question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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the difference in taste or texture, if any, when one orders their drink shaken, not stirred. | Whenever I order a drink and ask them for specifics, I make sure I know what it tastes like before hand.
Something smooth and strong like a shot of vodka with a chaser is usually better stirred in my opinion because it distributes the flavours more evenly except each flavour is strong.
Shaken isn't one of my favourit... | [
"In another experiment two groups of people were given a flavored carbonated drink. The first group was later exposed to motion sickness, and these participants developed a taste aversion against the carbonated drink, even if they were made aware that the drink didn't lead to the motion sickness. This shows that th... |
what's the point of one-penny/one-dollar discounts? | It's a ploy to make things appear subconsciously cheaper to the buyer | [
"The discount is usually associated with a \"discount rate\", which is also called the \"discount yield\". The discount yield is the proportional share of the initial amount owed (initial liability) that must be paid to delay payment for 1 year.\n",
"Purchase discount is an offer from the supplier to the purchase... |
How was drinking water distributed during ancient Rome? | Pompeii provides the most complete evidence, but it is worth noting that enough fragments can be found from other cities to lead to the conclusion that this was fairly common across the empire, so we don;t have to worry about falling into the Vesuvian trap. Another note is that it is common to read that fresh water fro... | [
" of water were brought into Rome by 14 different aqueducts each day. Per capita water usage in ancient Rome matched that of modern-day cities like New York City or modern Rome. Most water was for public use, such as baths and sewers. De aquaeductu is the definitive two volume treatise on 1st century aqueducts of R... |
how come video compression is getting better all the time, but sound files are still the same size as ever? | Audio compression is already really good, and has been for ages. People tend to be a bit more picky about audio quality (real or perceived) than they are about video quality, for some reason.
The bottom line is we don't really need better compression for audio files. | [
"Consumer video is generally compressed using lossy video codecs, since that results in significantly smaller files than lossless compression. While there are video coding formats designed explicitly for either lossy or lossless compression, some video coding formats such as Dirac and H.264 support both.\n",
"The... |
why do planes crash into each other when they have so much open sky and space to fly in? when i look up at the sky, it seems almost entirely clear of planes. | Almost all air accidents happen near takeoff/landing where all those planes are in a tight area. There is a very narrow path to use a runway.
That said, air accidents are EXTREMELY UNCOMMON. You're safer on a plane than you are in your own car, by a huge margin. | [
"Because aircraft move so quickly, they can experience sudden unexpected accelerations or 'bumps' from turbulence, including CAT - as the aircraft rapidly cross invisible bodies of air which are moving vertically at many different speeds. Although the vast majority of cases of turbulence are harmless, in rare cases... |
Why does the moon appear to rotate during the night? | It could be a number of reasons but the moon does "wobble" on its axis.
It's called [libration](_URL_0_).
| [
"Because the lunar orbit is also inclined to Earth's ecliptic plane by 5.1°, the rotational axis of the Moon seems to rotate towards and away from Earth during one complete orbit. This is referred to as \"latitudinal libration\", which allows one to see almost 7° of latitude beyond the pole on the far side. Finally... |
(us) why do car manufacturers promote horse power so much in their product marketing when you can’t even use it to its full extent? | You can very much use it to its fullest extent.
Don't switch gears, and let that needle climb all the way to the redline.
If you're asking why cars can go more than 100 mph when there aren't any roads where you're allowed to go that fast, the answer is that it's more fun to drive a 300 hp car than a 100 hp car. | [
"Throughout the 1990s, interest in fuel-efficient or environmentally friendly cars declined among consumers in the United States, who instead favored sport utility vehicles, which were affordable to operate despite their poor fuel efficiency thanks to lower gasoline prices. Domestic U.S. automakers chose to focus t... |
how come hotel beds and pillows are so damn comfortable? | i'm guessing the one at home you bought was some cheap POS mattress and some polyester fill pillow. investing in a quality mattress and down feather pillow/comforter goes a long way. | [
"A pillow menu is a list of available pillows provided by a hotel to guests, usually free of charge. It allows guests to make an alternative pillow choice. Some common pillow alternatives are memory foam, buckwheat hull, and hypoallergenic. Some hotels offer pillows to treat specific conditions such as headaches or... |
why does ecstasy make your jaw swing like a nine iron? | It is a byproduct of the stimulant part of MDMA the MA stands for methamphetamine. Your central nervous system is being extremely stimulated and this causes your jaw to tighten and your body doesn't want tight/locked jaw, so you continually move it to keep that from happening. | [
"Mandibular fracture, also known as fracture of the jaw, is a break through the mandibular bone. In about 60% of cases the break occurs in two places. It may result in a decreased ability to fully open the mouth. Often the teeth will not feel properly aligned or there may be bleeding of the gums. Mandibular fractur... |
If Earth had the orbit of Mars could it harbour life as we know it? | If you just moved the Earth the same distance away from the Sun as is Mars and all other factors were the same, I would argue that life as we know it would still exist there. Through Earth in it's new orbit would receive less solar energy, it's greater atmospheric pressure would still allow liquid water to exist on the... | [
"BULLET::::- Sir Oliver Lodge published an article in the \"Journal of the British Astronomical Association\" theorizing that if there had been intelligent life on Mars, it had been destroyed by a catastrophe two months earlier. Lodge based his theory on observations that suggested that the polar caps of Mars had f... |
Where did European classical singing arise and when did it spread throughout the continent? | It is a bit mysterious how it came to be, but the short answer is Northern Italy, around the mid 16th century, in the church setting. No relation to yodeling at all actually. Yodeling has a [highly emphasized "pop" between vocal registers of head and chest,](_URL_1_) that's its signature move, not just being "weird and... | [
"Opera performances were performed also in the country of Mexico. It is within that nation that the first indigenous opera composers of Latin America emerged, with Manuel de Zumaya (c. 1678–1755) being considered the first and most important early opera composer. Outsider of Perú and Mexico, opera was slower to gai... |
why is it uncomfortable to exercise? it does not seem to make evolutionary sense. | You should keep in mind that for essentially every animal but present-day humans (and even for some of us today), famine is much more likely than feast. So all creatures are evolved with an emphasis on gathering, storing, and preserving reserves of energy in case of famine.
