Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
How are cannabinoids metabolized?	_URL_1_ > After smoking, the initial metabolism of THC takes place in the lungs, followed by more extensive metabolism by liver enzymes which transform THC to a number of metabolites. The most rapidly produced metabolite is 9-carboxy-THC (or THC-COOH) which is detectable in blood within minutes of smoking cannabis. I...	[ "Cannabinoid production starts when an enzyme causes geranyl pyrophosphate and olivetolic acid to combine and form CBGA. Next, CBGA is independently converted to either CBG, THCA, CBDA or CBCA by four separate synthase, FAD-dependent dehydrogenase enzymes. There is no evidence for enzymatic conversion of CBDA or CB...
how do remote controlled cars work?	A radio sends commands to a controller in the car. That in turn sends electrical signals to the various motors and solenoids that operate the mechanical parts of the car. This can be super basic in a battery powered car with simple steering, or increasingly complex as you approach full sized gasoline powered vehicles...	[ "A remote control vehicle is defined as any vehicle that is teleoperated by a means that does not restrict its motion with an origin external to the device. This is often a radio control device, cable between control and vehicle, or an infrared controller. A remote control vehicle or RCV differs from a robot in tha...
Why did the vice president switch from being the second place finisher in the US presidential elections to a ticket with the president?	The most obvious answer is the election of 1800, but the election on 1796 had some impact on the 12th Amendment as well . The way the constitution was originally structured, electors from each state had 2 votes each with no distinction for president and vice president. It was also the case that many states decided t...	[ "The President and the Vice President are elected through universal suffrage by the nation considered as a whole. The Constitutional reform of 1994 introduced a \"two-round system\" by which the winning President-Vice President ticket has to receive either more than 45% of the overall valid votes, or at least 40% o...
what's the difference between thermionic emission and thermoelectric effect?	Thermionic emission is the ability of some materials to emit electrons more readily when heated. Electronic vacuum tubes (valves) use heated cathodes to take advantage of the effect. The thermoelectric effect happens when two different metals are joined. Temperature difference can be converted to electric current and...	[ "The electrocaloric effect is a phenomenon in which a material shows a reversible temperature change under an applied electric field. It is often considered to be the physical inverse of the pyroelectric effect. It should not be confused with the Thermoelectric effect (specifically, the Peltier effect), in which a ...
even with the advances in sciences, why is meteorology so inexact?	Because the climate is complicated and modeling it is hard and expensive. Being sort of right is good enough and spending the money to be right slightly more often (meteorologists aren't actually that bad at predicting the weather) isn't worthwhile for, say, a news station.	[ "\"Why did modern science, the mathematization of hypotheses about Nature, with all its implications for advanced technology, take its meteoric rise only in the West at the time of Galileo [but] had not developed in Chinese civilisation or Indian civilisation?\"\n", "Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientifi...
Why did the Western borders of Tang China jut out?	That extension to the Northwest is the modern Gansu Corridor and some areas along the Tarim Basin. These areas were strategically important because they controlled key overland trade routes with India, Central Asia, and the Middle East -- the proverbial Silk Road. This area was important for commerce, but also strate...	[ "Because Chinese Tang forces in the \"Western Territories\" were negligible, to resist the restoration of the Türkic Kaganate, the Tang government had to accede to the rise of Turgesh, a nation descendent from Abars and Mukri, under the leadership of an \"Uchjile\". In effect, the territory captured by Tang by 659 ...
Pandemics and Quarantine History - Megathread	This current pandemic is falling on a presidential election year in the United States. How did the 1918-1920 flu pandemic affect the 1920 presidential election?	[ "As the pandemic intensifies it gains many names, \"Captain Trips\" and the superflu being the most used. A multi-faceted narrative—told partly from the perspective of primary characters—outlines the total breakdown and destruction of society through widespread violence; the failure of martial law to contain the ou...
when a restaurant runs out of something, why is it "86ed"?	As you'll see in [this article](_URL_0_) there are a number of theories, none of which are confirmed and all of which have problems. I think as the article states at the end that the most likely answer is that it rhymes with "nix," meaning eliminate or negate. Wouldn't shock me to learn that a bit of rhyming slang ju...	[ "In British English, the term \"restaurant\" almost always means an eating establishment with table service, so the \"sit down\" qualification is not usually necessary. Fast food and takeaway (take-out) outlets with counter service are not normally referred to as restaurants. Outside North America, the terms fast c...
why do we sneeze and why would our body cease all other functions to favor one thing?	We sneeze to clear irritants out of our noses. As a multistep process to keep whatever it is out of our lungs. Our bodies are fallible though, sometimes it overreacts. Like seeing pollen as a dangerous intruder.	[ "There is much debate about the true cause and mechanism of the sneezing fits brought about by the photic sneeze reflex. Sneezing occurs in response to irritation in the nasal cavity, which results in an afferent nerve fiber signal propagating through the ophthalmic and maxillary branches of the trigeminal nerve to...
If the mechanisms of nerve impulses is always exactly the same, how does the brain differentiate between different signals/messages and carry out different functions?	In the same way that when your doorbell rings you go to the front door, and when you phone rings, you pick up the phone, even though both of them use electricity to make the ringing happen. Which is to say that even though the physiological mechanisms are the same, their pathways in the nervous system are not the same...	[ "At the most basic level, the function of the nervous system is to send signals from one cell to others, or from one part of the body to others. There are multiple ways that a cell can send signals to other cells. One is by releasing chemicals called hormones into the internal circulation, so that they can diffuse ...
Do you and I see the same colors?	[Is it possible that you and I see the same colors differently?](_URL_0_)	[ "BULLET::::2. Colors that cannot be seen directly from any combination of retina signal output from one place in one eye, but can be generated in the brain's visual cortex by mixing color signals from the two eyes, or from more than one part of the same eye. Examples of these colors are yellowish-blue and reddish-g...
if liquids in containers above 100ml in size can be dangerous (for various reasons), why does airport security dump the contents of said bottle into a bin (with who knows what else) not that far from people amassed in long lines?	Honestly, you're going to have a hard time finding logic in most of the TSA's guidelines. It's more about security theater than actual security. _URL_0_ Basically, the thought is that if people -feel- safe and secure, they'll act safe and secure. And if people -think- security is high, they won't try to bypass it. It...	[ "As of 26 September 2006, the Transportation Security Administration adjusted the ban on liquids, aerosols and gels. Travellers are permitted to carry liquids through security checkpoints in containers of 3.4 ounces (100 mL) or less that fit comfortably in one quart-size clear plastic zip-top bag. This procedure ca...
