Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
Do we have any evidence of extrasolar asteroid belts or comets?	We don't have the resolution yet to observe any of these directly. What has been seen are disks of debris around several stars, and the ALMA array just delivered a really spectacular example (_URL_0_). So there's every expectation that things like asteroid belts and cometary clouds are the norm.	[ "Main-belt comets (MBCs) are bodies orbiting within the asteroid belt that have shown comet-like activity during part of their orbit. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory defines a main-belt asteroid as an asteroid with a semi-major axis (average distance from the Sun) of more than 2 AU but less than 3.2 AU, and a perihel...
why would someone have a caymen or offshore bank account if they weren't doing something illegal or had something to hide?	Well they don't tax in the same way. Keeping money offshore isn't illegal, it's also extremely secure.	[ "Offshore companies are legal, said Panamanian lawyer and former controller of the republic Alvin Weeden; illegality arises when they are used for money laundering, arms smuggling, terrorism, or tax evasion.\n", "Gigaba apparently told state security agents that the account was opened by one of his officials with...
How did weapons/tools made from meteoric iron compare to those made from smelted ore?	You're asking historians about metal smithing ? ;P Who knows, maybe one will have a better answer. But here goes. Meteoric iron has most of the volatiles cooked out of it, and a very high amount of nickel in it. This is generally expensive to do even today as the energy requirements are fairly high. So here's a des...	[ "Before the advent of iron smelting, meteoric iron was the only source of iron metal apart from minor amounts of telluric iron. Meteoric iron was already used before the beginning of the iron age to make cultural objects, tools and weapons.\n", "The place and time for the discovery of iron smelting is not known, ...
how can a member of the commonwealth be considered independent but still have a constitutional monarchy with queen elizabeth ii as the head of state?	You are thinking about this all the wrong way. She is not the “queen of the Commonwealth”. She is the queen of the United Kingdom. But she’s also the queen of Canada, which is a completely separate job. Then, she’s also the queen of Australia, which is a completely separate job from the first 2. So, each country that...	[ "Since succeeding her father on 6 February 1952, Queen Elizabeth II has been head of state of 32 different independent states; currently, there are 16 states, called Commonwealth realms. Within the Westminster system in each realm, the Queen's government is headed by a prime minister. Appointment and dismissal of p...
how ice does this in the freezer sometimes	Water near top of cube freezes first. Lets say it all freezes except one small hole at the top, so you have a thin layer of ice with a hole in it floating on the top of the cube. As water continues to freeze under the surface, it expands out the hole in the top and causes the spike to grow. _URL_0_	[ "Small freezer-unit machines sit inside the freezer (or the freezer part of the refrigerator) and operate similar to a food processor in slow-motion. Every few seconds, the paddles stir the mixture to prevent formation of large ice crystals. When the ice cream sufficiently freezes, the paddles automatically stop ro...
how much would educated medieval Europeans, have known about the history of the world before Christ?	When it comes to medieval conceptions of history, a lot would have been founded on the Bible: the Creation was the starting point of many medieval chronicles, and they moved through the biblical patriarchs such as Abraham to the historical present. Works such as Eusebius' Chronicon were widely quoted by medieval chroni...	[ "In 708, some monks at Hexham accused Bede of having committed heresy in his work \"De Temporibus\". The standard theological view of world history at the time was known as the Six Ages of the World; in his book, Bede calculated the age of the world for himself, rather than accepting the authority of Isidore of Sev...
information retention when asleep	Omelette du fromage?	[ "Research evidence suggests that sleep is involved in the acquisition, maintenance and retrieval of memories as well as memory consolidation. Subsequently, sleep deprivation has been shown to affect both working memory and long-term memory processes.\n", "One way sleep is involved in the creation of long-term mem...
Do flies and other seemingly hyper-fast insects perceive time differently than humans?	You're looking, in part, for the [flicker fusion threshold](_URL_2_) of non-human species. Pigeons, for example, can independently perceive flashes at about 100Hz, which is a hell of a lot faster than humans. Dragonflies may, based on the potential information content of the neural signaling, respond [quite a bit fas...	[ "Flies have rapid reflexes that aid their escape from predators but their sustained flight speeds are low. Dolichopodid flies in the genus \"Condylostylus\" respond in less than 5 milliseconds to camera flashes by taking flight. In the past, the deer bot fly, \"Cephenemyia\", was claimed to be one of the fastest in...