There is a part of your brain that, towards ... | [
"One such phenomenon is known as biological altruism. This is a situation in which an organism appears to act in a way that benefits other organisms and is detrimental to itself. This is distinct from traditional notions of altruism because such actions are not conscious, but appear to be evolutionary adaptations t... |
Why is geosynchronous orbit around the equator on Earth constrained to one radius? | Because [orbital speed](_URL_0_) is completely determine by the gravitational field (that is, the mass of the planet) and the orbital parameters (that is, radius and eccentricity of the orbit). You don't get to choose your orbital speed without changing the others, and you don't get to change planetary mass, so a chang... | [
"Additionally, the radius can be estimated from the curvature of the Earth at a point. Like a torus, the curvature at a point will be greatest (tightest) in one direction (north–south on Earth) and smallest (flattest) perpendicularly (east–west). The corresponding radius of curvature depends on the location and dir... |
In WW2, did Heer officer cadets got sent into battle before being promoted to actual officers? | In the Wehrmacht and other Prussian-influenced military organizations such as the Finnish armed forces, officers first spend some time in an officer training school, and then do a "residency" among troops as a Fänrich/Oberfänrich, acting with the rank of a mid-level NCO but doing the work of an officer, typically under... | [
"During the war he worked in the commercial and the contraband departments. Owing to the national importance of his work at the cipher desk, he was exempted from military service until June 1917, when he joined the Grenadier Guards. He had not actively sought to join the Army but was happy to be “released” as a res... |
Is noise additive in terms of causing hearing damage? | I first want to mention that the "long term safe" levels aren't precise, and quieter is better.
Sound is measured in dB, which is a logarithmic unit.
If your headphones are emitting 80 dB to your ears, and let's say the airplane is emitting 80 dB to your ears, the total sound to your ears would be 83 dB. | [
"In addition to medications, hearing loss can also result from specific chemicals in the environment: metals, such as lead; solvents, such as toluene (found in crude oil, gasoline and automobile exhaust, for example); and asphyxiants. Combined with noise, these ototoxic chemicals have an additive effect on a person... |
In the movie Dr. Strangelove, the bomber aircrew are given survival kits containing a range of supplies both reasonable and comical. What sort of things would Cold War era American soldiers really be issued in these kits? If they got them at all. | To get an idea, I used the list of things that were found on Francis Powers - a US U-2 pilot that was shot down over USSR while on a spy mission:
- A poison needle containing "poison from curare group"
- A gun with a silencer
- A sort of a jackknife
- An inflatable rubber boat
- A set of maps of European part o... | [
"The US Army uses several basic survival kits, mainly for aviators, some of which are stored in carrying bags. Aviators in planes with ejection seats have survival kits in a vest and the seat pan, the survival vest worn by US helicopter crews also contains some basic survival items.\n",
"The M6 Air Crew Survival ... |
Does the speed of light have any special meaning? Why is it the speed that it is? Is the scalar value of the velocity (disregarding units) unique somehow? | It's the scale at which one unit of distance equals one unit of time. Imagine we measured horizontal distances in leagues and vertical distances in fathoms. We would need a conversion scale to tell us how many fathoms were in a league (~3038 or so). Well c is the scale that tells us how many seconds a meter is and how ... | [
"In the case where the velocity is close to the speed of light \"c\" (generally within 95%), another scheme of relative velocity called rapidity, that depends on the ratio of V to c, is used in special relativity.\n",
"Faster-than-light communication is, according to relativity, equivalent to time travel. What we... |
What happened to heroin addicts that were drafted into WWII? | You should try expanding your search to focus on drugs policies with regard to conscription and/or narrowing it to focus on a specific country. Finland, the country I'm most familiar with, is at the extreme end of the spectrum. A search for Finland heroin turns [this](_URL_0_) up.
> “It was an interesting time with ... | [
"He was considered to be a lieutenant of Lucky Luciano in the post-World War II heroin business, trafficking heroin produced in France by Corsican gangsters to the US. The opium needed to produce the heroin was cultivated in Turkey and Iran. The opium was processed into morphine base, after it was transported acros... |
[Biology] Will increased ocean acidification have an effect on barnacles & other species that grow on ships? | Without a doubt, OA is *the* dominant issue in Marine Ecology right now, so it is being studied furiously. However, we still have a lot to learn about its effects, and marine organisms have such complicated life histories and community interactions that it can be difficult to say exactly what to expect. Additionally, t... | [
"Organisms have been found to be more sensitive to the effects of ocean acidification in early, larval or planktonic stages. As ocean acidification does not exist in a vacuum, the multiple problems facing the Great Barrier Reef combine to further stress the organisms. Not only can ocean acidification affect habitat... |
why do some people's eyes dart back and forth while making eye contact? | Ask someone to stare at you the entire time they're talking to you. It can be rather unnerving. Don't take it as them blowing you off or them not paying attention to what you have to say. They're just being polite and trying not to be intimidating or overbearing. | [
"Eye contact is the instance when two people look at each other's eyes at the same time; it is the primary nonverbal way of indicating engagement, interest, attention and involvement. Some studies have demonstrated that people use their eyes to indicate interest. This includes frequently recognized actions of winki... |
why do people hate limp bizkit so much? | Two reasons really. Firstly, Fred Durst has the reputation of being kind of a douche.
Secondly, LB sort of became the face of the Nu Metal, which a lot of people don't like. The consensus is it's shitty rap and shitty rock, doing neither very well. | [
"Limp Bizkit's influences include The Jesus Lizard, Tomahawk, Dave Matthews Band, Portishead, Mr. Bungle, Sepultura, Ministry, Prong, Tool, Primus, Pantera, Minor Threat, Angry Samoans, Black Flag, the Fat Boys, the Treacherous Three, the Cold Crush Brothers, Urban Dance Squad, Rage Against the Machine, and Korn.\n... |
why is china seen as a threat to the united states? | China is developing into a successful blend of communist style government with capitalist style economics. It is the world's largest nation, with approximately four times the number of citizens as the US. It has MILLIONS of low cost, low skill, but well educated and intelligent work force, that are prime for an industr... | [
"Even while embroiled in the problems of territorial disputes with its neighbors and the dangers of periodic tensions on the Korean Peninsula and across the Taiwan Strait, China perceives the United States as its major threat. Beijing believes that the United States still maintains its Cold War policy toward China ... |
Do all historians agree that Ancient Sumer was the first civilization | I think this question may be better served on /r/AskAnthropology - the reason being it really gets to the core of a semantic argument about how the dividing line between a "culture" and a "civilization" is nebulous and ill-defined. There were many sedentary "cultures" that exhibit signs of advanced social heirarchies, ... | [
"Sumer (or \"Šumer\") was one of the early civilizations of the Ancient Near East, located in the southern part of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) from the time of the earliest records in the mid 4th millennium BC until the rise of Babylonia in the late 3rd millennium BC. The term \"Sumerian\" applies to all speakers... |
why vitamin supplements can't be used as substitutes? | Legally covering. Keep in mind 100% of the recommended value doesn't mean it is 100% for your size, sex, health, & diet. So, they don't want you taking their very simplified chart as a guide for your entire health. | [
"As with the minerals discussed above, some vitamins are recognized as essential nutrients, necessary in the diet for good health. (Vitamin D is the exception: it can alternatively be synthesized in the skin, in the presence of UVB radiation.) Certain vitamin-like compounds that are recommended in the diet, such as... |
Why do we have so many surviving works of Plato, while most of Aristotle's writings are lost? | The sad truth about the survival of our historical sources is that its just a matter of luck. What survives the night of times and what not its just that, luck. But maybe the most important reason in this particular case is the Macedonian origin of Aristotle. After the death of Alexander the anti Macedonian sentiment i... | [
"The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organisati... |
If not all stars are massive enough to become black holes, then there must be point where a Star becomes massive enough. What is changing once that threshold is reached? | The limit you are referring to is the Chandrasekhar limit, which is 1.39 solar masses. Basically, some stars at the end of their life will collapse down to white dwarfs, but these white dwarfs have a maximum mass of 1.39 solar masses. This is because they are held up by the electron degeneracy pressure, and above this ... | [
"If a main-sequence star is not too massive (less than approximately 8 solar masses), it eventually sheds enough mass to form a white dwarf having mass below the Chandrasekhar limit, which consists of the former core of the star. For more-massive stars, electron degeneracy pressure does not keep the iron core from ... |
why can't surgeons just pull out huge chunks of body fat at a time with a glove or a modified vacuum hose? | The fat isn't just floating inside you. Its attached to your organs and blood vessels. Tearing at it is gonna cause issues. | [
"A modular vacuum hose called \"QuickClick\" is available in 10/15/20 foot (3/4.5/6 m) lengths, allowing a custom-length hose to be quickly set up or taken apart by an end user. In addition, a promotional article in a trade magazine says that arthritic testers were able to connect and disconnect the hose in spite o... |
is the saying "red sky at night, a shepherd's delight" true and if so, why? | It is generally correct in temperate zones of the Earth (not too close to the Equator or poles) due to the prevailing winds there (which travel west to east).
