Sudden Outbreak of Yellow Leaves on Tomato (and Other) Plants

Question: My mother was in a panic this morning. She called me over to help her with her garden because many of her tomato plants had suddenly developed yellow leaves, many of which (but not all) also have brown spots.
Here are the facts and observations:

Developed almost overnight (few if any were yellow the previous day)
All of them are potted (with drainage holes)
About half of them have the problem
Some have no brown spots, some have one, some have many
Some have a lot of yellow leaves, some only a few
Most of the plants are clustered together, but one on the other side of the garden also had yellow leaves
Her eggplant and strawberry plants also have one or two new yellow leaves
Her pot of shamrocks has many yellow leaves, most with brown spots
It has rained a lot this past week
I didn't make a note at the time, but I believe that most of the affected ones were on the outer row of the garden while most of the inner row was affected less so, if at all (i.e., they could have been shielded from the rain by the outer row if it came down at an angle)
It has been pretty hot, humid, and muggy recently (whenever it wasn't raining that is)

Worrying that it was a disease, she pruned every yellow or even yellowish leaf that she could find on all of the tomato plants as well as the eggplant, strawberry, and shamrocks.
I pointed out that it rained a lot recently and that it seems to have happened to different kinds of unrelated plants, and so could be hyponatremia (like with blossom-end-rot).
Using this information, I managed to find a few web pages that seem to indicate that it could indeed be too much rain, but the same symptoms (well, at least the yellow leaves/brown spots) were indicated for several other things (this similar sounding question didn't even mention over-watering as possible cause).
Does anyone know what this is? Can anyone confirm if it is over-watering and whether they can recover if she can find a way to prevent them from getting soaked the next time it rains?
Comment: @ckuhn203 This is early blight, so if I write up an answer, it would be almost a duplicate of gggeeks answer, which is the correct, and thus highest voted answer.
Comment: Then I'll award that answer the bounty when I can do so. There was conflicting information in the answers (all up voted) hence the bounty. Thank you for the confirmation @J.Musser.
Comment: @ckuhn203 I'll add my own little answer just as an added confirmation, with some added control methods.
Comment: @ckuhn203 Your plant is showing similar symptoms?
Comment: Exactly the same symptoms. It's spreading bottom up. Leafs are just as shown in the photo, which doesn't look like other photos (or cases) of blight I've seen.
Comment: @ckuhn203 I can add matching pics to my answer.
Comment: If your plant has over 50% affected leaves, it may be better to destroy them. The methods of curing work best when the infection is fairly young.
Answer: Looking closely at the last picture, there are clear dark concentric circles around the black spots which is textbook early blight.  It is a trademark of the disease.  Blight has been bad, really bad this year.
Your best chance is unfortunately to pull the plants and save any remaining healthy plants.  Then going forward there are some key cultural practices to help avoid this situation (though you can never truly escape these problems which tomatoes are very susceptible to these diseases).

Plant tomatoes far enough apart to promote good airflow between plants.  If two plants are touching, they are too close.  If you have to plant them close together, restrict them to a single vine by pinching out the suckers that grow from the elbows of the plants.
MULCH underneath the plants.  The diseases are most often in the soil and get onto the plant due to splash back during rain or overhead watering.  Mulch eliminates soil splash.
Water in the morning and water only the base of the plant.  A good trick is to bury a 4" plastic pot next to the base of each plant.  When you water, only water into that pot which will then drain out directly into the soil.  Or another neat trick is to slice a few cuts into the bottom of a gallon milk jug.  Fill the jug with water and set it on the soil near the plant.  Over an hour or two the water will slowly leak out of the slits and gently water into the soil.
Rotate organic fungicides such as Actinovate and Greencure.  Spray BEFORE there are problems and continue to keep on spraying on a regular schedule.  As soon as the plant goes in the ground, start spraying.  If it rains, get out and spray.  Both of these products are cost effective and work best as a preventative instead of reactionary solution.
Rotate crops.  DO NOT plant tomatoes in the same soil year after year.  If you cannot rotate locations, dig up as much of the soil as possible and discard under ornamental shrubs.  Replace with a good mix of compost and new top soil.  Consider container gardening for tomatoes where you can then easily replace the soil every year in the pots and really start out with a near-sterile growing environment.  Containers also allow you to quickly move diseased plants out of the area of the rest of your tomatoes.
Get your soil tested and make sure the PH level is correct for tomatoes; generally between 6.4 and 7.0.  Make sure there are significant enough levels of nutrients.  Consider a fertilization program that meets the needs identified in the test.  Stronger plants will stay healthier longer.  At a minimum start using rock dust (such as Azomite) that will add micro-nutrients to your soil.
Plant resistant varieties such as Roma VF.
Comment: It does matter on spacing and mulching.  Good spacing greatly reduces the chance of transmission.  The closer the plants are together, the easier it is for the wind or a human to accidentally move the spores to the next plant.  Mulching is critical as it prevents soil splash.  A lot of the spores fall harmlessly into the soil and their only vector to get back onto the plant foliage is via soil splash.
Comment: Early blight is a fungal infection like septoria, which I'm further convinced is caused by nutritional deficiencies in the soil, which is why it affects the bottom leaves instead of the entire plant at once or random locations. Also, the fungi release spores into the air (An average person inhales 40 fungal spores per hour) and overwinter in plant debris (mulch) and other living plants. Fungi eat plants, not rocks and soil, therefore they live on plants, not soil. Roma VF is not resistant to blight or septoria. In fact, my Romas are hit harder than my Better Boys or Mortgage Lifters.
Comment: Those are some great tips; I'll pass them on. So it could have spread even though they were each in their own pot because their leaves were touching?
Comment: Let's keep in mind that the spores are airborne. They land on the top leaves, the bottom leaves, the fruit, the ground, the mulch, they land on you, you even inhale them. So it doesn't matter if the plants are on top of each other or 10ft apart as far as transmission is concerned. It doesn't matter if the plants are mulched or the dirt is sterile.
Answer: That is Early Blight, Alternaria solani.  The earlier you treat, the better the control, as a strong infection will build up resistance to the fungicide.
Here's what to do:

Remove all leaves showing signs of early blight (yellowing, dry margin, large to small round dead spots.)

Do not touch the unaffected leaves with the removed portions, or your hands until they are thoroughly washed.

Spray with a copper fungicide (like BONIDE© Liquid Copper Fungicide). Apply once every 5 days, and after any rain. Continue for 3-4 weeks, or until the plant stops developing the symptoms.

There are some preventative measures you can take. To lessen the chances of future attacks, you can try to:

Minimize soil-foliage contact

Make sure the plants get good air circulation (including proper spacing)

When you water, try not to wet the foliage, or splash soil onto the leaf undersides. The fungus spreads faster in wet conditions.

To go along with that, an organic mulch will help keep soil from splashing, and is also useful for many other reasons.

Make sure the plants have a support to climb on.

Rotate the plantings each year, to stop pathogens from inhabiting the soil. Remember that potatoes are also vulnerable to early blight, so plan accordingly.

About the other nearby plants showing the same signs, Alternaria contains many species, which attack multiple plants. The hot, muggy weather and lots of rain are what helped the disease spread like that.
Below are pictures of early blight that match those in the original question:

References/further reading:

Tomato dirt: Tomato Blight: How to Identify and Treat Early Blight in Tomatoes

University of California: UC Pest Management Guidelines

Mother Earth News: Try This Technique: Preventive Pruning for Tomato Early Blight

APS: Early blight of potato and tomato

Missouri Botanical Garden: Early Blight of Tomato

The Spruce.com: Identifying and Controlling Early Blight on Tomato Plants

Wikipedia: Alternaria solani, Alternaria

University of Maine: Early Blight of Tomato

Gardening and Landscaping Stackexchange: What's affecting this tomato plant?
Comment: Thank you for confirming. This is an excellent answer. You've earned the bounty and I will award as soon as I'm permitted to do so.
Answer: You've just described my weather and tomato plants.  The best I can figure, all the rain and humidity has provided the perfect conditions for fungus to thrive.  I'm thinking Septoria lycopersici.
From: http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/450/450-711/450-711.html

Septoria leaf spot of tomato, caused by the fungus Septoria lycopersici, is one of the most common and destructive diseases of tomato in Virginia. The fungus can cause severe leaf spotting and defoliation is common following severe infection. Heavy leaf loss during wet seasons leads to sun scalding of fruit and failure of fruit to mature properly.
Symptoms
Numerous, small, water-soaked spots, which are the first noticeable characteristic of Septoria leaf spot, appear on the lower leaves after fruit set. Spots enlarge to a uniform size of approximately 1/16 to 1/4 inch in diameter. They have dark brown borders and tan or light colored centers. Yellow halos often surround the spots. Severely infected leaves die and drop off. Septoria leaf spot is easily distinguished from early blight, another foliar disease of tomato, by the uniform, small size of the spots and the lack of concentric rings in the spots; however, Septoria leaf spot is sometimes confused with bacterial spot of tomato. The presence of fruiting bodies of the fungus, visible as tiny black specks in the centers of the spots, confirms Septoria leaf spot.
Favorable weather permits infection to move up the stem, causing a progressive loss of foliage from the bottom of the plant upward. Plants appear to wither from the bottom up. Loss of foliage causes a decrease in the size of the fruits and exposes fruit to sunscald. Spotting of the stem and blossoms may also occur.
Chemical Control
Apply fungicides on a preventative schedule before the disease first appears on the lower leaves. Begin sprays when the first fruits of the first cluster are visible after blossom drop. Apply fungicides every 7 to 10 days or more often when the weather is warm and wet. In home gardens the fungicides, chlorothalonil (e.g. Daconil 2787) or maneb (e.g. Maneb), can be used.

After weighing my options of copper sulfate mix, ferrous sulfate, or a chemical fungicide, I quickly ruled out copper because I don't want to cause a copper imbalance in my soil... that and copper is toxic to everything (plants, fungi, bacteria).  I didn't want to be burdened by wondering if I'm applying too much.
I went to lowes and reviewed the selection of fungicides.  Many were neem oil based and seem to treat more trivial infections, which excludes septoria.  Only one treated seemingly everything fungal, Daconil.  So I bought it.
After reading the label and considering the degree to which I had to protect myself from the chemical, and after using it once and feeling a little trepidatious to work around the tomato plants, I decided to shelve the Daconil pending further research into its safety.
I settled on ferrous sulfate (Its called Copperas, its about $5 for 5lbs). Its safe for me and the plants, yet it makes things uncomfortable for fungi.  Additionally, the iron and sulfate will help green the leaves.  Due to heavy rain, sulfate will be one of the first nutrients depleted in soil because of its negative charge.