Was the Dunkirk evacuation a triumph or defeat for Britain?	The Evacuation of Dunkirk was essentially a defeat (and as close to a rout as it got) for the British Expeditionary Force that had its image turned around due to good PR on the part of the performance of the Royal Navy, Merchant Navy and civilian volunteers who helped shuttle retreating soldiers from Dunkirk, as well ...	[ "BULLET::::- 26 May: Around 850 British civilian ships and vessels help assisted Allied forces of Dunkirk, which would become the largest military evacuation in history. On 6:57 PM Operation Dynamo code name for the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk took place. Hitler also ordered his army forces towards Du...
why do bytes use metric prefixes (giga, mega, etc) if they don't follow metric standards?	Computers like powers of 2, and people decided that 2^10 = 1024 was close enough to 1000 to use the kilo- prefix. But then some marketers came along, and decided they could make hard drives look bigger if they used 1000 for kilo instead of 1024. So things got confusing. There are some alternate prefices, kibi-, mibi...	[ "BULLET::::- Prefixes for bytes are now used in strictly decimal meaning (as opposed to their binary meaning) when describing disk space, such that an indicated file size of 1 MB corresponds to 1 million bytes, as commonly used by hard disk manufacturers.\n", "A metric prefix is a unit prefix that precedes a basi...
Was there a moral justification given in ancient India for the practice of slavery?	Slavery as in West (west of Indus) never existed in India until Muslim conquests into India(Legally). There were no Historical stories which mention about slavery, other than few anecdotes. Due to high population and economical/social segregation of Varna system, Slavery as seen in west was observed in the west alth...	[ "There are some very notable differences between the way ancient punishment was to be administered and how modern punishment is administered in Hindu societies. If a criminal were to confess to a crime, he would received half of the prescribed punishment in ancient India; however in modern India, confessing does no...
what prevents us from just arranging protrons, electrons and neutrons together in any way we like to create any elements we want and make anything we want out of nothing?	It takes a lot of energy to attach and rearrange those pieces. Think about burning a log: you're rearranging the chemicals by changing the bonds between different atoms, so that you turn cellulose into carbon dioxide and water (and some other byproducts). Doing so requires you to add energy to the system (a match...	[ "The RIS process can be used to ionize all elements on the periodic table, except helium and neon, using available lasers. In fact, it is possible to ionize most elements with a single laser set-up, thus enabling rapid switching from one element to another. In the early days, optical schemes from RIMS have been use...
what was the reason to split programs into interpreters and compilers?	Compilers came first, they took your code and brought it down to machine code ahead of time so it can run directly on the processor quickly when you needed it to. Compiling is/was a reasonably slow process and was done on slow equipment so it was good to do it in advance. You could optimize the code during the proces...	[ "Compilers are not the only language processor used to transform source programs. An interpreter is computer software that transforms and then executes the indicated operations. The translation process influences the design of computer languages which leads to a preference of compilation or interpretation. In pract...
how do some studies (referenced) come to the conclusion that smoking marijuana is not harmful to the human body?	Smoking might induce the body to produce more blood than otherwise, but so would doing something like donating blood. Unless we are to accept that the Red Cross is harming donors it wouldn't be reasonable to consider the minor monoxide poisoning to qualify as a harm on such a report.	[ "Exposure to marijuana may have biologically-based physical, mental, behavioral and social health consequences and is \"associated with diseases of the liver (particularly with co-existing hepatitis C), lungs, heart, eyesight and vasculature\" according to a 2013 literature review by Gordon and colleagues. The asso...
Alexander the Great marched all the way to India. How did he supply his army?	So Alexander the Great's great cause he conquered the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Until he passed over the Indus, all the lands he had conquered had either been Persian satrapies or at least within the Persian orbit. This included everything from Thrace, the Levant, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia itself, all high...	[ "Alexander's march east put him in confrontation with the Nanda Empire of Magadha and the Gangaridai of Bengal. According to the Greek sources, the Nanda army was supposedly five times larger than the Macedonian army. His army, exhausted, homesick, and anxious by the prospects of having to further face large Indian...
When showing teeth (in art, photograph and portraits) became culturally acceptable? And why it wasn't before?	The first question to ask is what message the portrait is intended to convey. Through to the eighteenth century, portraits were primarily commissioned by either the clergy or the nobility and so reflected the social norms and customs of those two groups. In particular, open-mouthed smiling in art was considered somewha...	[ "Although oral hygiene was nowhere near today’s standards, white teeth were prized by the Romans, and so false teeth, made from bone, ivory and paste, were popular items. Ovid shed light on the way white teeth were viewed in society when he wrote the statement, \"You can do yourself untold damage when you laugh if ...
what makes white wines "dry"?	There is a spectrum of wines! Both red and white have it. They range from dry to sweet. That's how you get semi-sweet, etc. It's determined by how much natural sugar from the grapes is left in the wine. You can stop the fermentation process early to make a sweeter wine (or add sugar afterwards). If they ferment unti...	[ "The dry white wine is a wine without sugar (the sugar ratio is generally less than 4 grams per litre). It is a wine very difficult to develop because the balance of the wine is based on only two parameters: acidity and alcohol. This is the wine that the consumer refers to when he speaks of white wine without givin...
A question about intelligent life.	With the exception of some very very exotic and speculative reproductive technologies, no. Evolution is just long-term adaptation to our environment. If, say, our brains start getting smaller because we can offload thinking to technology, then that is the process of evolution in action. If the main standard for mate...	[ "Design that favors the development of intelligent life, argues Behe, is not only demanded by \"the most recent findings concerning biological complexity\", but also by discoveries in the fields of chemistry (he uses the example of the peculiar, life-supporting structure of water), and of cosmology (referring to th...
If I have two quantuam entangled particles at large distance, can I change the state of the far-away particle by changing the state of my near-by particle?	No. Entanglement is nothing more than a correlation between the outcomes of measurements. If you measure the state of the first particle, then you will be able to predict with certainty the outcome of a similar measurement on the second particle. It has nothing to do with controlling the second particle with the first.	[ "Now, if the initial state is very localized in position, it will be very spread out in momentum, and thus we expect that the wave function will rapidly spread out, and the connection with the classical trajectories will be lost. When Planck's constant is small, however, it is possible to have a state that is well ...
What's the deal with the pyramids in bosnia?	You'll be interested in my response [here](_URL_0_), as well as the discussion elsewhere in the thread. I and the others definitely welcome follow-up questions. It's a claim backed by a few people with monetary investments (read: tourism) in the site, based on results that have not been replicated by any one else. I'm ...	[ "The 'Bosnian Pyramid' project is alleged to have done considerable damage to the archaeological heritage of the area, which contains ruins of a medieval capital, Roman observation post, and earlier remains. Anthony Harding, Professor of Archaeology at Exeter University and then-president of the European Associatio...