Modern Languages, when did they appear?	hi! there's room for examples of more languages, but you'll previous responses in the this section of the FAQ* [How far back could I go and still communicate?](_URL_0_) *see the link on the sidebar or the wiki tab	[ "Vernaculars acquired the status of official languages through metalinguistic publications. Between 1437 and 1586, the first grammar of Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German and English were written, though not always immediately published. It is to be understood that the first vestiges of those languages precede...
my glasses fog up when i drink hot coffee on a cold day, but why don't my eyeballs fog up when i take off my glasses?	It's not just temperature difference that matters, the surface still needs to be fairly cold otherwise the water vapor won't condensate on the surface. I don't know what sort of temperature's you'd need though, so this may not actually make a difference in the case of your eyes. The main reason though, is that your ey...	[ "Masks tend to fog when warm humid exhaled air condenses on the cold inside of the faceplate. To prevent fogging many divers spit into the dry mask before use, spread the saliva around the inside of the glass and rinse it out with a little water. The saliva residue allows condensation to wet the glass and form a co...
why do we have the tendency to fall when you look down from height?	Vertigo--you lose your balance.	[ "There are logical biological causes of fear of falling. Firstly, there is the innate so-called \"cliff edge phenomenon\", whereby even toddlers, as well as many animals, avoid large drops, even without having previously had a bad experience.\n", "Most people experience a degree of natural fear when exposed to he...
i purchase controlling share (51%) of publicly traded company. what happens next?	You get voting rights at annual shareholder meetings. Since you have more shares than anyone else combined, you win any votes. You have to follow the company bylaws though, so what you can do is limited.	[ "If all the shareholders of the company choose to exercise their stock option, the company's outstanding shares would increase by 100 million. The market capitalization of the stock would increase to $60 billion (previous market capitalization + cash received from owners of rights converting their rights to shares)...
Was the rape of Germany in the wake of WWII the largest known case of mass rape/brutalization in human history? Have any such events as brutal as this occurred at the hands of an occupying army?	One very brutal occupation of a city was the "Rape of Nanking". After Japanese captured the city in 1937 the Japanese Imperial Army spent weeks killing between 200,000 and 300,000 people and raping between 20,000-80,000 women. I do not know how large the "Rape of Germany" was and do not know any significant statistics ...	[ "Germany was the site of mass rape by invading Allied forces, most notably the Soviet army, during the latter part of World War II, with the estimated number of victims ranging from tens of thousands to as many as two million.\n", "Acts of mass rape and other war crimes were committed by Soviet troops during the ...
How environmentally damaging is the production of a Hybrid car as opposed to a standard gas car?	According to the Argonne National Laboratory's GREET model, [they're about the same, for the most part](_URL_0_) (see page 73 for the graph detailing total energy use). There is one aspect according to the graphs where hybrids fare worse, and that is SOx emissions, chiefly due to the batteries.	[ "The hybrid vehicle typically achieves greater fuel economy and lower emissions than conventional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), resulting in fewer emissions being generated. These savings are primarily achieved by three elements of a typical hybrid design:\n", "According to a 2009 study by The Nati...
why would anyone want to buy berkshire hathaway's stock if they never pay dividends?	Instead of paying dividends, the company reinvests in itself, so therefore you would expect stock prices to rise faster than a company that does pay dividends. So the value you get from the stock is the increase in the value of the shares you own over time, instead of a cash payout of dividends. As mentioned, Berkshire...	[ "Berkshire Hathaway has never split its Class A shares because of management's desire to attract long-term investors as opposed to short-term speculators. However, Berkshire Hathaway created a Class B stock, with a per-share value originally kept (by specific management rules) close to of that of the original share...
Since there's roughly 5 times as much dark matter as regular matter, why doesn't this mess up orbits or satellite trajectories?	The dark matter is very dilute, and so does not make an appreciable change in the gravitational influence of the Sun and planets on each other. You can read a description [here](_URL_0_).	[ "and a Milky Way mass of . These ratios are one of the main arguments in favor of the presence of large amounts of dark matter in the universe; if dark matter did not exist, a much smaller mass-to-light ratios would be expected.\n", "Another important result from the HDF was the very small number of foreground st...
Why don't I feel pain in my sleep?	"Pain" has two components: nocioception and conscious awareness. The prior occurs during sleep, but not the latter. Nocioception is the physical or chemical stimulation of the pain receptor neurons ("nocioceptors") due to an aversive stimulus and the transducing and encoding of these signals. These signals from the re...	[ "BULLET::::- “Small-fibre polyneuropathy can interfere with the ability to feel pain or changes in temperature”. For some individuals, neuropathic pain can be more prominent at night, which makes it harder to sleep and thus rest and recovery in order to rehabilitate nerve damage can be difficult. This may be a resu...
Is there more to weight loss than eating less calories than you use?	The complexity comes in the fact that "calories in" and "calories out" aren't as simple as they sound. Not every person digests food exactly the same way, which lends some fuzziness to "calories in," and human basal metabolism can be surprisingly variable, which makes "calories out" hard to estimate accurately as well....	[ "A commonly asserted \"rule\" for weight gain or loss is based on the assumption that one pound of human fat tissue contains about 3,500 kilocalories (often simply called \"calories\" in the field of nutrition). Thus, eating 500 fewer calories than one needs per day should result in a loss of about a pound per week...