To enhance fungicidal activity and correct possible iron chlorosis of the grass, Cutting recommends adding ferrous sulfate to the tank mixture at a rate of 1/2 oz./1,000 square feet of turf area. Ferrous sulfate is an inorganic chemical of iron and sulfate, and iron is an important component of photosynthesis. "We've been using ferrous sulfate with our fungicides since the early 1950s to increase the green of grass and improve the finish of turf," he explains. Data show that when turf is under stress, particularly during hot summer months, the grass plants have difficulty absorbing iron from the soil. When applied as a spray, iron can be foliarly absorbed through the leaf tissue.

Ref: http://archive.lib.msu.edu/tic/holen/article/1982may4.pdf
Here is a study comparing 16 mixtures of fungicides for the control of early blight in celery: http://fshs.org/proceedings-o/1957-vol-70/134-136%20(DARBY).pdf
The result was Ferbam (sodium dimethyl dithiocarbamate + ferrous sulfate) is an excellent fungicide.
I'm not going to claim the ferrous sulfate by itself is an excellent fungicide, but it does have some fungicidal properties.  I mix about a teaspoon in a squirt bottle with water.  While out pruning off branches having yellow stems or clusters of yellow leaves, I keep the bottle with me and give the plant a good squirting.
Its important to remove the dead and dying branches, thereby eliminating some of the innoculum, and increasing airflow around the plant.  I've even considered setting up a box fan in my garden.
I also prune branches growing in the middle of the plant or those which never receive sunlight.  The idea is to open up the interior to airflow.
Is important to keep the plant healthy.  This includes fertilizer with plenty of potassium and calcium.  Lack of calcium causes blossom end rot.  Lack of potassium generally produces brown spots (necrosis) and necrosis at leaf margins in a wide array of plant species.  A good fertilizer blend for tomatoes would be 30% N, 5% P, 40% K, 20% Ca, 5% Mg.  I'll leave you to decide how to mix your favorite water soluble fertilizer with potassium sulfate, calcium nitrate, and epsom salts to arrive at those percentages :)
The distinction between overwatering and too much rain is that overwatering is drowning the roots producing a condition of suffocation to oxygen and starvation of nutrients a plant needs, while too much rain washes soil nutrients out of the root zone, starting with the anions (NO3, SO4) and then affecting the cations (Ca, K, Mg, etc).  If you have well-draining soil, you can water a lot and not produce root-suffocation, yet you'll wash away nutrients.  If you have heavy clay soil, you can water a little and still manage to suffocate the roots.  Root suffocation would be similar to yanking the plant out and tossing it on the ground... the whole plant will suffer.  Rather, in this case we have healthy plants with the exception of yellow leaves on the bottom.  This wouldn't be root-suffocation or overwatering, though, it could be that the rain leached away enough nutrients to leave the plant in a malnourished state, weak enough to succumb to a fungal infection.
Update
The more I contend with these sickly tomato plants, the more I think the cause is nutritional.
Consider this:
1) Why doesn't it affect the upper limbs until the plant has been severely weakened by the loss of lower limbs?
2) Why doesn't it affect fruiting limbs?
3) Why do symptoms only show after fruit-set?
4) Why does a fungus, which is naturally present in the air all the time, only attack sometimes and only some plants?  Can a fungus be specific to only the tomato plant?
5) Septoria strikes after a wet season, which is conducive to fungal growth, but leached soil is also associated with increased rainfall.
My Theory
Heavy rains leach soil of calcium, sulfur, magnesium, and potassium (in that order - per The Nature and Properties of Soils – Harry Oliver Buckman, Nyle C. Brady).  The leached soil leaves the plant vulnerable to disease while, at the same time, the increased humidity favors fungal infestation.  This explains why lower limbs, the limbs less defended by the plant, are attacked first.  It also explains why limbs not containing fruit are attacked first, the plant defends the fruit, not the leaves.  And it also explains why the disease strikes most often after fruit-set, since the plant is having to divide its nutrition with the fruit.
Therefore the cause would be nutritional.  The mechanism (fungus or bacteria) for decay isn't important.
My Treatment
I applied lime everywhere.  I dusted the plants as well as covered the ground in liberal amounts.  I want to accomplish 2 things with this.  1) To add calcium to the soil and plant (if possible). 2) Rain can have quite a low ph, therefore I want to neutralize that acid before it hits the soil.  The acid rain will also break the calcium loose in the lime.  A possible third effect may be to raise the ph on the leaves, making it uncomfortable for the fungus (if so, I would consider this more of a side-effect than the main idea).
I started fertilizing with calcium nitrate, potassium sulfate, and magnesium sulfate (epsom salts).
I also found this page to be interesting: http://www.aglabs.com/newletters/tomatoes.html

The bottom line is that if you are having disease and insects in your tomatoes, something is out of balance. The first things to check are your calcium and phosphate levels. For quick fixes, liquid calcium nitrate and liquid phosphoric acid can prove to be valuable aids.

I will update this answer as I discover more.
Comment: Actually, I considered [Septoria](http://images.google.com/images?q=septoria+tomato) as well as [early blight](http://images.google.com/images?q=early+blight+tomato), but the photos don't quite match; they tend to have much less yellow.   `This wouldn't be root-suffocation or overwatering, though, it could be that the rain leached away enough nutrients to leave the plant in a malnourished state, weak enough to succumb to a fungal infection`   But would malnutrition cause them to succumb to infection overnight?
Comment: Whatever photo you're reviewing, the leaf in the picture will eventually be completely dead (black), therefore it will be yellow during that process. The pics just illustrate the spots and those particular leaves are selected for that reason. Whatever the exact pathogen, it thrives in humid air of moderate temps. It doesn't look viral to me, so to work under the assumption of septoria would work towards a cure regardless if its fungal or bacterial (unless you'd want to purchase antibiotics in the event its bacterial). The organic treatment is the same for bacteria and fungi.
Comment: I would think malnutrition would favor infection overnight if it were possible (which it seems to be since it happened). A more healthy plant would fight off the infection longer, maybe this explains why some plants are infected and some aren't. Being in pots aren't doing the plants any favors, but some pots may have better soil in one way or another. The only thing you can do regarding soil is to add the mix of nutrients in the proper ratios, unless you get a soil test which would reveal which nutrient in particular you'd need to add.
Comment: It isn't septoria wilt, it's early blight.
Answer: My goodness...based on the two pictures, pruning would definitely help the air-flow. Make sure you clean your pruners with alcohol between each plant pruned.  FYI, it takes ONE fungal spore to infect a plant. The spores are in the soil and watering will splash the spore onto leaves. Once the plant has been infected there is not much one can do to stop the infection.  Fungicides are predominately a protective measure to prevent that one spore infecting the plant. Sort of a raincoat.
Since this question/answer is a year old, what DID happen?  Did you ever do a pH test of your soil? What got planted where these tomatoes were?
Have you tried Bacillus subtillis as a fungicide?  I think that is in 'Serenade'...and would like to hear that it does more than the traditional 'raincoat' fungicides.
This doesn't look like nutrient deficiency.  That comes on much more slowly.
Comment: Oh good.  Then it wasn't late blight, just localized fungus.  Blight will blacken an entire plant in 3-4 days, including the fruit.  If you harvest the tomatoes, they will continue to turn black.  If the weather gets wet again you might try putting a cover over the tomatoes, a real raincoat instead of chemicals to keep the leaves dry and stop soil with spores from splashing up onto the plants.  I prune the vegetative leaves off the plant that aren't getting much light to help keep air moving readily through the plant.
Comment: I can't recall if she checked the pH, but she chopped off anything that looked remotely affected and by the end of the summer, she had a decent harvest; not as much as previous years, but that may or may not have had as much to do with the erratic weather as with the infection. She did get and use some fungicide (I believe it was a mix of sulfur and diatomaceous earth). She planted a new set this year and so far, the leaves on the tomatoes and other plants are looking okay.


For showing a deceased person under a negative light, can you get sued for defamation by relatives of the person deceased?

Question: Let's say you make a movie and you show a deceased person under a negative light, can you get sued successfully by his relatives, and does the success of a lawsuit get diminished if the movie is a parody rather than a film biography?
Comment: Can we just say if you did anything that would get you sued successfully for defamation if the person was still alive?
Answer: Many countries of Continental law recognize "desecration", "deningration" or defamation of the deceased or similar civil or criminal wrongs, the special form of defamation of the deceased and it is ordinary that those who had been relatives to the subject are entitled to press charges. (e.g. Germany (See: §189 "denigration of a deceased person"), Slovakia (See: MAC TV v. Slovakia before the European Court of Justice leaving ambiguity about the extent of legality of defamation-of-the-dead laws under Community law), Greece (See: Penal Code, Article 365, "disparaging the memory of the deceased" etc.)
Additionally, the prosecutors may press charges by the operation of law or as a duty of their office if certain conditions are met.
One example in detail is the Penal Code of Hungary:
Defamation

§ 226 (1) Whoever states, reports or uses an expression directly referring to a fact capable of defaming the honour of another person, shall be punished for a misdemeanour by imprisonment for up to one year.
(2) The penalty shall be imprisonment for up to two years if the defamatory statement
a) with malicious motive or purpose,
(b) in public, or
(c) by causing substantial damage to the merits
is committed.

Making a false sound or visual recording likely to defame

§ 226/A (1) Whoever, with the intent to defame the honour of another or others, makes a false, falsified or untrue sound or image recording, if no other offence is committed, shall be punished for a misdemeanour by imprisonment for up to one year.

Disclosure to the public of a false sound or image recording likely to defame

§ 226/B (1) Whoever, with the intention of defaming the honour of another or others, makes available a false, falsified or untrue sound or image recording, shall be punished by a misdemeanour with imprisonment of up to two years.
(2) The penalty for a felony shall be imprisonment for up to three years if the offence is
(a) in public, or
(b) by causing substantial damage to the interests of is committed.