Is beauty a human invention, or do animals differentiate in a similar way?	This is typically called [sexual selection](_URL_0_) and yes, it occurs in many species of animals (humans included). One good example is the tail of a male peacock. The color, size, luster etc, of the plumage works to attract the females of the species (peahens). This makes for a pretty good example because we too ...	[ "In evolutionary aesthetics theory, there is evidence that perceptions of beauty are determined by natural selection and therefore Darwinian; that things, aspects of people and landscapes considered beautiful are typically found in situations likely to give enhanced survival of the perceiving human's genes.\n", "...
how the mpaa can decide what i get to watch?	Because all the major movie producers agree to listen to what the MPAA says. There's nothing stopping some rogue producer from ignoring them, but you'd have a hard time finding that producer's movies.	[ "The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) film rating system is used in the United States and its territories to rate a film's suitability for certain audiences based on its content. The MPAA rating system is a voluntary scheme that is not enforced by law; films can be exhibited without a rating, although c...
Please join us in /r/HistoryNetwork for an Historical IAmA in 190 with Prime Minister Winston Churchill shortly after the Battle of Dunkirk	Might just have to have a look at that...	[ "On 31 May 1940, Churchill flew again to Paris for a meeting of the SWC, this time with Clement Attlee and Generals John Dill and Hastings Ismay. Discussions were held at the French Ministry of War on the deteriorating military situation with a French delegation consisting of Reynaud, Philippe Pétain and Maxime Wey...
how did samsung not notice note 7s exploding in the testing	There are 35 worldwide reports of explosions or fires from Note 7s, 2.5 million were sold. That's 0.14% that have had a problem. Its very possible that its just bad luck none of the phones they tested had the issue.	[ "In the wake of the recall, Samsung, as well as UL LLC, Exponent, and TÜV Rheinland performed internal testing and analysis to determine the exact causes of the defects. Samsung released its official findings on 23 January 2017. Concurrently, the company announced that all of its future battery-operated products wo...
Can you tell me what this is that fell from the sky?	Really great video that should put bugs above in perspective. (Starts slow for first minute but get super interesting) _URL_0_ (1:27 for your answer)	[ "The original stone is believed to have been approximately the size of an automobile traveling towards the Earth at more than 10 miles per second. The fall occurred in the early morning hours of February 8, 1969. At 01:05 a huge, brilliant fireball approached from the southwest and lit the sky and ground for hundre...
network ports and its exact purpose	No, no. Ports are used so the device, identified by it's IP address on the network, knows which application should handle the data, not so that the network knows where to send the data. It's essentially the same as a ship harbour - the IP address is the coordinates of the harbour, and the Port is the... well, th...	[ "The port numbers in the range from 0 to 1023 (0 to 2 − 1) are the \"well-known ports\" or \"system ports\". They are used by system processes that provide widely used types of network services. On Unix-like operating systems, a process must execute with superuser privileges to be able to bind a network socket to a...
israel-palestine war. which country started and why?	well, this could be a brief answer to your question _URL_0_	[ "The 1947–1949 Palestine war, known in Israel as the War of Independence (, \"Milkhemet Ha'Atzma'ut\") and in Arabic as The Nakba (\"lit. Catastrophie,\" , \"al-Nakba\"), was fought in the territory of Palestine under the British Mandate. It is the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–...
how do payday loans pay so fast?	Many Australian banks will offer loan money to customers as soon as they're approved (at least for personal loans, mortgages can be more complex). Transfers between accounts within a bank are also usually instant. What often takes a long time is transfers between banks. [This is complicated](_URL_0_). Payday loan com...	[ "Payday loans originated in the United States and have been growing quickly in the UK market over the last five years. They offer a relatively small amount of capital (usually up to £500) for a short term, often under two weeks on average (or until \"payday\").\n", "A payday loan (also called a payday advance, sa...
Why are certain people always prone to the virus that causes warts?	Viral infections such as those caused by [HPV](_URL_0_) often exhibit latent, asymptomatic phases. The virus may remain in the host for many years, cycling through periods of heightened activity before being suppressed [but not cleared entirely] by the immune system. So, to answer your question: it's not that they are...	[ "Warts are caused by infection with a type of human papillomavirus (HPV). Factors that increase the risk include use of public showers, working with meat, eczema and a weak immune system. The virus is believed to enter the body through skin that has been damaged slightly. A number of types exist, including \"common...
why hasn't the united states adopted a propotional representative congress?	It has to do with the federal nature of our government. One of the core goals of our Constitution was to give all regions of the country a voice in the government. The way that that was done was to create a bunch of separate, winner-take-all districts.	[ "Representation in the United States Congress is \"geographically based\". Moreover, the Founders explicitly designed the House of Representatives to be an institution that reflects local and regional concerns. These inescapable facts, and the actual history and actions of Congress itself, led many prominent histor...
modern art...i just don't get it.	You know how everyone in your class always tries to colour in the lines? Because pictures always look better when you colour in the lines, right? And the sky should be blue and the grass should be green and if you follow all those rules your pictures will always be pretty. ...And they'll all kind of look like everyo...	[ "Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. M...
How do printers pick out one piece of paper if they are all stacked up?	Rubber rollers with a lot of friction, spread across the sheet. This is really easy for thin sheets. (text weight paper) Sometimes on the bigger industrial printers they are air-fed. A blast of air separates the top sheet and guides it foreword to a rubber roller. I work with these printers.	[ "Single-sided printers can print both sides of the paper by manually removing and turning over a stack of sheets after one side is printed; however, the user has to manually turn the print job over and re-initialize the printing of the document, with care to ensure that the order and orientation is correct.\n", "...
what keeps mail delivery people from taking your packages?	Aside from the fact the packages are tracked and logged, it is unlikely an individual would want to risk there income for a £10 loot crate	[ "There is a small amount of storage fee (1-2 Thai Baht) when picking up the mail or parcel. Keep in mind that the recipient must track the delivery status by themself via Tracking number provided. So it is recommended to deliver using Registered mail or EMS. Since regular mail delivery service does not provide a tr...
