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I don’t feel like writing my notes into an actual post and haven’t posted for a while so have this:

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Why Specifically 6ft Under?

Ever wondered why burying people 6ft underground is considered the norm? Turns out many states actually don’t have laws that enforce burying a body 6ft under and it’s usually left up to the funeral homes to decide how deep they want the grave. In the UK, it’s up to the owner. As long as animals can’t dig the grave site up and expose the body or coffin and the depth doesn’t lead to any safety concerns, the body can be buried at whatever depth they prefer. Also, some areas may receive more rainfall than others, resulting in them burying bodies differently. An example of this is that New Orleans most likely wouldn’t want to bury their bodies 6ft under because it would only cause waterlogging and the coffin surfacing (this is still a problem, coffins are floating to the surface during floods).

One of the earliest documented instances where burying a body 6ft underground was mentioned was published in a leaflet in 1665 during the London plague(the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague in England and lasted 18 months while killing 100,000 people, close to a quarter of London’s population). Burying a body at this depth was believed to prevent the spread of the disease. 

Some reasons why specifically 6ft under include: to discourage body snatchers from stealing bodies for medical students to study (during the early 1800s, grave robbing was very common because medical schools had limited access to corpses for anatomical study and research purposes), and the risks of cave-ins and related accidents increase when digging deeper. 

Burying a body in a deep grave is not only a Western tradition. Among other cultures and civilizations, ancient Greeks and Romans also dug deep graves for their dead ones. 

Sources: Why Are People Buried 6 Feet Under? | Six Feet Deep Grave (askfuneral.com), Great Plague of London - Wikipedia, The Reason Why The Dead Are Buried Six Feet Below The Ground | Elite Readers, Why Are Graves 6 Feet Deep & What Are The Reasons Behind It? | All About Grave

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Iron in Human Blood

A male of average height contains around 4 grams of iron, a female has about 3-5 grams, and children contain less than or equal to 3 grams. Most of this iron is stored in hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to the body’s organs and tissues, and also takes carbon dioxide from the organs and tissues to the lungs. Humans lose about 1 to 1.5 milligrams of iron daily. This is carried out by urine, vaginal fluids, sweat, feces, and tears. Iron is formed by stars with a large enough mass via fusion.

Sources: How Much Iron Is In The Body | Iron Disorders Institute, Hemoglobin test - Mayo Clinic, Interesting and Useful Facts about Iron (thoughtco.com)

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Dancing Bees

One of the dances performed by forager bees is the waggle dance. Through the dance, bees can relay information about food sources; information like the distance, direction, and even the abundance of the source. The dance was first discovered by ethologist (someone studying animal behavioral patterns) Karl von Frisch and even he was surprised by it. The waggle dance is one of the most complex communicative rituals among insects, mostly due to the complexity and accuracy of the information relayed. 

When someone hears of bees performing dances, they most likely think of the bees understanding the dance by watching it right? Turns out, the dance seems to be a multisensory experience for the bees; also, the inside of the hive is quite dark so seeing the dance would be difficult. The bees inside of the hive will usually touch their antennae with the dancing bee and feel the vibrations of the dance. A bee’s antennae allow the bee to FEEL SMELLS (i didn't know they did this) and vibrations. Smell might also play a part in understanding the dance, but what we do know is that bees use all of their senses to understand the dance, just using one won’t do the trick. 

The waggle dance consists of 2 main parts, the waggle and the return. During the waggle, the bee will move in a specific direction while waggling its abdomen (the bee’s butt). Return is when the bee circles back to its starting point and starts the dance all over again. Since bees determine their flying direction relative to the sun’s position, the first message sent by the dance will be the direction of the food. If the bee moves up while waggling, it’ll mean that the other bees should fly toward the sun. The bee communicates the distance of the food by the duration of the waggle phase, the longer the waggling, the farther the source. The more vigorously the bee waggles its butt, the more excited it is, and it tells the other bees the food is abundant and of high quality. 

Source: Why Do Bees Dance? – School Of Bees

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- Geekerella

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Wind Turbines and the cost

Wind turbines use the wind to push the blades of the turbine, spinning a generator and creating electricity. The terms “wind power” and “wind energy” have the same meaning, describing the process where wind is used to generate mechanical power or electricity. The mechanical power can be used for small, specific tasks like grinding grain or pumping water, or can be converted into electricity using a generator. The first wind turbine that generated electricity was built in 1887 in Scotland and was used to power a small cottage. Now there are over 341,000 wind turbines worldwide. 