The "red sky" is caused by the light from the sun reflecting off the underside of clouds. If you see this in the morning, then it is assumed that more clouds ar... | [
"In the still of the night, the only source of light radiates in \"Annunciation to the Shepherds\" comes from an angel who has come to tell the shepherds of the birth of the infant Christ. The light is so brilliant that the Bethlehem shepherds must shield their eyes. Aside from the startling angel, the nocturnal pa... |
distillation as it pertains to alcoholic drinks | Once the liquid that they are making the liquor out of has been fermented, and has alcohol in it, then the alcohol needs to be concentrated. Alcohol has a slightly lower boiling point than water, so they heat the liquid (which is called a mash by the way) to just below the boiling point of water. The alcohol boils off ... | [
"A distilled drink, spirit, or liquor is an alcoholic drink containing ethanol that is produced by distillation (i.e., concentrating by distillation) of ethanol produced by means of fermenting grains, fruits, botanicals, vegetables, seeds, or roots. Vodka, gin, baijiu, tequila, rum, whisky, brandy, singani and soju... |
why h2o is vital to life, but h2o2 is dangerous | Take bread. Pretty good, right? Now add some butter. Also good, right? Now add a half pound of butter. Fucking awful now, right?
Like that. Only it's chemistry, so not at all. | [
"Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) increases the overexpression of protein RCAN1. However, anti-oxidants and inhibitors of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) treatment block the increased expression of RCAN1 by H2O2. Demonstrating that the increased expression is a result of generating reactive oxygen species and acti... |
why are we trying to colonize mars? | Some facts about Mars: It has 24.5 hour days, 144 trillion square meters of land area (roughly equivalent to the land area of Earth), and an average temperature of -85F. That's cold, but better than any of our other options.
First, a self sustaining martian colony is a Plan B for Earth, should a catastrophe occur that... | [
"Some of the main reasons for colonizing Mars include economic interests, long-term scientific research best carried out by humans as opposed to robotic probes, and sheer curiosity. Surface conditions and the presence of water on Mars make it arguably the most hospitable of the planets in the Solar System, other th... |
why does licking a seemingly dead pen make the pen able to write again? | Pens are a chamber with ink in it and a steel ball jammed in a tight-fitting tube at the lower end. When you write, the ball turns, "rolling" the ink onto the paper, then rotating up into the ink supply to bring more down.
Pens with ink still in them often get jammed up if unused for a while because a crust forms on t... | [
"I’m listening to classical music one day – Mendelssohn – when all of a sudden I dipped the bulldog pen into a bottle of ink and started drawing – doodling I suppose you’d call it – on the cardboard tabletop. I don’t know why. I just did. In a couple of days – I worked almost ceaselessly – the whole of the tabletop... |
Operation Market Garden | The western allies had landed in northern France in Operation Overlord in June 1944 and then in southern France in Operation Dragoon and had encircled and routed the German counter-attack at Falaise in August 1944. After that, the western allies broke through and liberated most of France.
However, the Germans, while c... | [
"Operation Market Garden was a failed World War II military operation fought in the Netherlands from 17 to 25 September 1944. It was the brainchild of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, planned primarily by Generals Brereton and Williams of the USAAF. The airborne part of the operation was undertaken by the ... |
How did parents give their kids 'the sex talk' before modern biology gave us the means to explain the details of reproduction? | First off the modern "Birds and the Bees" discussion acts like sex is a taboo subject, as does our modern society as a whole. However in places like Ancient Greece we can see that was not so true. In places like America, in places like the US you can't show sex (actual not fade to black) or genitalia without being on H... | [
"Sexual reproduction first probably evolved about a billion years ago within ancestral single-celled eukaryotes. The reason for the evolution of sex, and the reason(s) it has survived to the present, are still matters of debate. Some of the many plausible theories include: that sex creates variation among offspring... |
why isn't a zip code enough when entering an address, why must i give my state, city and zip code? | I'd assume it's a 2nd check for incorrect zip codes... IE: If you're sending a letter to Scruff McGruff in Chicago, IL 60652, and accidentally mix up your 5's and 6's and send it to Scruff McGruff Chicago, IL 50562, (Which is the zip code for Mallard, IA) they can say "Chances are, it was meant to go to Chicago, rathe... | [
"Postal designations for place names become \"de facto\" locations for their addresses, and as a result, it is difficult to convince residents and businesses that they are located in another city or town different from the \"preferred\" place name associated with their ZIP Codes. Because of issues of confusion and ... |
What keeps our gut bacteria from eating our live tissues? | Our immune system stops them from invading deeper into the body by providing physical barriers, secreting antibodies (IgA) into the gut and sensing and fighting ones that get too invasive. For instance while it was previously thought that bacteria being in the blood was a rare and deadly event, it is actually quite com... | [
"The gut flora community plays a direct role in defending against pathogens by fully colonizing the space, making use of all available nutrients, and by secreting compounds that kill or inhibit unwelcome organisms that would compete for nutrients with it. Disruption of the gut flora allows competing organisms like ... |
Why would centrifugal space cylinders for artificial gravity work? | In space, yes, you could be near the spinning surface and not be affected. In atmosphere, though, atmospheric gases would be affected by the spin, and thus centrifugal forces, and would slowly act on you until the centrifugal force became strong enough to "pull" you towards the outer cylinder. | [
"Even though this technology has potential to aid in counteracting the detrimental effects of prolonged spaceflight, there are difficulties in applying these artificial gravity systems in space. Rotating the whole spacecraft is expensive and introduces another layer of complexity to the design. A smaller centrifuge... |
how does putting black charcoal marks below your eyes help you see better in sunlight? | It reduces glare from light reflected under your eye and then into the eye.