Many galaxies are moving away or towards us. Are there any galaxies that aren't moving considerably, or have more sideways movement than in and out?	Measuring the sideways motion of galaxies isn't something we can really do. However there are nearby galaxies with have negligible velocity (relative to us) in the radial direction; in these cases, you can safely assume that their sideways motion (relative to us) is the larger component.	[ "In models of the expanding universe, the farther galaxies are from each other, the faster they drift apart. This receding is not due to motion \"through\" space, but rather to the expansion of space itself. For example, galaxies far away from Earth appear to be moving away from the Earth with a speed proportional ...
what exactly causes websites to display special characters incorrectly (often quotes or ampersands)	Different character encoding standards. Your computer only recognizes the number that's being sent, not the character. Computers only understand zeros and ones. A computer will assign each letter a different set of 8 zeros and ones, but problems happen when two computers use a different system of matching these numbe...	[ "Because many fonts are designed to fulfill the WGL4 set, this set of characters is likely to work (display as other than replacement glyphs) on many computer systems. For instance you are probably able to see all the characters in the table below, compared to the many missing characters that may be seen in other a...
was meat considered to be something just for the upper class in Europe 900 years ago?	Not at all. Medieval peasants grew livestock and used their produce for their own sustenance - chickens, pigs, goats, and cows were all consumed by members of all classes. If they lived near a river or the sea, they would also probably eat fish as well. The difference between classes, as far as culinary was concerned,...	[ "European consumption of meat remained exceptional by world standards, and during the period high levels generally moved down the social scale. But the poor continued to rely mainly on eggs, dairy products, and pulses for protein. Often they did better in the less populated regions, where wild game and fish could s...
why has china not taken over mongolia and korea but shows irredentism when it comes to tibet, taiwan, islands in south china sea?	This is a [progress of China's borders](_URL_0_) through out history. Notice both Tibet and Mongolia were part of China's Qing (1644 to 1911) dynasty. China's Yuan (1271–1368) dynasty was actually Mongols, which of course includes Mongolia. China broke apart into several warring factions after 1911. Tibet, Mongolia an...	[ "Since the 1960s, China had considered the Soviet Union the principal threat to its security; lesser threats were posed by long standing border disputes with Vietnam and India. China's territorial claims and economic interests made the South China Sea an area of strategic importance to China. Although China sought ...
Where did Yiddish as a language originate?	א שיינעם דאנק פור די שאלה! Yiddish is, as the podcast and others have said, closely related to German. It's got loans from Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages, and occasionally romance loans (beyond what exists in German dialects), and it's got pronunciation differences like a German dialect would. It formed by Jews in ...	[ "Yiddish is a major linguistic creation of the Jewish Diaspora, originating in what is now Germany. It is one of many languages that emerged as a result of the migration of the Jewish people throughout Europe, alongside Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), Italkian (Judeo-Italian), Knaanic (Judeo-Slavic), Yevanic (Judeo-Greek),...
if vegetables are good for you, why do soda, chips, and other "junk food" taste better?	Sugar, salt, and fat are critical for the human body to work. Our brain users more sugar than any other part, salt is needed to conduct electricity, and fat is of course an excellent store of energy. You and I are unfortunately a very old model, stuck in modern times. Human beings haven't had a major evolution in 3...	[ "Most vegetables are low- or moderate-carbohydrate foods (in some low-carbohydrate diets, fiber is excluded because it is not a nutritive carbohydrate). Some vegetables, such as potatoes, carrots, maize (corn) and rice are high in starch. Most low-carbohydrate diet plans accommodate vegetables such as broccoli, spi...
notre dame is getting lots of donations to rebuild and they say it's not enough. wouldn't a world landmark be covered in insurance for catastrophe like this?	From my understanding, neither the maximum amount of insurance possible on the church, nor the insurance bond of the construction company doing the restorations, come anywhere close to the BILLIONS it will take to rebuild.	[ "On Tuesday 16th April 2019, the company's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Pouyanne pledged that Total will make a €100 million contribution to the reconstruction of the Notre-Dame cathedral after it was extensively damaged in a fire. \n", "Since 1905, France's cathedrals (including Notre-Dame) have been owned b...
What was civilian life like during WW2? During WW2 in US was life in country more or less "business as usual"?	It was fairly different. Though as the war went on, people took the restrictions less seriously and there was always a thriving black market. The main differences were the number of men leaving to join the military was very different, the lack of military age males meant for the first time large numbers of women join...	[ "As well, during World War II, the war effort created work in the cities, and returning soldiers were less willing to return to small communities. With the rise in consumerism, \"places like Cheapside...were casualties of an upwardly mobile society\".\n", "Inside the United States, every aspect of life from polit...
what is the difference between knitting and crocheting?	Knitting uses two needles _URL_1_ crocheting uses a hook _URL_0_	[ "Knitting is the process of using two or more needles to loop yarn into a series of interconnected loops in order to create a finished garment or some other type of fabric. The word is derived from \"knot\", thought to originate from the Dutch verb \"knutten\", which is similar to the Old English \"cnyttan\", “to k...
Were US troops in WWII required to have haircuts?	If you mean buzzcuts in the modern sense, no; at least not for the US Army. They absolutely, however, had grooming standards; its a basic tenet of military hygiene. Hair had to be short at the sides and back; away from the collars and not covering the ears. [Haircuts happened when they could](_URL_2_) and the frequency...	[ "Before World War One men generally had longer hair and beards. However, short hair on men was introduced in World War One for soldiers. Slaves and defeated armies were often required to shave their heads. The trench warfare in 1914 to 1918 exposed men to flea and lice infestations, which prompted the order to cut ...
Could polar bears and penguins be introduced to their respective opposite poles (south, north) and survive?	Its unlikely that they would survive. [Polar bears](_URL_5_) are adapted to eating seals, but its very hard to hunt them in the open water so they hunt on land. Two common ways of catching seals include: crashing through the ice using their paws and kill the seals in their dens or stalking air holes and kill seals as t...	[ "Although almost all penguin species are native to the Southern Hemisphere, they are not found only in cold climates, such as Antarctica. In fact, only a few species of penguin actually live so far south. Several species live in the temperate zone; one, the Galápagos penguin, lives as far north as the Galápagos Isl...
why do smaller animals seem to live shorter lives and larger animals longer? such as a fly compared to a whale	Typically organisms with shorter life spans have a survival strategy based on rapid and mass reproduction. A fly for example would be expected to grow many larvae to maturity, mate, and lay their own eggs within a month because flies die all the time to various things. If a fly needed to survive for 5 years before it c...	[ "In mammals, larger animals tend to have longer lifespans than smaller ones; the Brandt's bat is the most extreme outlier to this pattern, with lifespans exceeding 40 years in the wild while only weighing .\n", "The life expectancy is typically twenty to thirty years; as in many mammals, smaller species often hav...
modern vs. post-modern	Modernism was a cultural movement that began around 100 years ago. Modernist writers are the folks who rejected big, dramatic stories about glorious heroes defeating sinister villains, chosen people going on exciting adventures, comedies about elaborate social disasters, etc and instead focused on intimate and in-depth...	[ "Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era), as well as the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the \"Age of Reason\" of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century \"Enlightenment\...
When doing statistics, is too large of a sample size ever a bad thing?	The only way I can think of would be if your sample size is larger than your population of interest. For example, if you want to figure something out about a population of 10,000 people and you poll 20,000 people, you've clearly polled at least 10,000 people that are not part of your population of interest.	[ "Larger sample sizes generally lead to increased precision when estimating unknown parameters. For example, if we wish to know the proportion of a certain species of fish that is infected with a pathogen, we would generally have a more precise estimate of this proportion if we sampled and examined 200 rather than 1...