According to Windustry, “Wind turbines under 100 kilowatts cost roughly $3,000 to $8,000 per kilowatt of capacity. A 10 kilowatt machine (the size needed to power a large home) might have an installed cost of $50,000-$80,000 (or more). The costs for a utility scale wind turbine range from about $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed. Most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed”.

Sources: How Do Wind Turbines Work? | Department of Energy, When Were Wind Turbines Invented? - Semprius, There are over 341,000 wind turbines on the planet, why they matter (cnbc.com), How much do wind turbines cost? - Windustry

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What makes someone left or right-handed?

Most of the human population today is right-handed, something can be seen as far back in the archeological record researchers are able to see, but we still haven’t figured out what truly makes a person right or left-handed. However, here’s what we do know: genetics and environment play a role in determining a person’s handedness.

While there is no gene that determines left or right handedness, research conducted by William Brandler and his colleagues suggested that the same genes affecting the left-handed symmetry of the organs in our bodies can also affect the way a person’s brain is wired, in turn affecting whether someone’s left or right hand is dominant.

The environment the person is in can also affect whether they turn out to be left or right handed. There have been times in the past when right-handedness was forced upon people, for example, teachers would force students to use their right hand and punish those who used their left hand, and some people believed being left-handed was a sign of evil, therefore avoiding the use of it.

Researchers at Northwestern University created a mathematical model showing that people are rarely left-handed because it is a form of cooperation. Apparently, the balance between cooperation and competition within a species determined the percentage of organisms that were right-handed and the percentage that were left-handed. Humans typically value cooperation, and in doing so, become right-handed as a form of conformity to a social norm, making lefties more rare.

Several other species also prefer to use one hand over the other, however the ratios are much closer to 50-50.

Sources: Why Are People Left- (or Right-) Handed? | Live Science, Why are there more right-handed people than left-handled people? | SiOWfa15: Science in Our World: Certainty and Controversy (psu.edu), Righty or Lefty? It's in Your Genes | Live Science

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- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

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- Before We Disappear

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- Before We Disappear

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Sleeping or Unconscious?

The biggest difference between a person who is sleeping and a person who is unconscious is that a person sleeping will respond to stimuli, for example, loud noises and being shaken. A sleeping person might move if they feel uncomfortable but an unconscious person won’t. When used as adjectives, sleeping is asleep while unconscious is having no awareness. 

A person is considered to be in a coma if they are unconscious for an extended period of time. They can’t be woken up, even when hurt or shaken. The person’s eyes are closed and they don’t respond to things like sound in their environment. During a coma, the brain doesn’t go through the normal sleeping stages.

Sources: Sleeping vs Unconscious - What's the difference? | WikiDiff, Coma: Types, Causes, Recovery (verywellhealth.com)

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✨️Lich & Mushroom for everrr🍄

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im so done with seeing articles about kids and screen time that doesnt mention parent behaviors even once. “kids are always on their phones” so are the parents! which the kids look to for how they should behave! ipad babies didn’t chose to only play on their ipads, thats what their parents gave them!

an anecdotal example: when i was a kid, all my parents would do in their minimal free time was watch tv and then they would be surprised when in my sister and i’s minimal free time we would also only watch tv/play video games. they scolded us for not reading books, but they never read books. they scolded us for not going outside but they never went outside.

“kids are always on their damn phones” my mom is in her 60s and opens up candy crush anytime she’s sitting — it isnt just the kids

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Song of Seventeen.

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hey guys...i put a picture of a kity under the cut...

[ID: A photo of two gray kittens. End ID.]

I LIED!!! HA!!! THERE ARE TWO KITTIES!!!!!!!!!! APRIL FOOLS

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Does a coffin affect human decomposition?

Placing a body in a coffin or casket will usually result in its decomposition rate being slower compared to burying the body directly into the earth (this will usually take around a year). The amount the rate is slowed down depends on many external factors, like the size of the body, moisture levels, and oxygen levels. The large amount of variables contributing to the decomposition rate results in having a harder time to accurately say the exact amount it’ll take the body to decompose. While there have been attempts to create a universal formula to estimate how long a body’s decomposition will take, it hasn’t been achieved yet. The science behind it is not understood clearly enough to do so yet.