It's like standing in the sand, the glare from the sand makes it harder to see. | [
"After the foundation layer is applied, a sponge is patted all over the face, throat, chest, the nape and neck to remove excess moisture and to blend the foundation. Next the eyes and eyebrows are drawn in. Traditionally, charcoal was used, but today, modern cosmetics are used. The eyebrows and edges of the eyes ar... |
How did "The Eclipse of Darwinism" in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries occur simultaneously with the rise of eugenic Social Darwinism? Was there a schism in biology and anthropology at the time? | The Eclipse of Darwinism was a period in which biologists doubted that Darwinian natural selection (with its heavy emphasis on gradualism) was responsible for species change. Alternative theories proposed and discussed at the time to explain speciation included orthogenesis (that there were "internal drives" to species... | [
"The period of the history of evolutionary thought between Darwin's death in the 1880s, and the foundation of population genetics in the 1920s and the beginnings of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s, is called the eclipse of Darwinism by some historians of science. During that time many scientists and ... |
how come some countries' currency cannot be exchanged like incidentally mine (tunisia) | Exchanging currency isn't really 'exchanging currency', it's selling your money like selling anything else. In order to 'convert' CAD to USD for example I must find someone willing to pay me in USD for my CAD.
If I can't find a buyer then I can't convert the money in exactly the same way if I can't find someone to bu... | [
"Countries often have several important trading partners or are apprehensive of a particular currency being too volatile over an extended period of time. They can thus choose to peg their currency to a weighted average of several currencies (also known as a currency basket) . For example, a composite currency may b... |
how can the ups trademark the color brown? | They actually trademarked Pullman Brown, and the limitations of the trademark are likely to prevent other shipping companies from using the same color, this is to prevent market confusion. | [
"The color brown is said to represent ruggedness when used in advertising.\" \" is the color of the United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery company with their trademark brown trucks and uniforms; it was earlier the color of Pullman rail cars of the Pullman Company, and was adopted by UPS both because brown is easy to ... |
how does buying us treasury bills help in keeping chinese yuan low? | If China spends yuan to buy dollars (which you have to do because T-Bills are sold in dollars), this increases the supply of available yuan and decreases the supply of available dollars. Due to the free market, this drives down the price of yuan and drives up the price of dollars. | [
"In the 1990s and 2000s, there was a marked increase in American imports of Chinese goods. China's central bank allegedly devalued yuan by buying large amounts of US dollars with yuan, thus increasing the supply of the yuan in the foreign exchange market, while increasing the demand for US dollars, thus increasing ... |
If the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, does that imply that certain parts of the universe are in principle unobservable/unknowable? | Yes. Although more and more galaxies will continue to enter our observable universe, any galaxy that is currently farther than about 65 Gly will never be seen at all. (For reference the current radius of the observable universe is about 47 Gly.) This occurs because of the acceleration of the expansion. Without dark ene... | [
"Another common source of confusion is that the accelerating universe does \"not\" imply that the Hubble parameter is actually increasing with time; since formula_21, in most accelerating models formula_22 increases relatively faster than formula_23, so H decreases with time. (The recession velocity of one chosen g... |
What happens when you try to fertilize a chimpanzee egg with human sperm? And a human egg with chimpanzee sperm? | Chimps have 24 chromosome pairs, Humans have 23. I think the resulting fertilized egg would be unable to undergo mitosis. | [
"Because of this inability to create or nurture life, the method of the creation of a cambion is necessarily protracted. A succubus will have sex with a human male and so acquire a sample of his sperm. This she will then pass on to an incubus. The incubus will, in his turn, transfer the sperm to a human female and ... |
Did knights/athletes/anybody in the early to late middle ages know about stretching? Do we know if it was suggested or practiced? | You could try asking on /r/wma, where they do a lot of reading of late medieval fighting manuals. | [
"Such forms of sportive equipment during the final phase of the joust in 16th-century Germany gave rise to modern misconceptions about the heaviness or clumsiness of \"medieval armour\", as notably popularised by Mark Twain's \"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court\".\n",
"From the 11th to 14th centuries wh... |
Wasp Sealing Own Nest? | They are sealing in their young. They will implant food and an embryo and seal it up to protect the baby till the baby can come out. It's sealed with the same thing the nest is made of - what that is I do not know. | [
"\"P. jacobsoni\" wasps reproduce via oviposition. Egg laying is divided into three stages. First, the female produces a substance from the Dufour's gland and collects a patch of it in her mouth. Then, after stretching the gaster, the wasp brings it back toward her mouth and collects the eggs as they emerge, adheri... |
What was marriage like with the slaves in the United States? What were their traditions and ceremonies like? What reasons would they choose a partner? How did slave owners look at the marriages? | It depends on the date as well. There was slavery all over the world and long before American slavery. The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was founded only a short eight years after the Virginia Bay Co. set up shop and they had African slaves from the offset.
However, their laws pertaining to those slaves were relativel... | [
"Slave-owners were faced with a dilemma regarding committed relationships between slaves. While some family stability might be desirable as helping to keep slaves tractable and pacified, anything approaching a legal marriage was not. Marriage gave a couple rights over each other which conflicted with the slave-owne... |
What areas of the earth would best weather global warming? | The problem of global warming is not the change in climate itself - it is the rate of change coupled with the fact that we have adapted to a specific climate in the areas we inhabit.
Change is harmful to most species that have adapted to a particular local eco-system. However, change also presents opportunities.
Clim... | [
"Eltahir's research focuses on how global climate change may impact society, specially in Africa and Asia. He spent the last 25 years developing sophisticated computer models suitable for predicting regional and local impacts of climate change, and testing them against field and satellite observations. Using these ... |
Is there any truth to the idea that Coca Cola secretly made special "White Coke" without colouring, at the request of Soviet Marshall Georgy Zhukov? (x-post r/AskHistory) | I'm assuming you've looked at the Wiki page for this, so I won't bother pointing you there.
The only vaugley scholarly source that addresses this in any detail is Mark Pendergast's *For God, Country, and Coca-Cola*. Basically, Pendergast concludes that the "white coke" story is at least plausible, and very even pro... | [
"White Coke (, \"colorless Coca-Cola\") is a nickname for a clear variant of Coca-Cola produced in the 1940s at the request of Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov. Like other clear colas, it was of the same original flavor, virtually unchanged by the absence of caramel coloring.\n",
"The colorless version o... |
i wipe my bottom very well until the tp comes back clean - without fail 20 minutes later i have to "re-wipe" - what the hell is going on? | It's because you are wiping away the poo on your butt, the TP is absorbing the moisture as you wiping, leaving behind dry poo that won't wipe away any more.