It seems to be a commonly held belief that only the richest american families owned slaves. Is this true or just another case of southern revisionist?	Adapted from [an older answer](_URL_1_): It's a myth that "only the richest American families" in southern states could own slaves, which is perpetuated mainly by Confederate apologists hellbent on arguing that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Spoiler alert: it was about slavery. Many people in the antebellu...	[ "Of the Founding Fathers of the United States, as defined by the historian Richard B. Morris, the Southerners were the major slaveholders, but Northerners also held them, generally in smaller number, as domestic servants. John Adams owned none. George Washington freed his own slaves in his will (his wife independen...
Some mammals have internal testes (Elephants, Rhinoceroses, Cetaceans), how do they get around the difficulties that body heat imposes on sperm production?	This has more to do with the sperm than the testes. Temperature tolerances of proteins can vary quite a bit with very small changes in the amino acid sequence used to make them. The bonds between amino acids not linked together by peptide bonds are typically pretty weak so the extra movement with temperature (the aver...	[ "The mammalian male reproductive system contains two main divisions, the penis and the testicles, the latter of which is where sperm are produced. In humans, both of these organs are outside the abdominal cavity, but they can be primarily housed within the abdomen in other animals. For instance, a dog's penis is co...
cryptology	People like to communicate. When we communicate, sometimes we tell each other secrets - things that nobody else should know. If you are sending a message containing a secret to somebody you might fear that this message will fall into the wrong hands and the wrong people will know your secret. So to outsmart the bad gu...	[ "Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties (called adversaries). More generally, it is about constructing and analyzing protocols that overcome the influence of adversaries and that are related to various aspects in information security such as da...
Why do people (usually children) associate transparency with the colour white?	For children coloring, white and clear mean the same thing, on a white piece of paper. If they want to show something as white, they don't fill it in, it'll be the white of the paper. If they want to show something as clear, they'll leave it blank, and it'll be transparent to them.	[ "\"White\" is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness. White is the lightest possible color.\...
- why does one get cravings? when one quits a drug/behavior, what's exactly happening when one senses a 'craving'?	When one does drugs or smoke or eat junk food, our brain responds by giving you a “feel good” feeling. This feeling is caused by chemicals aka neurotransmitters, in our body like dopamine and endorphins. Our brain remembers what caused us to feel this way and knows in the future what it needs to make yourself feel goo...	[ "\"Cue-induced wanting\" or \"cue-triggered wanting\", a form of craving that occurs in addiction, is responsible for most of the compulsive behavior that addicts exhibit. During the development of an addiction, the repeated association of otherwise neutral and even non-rewarding stimuli with drug consumption trigg...
why must clothes irons be hot in order to serve their purpose ?	It's kinda like how you straighten hair the carbon bonds are weak in hair heat allows the breaking of bonds and forms it straight under the flat surface	[ "A clothes iron is a device that, when heated, is used to press clothes to remove creases and help prevent the spread of infectious disease. Domestic irons generally range in operating temperature from between to . It is named for the metal (iron) of which the device was historically made, and the use of it is gene...
how do lottery ticket companies make sure their workers don't track down the winning tickets that they print?	A computer prints the numbers on the scratchoff tickets as they roll through the printing presses at a thousand tickets a minute and the machine also coats the tickets with the scratch off coating in the same process. So when they come out of the press all the employee sees is the completed tickets in a giant stack. ...	[ "Companies operating using a ticket reseller model purchase tickets for the official lottery draw on behalf of the player. The company then charges the player the price of the ticket, as well as an extra commission. In the event of a winning ticket, the company collects the winnings from the official lottery operat...
why is it so difficult to provide africa with clean drinking water desalination?	Solar stills might be more viable there than in other parts of the world, but the problem is that they still aren't very viable. The parts of Africa that have trouble accessing clean drinking water generally aren't coastal regions, those tend to be quite prosperous areas that have wells or other forms of water. The p...	[ "To adequately address the issue of water scarcity in Africa, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa emphasizes the need to invest in the development of Africa's potential water resources to reduce unnecessary suffering, ensure food security, and protect economic gains by effectively managing droughts, f...
Has there ever been any movements similar to Zionism?	Check out the [Back to Africa Movement](_URL_0_) from 19th century America. It lead to the foundation of Liberia (fun fact: the capital of Monrovia is named after James Monroe!) Sierra Leone has a similar history of resettlement in the foundation of the Province of Freedom, which was founded for the "resettlement" of...	[ "Zionism was formed in Europe as the national movement of the Jewish people. It sought to re-establish Jewish statehood in the ancient homeland. The first wave of Zionist immigration, dubbed the First Aliyah lasted between 1882 and 1903. Some 30,000 Jews mostly from the Russian Empire reached Ottoman Palestine. The...
Are there visual anomalies that the human eye can see but wouldn't be seen on a picture taken?	I can think of a couple: - Extreme dynamic range. You've probably noticed most cameras can't take a picture containing some items in direct sunlight and others in shadow: either the sunlit areas are blown-out to white, or the shaded objects are solid black. This is because our eyes have a greater dynamic range than mo...	[ "Every normal mammal eye has a scotoma in its field of vision, usually termed its blind spot. This is a location with no photoreceptor cells, where the retinal ganglion cell axons that compose the optic nerve exit the retina. This location is called the optic disc. There is no direct conscious awareness of visual s...
the universe is expanding, but where is the center of the expansion? is that the point in which the big bang happened? and where are we relatively to it?	Every point is expanding away from every other point. There's no "center of the expansion". Imagine an infinitely large rubber sheet, with a 1" grid drawn on it. Now stretch out the rubber sheet so that the grid lines are 2" apart instead, everywhere. Is there a "center" to this stretching? Every point is moving a...	[ "Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding and that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us. Two years later, Georges Lemaître suggests that the expansion can be traced to an initial \"Big Bang\".\n", "Since Georges Lemaître first noted in 1927 that an expanding universe co...
if the universe is infinite but empty outside of the "edges", wouldnt gravity curve space so that if you go straight sooner or later you would end up "inside" of the edges again?	Reading through this thread I'm imagining this discussion taking place 500 years ago and we're all monkeys grunting and banging sticks to explain our individual understanding of this .	[ "If formula_7, the geometry of space is open, i.e., negatively curved like the surface of a saddle. The angles of a triangle sum to less than 180 degrees, and lines that do not meet are never equidistant; they have a point of least distance and otherwise grow apart. The geometry of such a universe is hyperbolic.\n"...
how were the victims of the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs "killed instantly"?	The bomb generated extreme heat, around 3000 degrees Celsius and given that humans are mostly water, they literally steam cooked and exploded at the same time	[ "The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are identified as the cause of Japanese whaling. The two Japanese cities were destroyed by atomic weapons during the final stages of World War II under orders by U.S. President Harry Truman, which killed about 220,000 people. In \"Whale Whores\", the Japanese are prese...