Dishonoring

§ 227 (1) A person who, against another person other than those specified in § 226
a) in connection with the performance of the victim's duties in the exercise of his or her employment, public office or activity in the public interest, or
b) in public
uses an expression capable of defaming the honour or commits any other such act, shall be punishable for a misdemeanour by imprisonment for up to one year.
(2) A person who commits defamation by an act of deed shall be punishable under subsection (1).

Desecration ("Kegyeletsértés")

§ 228 Whoever desecrates a dead person or his memory in the manner specified in §§ 226 or 227 shall be punished for a misdemeanor with the punishment specified therein.

In the case of Hungary, one, including especially a surviving relative, may also step up as a substitutive civil prosecutor and file a motion with the court for criminal charges to be filed in case the public prosecutor fails or refuses to press charges.
This is true despite freedom-of-speech rights.
In the U.S., some states allow for libel and/or slander claims to go forward and be brought against one who engage in such or similar conduct (e.g. Rhode Island, Texas etc.)
Many Asian countries also recognize both the civil and criminal forms of such acts (e.g. the Philippines, Thailand etc.)
Answer: Not in California:

"Defamation of a deceased person does not give rise to a
civil right of action at common law in favor of the surviving spouse,
family, or relatives, who are not themselves defamed. A libel on the
memory of a deceased person is not deemed to inflict on the surviving
relatives of the deceased any such legal damage as will sustain a
civil action for the defamation. (Skrocki v. Stahl, 14 Cal. App. 1
[110 P. 957]; Saucer v. Giroux, 54 Cal. App. 732 [202 P. 887].)
Comment: Where does "A libel is a malicious defamation, expressed either by writing, printing, or by signs or pictures, or the like, tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead, or to impeach the honesty, " come from? I do not find it in CA law.
Comment: I yield. I think something I missed is that Pen. Code § 248 was repealed or amended since and is no longer applicable.
Comment: I found it in _Flynn v. Higham_, 149 Cal.App.3d 677, 197 Cal. Rptr. 145 (Cal. Ct. App. 1983). That Section now is about blinding aircraft pilots probably with a laser pen or something. The content of it does not seem to be moved to any other Section.
Answer: You can't defame dead people
Legally, dead people can feel no shame or embarrassment which is at the heart of defamation.
Comment: that's incorrect without specifying a jurisdiction. It's incorrect in many U.S. states and European countries, too.
Comment: In fact, the reputation of the deceased is a matter of value for the purposes of U.S. federal extortion statutes — 18 U.S.C. § 875 (d) "Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure … the reputation of a deceased person … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

It's questionable if U.S. courts would recognize anyone to have standing for damages even if arguably they should.


How to make a somewhat stiff pneumatic tube?

Question: I tried using softbody physics on a path, but, the path then behaves like a string rather than a stiff tube. I want the  pneumatic tube to behave something like the tubes in this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klLI5skuwj4
Comment: You can probably achieve it with Bezier Curves and constraints. See how too here http://www.rab3d.com/tut_blen_2-63_hooks.php
Comment: See this: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1/how-do-i-prevent-soft-body-balloons-from-crumpling-when-they-hit-walls
Answer: You can use a cloth simulation for this.

Scene Setup
To begin with, I added a simple bezier curve, then edited and beveled it. I then converted it to a mesh object, and built the other simple cuboid mesh object you can see in the pictures.
Next, go into edit mode on the curve (now a mesh), and select the ending vertices to setup a vertex group to pin them. Add a new vertex group and assign these verts to it.

Parent the curve to the cuboid mesh (that means the curve mesh becomes the child of the other), and add a cloth simulation in the physics tab of the properties panel.
Note: All of the above should be trivial, but if you need more information, let me know.
Cloth Simulation Setup

I disabled everything in the cloth settings except for pinned vertex group.

I started with the "leather" preset, as I felt that was closest to the desired physics settings.

The quality steps is not super important to keep high, but will be noticeable if set low (e.g., below 5).

If the speed multiplier is set lower, things look more like string (they move faster); if set high, it looks more like the desired tubing (I used a value of 3 in the demo).

Make sure to setup the vertex group for pinned verts by enabling "pinning" and then setup a vertex group (assign the vertices that are on the edges of the tube) for it.

I decreased the "bending" relative to the leather preset. As the tooltip says, it basically sets the size of the waves: higher is bigger, lower is smaller.

I increased the "structural" stiffness factor because the tubing has a more stiff overall stiffness than leather would.

I decreased the "spring" damping from 25 to 15, because I wanted a bit more jiggling when I did the shake animation.

I increased the "air" damping to slow it down further. This seems to behave similarly to the "multiplier" setting, although the values are entirely different.
Comment: Can you explain each thing you changed and what it does?
Comment: @10Replies Yes, I will. Just waiting for my gif making tool to finish :-|
Comment: @10Replies Please see my updated answer.
Answer: please find a blend file with a rigged cable under this link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/abactz3bu7olldv/Rigged_Cable.blend?dl=0
It may suit your needs. It uses the cloth simulation technique as well, but the solution is extended using a set of hook modifiers. If you do so, the circular cross shape of the cable (or tube) will not get lost at collisions. regarding on the number of hooks you set, the more accurate your simulation will be.
regards,
pixelpoems.de


Horizontal gene transfer versus convergent evolution

Question: There are several often noted examples of convergent evolution (eyes, bat/bird wing evolution etc.)  How do we rule out horizontal gene transfer in these cases?
Comment: You know that bat wings are modified hands, while bird wings are modified arms.  And human eyes and insect eyes are very different.
Answer: Without any molecular evidence you could infer convergent evolution if the species being compared shared a common ancestor that lacked the trait in question.
With genomic and developmental data you would measure the degree of similarity shared between the relative factors in each species. Little or no similarity indicates convergent evolution.
Horizontal gene transfer is predominantly found in bacteria. Although there are examples of limited gene transfer in eukaryotes, the donor is almost always bacteria. And there are currently no known cases of multi-gene transmission of complex networks.
It is interesting to contemplate how a full network might be transmitted horizontally. Horizontal Network Transfer would first require a mechanism for segregating the relevant genes from the rest of the genome. It would also require invasive machinery that allows the large amount of foreign genetic material to bypass the host's defense systems. Furthermore, integration of a foreign network is increasingly more difficult with the more genes you transmit due to positional and regulatory effects of the host genome. And on top of that, it is highly unlikely that a full complement of genes involved in a complex developmental process would function in any way resembling eye or wing development. These networks have been coevolving within massively complex genomic environments for hundreds of millions of years. Expressing a large network in a foreign cell would likely prove toxic.
A looser definition of HGT might include bioengineering, specifically stable transgene integration.
Comment: A small comment on the use of the term homology. Homology is an absolute state, i.e. genes (for instance) are either homologous or not homologous. Referring to degrees of homology is misusing the term. Genes can be identical to a certain degree which not necessarily means that they are homologous.
Comment: @RickardSjogren you're right. I've edited the answer to use the correct term. Thanks!


Website for lexical resources assessment?

Question: Is there any website that assesses how rare or common are the words I used in my essay? Something like this picture below:
Answer: Google NGrams could give you a hand. It gives you instances in written texts and that is good for an essay. It is not 100% reliable, but it can provide precious help.
Here you can find information on how to use the site.
Comment: I've faced this error. 403. That's an error.
Comment: @MohammadSalehi Try again later, I can open the links with no diffciulty. Otherwise you can just google ngram.
Comment: Please look at picture. I need sth like it.
Answer: Disclaimer: I've never used this tool but it looks interesting enough.
Frequency Level Checker
It assesses the frequency of English words in sentences: level one contains the 1,000 most common terms and their derivatives, level two the next 1,000 words and level three the 800 words most commonly used in higher education which are not found in levels one and two. Then there is something called "outside levels" which are words not in levels 1, 2 or 3.
For example, the term weaknesses is classified as outside level but words such as "would", "many", "for", "be", "and", "not" and "go" are classed as level one.

Simply add the text and click enter, the results will open in a new page.

Longman Vocabulary Checker allows you to choose the frequency level. I selected

●●○ mid frequency words – which indicates the next most important 3,000 words in the English language.

The text is from George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-four.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

When I measured it against the Academic word list it failed to score a single hit.
However, the following scientific text scored quite highly

At subsequent passages, the virus grew rapidly. A conclusion was drawn that during these experiments either virus cross - contamination may have occurred, with RQ contaminating the RM stock, or that a variant virus emerged from the RM

There are dozens of similar tools online, it's a question of using the most relevant search terms. Mine were: checker, vocabulary, level, frequency, tool
Comment: Thank you so much. The second one suits me better, but it seems it still needs to be improved with better graphic and design. I wish I could upvote this answer but my reputation is low.


How do we determine the mass of a black hole?