So when you walk around for 30 minutes or sit, with your butt cheeks together, they release moisture and re-moistening the dried poop you left behind, giving you ... | [
"For wiping of the anal area after defecation—or for wiping after urination—UDDT users can avail themselves of the same materials that are utilized while using other types of toilets. Suitable biodegradable materials available in the surroundings can also be used, such as toilet paper, leaves, corn cobs or sticks. ... |
Can the strands of DNA accidentally get tied into a knot? | Yes. Any sufficiently long polymer has essentially a 100% chance of being knotted, and DNA is no exception. Viruses, which contain very compacted DNA, when they splort out DNA into cells [have a chance of splorting out knotted DNA](_URL_0_). In our cells, however, we have enzymes called topoisomerases that untie knots ... | [
"When the ends of a piece of double stranded helical DNA are joined so that it forms a circle the strands are topologically knotted. This means the single strands cannot be separated any process that does not involve breaking a strand (such as heating). The task of un-knotting topologically linked strands of DNA fa... |
Why weren't huge dinosaurs crushed under their own weight? | They weren't fat, they were big-boned.
But seriously, they had big bones and big muscles, big lungs and a big heart, and had evolved into that body-size. Imagine an ant looking up at a human thinking "how does it not collapse or fall over?" : ). But sick, injured or sedated rhino's and elephants have to helped if the... | [
"Body size is important because of its correlation with metabolism, diet, life history, geographic range and extinction rate. The modal body mass of dinosaurs lies between 1 and 10 tons throughout the Mesozoic and across all major continental regions. There was a trend towards increasing body size within many dinos... |
What do EEG signals really mean? | The EEG signal at the scalp is a measure of the mean voltage of an area of cortex induced by synchronous excitatory and inhibitory post-synaptic potentials on large pyramidal neurons. A negative amplitude peak at the scalp corresponds to synchronous excitatory post-synaptic potentials in at least 6 cm² of cortex.
The ... | [
"EEG measures the gross electrical activity of the brain that can be observed on the surface of the skull. In the metastability theory, EEG outputs produce oscillations that can be described as having identifiable patterns that correlate with each other at certain frequencies. Each neuron in a neuronal network norm... |
Creative history writing assignment or project? | One of my art history classes gave an interesting assignment where we had to curate a "imaginary museum". We had to draft catalog entries, exhibition labels, and bibliographies, as well as a initial proposal explaining the topic of our exhibit and the works to be selected that justifies why we chose those works. It was... | [
"The Federal writer's Project was a project funded by the federal government through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The project, founded in 1935, was intended to “provide work relief for writers and to develop writing and research projects.”(Mullen). As a result of the project, the FWP was able to documen... |
how do you doctors diagnose bacterial/viral illness? | Clinically, some bacterial/viral illnesses have very distinguishing features that give you a hunch towards what the disease may be caused from. Symptoms such as a certain rash, whether there is a fever, whether there is any pus, etc., point you in the direction of viral, bacterial, or even fungal infection.
If you thi... | [
"Specific diagnosis of infection with ' is made by finding the virus in the child's stool by enzyme immunoassay. There are several licensed test kits on the market which are sensitive, specific and detect all serotypes of '. Other methods, such as electron microscopy and PCR (polymerase chain reaction), are used in... |
After WW2, how was Japan and Germany treated in the following Olympics? | The 1948 Olympics were held in London and Germany and Japan were not invited to participate as a result of their role as aggressors. | [
"Japan and Germany were both reinstated and permitted to send athletes after being banned for 1948 for their instigation of World War II. Due to the division of Germany, German athletes from Saar entered a separate team for the only time. Only West Germany would provide athletes for the actual Germany team, since E... |
why do we rely on donations from the public for disaster relief? isn't this the government's responsibility? | > Shouldn't the government be able to fully fund disaster relief without relying on contributions from the general public?
If you want to fully fund disaster relief, that means convincing voters to raise taxes, or cut spending elsewhere.
getting Disaster funding is notoriously tricky. No one wants to pay for it unt... | [
"Because of this myth, more supplies are often sent than the disaster area typically needs. In addition to excess quantity, much of the supplies end up being of little to no use. Relief organizations often do not wait for an assessment of the disaster area and an identification of needs which can be provided by loc... |
Why do some people have good sense of direction while other don't? Do we know how the brain differs in such people? | This article explains it pretty well. It's like language, we are born with the ability and the amount of time we spend on tasks that use sense of direction directly influences how developed or underdeveloped our directional awareness becomes. There's a lot of cool ethnographic research about sense of direction. We us... | [
"Thus humans are indeed vulnerable and susceptible to the riddle of existence (see vv. 13-14{17-18}). It is their sense of real ascertainment, their capability of applying their judging faculties with right measure (see vv. 15-16{19-20}), that gives them the right sense of direction.\n",
"We get our sense of dire... |
Why is Sulphur used in the vulcanization process instead of some other element? | Ok so I worked in Zinc Oxide which is used as a catalyst for the rubber curing. I only did a bit on the rubber side so hopefully someone can come and fill that in, but yes Sulphur I presume works to form di/trisulfide bridges similar to what it does with amino acid structure. Oxygen is more likely just to burn it and y... | [
"Sulfur vulcanization or sulfur vulcanisation is a chemical process for converting natural rubber or related polymers into more durable materials by heating them with sulfur or other equivalent curatives or accelerators. Sulfur forms cross-links (bridges) between sections of polymer chain which results in increased... |
why are insulated cups made from seemingly highly conductive materials like stainless steel or aluminum? | Oh I think I actually know this one!
Okay, so there's actually three layers in the cup: an outer layer of metal, a vacuum layer, and an inner layer of metal. You want to use a metal that doesn't "off-gas" (i.e. release gas into the vacuum) after you seal off the center layer.