The rate of universal expansion is accelerating to the point that light from other galaxies will someday never reach us. Is it possible that this has already happened to an extent? Are there things forever out of our view? Do we have any way of really knowing the size of the universe?	Yes, there are galaxies from which we will never receive any light at all. (Any galaxy beyond a current distance of about 65 Gly.) There are also galaxies whose light we have already received in the past but which are currently too far away for any signal emitted from us now to reach them some time in the future. (An...	[ "However, because the expansion of the universe is accelerating, it is projected that most galaxies will eventually cross a type of cosmological event horizon where any light they emit past that point will never be able to reach us at any time in the infinite future, because the light never reaches a point where it...
encoders, decoders and transcoders	Encoder - changes data into a certain format or "code". Usually it's to conform to certain standards for displaying the information, such as ASCII being the standard for displaying letters and symbols on computers and other devices, or .mp3 being a common format for audio data. Decoder - changes the encoded data back ...	[ "An encoder is a device, circuit, transducer, software program, algorithm or person that converts information from one format or code to another, for the purpose of standardization, speed or compression.\n", "An autoencoder consisting of an encoder and a decoder is a paradigm for deep learning architectures. An e...
why is it not practical for more countries to send a space shuttle to the moon with all the advances in technology since 1969?	Two reasons. First, getting to the moon is incredibly difficult. It's not like "Yeah, it's hard to figure out but once you crack it it's easy." I mean it's incredibly difficult. The energy requirements are really enormous. You just wouldn't believe. The other, better reason is that the moon's a shithole. There's n...	[ "In the 2000s, the People's Republic of China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, and India have also planned future crewed space missions. China, Russia, Japan, and India have advocated crewed missions to the Moon during the 21st century, while the European Union has...
I'm the illegitamate kid of a English king in the Middle Ages, what's my life like?	I assume you're talking about an acknowledged illegitimate kid? If so, and you're a boy, you'll probably be made a duke or an earl and the king will pay for you're upbringing and you'll have a very comfortable life, including favouritism for a political career if you want one. If you're a girl, you'll probably be ma...	[ "BULLET::::- \"Making a Living in the Middle Ages: the People of Britain, 850–1520\" (London and New Haven, 2002 (Yale UP); London, 2003 (Penguin);), New Haven, 2003 (American paperback, Yale UP), 403 pp.\n", "For detailed information about the middle ages Scott drew on three works by the antiquarian Joseph Strut...
Why does a pistol's muzzle flip upwards when you shoot?	The hot gas does leave the muzzle equally. Handguns are held from the bottom and the recoil goes backwards through the barrel on top, so there's a torque force which wants to rotate it a little. Even if the recoil force translated directly through the hands a...	[ "The muzzle rises primarily because, for most firearms, the centerline of the barrel is above the center of contact between the shooter and the firearm's grip and stock. The reactive forces from the fired bullet and propellant gases exiting the muzzle act directly down the centerline of the barrel. If that line of ...
regarding the current event surrounding the missing malaysian airplane, if family members of its passengers claim that they can still call their missing relative's phone without getting redirected to voice mail, why doesn't the authority try to track down these phone signals?	Phones don't really work that way. When you dial a phone number it's sent to the telco. The telco could choose to send you a ring tone while it's attempting to locate the phone. Unable to find the phone it can just send you to voicemail which is located at the telco not on the phone. Just because you hear ringing i...	[ "Some had speculated that the passengers were still alive but could not answer their cellphones—sometimes known as the \"phantom cellphone theory\". This was based on early reports that family members of Flight 370 passengers heard ringing (as opposed to a busy/off signal) while calling the passengers' phones, thou...
why would a company sell stock and buy it straight back?	Sell when it's high, stockholders may start selling too which can bring down stock price, buy it all back again. Profit.	[ "Stock can be bought and sold privately or on stock exchanges, and such transactions are typically heavily regulated by governments to prevent fraud, protect investors, and benefit the larger economy. As new shares are issued by a company, the ownership and rights of existing shareholders are diluted in return for ...
How much beta/gamma radiation does the core of a star that has undergone supernova emit?	It depends slightly on the type of supernova, and what the core will be made of. However you need to remember a star is much bigger than a nuclear reactor! As such it will emit trillions of times more radiation. To go into a bit more detail, stars don't contain many radioactive materials (the radiation comes from f...	[ "Core collapse supernovae are on average visually fainter than Type Ia supernovae, but the total energy released is far higher. In these type of supernovae, the gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy that compresses and collapses the core, initially producing electron neutrinos from disinte...
I just learned about foreign accent syndrome, when brain damage makes it sound like you have a foreign accent. Do those who suffer from it actually speak with an accent from one they know or is it just the new speech patterns that come with the syndrome making it sound similar to an existing accent?	I'll answer this with the caveat that this is a very rare condition [( < 20 cases worldwide to date)](_URL_0_) and with an etiology that is not perfectly understood. The basic idea is that after a stroke regions of the brain are damaged that result in a changed prosody. Most of the time, the change in speech patter...	[ "Its symptoms result from distorted articulatory planning and coordination processes and although popular news articles commonly attempt to identify the closest regional accent, speakers suffering from foreign accent syndrome acquire neither a specific foreign accent nor any additional fluency in a foreign language...
Is the Out of Africa hypothesis still widely accepted? Are all humans really "african?"	The good fellows over at /r/AskAnthropology gave me some [wonderful answers](_URL_0_)	[ "Alan Templeton (1997) asserted that the study did \"not support the hypothesis of a recent African origin for all of humanity following a split between Africans and non-Africans 100,000 years ago\" and also did \"not support the hypothesis of a recent global replacement of humans coming out of Africa.\"\n", "The...
How do stains work on the molecular level?	I can tell you how bleach works on some types of stains. So some Compounds have color because of the molecule is a conjugated system. Meaning that more than 8 groups of alternating double then single bonds in a row all share electrons. When light hits this conjugated system it absorbs then releases energy that we see ...	[ "Staining is a technique used to enhance contrast in samples, generally at the microscopic level. Stains and dyes are frequently used in histology (the study of tissue under the microscope) and in the medical fields of histopathology, hematology, and cytopathology that focus on the study and diagnoses disease at a ...
What were the extent of Anglo-Saxon and German Saxon Relations until the Carolingian Conquest of Saxony?	To answer briefly, there was a massive amount of contact between the two cultures. Trade continued between them in the early years, and after the Anglo-Saxon conversions were complete numerous missionaries were sent to different parts of Germany, the most famous being Boniface and Willibrord in the eighth century. I ...	[ "In the late 6th century there was another period of Saxon expansion, starting with the capture of Searoburh in 552 by the dynasty that later ruled Wessex, and including entry into the Cotswolds area after the Battle of Deorham (577), though the accuracy of the entries in the \"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle\" for this peri...