Question: Since by definition we cannot observe black holes directly, how do astronomers determine the mass of a black hole?
What observational techniques are there that would allow us to determine a black hole's mass?
Comment: The movie at http://www.galacticcenter.astro.ucla.edu/videos/2013orbits_animfull.gif is a beautiful visualization of data relating to the Milky Way core -- that "something really massive" is there can be clearly seen
Answer: You can work out the mass of a central gravitating body in a manner somewhat similar to Cameron's answer, but it's a little more complicated. For situations where one object is much more massive than the other:
Newton's law of gravitation says that the gravitational force between two objects is
$$F_\text{grav} = \frac{GMm}{r^2}$$
where $G$ is a universal constant, $M$ is the central mass, $m$ is the orbiting mass, and $r$ is the distance between them.
From Newtonian mechanics, we know that the force required to keep an object traveling in a circular path (AKA centripetal force) is
$$F_\text{cent} = \frac{mv^2}{r}$$
where $m$ is the orbiting mass again, $v$ is its velocity, and $r$ is the radius of the circle.
All the letters in the two scenarios match up, and since gravity is the centripetal force, let's just set them equal:
$$
F_\text{grav} = F_\text{cent} \\
\frac{GMm}{r^2} = \frac{mv^2}{r}
$$
Rearrange and we get
$$M = \frac{v^2r}{G}$$
Now if we want to compare the Sun and Earth to the black hole and its satellite,
$$
M_\text{sun} = \frac{v_\text{Earth}^2*r_\text{Earth}}{G}
M_\text{BH} = \frac{v_\text{sat}^2r_\text{sat}}{G}
$$
dividing one by the other, we get
$$\frac{M_\text{BH}}{M_\text{sun}}=\left(\frac{v_\text{sat}}{v_\text{Earth}}\right)^2\left(\frac{r_\text{sat}}{r_\text{Earth}}\right)$$
MORE PRACTICALLY, HOWEVER,
Instead of using Newtonian mechanics, Kepler's third law is more often used to determine the mass of two objects orbiting each other. It uses quantities that are more easily measurable and can be used no matter the ratio of the masses of the two observed objects.
Kepler's Third Law (generalized from his original work) says that the sum of the masses of two objects orbiting each other is proportional to the the cube of the semi-major axis of the orbit (think radius) divided by the square of the period.
M+m (is proportional to) SMA^3/P^2
Doing a proportional reasoning problem with the figures for the Earth and Sun (sum of masses = 1 solar mass, period is one Earth-year, SMA is 1 AU) gives the result
M+m (expressed in Solar masses) = (SMA expressed in AU)^3 / (P expressed in E-yr)^2
Let's say that we observe a small object orbiting a black hole at 5 AU, with a period of 2 E-yr. Then M+m = 5*5*5/2*2 = 31.25 Solar masses. If we assume that the orbiting object is practically nothing compared to the black hole, then the black hole is 31.25 Solar masses.
[EDIT: How to actually get that information-
There are lots of analysis techniques to try to extract semi-major axis and period information from observations.
The simplest case is nearby binary stars, which we can literally see orbit each other, so we can measure those things directly.
Exoplanets are mostly invisible against the glare of their parent stars, so they are mostly detected by the wobble they cause in the star's image as they orbit. The details of that wobble signal provide a wealth of information, some of which can be used to extract period and SMA.
For dense objects like neutron stars orbiting each other, Einstein's theory of General Relativity dictates that they will emit gravitational radiation, or ripples in spacetime. This causes them to lose energy, which makes them slow down. Accurate timing of the lighthouse-like pulses of radiation we receive from them can also yield what we need.
Finally, black holes, especially large ones, have a dramatic effect on their environments. Many have a disk of material spiraling into them. The material heats up to extreme temperatures and emits lots of radiation, allowing us to observe it. Models of the material disks' behavior depend on the mass of the central black hole, so matching a model with observations will give an estimate of the mass.]
Answer: There are numerous ways to estimate the mass of a black hole; I will just discuss the most common methods.
(1)
For stellar-sized black holes, the primary method is to find them in binary systems and measure the motion of the companion object - usually a "normal" star.
By measuring the radial velocity amplitude $K_2$ and orbital period of (what is conventionally known as) the secondary star, we can construct the binary mass function, which is a relationship between the masses of the components, $M_2$ and $M_{\rm BH}$, the (generally unknown) orbital inclination to the line of sight, $i$ (where $i=90^{\circ}$ is edge-on), and the observables.
$$f_{\rm  BH} = \frac{(M_{\rm BH} \sin i)^3}{(M_{\rm BH} + M_{2})^{2}} = \frac{P_{\rm orb}
K_2^3}{2\pi G}\tag1$$
These measurements are not without difficulties, since the light from the visible companion may be overwhelmed by light coming from an accretion disk of material spiralling in towards the black hole. This is in fact how many of these systems are discovered.
If the above information is all that is available then only a lower limit to the black hole mass can be found, by inserting $\sin i =1$ and $M_2 =0$ into equation (1) (or use some other sensible lower limit to $M_2$).
To make further progress you need more information about the inclination and the mass-ratio of the components $q=M_{\rm BH}/M_2$, such that
$$ M_{\rm BH} = \frac{f_{\rm BH} q (1+q)^{2}}{\sin^{3} i} $$
Information on the inclination can come from X-ray binary systems where the accretion disk around the black holes emit X-rays that are eclipsed by the secondary. In these cases, we know the inclination is high, and careful modelling can yield a precise value. This together with a good estimate of $M_2$ leads to an estimate of $M_{\rm BH}$.
Alternatively one can use ellipsoidal modulation of the light curve from the secondary star (e.g. Beekman et al. 1997) to simultaneously constrain $q$ and $i$/ The ellipsoidal modulation is caused by the tidal distortion of the secondary star if it is in a close orbit with a compact object. The star becomes "ellipsoidal" and the amount of flux the observer sees depends on the phase of the orbit. The amplitude of the modulation depends on $q$ and $i$.
(2)
For supermassive black holes there are also a number of techniques. The most important an accurate are probably the direct modelling of the motions of resolved stars that are in orbit near the black hole. This has only been achieved for the black hole at the centre of our own Galaxy, but is a spectacular success for adaptive optics in a very crowded field. See for example  Ghez et al. (1998); Gillesen et al. (2017). These measurements are now sufficiently accurate to even see the effects of General Relativity rather than Newtonian gravity on the orbital motion (e.g. Parsa et al. 2017).
For more distant galaxies, individual stars cannot be resolved, but one can still use the motion of gas or the overall velocity dispersion of stars near the centres of galaxies to estimate the mass of the central object.
A classic example would be the motion of gas in the accretion disc of the active galaxy M87. The picture below shows measurements of the gas velocity across the centre of the galaxy (the scale is about 100 pc across). The  lines show models of a Keplerian disc orbiting a central massive object (from Macchetto et al. 1997).

(3)
The detection of gravitational waves has led to a new way of measuring black hole masses in close, merging binary systems. The two black holes (the only examples so far are BH-BH binary systems) in a close orbit lose energy via the emission of gravitational waves and spiral into a merger at a rate which is highly dependent on both the product and sum of their masses (see for example here). The waves are emitted at twice the orbital frequency.
A detailed modelling of the gravitational wave signal - the time evolution of the frequency and amplitude is able to yield the masses of both inspiralling components - e.g. Abbott et al. (2016).
Answer: It is possible to measure the mass of a black hole from the speed of other objects. If we measure the speed of a star orbiting a black hole and the distance of its orbiting radius we can tell its mass. For example we would first locate a star that is traveling at 100 km/s and has an orbiting radius of 150 megameters so we could find the black holes mass.
To do this we would first find a mass such as our Sun and the Earth. We know that the Earth is 149,597,900 km, or about 150 megameters from the Sun, (so this is its orbital radius) and so simply by using pi we can work out how fast it is moving around the Sun. To find the orbital circumfrance we just do

pi*149,597,900 = 469,975,664km (470 megameters) (it'll be a bit more because the orbit isn't perfectly round)

We also know we orbit the Sun every 365.25 days (about 31557600 seconds). To find the speed we just do

469,975,664 km / 31557600 s = 14.9 km/s

Because the star around the black hole has the same distance from us to the Sun, we now know how to work out how much mass it has compared to the sun. To begin with, we know that it is orbiting around 6.7 times faster (100/14.9) and it is the same distance away. This means that it must have a mass 6.7 times greater than the mass of the Sun. The Sun's mass is 1.98892 * 10^30 kg so if we just times this by 6.7 we can find the mass of our black hole:

1.98892 * 10^30 * 6 = 1.193352 * 10^31

That's 1,193,352,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg!
But that doesn't mean the black hole is 6.7 times larger. In fact, if the black hole we are looking at is an "average" black hole it would be 66297333300000000 cm^3.
Comment: Yes, that math is wrong. The central mass and velocity of an object in a circular orbit are not linearly proportional. See my answer.
Comment: If my maths is wrong someone please correct me.


Worst first serve percentage in a match during a grand slam

Question: Is there a record of who has had the worst first serve percentage during a singles match in a grand slam event? This question includes both men's and women's games.
Answer: From various sources round the Web, but probably originally Associated Press content (one example):

Even the worst tennis hacker with the wackiest serve would find it tough to top Anna Kournikova's 31 double faults at the Australian Open in a farce of a match that was so bad it was funny.
It was one of most feeble and unintentionally comical matches of all time, and the packed crowd groaned and hooted, laughed and whistled through every excruciating moment of it.
That Kournikova could win 1-6, 6-4, 10-8 against Japan's Miho Saeki after setting perhaps an all-time record for sloppy serving Thursday speaks volumes for the way both players performed. Between them they made 149 unforced errors with 21 breaks of service. Once in a while they actually came up with some pretty good shots from the baseline and the net.
Kournikova, a popular 17-year-old Russian seeded No. 12, served for the match seven times, double faulted twice on match points, drilled an easy overhead into the net on one more, and played with all the consistency of a rank amateur. It wasn't as if Kournikova was going for big serves all the time — she had just three aces to zero for Saeki. She simply couldn't put the yellow ball in the green box.
About 3,000 fans jamming Court 2 cheered her nevertheless, their sympathy stretched to the limit as the 2½-hour match wore on. When Saeki hit a backhand crosscourt wide to lose the match at last, the crowd roared in celebration and relief.
Kournikova, who slugged 23 double faults in her first-round match, slumped in her chair and covered her face with a towel after shaking hands with Saeki, then obliged her adoring fans by signing autographs.
Double fault records are not kept, but no one among even the oldest observers could recall a professional player who served worse in a match. There was, however, one Gerald Patterson of Australia, who served 29 double faults and 29 aces in capturing the five-set final of the Australian championships in 1927.
Comment: If you're going to quote large chunks verbatim from other sources, please put them in the appropriate block quote markup to make it clear that it's not your content - plagiarism is bad.
Comment: @Philip Kendall, I didn't know that stuff. I will take of that from next time. Thank you for your valuable advice.


What changes have been made to bash in Lion?

