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According to Wikipedia, the ancient Greeks "did not produce medical concepts about any symptoms associated with end of menstruation and did not use a specific word to refer to this time of a woman's life". So, presumably sometime between then and the early 1800s when French doctors coined the term. [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 6:04 PM - 5 answers

Looking for a lucid dreaming app for my iPhone, on iOS 18.3. I haven't read about lucid dreaming in a while, my last research was before phone apps took over the world. So now I'm curious about using one of the various techniques that use sound cues to help the dreamer realize they are dreaming. I do not have an Apple Watch, Fitbit, or any other that other jive. What apps do folks like? [more inside]
posted by 4midori at 9:50 PM - 6 answers

I am taking several meds. With each prescription, I expect the doc to consider any possible negative interactions w/ any other med, and I always ask. But still, I am lately having some symptoms that I don't care for. Are they related? Aside from grilling each provider again, is there a way to have the meds/dosage interactions evaluated?
posted by ebesan at 6:23 PM - 6 answers

Modern phones have accelerometers and gyroscopes in them that continuously collect data about their relative motion and orientation in space. When I show my mug to my phone, it is required that I hold the phone in portrait orientation and upright (ie. with the visible and IR camera package at the top of the device, face pointed at the screen). If the phone has the hardware and software needed to transform the visible/IR scan data appropriately (applying a rotation operation, at least), why is this fixed positioning still a requirement? [more inside]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:48 PM - 3 answers

Can rechargeable Ni-MH batteries cause actual damage to small electronics? How? [more inside]
posted by katieinshoes at 2:44 PM - 20 answers

I am currently using radar.weather.gov to watch weather radar. Though functional and ad-free, the site is horribly coded : it is maxing out 100% of a M-series CPU core on my MacBook (Activity Monitor/ the 'Safari Graphics and Media' process hits 100% or above) when this page is visible and playing. If I pause and hide the browser window, cpu usage goes back to zero). [more inside]
posted by soylent00FF00 at 7:50 AM - 10 answers

They say the latter “dwarfs” the former, but I don’t know how to interpret that. Would a nested G(G(…G(x))) function filling every Planck volume in the observable universe even be in the ballpark? On a logarithmic scale of increasing enormity, is Graham’s number closer to 1 than it is to TREE(3)? Is it practically indistinguishable from 1? Is TREE(3), like, a whole different strata of reality?
posted by Lemkin at 12:23 PM - 4 answers

I need to be able to get a sense of what the weather was like, this week, last year. I need to be able to look up major Canadian cities. [more inside]
posted by walkinginsunshine at 4:56 PM - 5 answers

What are the odds of 3 people in a randomly selected group of 50 having the same birthday?
posted by Lemkin at 9:59 AM - 28 answers

From the mulch have arisen half a dozen objects that sure look like morels to me. Is that what they really are? [more inside]
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:13 AM - 12 answers

Is there a way to preserve an entire section of a (US government) website (not a single web page) for someone who is not the owner or administrator? Could an individual request that the Internet Archive do so? I am thinking of a fairly niche sub-site (previously at livertox.nih.gov) that lets you research liver effects of specific drugs. I am concerned the site could go offline any time. [more inside]
posted by M. at 5:13 AM - 10 answers

I'm interested in books about paleontology in the American West/Rocky Mountain/Great Plains area. I'm building the itinerary for a dinosaur road trip this summer, including Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska, and I'm looking for good background books related to dinosaurs, paleontology, geology, and fossils. [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer at 11:45 PM - 11 answers

Without the luck of having a giant moon in the sky to measure against, how could observers on another planet be able to measure the universe? [more inside]
posted by skoosh at 6:49 AM - 8 answers

I'm in need of a magnet like this or this, which is to say 1) fairly powerful 2) roughly horseshoe shaped and 3) bench-mountable. Online search for such is proving difficult--is there some term for these I should be using? I've tried: horseshoe, alnico, demonstration, all yielding only a small, red model on Amazon and the like.
posted by working_objects at 11:33 AM - 6 answers

I have a strange problem. I struggle to think thoughts privately to myself in my own head without imagining that I'm speaking to someone I know. I feel uneasy about this. [more inside]
posted by fruitdroid at 10:05 PM - 21 answers

According to my understanding of thermodynamics, if you get X joules of useful energy from burning a ton of coal, then the amount of energy you'd need to capture the resulting CO2 is more than X, making the whole exercise worse than useless. So how does carbon capture work? [more inside]
posted by splitpeasoup at 7:09 PM - 9 answers

Medical/science MeFites: as I understand it, beta blockers block adrenaline from affecting heart rate, among other things. Is this a complete block, or is it more like raising the threshold at which adrenaline takes effect? What happens in a classical adrenaline rush situation like a house fire?
posted by Rhedyn at 2:41 AM - 10 answers

I’ve asked about a found jawbone before, but here’s another one - whose is it? Found on the sidewalk in Seattle, in a neighborhood with some coyote presence and a lot of foot traffic. Thanks!
posted by centrifugal at 6:54 PM - 5 answers

Help me find an old blog post I vaguely recall reading (maybe 10-15ish years ago), which included a quote that went something like 'I'm related to my lawn, and not by marriage'. [more inside]
posted by 168 at 2:47 AM - 3 answers

Could China launch a rocket to the Moon or Mars in secret? [more inside]
posted by run"monty at 9:55 AM - 14 answers