What did the British plan to do if the captured New Orleans during the war of 1812?	I've written [pretty extensively](_URL_0_) before on the causes of the war, on [British war aims](_URL_2_) and their [alliance with American Indians](_URL_3_), and how they contrasted with [American goals](_URL_1_). To make a long story short, the British were defending their colonies in Canada and the Caribbean from a...	[ "During the final campaign of the War of 1812, the British sent a force of 11,000 in an attempt to capture New Orleans. Despite great challenges, General Andrew Jackson, with support from the U.S. Navy, successfully cobbled together a force of militia from Louisiana and Mississippi, including free men of color, U.S...
What was the mentality/practice behind conducting electro-shock therapy on homosexuals as a "cure"?	I'm no expert on this, but I'm currently reading [Steve Silberman's Neurotribes](_URL_0_), which is a cultural history of autism. It's not specifically about homosexuality, but it does delve into the use of electro-shock therapy on autistic children, as what's known as aversion therapy. Basically, the psychiatrist give...	[ "In the early 1970s, Ford McBride did research in electroshock therapy while a student at Brigham Young University (BYU); he performed it on volunteer homosexual students to help cure them of ego-dystonic sexual orientation. This was a standard type of aversion therapy used to treat homosexuality, which was conside...
Why didn't the Greeks try to explore west?	Precisely because they were able to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Ancient Greek ships weren't able to handle the open ocean, and it was thought all the way up until Columbus' time that there was nothing but open ocean between Europe and Asia. Sailors and explorers at the time would have wisely figured that ...	[ "The Greeks had to fight off Scythian and Sarmatian (Alan) raiders who prevented them from progressing inland but retained the shores which became the wheat basket of the ancient Greek world. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest the provinces maintained active trading relations with...
who decided the #2 pencil was the one to rule them all?	The #2 is a measure of the "hardness" of the pencil lead (which is actually graphite, but that's a different thread). #1 pencils are very "soft", meaning they wear fast, smudge often, and it's difficult to keep the writing point sharp. Numbers #3 and higher stay nice and sharp, but make lighter markings, which is wh...	[ "Similar to the role of the writers, few pencillers stuck around for more than one or two issues, with exception being Sal Velluto, who, alongside David Michelinie created the book, and pencilled 22 issues of the title. The only other regular artist was Ramon Bernado, who pencilled nine issues in total and pencille...
why can't we just like take a giant telescope and look at the planets that nasa discovered? similar to how our satellites can zoom in on earth.	Satellites take pictures of things from about 100 miles away. A planet that's 40 light years away is 235,100,000,000,000 miles away. So, you'd need a camera that is about one trillion times more powerful than what's on a satellite.	[ "It has been estimated that a telescope with a diameter of 80 meters would be able to spectroscopically analyse Earth-size planets around the forty nearest sun-like stars. As such, this telescope could help in the exploration of exoplanets and extraterrestrial life (because the spectrum from the planets could revea...
why is it that most of us won't think twice about spending £3.00 on a beer but will hesitate and think far too long about buying something that'll actually be useful and last for a long time?	Where the fuck are you getting a beer for £3.00?	[ "The Act has caused some controversy. On one side of the argument is the frustration some British drinkers and many tourists have with the traditional closing time of 23:00, as opposed to the more liberal drinking regulations of continental Europe and further afield. They believe that a liberalisation of the drinki...
why do they market toys and collectibles before their respective movies come out?	It's better to have them released beforehand, so when people see the movie and get excited they can immediately find them on the shelves in stores, than risk a delay and them not getting into stores when demand is highest. Back when Star Wars (the original movie) came out in theatres, the toys weren't ready yet. For C...	[ "Many successful films, television programs, books and sport teams have official merchandise, which often includes related toys. Some notable examples are \"Star Wars\" (a space fantasy franchise) and Arsenal, an English football club.\n", "Toys are big business: the global toy market is estimated at over 80 bill...
Did the USSR have any kind of youth counterculture movement like the USA during the late 1960s?	[Punk in the Soviet Union](_URL_0_) edit: not in the 60's, but might be interesting.	[ "Several factors distinguished the counterculture of the 1960s from the anti-authoritarian movements of previous eras. The post-World War II \"baby boom\" generated an unprecedented number of potentially disaffected young people as prospective participants in a rethinking of the direction of the United States and o...
if the 4th dimension exist does that mean im already dead somewhere/when in time?	The way I like to think about all these dimensions, is that the one before it is a just a slice. So like a point is just a slice of a line, a line is just a slice of a square and a square is just a slice of a cube. Now we're in the 4th dimension, meaning we can fully experience the first three, which we interpret as l...	[ "In the \"Brothers Karamazov\", Dostoevsky's last work completed in 1880, the fourth dimension is used to signify that which is ungraspable to someone with earthly (or three-dimensional) concerns. In the book, Ivan Karamazov laments to his younger brother:\n", "In the first volume of \"In Search of Lost Time\" (o...
How far into North America did the diplomatic/economic sphere of the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican empires extend? For instance, would a Native American living on the Chesapeake have heard of massive, city-building empires to the south?	Connections between what is now the American Southwest and Mesoamerican are so well established that it is almost inappropriate to think of them are entirely separate areas. These links were primarily trade based, not political or military, with products like [tropical birds/feathers](_URL_1_) and [cacao](_URL_4_), as ...	[ "The Aztec Empire arose in the early 15th century and appeared to be on a path to asserting dominance over the Valley of Mexico region not seen since Teotihuacan. Spain was the first European power to contact Mesoamerica, however, and its conquistadores and a large number of native allies conquered the Aztecs.\n", ...