Question: I am working on some bash shell scripting for a local login script and it works fine on Leopard and Snow Leopard but fails on Lion.  I was curious if there was a place that listed the differences in bash on Lion?
Comment: This is a very, very vague question. You'd do best to post all or a portion of the script and explain what you're trying to do.
Comment: @John I tried `u="$(whoami)"; echo $u` on 10.6 and 10.7, with the same result. Post the script source, that way you'll get decent answers. Also, to address your main question, the latest system upgrades for 10.7 and 10.6 will have the same version of bash anyway, ie. `3.2.48(1)-release`
Comment: I do not think that it required a down vote.  Surely there is a way to tell what differences exist in BASH between the versions.
Comment: I was trying to use the following variable in my bash script:    username="$(whoami)"
Answer: Assuming a SnowLeopard or Lion installation that has the latest software updates, the version of Bash is the same. 3.2.48(1)-release.
On SnowLeopard you may have a 32bit compilation in some cases, whereas on Lion it is (by default) 64bit.
The command username="$(whoami)" is extemely unlikely to ever change it's output on bash, since doing so would incur the fast moving, brain devouring wrath of an infinite number of ravenous zombie sysadmin types.
(By the way sysadmins are almost never undead, despite the occasional appearance to the contrary. The description was added for dramatic effect, and no offence to sysadmins was intended. I offer my heartfelt apology to any actual undead sysadmins, and their families, and I urge them to grab a shotgun immediately and barricade the bedroom door, double tap to be sure.)
Answer: Within bash, the command echo $BASH_VERSION shows the version of bash. You can then look up what changed in the changelog file, which is bash's case is called CHANGES. (There's a more complete changelog in the sources, but it's mainly of interest to people who write and maintain bash.)
If your machines are up-to-date, they'll be running the same version. Make sure all the external programs used in the script are up-to-date too: the script may behave differently because one of these programs produces different output.
You can watch what your script is doing more closely by running bash -x /path/to/script. The -x option makes bash print a trace for each command that it runs. You can also put set -x in a script to turn tracing on, and set +x to turn it off.
Comment: `bash --version` will give you the same result as `echo $BASH_VERSION` btw. +1 for `bash -x script`


Cat biting me, seems odd

Question: So my cat has a strong bond with me. But I notice sometimes he will give me a love bite when I scratch his back or pet his belly. More often it happens when I scratch him. Why does he give me a love bite when I scratch his back? Does he not like being scratched there or what is going on? Before, he wouldn't bite me at all, just purr when I pet his belly or scratched his back.
Answer: Properly socialised cats communicate with their butlers. They want food, they will let you know. When they want to be petted, they will get it. But sometimes it can be a bit much, you know. That spot has been properly scratched and is done now. You should stop.
My cats will tell me to stop in the following escalating steps:

Move
Vocalise (miuow)
Growl
Put offending thing in its mouth
Bite softly
But claws into action, but not hard
Bite hard
Use everything, hard!

With the note that the escalation from #5 can scale fast, in less then 2 seconds to 8. So I had better stop before that.

So, I think your cat is communicating that you can stop scratching that spot now, thank you very much.

Cat biting me, seems odd


Why should cognitive semantics and formal semantics co-exist?

Question: Cognitive Semantics and Formal semantics seems to exist.
Which is more popular in the field of semantics?
Why can not they replace each other?
Comment: Because they have different goals. Theoretical physics and experimental physics cannot replace one another; the tension between them is what drives physics. This is not the same situation as semantics; but it's at least a reason why there should exist several varieties of things that are similarly named. Names are not descriptions.
Answer: Cognitive and formal semantics can coexist very easily. They not only have different goals but also different objects of study.
Formal semantics grew out of formal logic and is concerned with a very limited set of statements that can be truth conditional (about which the truth can be determined). Formal semantics is not much concerned, for instance, with lexical meaning but looks mostly at combinatorics at primitive units. Formal semantics is the natural choice for people working in rule-based natural language processing.
Cognitive semantics is just a particular perspective on more traditional semantic concerns and tries to root meaning in human experience of the world which it finds in human cognition. It does not deal with primitive units of meaning and therefore is not concerned as much in their combinatorics. However, it looks at how meaning is constructed in speech, so it is not limited to small scale utterances. As such it is more difficult to formalize and use directly in natural language processing.
Both of these approaches to semantics co-exist with more general semantics which looks at both lexical and relational phenomena in language as they are found rather than through a specific lens but borrows from both of these as needed. Modern stochastic-based NLP is more likely to draw on both as appropriate, as well.
Answer: Cognitive semantics strives to reduce regularities about meaning (in the broadest sense) to informal and non-grammatical facts about cognition, and formal semantics attempts to give a symbolic and grammatical account of a proper subset of that sense of "meaning". Per se, they are logically exclusive, though a formal semanticist can accept the functional explanations proposed by cognitive semanticists for why meaning properties in language are what they are, and still maintain their theories of what they are in grammar.
Answer: Formal semantics is simply a (set of) metalanguage(s), a (set of) formal system(s) of representation, and is compatible with any 'ontologically substantial' theory of meaning, no matter whether meaning is all in the mind, as 'conceptualists' (e.g., present-day cognitivists and Chomskian minimalists) believe, or all outside the mind, as radical 'realist' referentialist theories of meaning traditionally claim, or partly in the mind and partly in the extramental world, as 'dualist' theories say, or even all in Language itself, as in the 'immanentist' approaches of early structural semantics inspired by people Saussure, Hjelmslev or Coseriu, or Katz, and arguably by Chomsky himself for as long as he believed in a non-trivial Faculty of Language. This list, of course, is not exhaustive, it does not quite capture Frege's 'idealist-realist' view of sense, nor Quine's hybrid behaviourist-conceptualist view, nor the late Wittgenstein's conception, nor Putnam's view, etc., but the point is just that formal semantics is not a theory of meaning in the sense all those are or were. The 'entities' (sets, functions, possible worlds, whatever) that the 'alphabet' and the well-formed formulae of formal semantics 'denote' may, ontologically speaking, be 'anywhere', so to speak. No wonder, then, that it should be able to co-exist with any conception of semantics. You can do 'formal semantics' starting from a cognitive semantics perspective. Obviously, to the extent cognitive semantics works with fuzzy categories, representing its analyses according to the rigid standards of 'formal semantics' may be less straightforward, but the conceptual-methodological difficulties defining and operating with fuzzy categories may raise are the cognitive semanticist's concern, not anything 'formal semantics' itself should worry about. Whether formal semantics is ultimately adequate or not to model meaning in natural languages is a different matter, but the same question can be asked with respect to cognitive semantics or any other 'substantial' theory of meaning.


The SUM function in Numbers 3.6.1 on my Mac OS X10.10.5 isn't calculating correctly. Why?

Question:
You can see in the attached screenshot that I have used the SUM function to add the values in column E. There are several "1" values (you can see one in cell E126) but the SUM always comes out at "0". Why is this?
To create this spreadsheet, I duplicated a Numbers spreadsheet in which I used "x" to denote a positive value (presence of different types of bees), then I used Find and Replace to change each "x" to "1" in this spreadsheet so I could use Numbers to compute a sum for each column. Would this find-and-replace maneuver make the values unable to be counted by the SUM function? How can I get Numbers to return a correct SUM for each column?
Answer: If the cells are in text format, they won't be counted. Check they are a number format cell first.
EDIT
I have tried it myself, when you find and replace, the cell is not automatically updated to a number cell. If you manually type in the number 1, it automatically gets changed to a number format.
Comment: yes, select rows E3 to E130 with the mouse, then in the format panel on the right, choose the "Cell" tab and "data format" is the first option - change it to number, or automatic.
Comment: Can I change them to a number format all at once? Or do I have to re-type all the numbers in the cells?
Answer: Another way of doing this without having to convert the text to number:
Use the COUNTIF() function.
This way, you don't even have to convert your "x" to a 1 either:
=COUNTIF(E3:E130, "x")
This counts all the "x"'s in the column. Same as summing up a bunch of 1's.
The SUM() function is not preferred for your situation. Suppose one of the numbers becomes 2 or 11 by mistake. As you really are looking for a COUNT of how many are '1' the count functions COUNT, COUNTIF, COUNTIFS are much better tools for this particular job.


How to Check remaining files of Windows 7 from Ubuntu?

Question: I've just installed Ubuntu (14.04 LTS). Before this, I had dual-boot Windows 7 and Fedora 18, and I tried to uninstall the Fedora, but I did something wrong, so I have to install Ubuntu (because I have its boot CD). I chose to install Ubuntu, and then "Erase disk and Install Ubuntu". Now I cannot open Windows 7 again, as it immediately runs Ubuntu when I turn on the computer.
What I want to do now is to check whether there are some files left from Windows 7. Of course, those files aren't important. I just want to make sure that there aren't. How can I do this?
Sorry for my English
Thanks
Comment: Ok, I understand. Thanks everybody here for answers.
Answer: Since you selected the option Erase Disk and Install Ubuntu, the hard drive was formatted as an ext4 partition and hence no Windows related files are on it.
However, data can still be recovered using tools such as photorec and hence if you want to completely get rid of your previous data, it is recommended to zero the hard drive, ie overwriting with zeros.
Answer:
"Erase disk and Install Ubuntu".

This means "remove any and all other operating systems and install Ubuntu".

Now I cannot open Windows 7 again, as it immediately runs Ubuntu when I turn on the computer.

That is because you removed Windows 7 (and Fedora). When there is just one operating system on a computer it will automatically boot that operating system. When there are 2 or more you get to choose when booting.

Of course, those files aren't important. I just want to make sure that there aren't. How can I do this?

If you want to check the lay-out of your disk you can install "gParted" and see if there are any partitions labelled as "ntfs". Those are Windows partitions. But I doubt if there will be any.
But in general: foreign partitions will be automatically shown in the launcher after the initial install (the icon is a grey harddisk icon). If those are not there you can also assume there are none on your disk.
Answer: If you've only erased the Fedora partition and left the Windows partition intact, you might want to press "shift" while booting to show you the boot menu and then choose windows (again: if its partition is intact)
Answer: If you chose to "Erase disk and Install Ubuntu" during your ubuntu installation there can not possibly be any windows files left .
Because in the "Erase disk and Install Ubuntu" step the installer formats your hard drive while converting it from NTFS(default windows file system) to ext4(ubuntu 14.04's default file system).
Unless you lost some important data and are looking for ways to recover it.
You really shouldn't be worried!


What does "warp" mean in DSP?

Question: I hear the word warp a lot, but cannot quite get a feel for what it really means
I suppose it's literal meaning would be to change in shape, but what does it mean with respect to DSP?
More specifically, I have a DSP chip manual that says a certain parameter adjusts warp for DACs and another one that adjusts warp for ADCs. What does warp mean in this context?
If possible, please explain it without technical jargon.
Answer: I've never really heard of "warp" regarding ADCs or DACs, but I imagine it's because the analog-to-digital (or vise versa) mapping function, which is supposed to be linear, a straight line, is curved slightly due to variation in parts.  I don't see how this would happen with sigma-delta ADCs or DACs (unless the summer at the input with the delta feedback is non-linear).  but with an R-2R DAC, if the R's aren't all perfectly the same, the digital-to-analog mapping function will not be a straight line.  For a flash ADC, if all of the resistors in the voltage divider line are not all perfectly equal, that analog-to-digital mapping function will also not be linear and would be "warped".
If, somehow, one can measure or determine the "warpness" of the mapping function, I suppose it can be compensated in the DSP software.

