-definition-of-god-consistent/29619 share mirrored problems. Though I would say yours is roughly on topic but builds on a debatable base. what appears missing at least to me is the hinge
Comment: i.e., why should the standard of proof be "scientific" under any definition of science in a proof for God's existence? Is God supposed to be like bigfoot or something?
Comment: @virmaior, still not sure I quite follow, but note that we're not really talking about proof here, we're just talking about reasonable justification. Genuine proof is *far* too high to set the bar when all you've got is a pole made of evidence. Anyway, from what I can gather, you seem to be saying: "Why am I talking about science, when all the OP has asked about is evidence?" The answer, I suppose, is that since God is in some sense a "phenomenon" (as opposed to, say, a historical event) hence I think that scientific standards are most appropriate.
Comment: @virmaior, also, if we allow for the kind of evidence that e.g. a court of law might allow (e.g. anecdotal evidence), then we quickly find ourselves simultaneously accepting *every* currently-practiced religion as true, despite their numerous incompatibilities. Obviously, this absurd.
Comment: I think you're still completely missing my point, but we're obviously talking past each other.
Answer: First, the word "believe" as it is used in religion, precludes evidence. A true believer believes without evidence. If they had evidence, that wouldn't actually help them believing at all.
As a non-believer, god or "a god" is supposed to be an almighty being. I can imagine things happening that could be caused by humans. I can imagine things happening that could be caused by a civilisation much superior to that of humans. Any such thing wouldn't be prove for the existance of god.
There would be a limit, where some effect couldn't possibly be produced by anything in the known universe. Which doesn't mean the cause would have to be a god, but we might as well assume it is, since having a force that is more powerful than anything possible, but less than god, is quite hard to imagine.
Answer: Evidence of God would have the property...

Indicates the existence of God,

does not equally well support the existence of any of:
Quetzalcoatl,
Mother Nature, Zeus, other god, other supernatural entity, other universal force,

does not equally well support the silly "kid + computer + simulator software" hypothesis

"Evidence of God", needs to be "evidence of God"... not "evidence of something".

Stanford University Office for Religious & Spiritual Life reminds us there are more than one belief system.  Christianity is one of many religions.


Are there any laws preventing overuse of rights?

Question: As cited here in Do Indian companies need a written letter before registering a user?
there seems to be a requirement for companies to appoint a grievance officer to handle grievances of users and answer within one month . What if a company faces so many grievance requests ( most of them being fake ) that it goes beyond their capacity to respond is there any statute to protect them ? Is there any law that governs what happens if it goes beyond a corporations financial capacity to respond ?
Answer: There is no statutory "exception" in the IT rules in case a business gets swamped. However, there is also no penalty for violating these rules except for intention to cause wrongful loss or wrongful gain (see this analysis). The requirement is thus legally toothless at present. The underlying Information Technology act imposes penalties for certain willful acts, but the requirement for a grievance officer and response within 30 days is a ministerial rule lacking parliamentary authority to enforce in any punitive fashion.
Comment: Slightly going against    Ministerial statutes might sometimes cause difficulties.
Answer: Hire more staff or go out of business
A company is obliged to comply with the law. Compliance has costs. The company must meet those costs. If the company is unable to remain viable with those costs then it should close.


Can you re-cast Planar Binding to extend duration?

Question: If you have a creature bound from a previous casting of Planar Binding, can you cast it again at a later point to renew the duration? I don't see any reason why not, but I may be missing something.
Comment: Welcome to RPG.SE! Take the [tour] and visit the [help] anytime you need guidance in posting question and/or answer here. Happy gaming!
Comment: Related: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/147865/does-planar-binding-extend-the-duration-of-another-spell-after-the-completion
Answer: Yes, you can.
The rules for Combining Magical Effects specify that (emphasis mine):

The effects of different spells add together while the durations of those spells overlap. The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don't combine, however. Instead, the most potent effect--such as the highest bonus--from those castings applies while their durations overlap, or the most recent effect applies if the castings are equally potent and their durations overlap.

Hence, if one casts Planar Binding once and after a while they recast it on the same target, just the last casting takes effect.
For example, suppose that a Wizard successfully casts such spell on a fiend at Monday noon: until Tuesday noon they can control the fiend. If the Wizard successfully (i.e. the target fails their saving throw) casts again  Planar Binding on the same fiend at Tuesday dawn before the ending of the previous spell, the duration of these spells overlap, and only the more recent one takes place: hence the wizard will control the fiend until Wednesday dawn.
A caster can attempt to gain control of a creature one day after another, simply casting Planar Binding one hour before the ending of the previous casting: remember that this does not automatically extend the duration, but the target has to fail their saving throw each time.


Spanish translation of Adversity Quotient?

Question: I was reading the book Adversity Quotient by Dr. Paul G. Stoltz and I would like to make a gift with that book to someone, but that person is not fluent in English (they're a Spanish citizen). Is there any translation of this book into Spanish? I've searched, but I didn't find anything.
Comment: Welcome to the site! I've edited your question since recommendation questions are off-topic here: it's fine to ask whether a particular book has been translated, but not to ask for a list/recommendation of books of a particular type/topic.
Comment: I'm voting to close this question because asking for a translation of a self-help book is not asking about it as literature, and since the book in question is not "inherently" literature I think this tips into off-topic.
Answer: Some tips for finding these sorts of things include clicking on the author's name on amazon or looking in Goodreads (selecting all editions under a title will surface many but not necessarily all translations of a book—you would still need to also look over the author's whole output by going to their author page).
From that, I was able to find a Russian translation of the book (Показатель стойкости: как обратить препятствия в новые возможности) and what might be a Vietnamese edition (AQ - Chỉ Số Vượt Khó), but no Spanish edition. I suspect that no Spanish translation of the book has been made as of yet.