You want that vacuum to be as empty as p... | [
"Ceramic is a general term for all clay materials excluding porcelain. It is a more sturdy material than porcelain, and since the material is thicker the cup walls have better heat retention abilities. Ceramic is a preferred material when the coffee cup must be more robust and resistant to damage.\n",
"Insulators... |
Why do we recycle paper? | Because in order to make paper, you have to cut down trees, which stops them from fixing more carbon. Plus the production of paper also releases carbon. | [
"The recycling of paper is the process by which waste paper is turned into new paper products. It has a number of important benefits besides saving trees from being cut down. It is less energy and water intensive than paper made from wood pulp. It saves waste paper from occupying landfill and producing methane as i... |
how does a store know i'm stealing something? | I’m not sure if I can write enough words for ELI5:
Sensors by the door don’t work for everything, it’s only certain high value items, such an item will have a little strip on them that the cashier passes over something several times to deactivate when you buy it. I guess the strip is probably an RF chip, but I’m not ... | [
"Theft by finding occurs when someone chances upon an object which seems abandoned and takes possession of the object but fails to take steps to establish whether the object is genuinely abandoned and not merely lost or unattended. In some jurisdictions the crime is called \"larceny by finding\" or \"stealing by fi... |
why do we sometimes think someone's first name fits that particular person? i.e; "you look like a dave" and when we try to associate a different name to them it feels weird and mismatched | I base this answer off no hard science but.... I would assume that it comes from other people you've met named Dave. You associate those physical attributes with Dave. The more Daves you meet the larger your Dave library gets. You meet someone with the same eyes as Dave Smith, the same hair style as Dave Jr, and a simi... | [
"\"Because it was so strange to see that the name like that is existing. You know, with the two \"o\"s and the exclamation mark at the end. It was strange, you know, the visual aspect and pronunciation. And, you know, it’s always good to have a name where somebody is like \"What was that?\" You know, if your band n... |
Why when bacteria are becoming antibiotic resistant, are we not using Phages to attack bacterial infections more. | /u/theuncool points out one of the big problems - a particular phage isn't wide spectrum. Another very big problem is that bacteria can develop resistances to phages, too. I can take a phage called lambda vir, which kills E. coli with zero chance of lysogeny (the vir mutation in this phage means it cannot stably inte... | [
"However, due to selective pressure, bacteria can develop resistance through mutations in the porin gene. The mutations may lead to a loss of porins, resulting in the antibiotics having a lower permeability or being completely excluded from transport. These changes have contributed to the global emergence of antibi... |
how the large hadron collider could help scientists understand how something can come from nothing. | In order to even begin learning about the origins of the universe we first have to understand how the tiniest bits of matter actually work. In the world we know things are governed by basic physics (Newton's Law's of motion), but at the moment of the big bang the universe was, as they say, infinitely small and infinit... | [
"The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration studies high energy particle collisions from the Tevatron, the world's former highest-energy particle accelerator. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and inter... |
Force-carrying particles and other misc questions? | Your confusion comes from the idea that interacting objects are constantly shooting particles at each other, which isn't the case. If that were true, we'd see, for example, glowing light between two magnets. Really, it's an idea that perturbations in a field due to a particle can be treated like another virtual particl... | [
"In particle physics, force carriers or messenger particles or intermediate particles are particles that give rise to forces between other particles. These particles are bundles of energy (quanta) of a particular kind of field. There is one kind of field for every type of elementary particle. For instance, there is... |
How do our lungs not freeze when we breathe in extremely cold air? | The answers I've seen so far in this are fine, but just to get a bit more specific; within the nasal cavity are several (three, if I remember correctly, on the lateral walls) folds of epithelium and mucosal membranes that the air passes through on its way down to the lungs.
These folds are called the nasal conchae, an... | [
"Breathing involves expelling stale air from the blowhole, forming an upward, steamy spout, followed by inhaling fresh air into the lungs; a spout only occurs when the warm air from the lungs meets the cold external air, so it may only form in colder climates.\n",
"Air trapping, also called gas trapping, is an ab... |
What would happen if Planck's Constant was much bigger than it is? | Yes, things would act more quantum-mechanically. Atoms would be much larger, as electrons (and everything else) would be more spatially spread-out ("wave-like", if you want) because of this. You'd soon not have matter-as-we-know-it, as the ratio between electron and nuclear masses and Planck's constant would change. In... | [
"The Planck constant is one of the smallest constants used in physics. This reflects the fact that on a scale adapted to humans, where energies are typically of the order of kilojoules and times are typically of the order of seconds or minutes, the Planck constant (the quantum of action) is very small. One can rega... |
What happened to the women in the emperor's harem after the death of "their" emperor during the Qing Dynasty in China? | I can't be sure this information applies to the system as it was under the Qing, but during the Tang dynasty an emperor's concubines would have their heads shaved and be required to retire to a nunnery after the emperor's death. This was because it would have been an insult to the dead ruler's memory for the women to h... | [
"Zaifeng (12 February 1883 – 3 February 1951), formally known by his title Prince Chun, was a Manchu prince and regent of the late Qing dynasty. He was a son of Prince Chun, the seventh son of the Daoguang Emperor, and the father of Puyi, the Last Emperor. He served as Prince-Regent from 1908–11 during the reign of... |
is it possible to do insider trading accidentally and be convicted? | In this scenario, it doesn't sound like you have any insider knowledge. In order to be convicted, the prosecutors need to prove that you were in possession of inside information. | [
"Different courts of appeals had come to different conclusions about what constituted insider trading under Rule 10b-5 — specifically, whether someone could be held liable for insider trading simply by trading while in possession of inside information, or whether a trier of fact must find that the person actually u... |
the differences between "franchised" mcdonalds and non-"franchised" mcdonalds | It's corporate and franchise stores.
The corporate ones are owned by McDonald's. The franchise store's owner pays a fee to corporate McDonald's to use the name, signage, menu and products.
Not all the franchise stores are run exactly the same, which is why some MacDonald's never carry the ribwhich or don't have 20 p... | [
"BULLET::::- Franchises: A franchise is a system in which entrepreneurs purchase the rights to open and run a business from a larger corporation. Franchising in the United States is widespread and is a major economic powerhouse. One out of twelve retail businesses in the United States are franchised and 8 million p... |
How Long did it take to get places by ship? | I hope that by '1800s' you mean 19th century, not only the first decade of it, as the following addresses almost whole century.
In the beginning of the 19th century, the speed of an average merchant ships used for transoceanic trade, such as British Indiamen was in the ballpark of 4 knots, i.e. 4 nautical miles per ho... | [
"The original intention was to make a coastal trip by sea, but it became clear early on in the venture that this was not practical, and most of the journey around the coast had to be made by road. The journey was completed in six separate trips, over the period 1813 to 1823. In the summer of 1813, Daniell and his c... |
how do doctors keep up to date with new information/techniques? | They are required to recertify every now and then, as well as being mandated to attend seminars and conferences about the latest of medical science in their fields.
Also, a doctor in a specific field is likely to want to learn about improvements in their field. They're clearly interested in whatever field they spent s... | [
"Taking a personal history along with clinical examination allow the health practitioners to fully establish a clinical diagnosis. A medical history of a patient provides insights into diagnostic possibilities as well as the patient's experiences with illnesses. The patients will be asked about current illness and ... |
Is it true that during the medieval era, the Islamic world was the home of science and research? | Hi there, while you wait for a more comprehensive answer, you may be interested in these older posts on the subject:
_URL_2_
_URL_0_
_URL_1_ | [
"Science in the medieval Islamic world was the science developed and practised during the Islamic Golden Age under the Umayyads of Córdoba, the Abbadids of Seville, the Samanids, the Ziyarids, the Buyids in Persia, the Abbasid Caliphate and beyond, spanning the period roughly between 786 and 1258. Islamic scientifi... |
Could relations between Europeans and Native Americans have turned out any other way in the 18th century? | This might be more of a question for /r/HistoricalWhatif | [
"Interracial relations among Native Americans and Europeans occurred from the earliest years of British, French and Spanish exploration. explorers and trappers. European impact was immediate, widespread and profound—more than any other race that had contact with Native Americans during the early years of colonizati... |
Why don't sound waves of same frequenvies cancel out each other? | It definitely applies to waves as well. For your example of sound waves, set up two speakers about 1m apart and then walk along in front of them a few metres away and you will notice loud patches and quiet patches. These patches are due to constructive and destructive interference.