What does "warp" mean in DSP?


How to merge these tiny faces?

Question: I have these messy tiny faces that I want merge them into nice smooth faces just like other parts of the object. What would be the best way to do this?
Answer: Use the Decimate modifier in the Collapse mode, then adjust the Ratio property as desired.

Bad topology and occasional glitches are to be expected, you may have to do additional cleanup by hand. You can also try the Remesh modifier if you wish to retopologise.

How to merge these tiny faces?


I am travelling to Netherlands on an Invitation letter.Should my point of entry and exit be same for Schengen visa?

Question: I am travelling to Netherlands and Germany as a tourist.
I have invitation letter from a friend in Netherlands.
I am applying for a Schengen visa from Netherlands consulate.
Should my point of entry and exit be necessarily Netherlands?I plan to enter Netherlands and return back from Germany
Comment: No. You can enter or exit through any Schengen country. The important things are that your planned itinerary sounds reasonable and that your actual itinerary fits with what you *said* you would do. Minor adjustments are OK, even if you change transit airports or the like.
Comment: This question is not duplicate @Willeke.The first question asks if one should enter from the country that has issued Schengen visa.My question states if my return ticket should also be from the same country.I have mentioned  the words entry and exit.
Answer: The Netherlands should be your main part of your Schengen visit, but it does not need to be your entry point, it does not need to be your exit point and it does not even have to be your longest stay.
It will be easier if your stay in the Netherlands is longer than any other, as that is easier to proof than the main reason to visit.
When you enter the Schengen zone you will be asked your plans.
Explain them as good as you can, and there should be no problem whatever entry point you have. You will have ongoing travel which will get you to the Netherlands, have that ticket or a print of your plans near at hand in case you are asked for them.
Leaving the Schengen zone will not be a problem at all, as long as you are within the time you have been given for your visa.
There are not rules about which country or airport to use for arriving or leaving, as there are plenty of flights where you have a connection between entering the Schengen zone and the country you are going to spend time in.
When you apply for a visa you have to mention travel plans, it is asked that you mostly stay with those plans. But change of Schengen Entry country is not a big change, often it is even out of your hands if your airline re-routes your flight.
The main thing is that your length of stay in your main country or countries will remain about the same.


Bitcoin transaction location

Question: I transferred my Bitcoin from my Exodus desktop wallet to another location. How can I find out, if possible, the exchange I sent it to that has my account? Is there any way to see the transaction code to find out what exchange my BTC is sitting on? Thanks.
Answer:
Is there any way to see the transaction code to find out what exchange my BTC is sitting on?

You cannot identify an exchange from a transaction-ID.
Answer: I am not sure what information you want from the adress you send your bitcoin to but you can see your transaction by using the adress of the bitcoin you send to.
you have to copy the adress you send it to, something like "1CK6KHY6MHgYvmRQ4PAafKYDrg1ejbH1cE" past it on a website like https://blockexplorer.com and then you will have some information for this adress
" Addresses are not wallets nor accounts, and do not carry balances. They only receive funds, and you do not send "from" an address at any time. Various confusing services and software display bitcoins received with an address, minus bitcoins sent in random unrelated transactions as an "address balance", but this number is not meaningful: it does not imply the recipient of the bitcoins sent to the address has spent them, nor that they still have the bitcoins received. "
more information here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address
Comment: I sent it to another account I own. I have no idea what account that is. How to find out if this can be accomplished?
Comment: How do you own this another account, is this a wallet, an exchange ? the only thing that make you own an account on bitcoin is the private key, and  How did you find the adress you have to sent the bitcoin to ?

Bitcoin transaction location


What is my institution when submitting to journal

Question: In the time between submitting the first draft of a paper to a journal and submitting the third and final version (now), my institutional affiliation has changed.  Should I indicate my original affiliation on my (latest) submission, or my current affiliation?  All the work for the paper was done while I was at the previous institution.
Answer: Ask the editor which they prefer, but (IME) the most common approach is to give your old institution (the one at the time of submission) and add a footnote saying "Now at...". An alternative would be to give two affiliations. Omitting your old affiliation entirely would seem strange.
(Bear in mind this may well vary substantially between disciplines, as with almost everything else! Again, if in doubt, ask the editor. It's their journal, after all...)


Does Islam differentiate between doubters and disbelievers?

Question: In the Quran, there's a clear separation between believers and disbelievers, but it doesn't talk of doubters as widely to best of my knowledge. Given that, I wonder whether there are references to doubters either in the Quran or hadiths, and whether Islam differentiates between doubters and disbelievers in any way. By doubter, I mean someone who doubts the correctness of Islam but does not necessarily thinks that it's false or/and working against it.
Answer: Doubt (شك) is classed as a type of disbelief. Various scholars have cited consensus on that.

واتفقوا ... فان من جحد شيئا مما ذكرنا أو شك في شيء منه ومات على ذلك فانه كافر مشرك مخلد في النار أبدا
And they are agreed ... he who denies anything of what has been mentioned or doubts in anything of it and then dies in that state, then he is a disbeliever and polytheist who shall remain in the fire forever
— Maratib al-Ijma'

There are verses in the Quran which have counted doubt as the trait of the disbelievers and those that have have contrasted it with belief:

لنعلم من يؤمن بالآخرة ممن هو منها في شك
That We might make evident who believes in the Hereafter from who is thereof in doubt.
— Quran 34:21

إنما المؤمنون الذين آمنوا بالله ورسوله ثم لم يرتابوا وجاهدوا بأموالهم وأنفسهم في سبيل الله
The believers are only the ones who have believed in Allah and His Messenger and then doubt not but strive with their properties and their lives in the cause of Allah.
— Quran 49:15
Comment: I don't understand the first part. How come having doubt makes you a polytheist?
Comment: Mushrik and Kafir are interchangeable synonyms as used in for example [9:32-33](https://quran.com/9/32-33) and the [hadith](https://sunnah.com/muslim:82b). And depending on the case it also can mean Mushrik in the sense of doubt of Tawheed.
Answer: Does Islam differentiate between such an individual, and someone who denies Islam due to his caprices, or someone who does not even bother studying Islam?
Islam may differentiate but it is God the Most High, the Most Merciful Who will decide:
11:10-12

And if We give him a taste of prosperity, after some adversity has
afflicted him, he will say, "Troubles have gone away from me." He
becomes excited and proud. Except those who are patient and do good
deeds—these will have forgiveness and a great reward. Perhaps you wish
to disregard some of what is revealed to you, and you may be stressed
because of it, since they say, "If only a treasure was sent down to
him, or an angel came with him." You are only a warner, and God is
Responsible for all things.

The final question goes beyond our competences, as it is God Who has the final answer. I can only answer from what I have understood from the Word of Him. I only cite the Word of God according tho the Holy Quran.
God promises Paradise to those who do believe and do good:
4:57

As for those who believe and do good deeds, We will admit them into Gardens beneath which
rivers flow, abiding therein forever. They will have purified spouses therein, and
We will admit them into a shady shade.

God warns of punishment to those who know but cease to believe
3:100-105

O you who believe! If you obey a party of those who were given the
Scripture, they will turn you, after your belief, into disbelievers.
And how could you disbelieve, when God's revelations are being recited
to you, and among you is His Messenger? Whoever cleaves to God has
been guided to a straight path. O you who believe! Revere God with due
reverence, and do not die except as Muslims.
And let there be among you a community calling to virtue, and
advocating righteousness, and deterring from evil. These are the
successful. And do not be like those who separated and disputed after
the clear proofs came to them; for them is a great punishment.

It is not excluded but not promised that those will be pardoned:
9:66

Do not apologize. You have disbelieved after your belief. If We pardon
some of you, We will punish others, because they are guilty.

Those who do not believe in the Prophet ﷺ but believe in God and do good deeds may expect to be received:
2:256

There shall be no compulsion in religion; the right way has become
distinct from the wrong way. Whoever renounces evil and believes in
God has grasped the most trustworthy handle; which does not break. God
is Hearing and Knowing.

3,114

They believe in God and the Last Day, and advocate righteousness and
forbid evil, and are quick to do good deeds. These are among the
righteous.

53,31

To God belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on earth. He
will repay those who do evil according to their deeds, and recompense
those who do good with the best.

Those who doubt but believe in God are between those who reject and those who believe.
As I initially stated, God will be the One to judge. It would be wrong to answer this question.


Image/video quality loss after importing Adobe Premiere Pro

Question:
Hi, i am new to premiere pro cc 2019. I have imported image file, it looks good in the project structure (circled). While drag it into timeline it shows a checked line like pixel images (shown in arrow). after rendering and making out also it is showing the checked boxes. But the original image is high quality image. How can i over come this? Kindly suggest me a solution.
Comment: Can you provide a little more information? What are the project settings you are using -- that determines the resolution, which is likely less than the original graphic, so it would be downsampled. Also, scaling in Premiere can reduce the quality of a graphic -- did you apply scaling? Finally, what is the effect on the graphic -- the screenshot is not that clear -- it appears there is some color blocking, but we can't be sure.
Answer: what is the quality of your image?
Please use the vector image once
Insert the vector into the format to see if the problem is resolved (.PNG )
Good luck buddy


Has anyone managed to run Xorg from console mode on OS X?

Question: I'm an avid user of XQuartz and use it for all my computing needs on OS X. Since I essentially don't use any Aqua apps any more, I wondered if it would be possible to start the X window system from console mode on OS X. Figures, I could get rid of the overhead caused by the Aqua window server and  I've all the necessary binaries installed in /opt/local/X11 (installed by XQuartz).
First, when logged into console mode (by typing >console as the user name at the Aqua login screen, not by booting into single user mode), I simply tried 'startx': I was faced with an error prompt along the lines of 'cannot connect to server; connection refused'. I then attempted to run 'exec startx', following which I am promptly dropped straight back into the Aqua login screen. Subsequently, if I try to start XQuartz from within Aqua, I get an error message saying a connection to the X server already exists. Grepping all running processes reveals that, indeed, there is an open connection.
I've also tried repeating the processes with common DISPLAY environment variables: :0.0, localhost:0, localhost:X0 (found in /tmp/.unix-X11), etc ... To no avail.
I have the feeling I'm an inch away from my goal but need a last push in the right direction. Hopefully someone knows more about this. I'm running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3, for the record.
Answer: Old question, but an answer for posterity: You cannot.