What does "punk" mean in this context?	"Punk" was used to mean listless or generally poor. So this could be taken to mean that he was going to a party that was bland and he wasn't having a good time. Would that make sense in the context? Context is everything. References to this use of the term in North American slang appears in the Oxford English Dictionar...	[ "\"Punk\" explores \"the music, the fashion, the art and the DIY attitude of a subculture of self-described misfits and outcasts.\". Each episode focuses on an individual era of punk, beginning with protopunk in the 1960s up until the present day. \n", "Art punk or avant punk refers to punk rock and post-punk mus...
if i sat in a bathtub of liquor would i get drunk?	Not a doctor. Do know several though that work ER. Since "butt-chugging" of alcohol is a thing I would be more concerned about the alcohol getting in there. Or just burning like hell on your bits. But if it did make it in, the effect is much stronger than if you drink it, which is why these idiots end up in the ER. ...	[ "BULLET::::- Sauna or steam-bath: Medical opinion holds this may be dangerous, as the combination of alcohol and hyperthermia increases the likelihood of dangerous cardiac arrhythmia}abnormal heart rhythms.\n", "Unfortunately, there are the quite a number of cases of unruly drunk patrons who vomit or urinate on t...
difference between enlisted and officers in army and how different are their selection process.	Almost anyone can enlist, and it's basically the entry level to the military. Officers are required to have at least a bachelors degree, and are placed into leadership positions. The [rank](_URL_0_) system is completely different, and they are also sent to different boot camps to be trained in their respective position...	[ "With regard to rank, a U.S. Army officer candidate exists in a gray area. AR 600-20, Army Command Policy, places their rank as outranking all enlisted members of the service and rank directly below all officers. They are not yet officers. They are enlisted soldiers who lose all rank status when reporting to the co...
why is it that links are repeated on different pages in reddit?	Going to the next page asks reddit to give you the 25 links following the link that's at the bottom of your current page. But the rankings of links are constantly changing - if that link has moved up the reddit rankings since you loaded your old page, it can jump over links you've already seen, and you'll get them agai...	[ "This phenomenon also occurs in the Internet. Counting the number of links to a page can give us a general estimate of its prominence on the Web, but a page with very few incoming links may also be prominent, if two of these links come from the home pages of sites like Yahoo!, Google, or MSN. Because these sites ar...
if spider webs are one of the most stiky things we know, why do spiders dont get stuck if they get tangled in them? and what aobout nest like spider webs?	Spider webs are not completely sticky. Some of the "silk" (sorry, don't know the name in English), is sticky, but spider can produce some that are not. So, when a bug come in contact with the web, it get glued on it, but the spider, who know where it put the sticky or non sticky silk, can move around and stay on the ...	[ "As these spiders live in constant proximity to humans, they are not usually aggressive and will even let a human hand approach their web. Like any other spider, however, they are afraid of bigger foes, and, in most cases, will retreat behind an obstacle (such as a dried leaf or prey remains) upon perceiving more t...
Can someone explain to me what ricci flatness is?	A manifold is Ricci-flat if the Ricci curvature tensor is zero. This roughly means that small cubes whose edges are geodesics have the same volume as cubes in the corresponding Euclidean space of the same dimension. But the geodesic cube itself may be twisted or curled into a different shape. (Think of distorting a sph...	[ "In mathematics, Ricci-flat manifolds are Riemannian manifolds whose Ricci curvature vanishes. Ricci-flat manifolds are special cases of Einstein manifolds, where the cosmological constant need not vanish.\n", "Richard Strier additionally notes the complexity of the word \"flatter\" not only within Sonnet 87 but ...
What will replace integrated circuits once they reach the smallest size possible?	[Three-dimensional integrated circuit](_URL_0_)	[ "IEDM papers from Intel in 2002, 2004, and 2005 illustrate the industry trend that the transistor sizes can no longer scale along with the rest of the feature dimensions (gate width only changed from 220 nm to 210 nm going from 90 nm to 65 nm technologies). However, the interconnects (metal and poly pitch) continue...
Did any significant amount of early-ish American settlers return to Europe?	In the seventeenth century it was pretty common for people to settle in the New World for a few years to fish, trap, or log before returning to Europe. Merchants in particular would often only stay in the New World long enough to set up agents or to collect enough goods to fuel their European operations. Newfoundland i...	[ "The first permanent European settlers arrived in the early 19th century. People came from the Bahamas to South Florida and the Keys to hunt for treasure from the ships that ran aground on the treacherous Great Florida Reef. Some accepted Spanish land offers along the Miami River. At about the same time, the Semino...
Why do frozen foods thaw faster on granite countertops?	Granite has a very high thermal mass. This means that it takes a lot of heat to change its temperature - much more than a laminate counter top. So, you put some cold food on the granite. The heat transfers from the granite to the food, but since it has so much thermal capacity, its temperature does not decrease as q...	[ "Due to its properties of rapid cooling/melting, the small size of granular ice is used widely by the process industries, particularly food manufacture for cooling products made in mixers or bowl choppers such as dough or sausage meat, here it is mostly known as \"fine ice\" or \"micro ice\". It is also used in lab...
- what does it mean when a file is encrypted?	Encryption is mixing up the message, such that it can only be made readable again with a key. To explain what hackers do, It might be easier to use an example: Let's say you want to send a book to a friend on the other side of the country, but you don't want anyone else to see it. You could stick the book in a box, an...	[ "File level encryption encrypts only the file contents. This leaves important information such as file name, size and timestamps unencrypted. Parts of the content of the file can be reconstructed from other locations, such as temporary files, swap file and deleted, unencrypted copies.\n", "The process of encrypti...
When NSDAP wanted to replace Roman law with German law, what did they meant?	A little while ago, there we had [a thread](_URL_0_) concerning this rather obscure topic. Perhaps you want to take a look at it.	[ "The statute drew legal influence from previous measures, including those undertaken by the Holy Roman Empire and Prussian states. It was amended several times. The Nazis broadened the law in 1935; in the prosecutions that followed, thousands died in concentration camps as a widespread social persecution of homosex...
Were left leaning student beatnik types any less hostile towards the Soviet Union in 1960s than most "normal" Americans at the time?	[Students for a Democratic Society](_URL_0_) was one of the most popular and powerful of the "New Left" student groups. SDS was founded in 1960, and permitted Communist party members within their ranks (this was a change from previous leftist student groups). SDS campaigned against the Cold War and militarism. They bec...	[ "As for the PPR on American side, some examples are also present. Between 1946 to 1956, there was a censorship campaign against schools and libraries in an effort to remove literature, described as 'radical'. The political move was explained through the danger that such literature was posing to the American democra...
How come the Abwehr were so inefficient and seemingly completely useless in gathering intelligence?	Look up what they did in the Netherlands. They were very effective in gathering intelligence before the invasion, trained, supplied and provided information for the Brandenburgers who took vital bridges during the Invasion of May 1940, and managed to capture almost all Allied spies active in the Netherlands between 194...	[ "\"Abwehr II\" was a section of German Intelligence which amongst its other duties was tasked with seeking out the disaffected and anti-authoritarian in opposing nations to give arms, assistance, or whatever means to increase disharmony. Following the successful 1940 campaign to defeat France, and the capture of Br...
by what method does google translate detect the language of input texts?	Matching words with words it knows from various languages. Also what characters you input. Like, if you were to input the Kanji lettering for the term "Horse stuffer", it'd detect that it was Kanji first, then what words it is, then makes the connection. Or for other roman lettering, it just knows what words belong to...	[ "Google Translate can translate multiple forms of text and media, including text, speech, images, sites, or real-time video, from one language to another. It supports over 100 languages at various levels and , serves over 500 million people daily. For some languages, Google Translate can pronounce translated text, ...

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.