This is the process behind high quali... | [
"Ships signal to each other and to the shore with air horns, sometimes called whistles, that are driven with compressed air or from steam tapped from the power plant. Low frequencies are used, because they travel further than high frequencies; horns from ships have been heard as far as ten miles away. Traditionally... |
How would the eruption of a volcano like Krakatoa compare to an eruption of The Yellowstone Caldera? | Here's a fun image that compares some of the largest and most notable eruptions in history:
[_URL_6_](_URL_6_)
As we can see Krakatoa (Krakatau) is close to 2 orders of magnitude smaller in erupted volume compared to Yellowstone (\~1000 cubic kilometers for yellowstone, vs 20 cubic kilometers for Krakatau).
Now le... | [
"Eruptions at Krakatoa started again around 16 June, with loud explosions and a thick black cloud covering the islands for five days. On 24 June, a prevailing east wind cleared the cloud, and two ash columns could be seen issuing from Krakatoa. The seat of the eruption is believed to have been a new vent or vents t... |
why did the hobbit movies use so much cgi (like in the famous ian mckellen crying picture) instead of real sets/ actors? | I guess no one remembers how cgi intensive the lord of the rings were with the battle of Rohan. It would a lot more time and money to create those sets and hire the actors. The Lotr took a long time to film. While the hobbit wasn't that much compared respectively. So all in all many people wanted them quickly unlike L... | [
"A few of the previous Ghibli movies had used CGI, but the whole computer graphics section at the studio had closed before the production of this feature, as it was decided they wanted to focus on hand-drawn animation.\n",
"Nevertheless, despite the fluidity of CGI animals and monsters, purely visual effects are ... |
Can anyone tell me the history of this trench art? | _URL_0_
More info: it has many names on it, including, although I’m sure unrelated, “Walter Churchill”. I’m just curious as to any info on “BTR” or their names, or anything. It’s quite a beautiful piece. | [
"Not limited to the World Wars, the history of trench art spans conflicts from the Napoleonic Wars to the present day. Although the practice flourished during World War I, the term 'trench art' is also used to describe souvenirs manufactured by service personnel during World War II. Some items manufactured by soldi... |
The Earth is an oblate spheroid, but what about the atmosphere? Does it fit the shape of the Earth or is it more perfectly spherical? | The density profile of the atmosphere is fixed by the total force, gravitational + centrifugal. The Earth takes the shape it does, oblate spheroid, because most of it is really liquid and it flows until its surface is composed of points all at the same total potential (being gravitational potential + centrifugal potent... | [
"For rigid-surface nearly-spherical bodies, which includes all the rocky planets and many moons, ellipsoids are defined in terms of the axis of rotation and the mean surface height excluding any atmosphere. Mars is actually egg shaped, where its north and south polar radii differ by approximately , however this dif... |
The Hindenburg disaster: The real cause for the decline of air travel by balloon? | I would argue it's less history, more business. You've got to look at speed (airplanes are faster), cost to build (airplanes require less material), and passenger capacity (typically greater on a plane). Plus, after WWII, you had an amazing airplane industry ready to retool for peacetime passenger planes, a huge pool... | [
"The newsreels and photographs, along with Morrison's passionate reporting shattered public and industry faith in airships and marked the end of the giant passenger-carrying airships. Also contributing to the downfall of Zeppelins was the arrival of international passenger air travel and Pan American Airlines. Heav... |
Is medieval portrayal of witches linked to anti-semitism? | [This thread] (_URL_0_) with answer by u/TheLionHearted may interest you. | [
"The stereotype of the witch finally solidified in the late Middle Ages. Numerous texts singled out women to be especially inclined to witchcraft. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, women defendants outnumbered men two to one. This difference only became more pronounced in the following centuries. The dispa... |
uptown vs downtown | The terms started with New York, where the southern tip of the island was the original core of the city and has since grown into the central business district. It also had access to port space, so it was originally rather commercial/industrial focused. As the city expanded north, that was mainly residential. Maps tend ... | [
"BULLET::::- uptown : (noun, adj., adv.) (in, to, toward, or related to) either the upper section or the residential district of a city; e.g., in Manhattan, New York City the term refers to the northern end of Manhattan, generally speaking, north of 59th Street; see also Uptown, Minneapolis; Uptown, Chicago; Uptown... |
Can epigenetics alter the expression of traits dependent on genetic tract length? | Is there a reason you're asking about a 3 base pair repeat in particular? Variations in these kinds of repeats are usually associated with trinucleotide repeat syndromes, where having too many copies causes some sort of genetic syndrome. Huntington's disease and fragile X syndrome are probably the most well known. The ... | [
"Whereas the mutation rate in a given 100-base gene may be 10 per generation, epigenes may \"mutate\" several times per generation or may be fixed for many generations. This raises the question: do changes in epigene frequencies constitute evolution? Rapidly decaying epigenetic effects on phenotypes (i.e. lasting l... |
coal-fired power plants | Burn coal. Gets hot. Boils water. Spins turbine. Generates electricity. Exhaust heat used to preheat the water. Soot captured with sulfur compounds for emissions. Makes gypsum for drywall and plaster. | [
"A coal-fired power station is a type of fossil fuel power station. The coal is usually pulverized and then burned in a furnace with a boiler. The furnace heat converts boiler water to steam, which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators. Thus chemical energy stored in coal is converted successively int... |
What is the next major evolutionary change the human race is most likely to undergo? | In evolution there is nothing "major". There is no intention, direction and purpose. There are random changes that are confirmed or rejected by the natural selection mechanism.
What humans can add to this is their ability to intervene in the natural selection process - by keeping alive and allowing humans to reproduce... | [
"Human evolution is characterized by a number of morphological, developmental, physiological, and behavioral changes that have taken place since the split between the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. The most significant of these adaptations are 1. bipedalism, 2. increased brain size, 3. lengthened o... |
Is there any evidence to show Shakespeare's actions and response to his son Hamnet's death? | Unfortunately we don't have much, if anything, to record Shakespeare's immediate emotional responses to his son's death; what we do have is rich grounds for speculation in the form of Shakespeare's plays. The impact of Hamnet's death on William Shakespeare is often interpreted through the lens of the play *Hamlet* as i... | [
"1609: Shakespeare is struggling to complete his sonnets while plague rages. He sees the body of a young child and remembers the moment in 1596 when he learned of the illness of his son Hamnet while rehearsing a play in London. Returning to Stratford-upon-Avon he was subjected to abuse from his shrewish wife Anne f... |
What would happen if an Astronaut in a spacestation with artifical gravity due to a spinning station would jump? | > shouldn't the Astronaut when making a little jump [...] negate the effect of the spinning wheel
No. During the jump the astronaut will keep moving sideways due to inertia. Since the astronaut is moving in a straight line and the floor is moving in a circle, eventually they will come closer and he'll land nearly on... | [
"Astronaut Buzz Aldrin called the visual effects \"remarkable\", and said, \"I was so extravagantly impressed by the portrayal of the reality of zero gravity. Going through the space station was done just the way that I've seen people do it in reality. The spinning is going to happen—maybe not quite that vigorous—b... |
how male animals know which young is theirs so they can protect it. | They don't know. Many males of various species (like lions and gorillas) kill all the children once they rise to power, and they'll jealously and violently guard access to the females. | [
"Precocial young are born with a highly developed sensory and motor system. At birth they are able to see, hear, and most can walk or will learn to walk within the first few days after birth. The females in these species have adapted to be able to recognize their own young, which allows them to be selective about w... |
is there a reason why humans have an arch in their feet or is it just from evolution? | Everything is "just from evolution".