Xquartz depends on having WindowServer running. It cannot be used outside that environment.
The "console mode" that you're referring to is no longer available in current versions of macOS. (Entering <code>>console</code> at the login screen will typically result in a black, unresponsive screen, and you'll have to reboot.)


How can I tell if my serial card supports RS-485?

Question: It's a Rosewill RC-300 1 Port serial PCI adapter.  From http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815166003, it says "The Rosewill RC-300 features a 9-pin RS232 serial port to add..." so I assume it only supports RS-232?  Sorry for the ignorant question; I tried looking up differences between the specifications but it's pretty complicated for me.
Comment: You can obtain a [converter](http://www.dinowish.com/stores/buybay005/-p-5867.html). You'll get much more useful answers if you tell us what, specifically, you're trying to do. "Supports" is a very vague term.
Answer: Unless you've bought a card that specifically supports RS485, no, you don't have it.
RS232 uses at a minimumum, three wires. A transmit, a receive and signal ground. The signal is a swing of around +-15VDC on the receive and transmit wires and is referenced to the ground wire.
RS485 is a differential balanced signal (one wire swings positive while the other swings negative) over twisted pair, similar to what Ethernet uses and typically is used for CSU/DSU units, process control, etc. Full Duplex requires two twisted pairs.
Answer: There's nothing in the manual to suggest the RC-300 supports RS-485
Other vendor's product descriptions generally do say if they support RS-485.
RS-485 is a more specialised comms standard than RS-232, mainly used in industrial systems
Comment: and I don't think Rosewill makes industrial serial pci cards.


Spanish Stem Change

Question: I'm looking at a set of data right and I'm a bit confused on how to tackle this. The data is showing a stem alternation of some verbs with [e] and [o] and no change in others. I know this is due to Latin and I've done some research on it but the answers I've found have left me confused. What rule makes a verb like "poder" conjugate with a stem change (puedo) but a similar verb such as "rentar" not (rento)? We're learning about abstract analysis right now and I'm quite sure that has something to do with it, but I don't know the steps to get there. Is there some sort of underlying vowel that never comes to surface that we can use in a rule? I've noticed that the dipthongization happens if the first syllable is stressed and has [e] or [o] but of course this doesn't apply everywhere, which is the problem. Thank you!
Comment: Oops — I saw this and thought it was in the Spanish.SE and not in Linguists.SE, so my previous comment isn't helpful.  But, basically, you can think of there being eight vowels in Spanish: A, E₁, E₂, E₃, I, O₁, O₂, and U.  Of these, A, E₁, I, O₁, and U allow for permanent rising and falling diphthongization, but are unaffected by stress.  E₂, E₃, and O₂ appear as E₁ and O₁ when *not* stressed, but when stressed, they become */je/* (E₂), */i/* (E₃), and */we/* (O₂).  Weirder things happen to them if of the *-ir* verb group, with E₂ and E₃ at times being */i/* and O₂ as */u/*
Comment: There are verbs that change (or not) on meaning. **follar**: *follo* (I fuck), *fuello* (I fart). **aforar**: *afuero* (legal term), *aforo* (I measure/calculate). You cannot predict when a stem change will happen by looking only at modern Spanish — you can only say definitively when it will *not*, or when it *could*.  You'd need to look to Latin to get better predictions, but it's not perfect.  *correr*, for instance, should be *cuerro* based on the Latin->Castilian rules, but it just doesn't.
Comment: @guifa I'm quite curious about your E³, since I haven't come across that pattern before (I'm a Latin speaker who knows these distinctions only through historical changes). Would you mind giving an example of a word containing it, that I could trace back? I'd like to improve my answer if I've left out something relevant.
Comment: @Draconis for example, **pedir** (*pido, pides, pide, pedimos, pedís, piden*). AFAIK, there's no pattern to predict when E goes to IE or just I, and some verbs can even go both ways, like **erguir** (*yergo/irgo*).
Comment: @guifa Most curious. Thank you! I shall research further.
Answer: Classical Latin had a system of ten native vowels + two foreign vowels + two important diphthongs, for a total of twelve (a, ā, e, ē, i, ī, o, ō, u, ū, y, ȳ, æ, œ). This is quite a lot of vowels to keep straight; for later Romance speakers, it was too many.
In the precursor to Spanish (aka "Late Iberian Vulgar Latin", the Latin spoken in Spain right before it became not-Latin-any-more), this twelve-vowel system simplified to seven: a, e, i, o, u, ɛ, ɔ. (ɛ and ɔ are phonetic symbols; they were never actually written that way at the time. ɛ is the vowel in English "met", ɔ the vowel in "hot".)
a ← a, ā
e ← ē, i, œ
ɛ ← e, æ
i ← ī, ȳ, y
o ← ō, u
ɔ ← o
u ← ū

This change was nicely universal and predictable. Similar things happened in other vulgar Latin dialects, which would become the other Romance languages.
Then, the system simplified again. In unstressed syllables, or before syllable-final nasals, ɛ and ɔ turned into e and o.
e ← ɛ
o ← ɔ

In any other places, they broke into diphthongs.
je ← ɛ (spelled "ie")
we ← ɔ (spelled "ue")

For instance, Latin metus → Spanish miedo, Latin focus → Spanish fuego.
And this is the source of your mysteriously appearing diphthongs. When the first syllable is stressed, a historical /ɛ/ becomes /je/; when unstressed, it becomes /e/. Similarly, a historical /ɔ/ in a stressed syllable becomes /we/; in an unstressed syllable, /o/. But a historical /e/ or /o/ never changes its form, always remaining /e/ or /o/ regardless of stress.
Unfortunately there's no good way to predict where these ɛs and ɔs are, except by knowing the vowel lengths in the Latin words. So the best option for analysis is to take them as separate underlying phonemes, even though only these few remnants are visible now.
Source 1
Source 2
(See also guifa's comment on your question: what they call E² I call ɛ, and what they call O² I call ɔ. The "weirder things" they mention in the -ir conjugation come from a later process of vowel-raising, which I haven't gone into here; the first source link has some excellent information on that as well.)
Comment: To make it also a little bit more fun, I believe it is worth to mention the vowel raising you mentioned. If the verb with original /ɛ/ or /ɔ/ has infinitive with _-ir_, it evolves to /i/ and /u/ in finite forms, e.g. _pedir_,_concebir_ etc. conjugate as _pido_, _concibo_ etc. Also the whole thing cannot be explained purely synchronically since in the evolution there were analogies (see _adiestrar_ and _amueblar_ from reply of user6726) and there are cases of inherited difthongs (_piedad_ from Latin _pietatem_).
Answer: The problem is that there are three classes of behavior, when only two make sense under normal assumptions about what the underlying segments of the language are. One pattern is the diphthongizing patterns of "be able" /pod/, where when stressed you get [we] as in [pwéðo] "I can". The second is the non-alternating pattern of "eat" /kom/ as in [kómo] "I eat". So far so good, yuo have a distinction between underlying diphthongs and underlying monophthongs, and diphthongs monophthongize when unstressed. But that can't be totally true, because of piedád "piety" where you do in fact have unstressed diphthongs. The abstract analysis "solves" the problem by saying that only specially-marked stressed vowels are diphthongized, so the unstressed diphthong of piedád is not a problem since the rule is that stressed vowels diphthongize, not that unstressed diphthongs monophthongize. There are basically two specific proposals for that special marking. One is that the special vowels are tense or long; the other is that they have an arbitrary diacritic [+D] (which is abstract since you can't hear it).
What seems to force some abstract analysis is this third class of vowels, exemplified by piedád: if only we could deal with unstressed diphthongs, the matter would be very simple – /pwed/ versus /kom/. As far as I know, the class of unstressed diphthongs is circumspect. There are prefixed stems like adiestrar, amueblar, and some nouns like piedad (also vienés), but to the best of my knowledge, no verb roots like puevár, pientér.
Answer: As an aside to all that's been said already: traditional Spanish grammar divides all verbs into three conjugation classes based on their endings (-ar, -er, -ir), but I've read (the source escapes me) that it would be more sensible to add three more for the stem-changing verbs discussed here, since there are so many.
Another aside: alternation of -e- and -i- based on the original Vulgar Latin vowel is of course not confined to Spanish. Italian has e → ie and o → uo, Romanian has e → e̯a and o → o̯a, etc. Neither French (which has fixed last-syllable stress) nor Portuguese have vowel alternation of this kind.
Comment: French has some vowel alternation based on stress (e.g. *vous venez, je viens*), although nowhere near as much as Spanish. See here: https://books.google.com/books?id=SKOrVqsZSzsC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=French+vowel+alternation+venir+viens&source=bl&ots=wkyECchy9s&sig=pfXHG9xQ37s1ppJbgLodM24Wqos&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjhmp2tuqvRAhXLzIMKHRxbAygQ6AEIJTAC#v=onepage&q=French%20vowel%20alternation%20venir%20viens&f=false
Comment: The French situation is the result of analogical levelling (OF tu aimes, vous amez; MF t'aimes, vous aimez) and in some cases of the split of the two stems into two semantically distinct verbs (ie *ployer* to flex, *plier* to bend)

Spanish Stem Change


What are the major themes in Foundation?

