What I seem to remember is that the Martian is stranded by the destruction of his civilization. Also, there is an odd detail that sticks in my brain: the Martian drops a bracelet (or a watch?) in a river, where the implication is that it could be found centuries later. The Martian may have intended to influence the development of humans. Quite poignant at the end.
If I recall it correctly, this book has two main characters, both male, one of them big and well muscled. During the novel, they found evidence that the current human race descends from ancient Martian astronauts who traveled to Earth in prehistory, causing the extinction of prehistoric Earth humans, (which explains the Missing Link in human evolution).  Later in the novel the big guy travels back in time (no idea of how or why) to Prehistory.  And near the end of the book, the other main character, during an archaeological field research, finds remains of a human being who lived thousand of years ago, a human with large bones, and who holds an item that could not be made in that era (a gold plaque? A metal rod?)  That's all I can remember. I know it is not from the ABC, Asimov, Bradbury or Clarke.  Thanks in advance.
I know  that uses $x={\sqrt{2}}^{\sqrt{2}}$ to prove that there must exist an irrational to an irrational power that evaluates to a rational. But I don't know if $x$ itself is known to be irrational or rational.  Could someone enlighten me? Thanks! Need a matrix to seventh power which is the identity but the original is not or the negative identity The question on the homework wants a $2\times2$ matrix $R$, but $R$ not equal to positive or negative identity, that when you raise to seventh power you get the identity.  $R^7=\operatorname{Id}$.  I thought it would have to be some ones and negative ones,  it no luck, then tried some ones and some $.5$.  Just using an online matrix calculator to do brute force.  We just started talking about eigenvalues with visual example, so assuming wouldn't need that since we have not talked about how to find them yet.  Any hints or ideas to get me back on track? "Welcome to the Jones__": Plural or Plural Possessive? When making a welcome sign, what form of the name Jones would you use?  ("Welcome to the Jones__") How to include third party Python libraries in Google App Engine? There have been several discussions regarding code-only answers (answers that contain only code blocks with no textual explanation whatsoever):         Personally, I can't see why the quality filter should let such answers through at all. The main problem I have with code-only answers, especially once they're flagged as not an answer or very low quality, is that we can't determine at a glance whether these answers are:   Genuinely attempting to answer the question  answers Trying to correct an error in the question without actually answering it Random code dumps that may or may not relate to the question even by programming language or keyword(s) in the question   In particular, what exactly is an "informative code-only answer"? Does it mean the code is self-documenting? Does it mean the code substitutes code comments for a proper write-up? This is all very fuzzy. From  to the last question above:     I have never seen a code-only answer that couldn't be made better with the addition of appropriate text. They are of lower-quality than the same answer with some text.   This text makes all the difference, IMO, between an answer and a non-answer. Without it, it's often needlessly difficult to tell.  Existing code-only answers that are good-faith attempts to answer the question should be edited or downvoted, yes. But if the quality filter already tries to block code-only questions, why not block code-only answers too? These answers are often low quality, and (almost) always have ample room for improvement, just like questions. Italics/roman in BibTeX I use a BibTeX style which automatically italicises booktitles (using \emph). I have certain entries which contain italicised words in the title. I would like these to appear non-italicised (in roman) in the final PDF output. Using any of \emph or \textit or \textrm on these items doesn't seem to make any difference -- the whole title still appears in italics.  Minimal .bib entry  @PHDTHESIS{klein1974, author = {Klein, Jared S.}, title = {The Particle \emph{u} in the {R}igveda}, school = {Yale}, year = {1974}, address = {New Haven, CT}, timestamp = {2009.12.04} }   Minimal .bbl entry generated by sp.bst:  \bibitem[{Klein(1974)}]{klein1974} Klein, Jared~S. 1974. \newblock \emph{The particle \emph{u} in the {R}igveda}. \newblock New Haven, CT: Yale dissertation. Testing AuraHandledExceptions? It seems like when I call getMessage on a thrown AuraHandledException, I see "Script-thrown Exception" instead of the message that I have set. Any idea why this may be happening?  