So... yes and yes?
Arched feet are easier to support a body that stands upright (like humans do). It also gives space for muscle which can soften the blow of walking and can be more springy, which wastes less effort when walking.
I'm not sure it's right to say these are "reasons... | [
"There has been some speculation as to whether arch height has an effect on pronation. After conducting a study at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Maggie Boozer suggests that people with higher arches tend to pronate to a greater degree. However, the generally accepted view by professionals is that the mos... |
Does the human brain use any form of quantum entanglement? | Probably not. You might want to read this article:
_URL_0_
The abstract provides a very clear summary:
We argue that computation via quantum mechanical processes is irrelevant to explaining how brains produce thought, contrary to the ongoing speculations of many theorists. First, quantum effects do not have the temp... | [
"Many quantum information applications, such as quantum teleportation, quantum error correction, and superdense coding, rely on entanglement. However, entanglement is a fragile quantum property between particles and can be easily destroyed by loss and noise arising from interaction with the environment, leading to ... |
Do you get any of the benefits of sleep from just lying still in bed with your eyes closed (as happens with insomnia)? | There's some discussion of this in [this thread](_URL_1_) about a year ago. That thread prompted [an article on the subject in The Atlantic](_URL_0_). The conclusion from that article is:
> "Lying down isn't completely useless -- it does help your muscles and other organs relax. But you'd get the same results just... | [
"Generally, for people experiencing difficulties with sleep, spending less time in bed results in deeper and more continuous sleep, so clinicians will frequently recommend eliminating use of the bed for any activities except sleep (or sex).\n",
"Sleeping issues in children have been linked to many physical and me... |
why does putting food in a plastic bag prevent it from going stale? | Putting food in any container that doesn't allow air in will prevent food from going stale. Well, not *prevent*, but slow the process down. A plastic bag, when wrapped tight enough, does an okay job, but there are other, better things that work. | [
"Lightweight plastic bags are also blown into trees and other plants and can be mistaken for food. Plastic bags break down by polymer degradation but not by biodegradation. As a result, any toxic additives they contain—including flame retardants, antimicrobials, and plasticizers—will be released into the environmen... |
How much energy is contained in the trace amounts of uranium in coal? | From [this page](_URL_0_) I have that the uranium content of coal is optimistically on the order of magnitude of 10ppm, depending on the source. Fissionable uranium, however, only makes up 0.71% of naturally occurring uranium.
Assuming, again optimistically, that coal is primarily elemental carbon, that gives us 4.55 ... | [
"A kilogram of uranium-235 (U-235) converted via nuclear processes releases approximately three million times more energy than a kilogram of coal burned conventionally (7.2 × 10 joules per kilogram of uranium-235 versus 2.4 × 10 joules per kilogram of coal).\n",
"Although only several parts per million average co... |
what's the limiting factor in how much memory companies like sandisk can make sd cards? | The circuits that make up the memory of the SD card take up a certain amount of space. Smaller components require more research time and more advanced manufacturing and so cost more money. Either 256 GB of memory cannot be made to fit or they would cost so much that nobody would consider spending 20x extra just to not ... | [
"Like most memory card formats, SD is covered by numerous patents and trademarks. Excluding SDIO cards, royalties for SD card licenses are imposed for manufacture and sale of memory cards and host adapters (US$1,000/year plus membership at US$1,500/year)\n",
"SD cards are not the most economical solution in devic... |
I read that a large steel rod from orbit would hit a land target with the force of a small nuclear weapon. Does this mean it requires the energy of a nuclear weapon to get it into orbit? | Time for some algebra. Let's assume that figure is calculated as the sum of the gravitational potential energy and the kinetic energy. Fortunately for us the [Virial Theorem](_URL_1_) tells us that for bodies in gravitational orbit, averaged over their orbit, their kinetic energy is -1/2 the potential energy. For a bod... | [
"The idea is that the weapon would naturally contain a large kinetic energy because it moves at orbital velocities, around 8 kilometers per second in orbit and 3 kilometers per second or Mach 10 at impact. As the rod would reenter Earth's atmosphere it would lose most of the velocity, but the remaining energy would... |
How did English language names for other countries/cultures originate? | hi! there's room for responses covering more country names, but FYI, you can get started in the FAQ
* [Why do countries have different names in other languages?](_URL_0_)
and the /r/Linguistics FAQ
* [Why are our names for countries so different from what the people call their own country?](_URL_1_) | [
"Anglicisation of non-English-language names was common for immigrants, or even visitors, to English-speaking countries. An example is the German composer Johann Christian Bach, the \"London Bach,\" who was known as \"John Bach\" after emigrating to England.\n",
"Countries which have seen repeated large-scale cul... |
Christianization after converting Europe to Christianity - What did it entail? | From how I understand your blurb, what you're getting at is the increasing orthodoxy of Christianity in Europe, following the conversion process.
As regards England, conversion began in the late sixth century with Augustine's mission to Kent. Whether the clergy today doesn't like the idea of pagan syncretism I can't ... | [
"The process of the Christianization of Europe typically involved Christian missionaries managing to convert a King or other ruler who then proclaimed his kingdom to be Christian. It certainly took several generations for Christianity to become truly established in the whole society, with many people - especially i... |
what is the difference between a bitmap and a vector image? | Think of a bitmap image as a painting. It's a specific size, it has been created and each brush stroke is where it should be. If we were to take an image of that painting and stretch it out, it would start to look bad because it wasn't meant to be that size.
Think of a vector as the painter who knows exactly how to ma... | [
"An X–Y plotter is a plotter that operates in two axes of motion (\"X\" and \"Y\") in order to draw continuous vector graphics. The term was used to differentiate it from standard plotters which had control only of the \"y\" axis, the \"x\" axis being continuously fed to provide a plot of some variable with time. P... |
if they use the same caliber and are similar in function, why is the ar 15 not used by soldiers? what is its catch? | The core difference is in function.
Specifically, the M16 and M4 are capable of automatic and/or burst fire, which means multiple shots fired, ejected, and chambered with one pull of the trigger.
The AR-15 that is commonly available to the public is not capable of automatic or burst fire. | [
"The caliber for the OHWS was quickly decided not to be the NATO standard 9 mm due to lack of stopping power. The FBI had selected the 10 mm auto to replace their 9 mm pistols, but it was too powerful, few manufacturers produced it, and the round caused short weapon service life. The .45 ACP caliber was chosen and ... |
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