Understanding series open stub tuning

Question: I recently had an assignment where I had to use open stub series tuning to find a way to maximize power delivered to the load from the generator. I understand that power delivered to the load is maximized when the input resistance is equal to the generator resistance and that reactance is zero. I know that when you are doing open stub series tuning you choose a length l for the stub such that it cancels any reactance at the position of the series open stub. What I don't understand is how I would calculate this length analytically (in this assignment we had to do it analytically without a smith chart). Below I have included a picture of the solution our teacher provided to us. I don't understand how he took the input impedance equation and arrived to an equation that was dependent on cotangent.
Answer: We know that the impedance presented by a (lossless) transmission line with characteristic impedance equal to \$Z_0\$, phase constant \$\beta\$, length \$l\$ and load impedance \$Z_l\$ equals
$$ Z_{in}(l) = Z_0 \frac{1+\Gamma \exp(-j 2 \beta l)}{1 - \Gamma \exp(-j 2 \beta l)} $$
Where \$\Gamma = \frac{Z_L - Z_0}{Z_L + Z_0}\$
Now, for a short circuit, we know that \$Z_L=+\infty\$ and thus \$\Gamma = +1\$. This gives us that:
$$ Z_{open}(l) = Z_0 \frac{1+ \exp(-j 2 \beta l)}{1 - \exp(-j 2 \beta l)} $$
Now we will multiply the entire thing by \$ \frac{\exp(j \beta l)}{\exp(j \beta l)} =1 \$ which gives us:
$$ Z_{open}(l) = Z_0 \frac{\exp(j \beta l)+ \exp(-j 2 \beta l)\cdot \exp(j \beta l)}{\exp(j \beta l) - \exp(-j 2 \beta l) \cdot \exp(j \beta l)} $$
$$ =Z_0 \frac{\exp(j \beta l)+ \exp(-j 2 \beta l + j \beta l)}{\exp(j \beta l)- \exp(-j 2 \beta l + j \beta l)} $$
$$=  Z_0 \frac{\exp(j \beta l)+ \exp(-j  \beta l)}{\exp(j \beta l)- \exp(-j  \beta l)}  $$
We can use the trigonometric identities
$$ \sin(x) = \frac{\exp(jx)-\exp(-jx)}{2j} \hspace{3mm} \text{and}\hspace{3mm} \cos(x) = \frac{\exp(jx) +\exp(-jx)}{2} $$
to simplify the earlier experssion for \$Z_{open}(l)\$ by multiplying it by \$\frac{2j}{2j}=1\$:
$$ Z_{open}(l) = Z_0 \frac{2j(\exp(j \beta l)+ \exp(-j  \beta l))}{2j(\exp(j \beta l)- \exp(-j  \beta l))} $$
And we can now find our \$\color{red}{\sin(x)}\$ and \$\color{blue}{\cos(x)}\$ identities:
$$ Z_{open}(l) = Z_0 \frac{\color{red}{2j}\color{blue}{(\exp(j \beta l)+ \exp(-j  \beta l))}}{\color{blue}{2}j\color{red}{(\exp(j \beta l)- \exp(-j  \beta l))}} = Z_0 \frac{\color{blue}{\cos(\beta l)}}{j\color{red}{\sin(\beta l)} }$$
Now use \$\cot(x) = \frac{\cos(x)}{\sin(x)}\$ and \$\frac{1}{j} = -j\$ to get
$$ Z_{open}(l) = Z_0 \cdot -j \cot(\beta l) = -j Z_0 \cot(\beta l)$$
the original equation given by your sollution.
Comment: Thank you Joren this helped a lot

Understanding series open stub tuning


Is there vascular supply to cartilage

Question: According to Gray's anatomy, cartilage is avascular but in a recent class, my teacher told me that there is vascular supply but it is confined to upper surface only. So, I'm confused that who is correct.
Comment: How do you define "upper"? My suspicion, however, is that there is no conflict: avascular tissue can still be supported by a blood supply, avascular just means there are no vessels in the tissue itself. It's probably best to just clarify this with your teacher.
Comment: I think that by upper, he meant surface region.
Comment: Then I think most likely there is no conflict and just misunderstanding. A tissue that is supplied only from its surface is equivalent to one that is avascular.
Comment: Thank you for the clarification.
Answer: This depends on what kind of cartilage you are examining and where it is located. Cartilage is not all the same depending on where it is located and it's intended purpose. Cartilage also generally exists as a continuum with the bone that it is attached to where you will see transitional changes from bone tissue to cartilage without specific delineation. Depending on the cartilage location and its function it may of may not be vascular. Hyaline cartilage existing closest to synovial joint spaces is pretty much entirely avascular. This has some advantages and disadvantages. Damage to cartilage is very difficult for you body to repair for myriad reasons one being avascularity, but also the avascularity allows for you to transplant live cartilage to any person regardless of what tissue type the donor or recipient is.

Is there vascular supply to cartilage