Controller:       @AuraEnabled     public static Conversation__c makeConversation(String tonum, String objid)     {         if (tonum.length() != 10)             throw new AuraHandledException('ToNumber length invalid.');     }   TestController:  @isTest     static void testMakeConversationInvalidTo()     {         Boolean testPass = false;         String fromNumber = '1234567890';         String toNumber = '1';          List&lt;ConversationController.ConversationWrapper&gt; test =    ConversationController.getConversations();         System.assertEquals(0, test.size());         try {             ConversationController.makeConversation(toNumber, '0');         } catch (AuraHandledException e) {             System.debug(e.getMessage());             System.debug(e.getTypeName());             System.assert(e.getMessage().contains('ToNumber length invalid'));             testPass = true;         }     }   Return:  16:26:28:477 USER_DEBUG [320]|DEBUG|Script-thrown exception 16:26:28:477 USER_DEBUG [321]|DEBUG|System.AuraHandledException Why does shrinkage work? In order to solve problems of model selection, a number of methods (LASSO, ridge regression, etc.) will shrink the coefficients of predictor variables towards zero. I am looking for an intuitive explanation of why this improves predictive ability. If the true effect of the variable was actually very large, why doesn't shrinking the parameter result in a worse prediction? cat line X to line Y on a huge file Say I have a huge text file (>2GB) and I just want to cat the lines X to Y (e.g. 57890000 to 57890010).  From what I understand I can do this by piping head into tail or viceversa, i.e.   head -A /path/to/file | tail -B   or alternatively  tail -C /path/to/file | head -D   where A,B,C and D can be computed from the number of lines in the file, X and Y.  But there are two problems with this approach:   You have to compute A,B,C and D. The commands could pipe to each other many more lines than I am interested in reading (e.g. if I am reading just a few lines in the middle of a huge file)   Is there a way to have the shell just work with and output the lines I want? (while providing only X and Y)? When is the order of convergence of Newton-Raphson greater than 2? If some function $f$ has a simple root at $x_*$ then I know that the order of convergence of the Newton-Raphson iteration is at least 2. But when is this order strictly greater than 2? My system is not dual-boot, I run a standard Ubuntu desktop system "on the metal" (I think running it in a VM is the same).  Pressing c while booting does not cause the GRUB menu to appear (which I believe it does for a dual-boot system).  How can I get the GRUB-menu to present itself on a single-boot system? Point Renderings Slightly Off in Mathematica I've just upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to its newest LTS version - 20.04. While it comes with some interesting changes, the Desktop icon system was messed up in my opinion. When you hover the mouse cursor over the icons, you see a huge space marked around them that cannot be violated (as you can see in the image below) so that they need to be placed very far apart from each other.  18.04 allowed you to place icons much closer to each other and didn't have that marked space around them. This new way leaves much less space on the Desktop to organize large amounts of icons - including folders, files and shortcuts. Is there a way I can significantly reduce the size of icons and their "spaces" or go back to the old system of organizing files? On "Settings", there is a tool to change the size of Dock icons, but not of Desktop icons.  Also, every time I move or delete something, the Desktop "flashes" and the icons seem to rearrange themselves automatically, nothing of which happened in 18.04. I also can't move anything directly to the Desktop; I need to move to the Desktop folder on Nautilus. This makes me start to think about downgrading Ubuntu back to 18.04. How to show that Klein four-group is a normal subgroup of the alternating group $A_4$ Why does \noindent have such an effect on \rlap and \llap.? What are instructions on how to download videos from YouTube?    Notice: Terms of Service Violation  Please be aware that by following any of the answers below, you will be violating YouTube's . In particular, from Section 5.B.:     Content is provided to you AS IS. You may access Content for your information and personal use solely as intended through the provided functionality of the Service and as permitted under these Terms of Service. You shall not download any Content unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the Service for that Content. You shall not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, or otherwise exploit any Content for any other purposes without the prior written consent of YouTube or the respective licensors of the Content. YouTube and its licensors reserve all rights not expressly granted in and to the Service and the Content. That is,     why is $\varphi(AB)=\varphi(A)\varphi(B)$, if $A$ and $B$ are two coprime positive integers?   It's not just a technical trouble—I can't see why this should be, intuitively: I bellyfeel that its multiplicativity should be an approximation at most. And why the minimum value for $\varphi (n)$ should be $ \frac{4n}{15} $ completely passes me by. For random variables $X \in \mathbb{R}^h$, and a positive semi-definite matrix $A$: Is there a simplified expression for the expected value, $\mathop {\mathbb E}[Tr(X^TAX)]$ and variance, $Var[Tr(X^TAX)]$? Please note that $A$ is not a random variable. If $x,y,z\in\mathbb R\setminus \{1\}$ and $xyz=1$, prove that $\frac{x^2}{(x-1)^2}+\frac{y^2}{(y-1)^2}+\frac{z^2}{(z-1)^2}\ge 1$. Save Illustrator as PDF with transparent background