Question: I'm not very good at discerning themes from books, but one of the ones that I picked up from Foundation went something like this: "a culture that stops learning is doomed to fail."
What major themes exist in Foundation?
Answer: The major theme I've always picked up from the original trilogy is:
"The flow of Humanity is too large to be consciously changed by any (normal) single individual or group. Instead, it is large social movements that shape history."
You can see it in the early days of the Foundation, where they manipulated the social structure around them (with the help of Seldon's Plan) to gain the upper ground on their more militarily and economically superior neighbors. You can also see it in the failure of General Bel Riose in defeating the Foundation, and ultimately succumbing to the deteriorating politics of the Empire. It took psychic (the Mule) to break the carefully orchestrated Seldon Plan, and it took a whole nation of psychics (the Second Foundation) to put it back on track.
The prequels are about Seldon coming to term with this theme, and realizing that he alone can't change the future. Not even his Psychohistory is enough. He needs individuals who can influence masses without themselves being influenced. Thus his creation of the Second Foundation.
The sequels add another theme:
"Human society is fundamentally flawed, and ultimately will be the cause of its own demise. For Humanity to survive they must change their very nature."
Daneel's master plan of creating "Galaxia" as galaxy wide version of "Gaia" is indicative of this.
Comment: I'm not sure if it was backing away from that theme as much as it was exploring what might break it.
Comment: "...large social movements that shape history." Except that's boring, so lets add psychics! I found that everything from "The Mule" onward to be backing away from that initial theme. :-(
Answer: As alluded to by Sean's commentg to the first answer, another theme is one taken from Tolstoy's War adn Piece - the tension between the pressure of historical forces of the masses and effects of strong individuals. The former is very thoroughly covered by SystemDown's answer, but while he mentions Mule as a mere "example that reinforces the concept", I view it as introducing this second competing dynamic (ala Napoleon for Tolstoy) of a strong brilliant individual who can try and shift the historical forces.
Comment: Nice. For some reason, I never linked War and Peace with Foundation, but you're spot on.
Answer: The theme that has stuck with me, was that it was not possible to stop the collapse, but that there would be a second foundation. The only thing that Seldon could do was to try to ensure that the dark ages between the foundations was as short as possible.
For a non-fiction look at this idea see The Collapse of Complex Societies
Answer: I think Foundation is about Asimov questioning what a human ideal future society would look like. He questions what it means to be human - he was from an early age entranced (as I have been) by robotics and how this affects what it means to be human. If a mechanical being looks like a human and thinks like a human, is it human? This is the same theme explored by Philip K. Dick in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It is less about explaining his opinion on this matter and more about opening up the debate for his readers. And this is what I have always loved about Asimov (which I have been reading since I was a little girl) - the desire to spark a debate. What constitutes a human being? What would an ideal human society look like? Does Gaia represent an ideal or a nightmare? I think it is no coincidence that he began this epic adventure during the war when prejudices about race were in the forefront of everyone's minds. I think it is still an intensely relevant story even today, perhaps even more so today and remains for me the most exciting vision of the future.
Answer: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
Another is that the empirical practice of science and the arts is more important than the academic study of science and the arts - that in certain ways, you have to DO to KNOW. See eg the scene in "The Encyclopedists" where a "scholar" who thinks that meta analysis of secondary scholarship is what is necessary to develop and maintain expertise, and disdains going into the field: Asimov sets him up for ridicule.


How to remove sticker price tags from wood without leaving residue

Question: I have this poplar hobby wood that has price tag stickers on it.  When I am peeling them off, they kind of tear, and of course it seems to leaving a residue behind when portions do come off.  How can I get these price tag stickers off in a way that the wood will okay to take stain in those places?
Answer:
How can I get these price tag stickers off in a way that the wood will okay to take stain in those places?

Re. the highlighted portion, you shouldn't need to worry about that because the surface of the wood should be worked enough that this stops being a concern — it's good practice never to attempt to stain, or otherwise finish1, any wood bought pre-dimensioned without at least doing something to prep the surface (these days usually light sanding).
For the sticker residue, scraping should get most or all of it off. This can be done using a card scraper, any sharp blade or the long edges of a chisel, whatever works best for you..... or whichever happens to be closest :-) Any traces remaining will be dealt with when you surface the wood, either by planing, scraping or sanding.
Note: although the right solvent2 will deal with 99% of sticker residues if you use this as the only step on wood there's a risk some of the dissolved adhesive will soak into the surface wood fibres, which will act as a 'resist' (stain-blocker). This can sometimes be visible even if only varnishing. So physical or abrasive means are the right call here.

1 This includes primer or paint.
2 Usually either mineral spirits or denatured alcohol (UK: white spirit or methylated spirits).
Answer: A cabinet scraper might be another solution, removing the wood the glue adhered to.
Comment: Agreed. You can use a normal stanley knife blade as a scraper in a pinch. (Added bonus: it's sharp out of the box!)
Answer: I'd use mineral spirits or another solvent (lacquer thinner, denatured alcohol, etc.) to remove the residue.
You should verify compatibility with your finishing product before use.
Answer: Guide a razor blade along the lifting edge of the sticker as you peel it off. This will usually get most of the adhesive. If you have remains of a sticker left, you can skim off most of the residue and sticker remains with a razor blade or sharp chisel, being careful not to gouge into the surface or cut through the top veneer if working with plywood or other veneered material.  Afterward, sand the entire surface lightly with a fine grit so the surface takes stain uniformly.


Algorithm to find primes $q$ and $p$ with $q\, |\, p - 1$?

Question: I understand that if $p$ is prime then $p-1$ must be composite (at least divisible by $2$ as it is even). But how does an algorithm find a prime $q$ such that $q \cdot r = p - 1$. I thought prime factorisation is such a hard problem?
Comment: what are the restrictions on $q$? $q=2$ is always a solution
Comment: @qwr You are obviously right. $q$ is supposed to be a great prime. The common reccomendation for crypto algorithms seems to be that the bit-width of $p$ is about 3 or 4 times the bit-width of $q$.
Answer: The critical facts enabling to find such $p$ in practice are:

We can easily tell with practical certainty if an integer with many thousand bits is prime or not, using a primality test such as Miller-Rabin, even though we are typically unable to tell all its factors when it is not prime.
About $1.4/b$ integers of $b$ bits are prime. Thus it is more likely than not that randomly trying $b$ integers of $b$ bits will uncover a prime (for $b>4$).

Hence a possible method to find a somewhat random large prime $p$ with some large known random prime $q$ dividing $p-1$ is:

first randomly select a suitably large prime $q$
for successive $r$ of suitable size

compute $p\gets q\,r+1$
if $p$ is prime

output $p$ and stop.

There are refinements to this. Obviously, we can restrict to even $r$. That's a special case with $s=2$ of a more general tweak: for any small prime $s$, it must hold that $q\,r+1\bmod s\ne0$, thus $r\bmod s\ne-q^{-1}\bmod s$. This allows to build a sieve of possible $r$, eliminating most candidates without a full primality test.
There are standardized algorithms to generate such $p$ and $q$, including deterministically from a seed. See FIPS 186-4 appendix A.1
Comment: Hey, thanks for the quick reply! This answers all my questions. :-)


Meaning of "What's shaking?"

Question: I can guess it probably means "what's happening", or "what's up". Am I right? I am curious where this phrase comes from and how to use it properly.
Answer: Wiktionary says:

Interjection
what's shaking

(slang) what is happening?

The phrase is Afro-American in origin, from the 1950s. From 1970's Black Slang: a Dictionary of Afro-American talk By Clarence Major:

Shaking: (1950's) same as Happening; example, "What's shaking?"

Here's some published uses from the 1950s.
From Reports of cases determined in the courts of appeal of the state of California, 1957:

From Sig Byrd's Houston by Sigman Byrd, 1955:

There's also this from 1931, it could be related but it's probably not:

"They've found you on the beach,
  that's what you hear, what's shaking
  your shoulder. Your heart's still
  beating. You've got time to go back,
  to live, to find someone else than
  Sue. Sue's meeting John on Thursday.
  Go back to the beach.

Anyway, as to how to use What's shaking?, the excellently titled Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slang (1996) gives some variations:
Comment: my gf asked me that when I took off my underwear.
Comment: Is it ok to say in the same sense "what shook?
Answer: Shaking or swinging is indeed what certain parts of the adult body can do. As a native speaker and city dweller, I can say that by intonation, that reference is the etymology.  Similar to "How's your sorry ass been?" of "How's it hangin'?"
Do not use the expression with your grandparents, but only with peers.

Meaning of "What's shaking?"


Why can't we drink wine that was made by a non Jew but by machine

Question: Why can't we drink wine that was made by a non-Jew but was made from beginning to end by machine? Needless to say that according to the Gemara that it is only yayin nesech if the non Jew makes an actual libation with it. Even if you want to call it yayin stam, according to the Gemara it's only yayin stam if the non Jew touches it after all the wine has been stored in the barrel to ferment, since before it is put in the barrel it is unfit to drink or be used for a libation.
Comment: Who said we can't drink it?
Comment: I've learned the laws of _yayin nesech_ with a winery _mashgiach_; if a non-Jew presses a button on a machine that causes wine to flow, it may be non-kosher.
Comment: But he didn't make a libation over the wine so it doesn't render it nesech!
Comment: Can you cite this Gemara and where it is brought down by later halakhists?
Comment: It's in מסכת עבודה זרה and it's in פרק רבי ישמעל אומר although I will find the exact quote. And I'm not sure about the later halakists.
Comment: What was the story with Welch's grape juice once-upon-a-time?
Answer: Probably because of what the Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah says in
 סימן קכה - דין יין הבא מכח עובד כוכבים וכח כחו

ב: כֹּחַ כֹּחוֹ כְּכֹחוֹ דָּמִי. וְאִם הוּא כֹּחַ כֹּחַ כֹּחוֹ, כְּגוֹן קוֹרַת הַגַּת שֶׁגִּלְגְּלָהּ עוֹבֵד כּוֹכָבִים, שֶׁיֵּשׁ שָׁם ג' כֹּחוֹת: הַדַּפִּין וְהַגַּלְגַּל וְהַקּוֹרָה, (ד) בְּדִיעֲבַד מֻתָּר אֲפִלּוּ בִּשְׁתִיָּה.

And the Be'er Heitev adds:

באר היטב  (ד) בדיעבד. אבל לכתחלה אסור אפילו בעשרה כחות ויותר כן
   משמע בטור ופוסקים:

That while - after the fact - a non-Jews triple-indirect actions may be allowed, one preferably doesn't have a non-Jew involved in making wine even if his actions are 10-times removed.
So, even having a non-Jew press a button to start a machine would be unacceptable.
Comment: Ok so that means welchs is still kosher now that they've pushed buttons. It's not like we told them they could use a nonjew to push the buttons
Comment: @DoubleAA: Firstly we never Pasken on MY, as per the guidelines. :-) Secondly, you're assuming no non-Jew has touched the wine - or shook the bottles - from the time it was grapes until it was [double?] sealed in the bottle (or until it was heated to the point of making it Mevushal).
Comment: I am not assuming that. The OP was...
Answer: Rabbi Frand has a tape where he says he likes to drink grape juice all the time, and wondered about this -- it would be a lot cheaper if he could buy regular (non-kosher) grape juice. He was told even with today's fancy-schmancy machinery, there's a human hand someplace in the factory unclogging a filter or the like every so often.
Comment: Isn't that bit _batel_ in the rest?
Comment: Even unclogging the filter would be batul bishishim!