Alfalfa fixes nitrogen through bacterial action - nitrogen fixing bacteria. That's why crop rotation is done. It adds nitrogen to the soil and feeds the cattle.

I forget the chemistry for the first bit but basically racism against Asians and American media panics are why people are so against it.

There's a good Sporkful episode about it, it probably goes into the chemistry too

Yes.

Hi NSA agent reading this.

I think a major problem here would be how to mathematically define "accurately represent[ing] the actual voting community" in a way that is as objective as possible. If you want to skew the results in your favor, you don't need a perfectly objective description as long as it gets roughly the results you want, but to prevent such abuse does require every detail to be fixed in place.

Would you be interested to know that the coal we dig out of the ground is compressed wood but it was from before bacteria knew how to decompose wood. So the wood just piled high on top of each other and compressed into coal (it did not rot).

Alcohol kills bacteria.

ultimately? nothing changed, the NSA still does what they do but now they are more tighly controlling their flow of information to avoid further leaks.

they still do the things they have always done: control information.

MSG have a very savory (umami) flavor and enhances other savory and salty flavors in the food.

So adding it to chicken broth made it taste extra chicken brothy.

People got against it because some articles came out about how it had sodium in it (which it does) and could have negative health impacts.

After research, it was found that eating MSG in normal small quantities has little to no impact on health.

Great!

So they have gotten better, and not stopped.

Very little, because the news cycle moved on to the next big clickbait thing and people ceased caring immediately after.

So nothing changed. And they are still doing this?

Sorry, got the wrong agency's you are right.

Counteract the spying or counteract more Snowdens trying to leak classified documents?

The NSA has taken a lot of steps to get ahead of other possible security breaches.

They’re still reading your emails.

You are unlikely to be able to create such a string/stack or whatever you wish to call it of a single atom thick string. If you could, you won't see anything. The diameter of an atom is about 1/1000th the wavelength of visible light.

There is the odd case of graphene. It is planar (two dimensional) unlike your essentially one dimensional example. Graphene is a molecule/substance that is a single atom thick consisting of carbon atoms in hexagonal sheet. You can actually see graphene, although the sheet would be much more than a single atom width...

Newton's 3rd law is quite a force to overcome in low g

That’s the neat part, there wasn’t.

The main outcome was the Snowden got branded as a treasonous traitor and fled the country to avoid arrest and is now living in Russia.

There was some public discourse, but hardly anyone truly cared and there wasn’t much political will to change anything.

He exposed the NSA, not the CIA.

NSA was the one doing the mass surveillance but Im not sure what counter measures were taken.

Right. If the particle you're looking at has a very similar refractive index as air (or if the pile is in water, then the refractive index of water. Whatever medium your pile is in) then you are not likely to see any visible aberrations at all. This needs to be close like withing a millionth of a percent.

If your particle has a significantly different refractive index, but is still mostly transparent, then you are likely to see it clearly. Even if a contiguous mass would be near transparent, every time the light passes from one substance to the other (and a pile like this is likely to have millions of such interactions) then it will scatter a bit of light every time. You will see this most likely as a white powder.

The only other option is that the particle is not transparent. It either absorbs or reflects most visible light, in which case it will look like any other pile of stuff. It will take on the visual properties of that stuff. Except reflection might end up looking more scattered or matte than normal. As an example, a really shiny metal that you could see your reflection in when atomized is likely to lose the perfect surface finish that gives it that specular reflection where an image can be made out. It is going to reflect the light in all directions equally so it will just look like a pile of silver dust.

The gyms and sports facilities I'm familiar with have very high ceilings in the workout areas. The offices in those buildings tend to be more normal ceiling height for offices.

Another set of high-ceiling buildings are large grocery stores. There is one locally that actually has a second floor office area with a balcony that looks down on the shopping area.

And Walmart. :) And most large retail stores.

Locally a large grocery chain pulled out of one of it's main stores. Everyone was wondering what would become of the space, which stayed vacant for months. Then a large gym facility moved in. Makes sense, the space already had the high ceilings the gym wanted.

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very nice! my (ex) spouse did some research on rhodopsin in anabaena. really cool stuff.

There a lot of good answers here but I’ll add this note: humans aren’t 70% water. We’re closer to 50% (females tend to be lower, males tend to be higher), but even that percentage will fluctuate quite a bit during the day.

Because it's never been a rule that abbreviations have to inherit the pronunciation of their parent word. The Hard C probably comes from it sounding better.

This makes sense to me, because having a lot of humans in a room can heat it up so quickly!

Do they have an air circulation system near the ceiling to keep it moving? I always wondered if it vented to the outside.

I would also think that ventilation has to be key. Being able to circulate all the air people are breathing out up into a very high ceiling is probably what keeps the air breathable at floor level.

Because it is unnatural. Moving in zero gravity means you have to be deliberate and careful in how you move since you're used to having resistance (ie your feet on the ground) rooting your body. Moving one body part moves others you aren't used to because of that.