Why do Calabi-Yau manifolds crop up in string theory, and what their most useful and suggestive form?
Why (in relatively non-technical terms) are Calabi-Yau manifolds favored for compactified dimensions in string theory?
I am interested in determining the ages of all 70+ my servers. I would like to create a growth graph showing when servers and databases were added to the environment either/both monthly or annually. I executed the following query using the SSMS multi-query feature with only partial success.  SELECT [name], create_date FROM sys.databases   It's partial success because the master and model databases return with a date of 'April 8, 2003' when I know that I created some of these servers during the past couple years.  I refresh databases from one server to another several times a week, which appears to be causing issues with the database create date.   Is there a simple method to determine the actual create date for both servers and databases? What are these auxiliary file descriptors? While poking around /proc/self folder for my mksh shell,  I found a peculiar thing: in /proc/self/fd/* there are all the standard file descriptors (0 for stdin, 1 for stdout, and 2 stderr) some file descriptors, but also some extra ones - 24, 25, 3. And I technically can list them with a glob in the shell:  $ for fd in /proc/self/fd/* ; do echo $fd ; done                                                       /proc/self/fd/0 /proc/self/fd/1 /proc/self/fd/2 /proc/self/fd/24 /proc/self/fd/25 /proc/self/fd/3   But when I try to stat them or use find on them, they are reported as non-existent.  $ find  /proc/self/fd/*                                                                                /proc/self/fd/0 /proc/self/fd/1 /proc/self/fd/2 find: ‘/proc/self/fd/24’: No such file or directory find: ‘/proc/self/fd/25’: No such file or directory /proc/self/fd/3   Same occurs in bash , but just with just one auxiliary file descriptor.  $ for fd in /proc/self/fd/* ; do echo $fd; done /proc/self/fd/0 /proc/self/fd/1 /proc/self/fd/2 /proc/self/fd/255 /proc/self/fd/3  $ find /proc/self/fd/* /proc/self/fd/0 /proc/self/fd/1 /proc/self/fd/2 find: ‘/proc/self/fd/255’: No such file or directory /proc/self/fd/3   Question is: what are those additional file descriptors? What is their purpose? UK visa blank refusal letter without reason for refusal What's the best way to deal with hot/stuck pixels in long exposure night photographs? I discovered red/blue/white pixels on my night photographs tonight. Trying to confirm this, I took a black image with the lens on and indeed I saw a whole lot of them (I didn't count them but at least a good fifty on the whole picture).   I'm not exactly sure if they are hot pixels, stuck pixels or anything else.  I quickly gave a check to my last exported JPEG files (I get RAW out of the camera) and couldn't find anything. After a quick search, I've seen that Lightroom is caring about those pixels after RAW conversion.  I've read that, with Canon DSLRs, there is a software process that could take care of that directly on my camera. I don't know if I can use it without getting things even more messy.   My question is: Considering my crazy pixels are not visible on my pictures, should I get too emotional about them? My camera is under warranty but is it really worth it to return it to Canon? If it's only to receive it back 1 month later after Canon just used the very same menu to map out the pixels, it's a bit ridiculous. Could this be a sign that my camera has a bigger problem?  It seems related to shutter speed. When shooting a black image at 1/250s I get nothing. When shooting the same setup but 1s, I get a few of them. The more I increase the shutter speed, the more crazy pixels I get. Polynomial $p(a) = 1$, why does it have at most 2 integer roots? The question that I am trying to answer is :  Suppose is $p(x)$ is a polynomial with integer coefficients. Show that if $p(a) = 1$ for some integer a then $p(x)$ has at most two integer roots.  I have no idea how to get started. Any help would be awesome! Centering in tabularx and X columns How can I center the column when using X in tabularx environment like in this example?  \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}lXXXXX@{}}  1 &amp; 2 &amp; 3 &amp; 4 &amp; 5 \\    \end{tabularx} Including .eps figure in PDFLatex This question has been asked a lot, but for reason I cannot get it to work. I'd like to include a .eps image in my document - I am using pdflatex in TeXMaker. Below is the input (I am providing the whole preamble incase there is some interference.   \documentclass[11pt]{article} \usepackage{times} \usepackage{graphicx} \usepackage{epstopdf} %converting to PDF \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{mathtools} \newcommand{\HRule}{\rule{\linewidth}{0.5mm}} \usepackage[parfill]{parskip} \setcounter{secnumdepth}{5} %how deep sections are numbers \usepackage{float} \usepackage[font={sf,footnotesize},labelfont=bf, justification=justified, singlelinecheck=off]{caption} \usepackage[font=footnotesize]{subcaption} \usepackage[scaled]{helvet}  \usepackage{titlesec}  \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \usepackage[export]{adjustbox} %for large figures \usepackage{upgreek} \usepackage{microtype} \usepackage{setspace} \singlespacing \usepackage[defaultlines=4,all]{nowidow}  \includegraphics[scale=1]{/../model_1_2.eps}    The error I get is:      ! Package pdftex.def Error: File `/model_1_2-eps-converted-to.pdf' not   found.See the pdftex.def package documentation for explanation.Type H    for immediate help.... .../../model_1_2.eps}   I hope someone can help. Speed of light travel Many anime do not follow the manga history and are made shorter. However there are a few that do follow it or try to finish the history with the manga like the big three (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece), Death Note, and FMA Brotherhood. But others finish the anime without the real ending like FMA, Ouran High School, Pandora Hearts, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. Why is this so? Is it because of the high cost? Or the lack of popularity? $ is not a function in drupal 7 theme Different and opposing voltage sources? &ndash; Schematic created using   The diagram above, the voltage sources are equal and wired parallel, they would increase the current(2x) flow to the load(R), but what about this case:          Are the two voltage sources in series now? Firefox 33 doesn't see Java Plugin I am trying to enable Java (not JavaScript) in my Firefox v. 33 so that I can use applets within the browser.  Currently, I just get a dark gray box across the whole screen when I try to load an applet, without any error message or prompt to install plugin.  As per , I tried going into the Firefox plugin page to activate it, however, it wasn't there listed.  I do have Java 7 installed and it is in the path:  &gt;java -version java version "1.7.0_71" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_71-b14) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.71-b01, mixed mode)   What do I need to do to get Firefox to see my Java installation and recognize it as a plugin so that I can enable it and view applets inside the browser? Consider a common proof of the uncountability of $(0,1]$, as presented  for example:  We assume that the reals can be arranged in a sequence $x_k$, represent every number in $x_k$ by its nonterminating decimal expansion, use the diagonal argument to create a sequence of decimal digits that differs from the nonterminating decimal expansion of each number in $x_k$ and then claim that this sequence of digits so generated must be the decimal expansion of some number not in $x_k$.  My problem is with this last step. Could it not be the case that the new sequence of digits is just the terminating decimal expansion of some number already in $x_k$?  Would it not be more correct to use the sequence $x_k$ to generate a sequence of all (both terminating and non-terminating) decimal expansion of all numbers in $[0,1)$ and then apply the diagonal argument? Found the following in an Oracle-based application that we're migrating (generalized):  SELECT     Table1.Category1,     Table1.Category2,     count(*) as Total,     count(Tab2.Stat) AS Stat FROM Table1, Table2 WHERE (Table1.PrimaryKey = Table2.ForeignKey(+)) GROUP BY Table1.Category1, Table1.Category2   What does (+) do in a WHERE clause? I've never seen it used like that before. list transparency across non consecutive slides Does a linear operator obeying Leibniz rule imply it is a differential operator? How do you "OR" criteria together when using a criteria query with hibernate? Why is median age a better statistic than mean age? If you look at       Or this Wikipedia page      Clearly  seems to be the statistic of choice when it comes to ages.  I am not able to explain to myself why  would be a worse statistic. Why is it so?  Originally posted  because I did not know this site existed. Split seeds.rb into multiple sections? Why do neural networks need so many training examples to perform? A human child at age 2 needs around 5 instances of a car to be able to identify it with reasonable accuracy regardless of color, make, etc. When my son was 2, he was able to identify trams and trains, even though he had seen just a few. Since he was usually confusing one with each other, apparently his neural network was not trained enough, but still.  What is it that artificial neural networks are missing that prevent them from being able to learn way quicker? Is transfer learning an answer?