Taking a rubik's cube apart and re-assembeling in random order, what is the likelyhood that it would be could be solved?	What you are doing is considering all the permutation on the cubes of your Rubik's cube (with the constraint that a corner must go to a corner and so on ...). And you want to know if you can come back to the initial position using only legal moves You can use group theory to do that. What you are exactly doing is loo...	[ "This argument was not improved upon for many years. Also, it is not a constructive proof: it does not exhibit a concrete position that needs this many moves. It was conjectured that the so-called superflip would be a position that is very difficult. A Rubik's Cube is in the superflip pattern when each corner piece...
Is this true? Did Britain really replace India's education system and caused the decline of social values?	This image does not appear to be accurate. I went and tried to look up the Parliamentary record for February 1835 and it seems that [Parliament was in fact not in session on the 2nd February 1835](_URL_2_). On the FAQs for the Parliamentary Archives [the question of Lord Macaulay's alleged speech is actually dealt with...	[ "The literary critic and historian Gauri Viswanathan identifies two major changes to the relation between Britain and India that came about as the result of the act: first, the assumption by the British of a new responsibility for Indian people's education; and, second, the relaxation of controls on missionary acti...
why oled display, which are so successful on mobile and tv markets, is having a hard transition into laptop market?	You'll note that OLED televisions are extremely more expensive than non-OLED. This isn't a big deal on tiny phone displays, but there's not a market for that kind of markup on laptops.	[ "With the arrival of Quantum Dot LCD displays, LG released an article describing why they still see OLED as the future of Television displays: \"In fact, OLED technology is the technology that is so much advanced that it should not be compared to an LCD based QD. Hence, even though LG already has the technology to ...
why are keyboards arranged in a slanted grid instead of a standard grid?	It is a holdover form mechanical typewriters. If you look at the keys you might notice, that the center of each key is fixed so that no two keys have their center in the same horizontal position. This is important because mechanical typewriters used to have levers that reached up from the keys forward to then angle t...	[ "There are a number of different arrangements of alphabetic, numeric, and punctuation symbols on keys. These different keyboard layouts arise mainly because different people need easy access to different symbols, either because they are inputting text in different languages, or because they need a specialized layou...
Leon Trotsky. Why did he do what he did?	I'm not a historian or expert by any stretch of the imagination, but what I know about Trotsky's early life comes from his autobiography (available online [here](_URL_0_)) entitled "My Life". I'm going to copy-paste some of [Chapter 6: The Break](_URL_1_) to get to the jist of your question, but I'd suggest reading t...	[ "Lenin said in 1921 that Trotsky was \"in love with organisation,\" but in working politics, \"he has not got a clue.\" Swain explains the paradox by arguing that Trotsky was not good at teamwork; he was a loner who had mostly worked as a journalist, not as a professional revolutionary like the others.\n", "After...
child porn and internet	Yes. In both situations. Federal law for pornography is 18 nationwide in the USA. Consent is to actually physically sleep with said person, which generally isn't possible across state lines.	[ "Child pornography is prevalent on the international, national, regional, and local levels. The differences of production, distribution, producers, evasion techniques, and status are explained in figure one. Child pornography is a multibillion-dollar enterprise that includes photographs, books, audiotapes, videos a...
Does slavery/forced labor leave an archaeological footprint?	There is a very extensive literature on the archaeology of plantation slavery in the Americas, which generally leaves a considerable trace given the facilities required to house plantation slaves. Besides the facilities (and how slave housing compares to the housing of free people), burials are probably the best indi...	[ "A common ethical issue in modern archaeology has been the treatment of human remains found during excavations, especially those that represent the ancestors of aboriginal groups in the New World or the remains of other minority races elsewhere. Where previously sites of great significance to native peoples could b...
how did live tv broadcasts work before the invention of digital cameras?	Old TV cameras used a specialized form of cathode ray tube called a video tube to scan the image and convert it into an electrical signal, which could then be broadcast and converted back into video by an image-forming cathode ray tube in the viewer's television. _URL_0_	[ "Videotape technology was still in its infancy when Australian television was launched in 1956 and video recorders did not become widely available to Australian TV stations until the 1960s. For the first few years, the only available method for capturing TV programs was the kinescope process, in which a fixed movie...
Why does an anechoic chamber have such an adverse affect on people?	It's a form of [sensory deprivation](_URL_0_) - you're missing all the background sounds you subconsciously process. With no input to process your brain doesn't turn off, rather it digs up memories & images and plays with them instead. [Nice video.](_URL_1_)	[ "In other words, the system has a severely censored and distorted view of reality from biased and filtering sensory organs which displaces understanding of the actual real-world which pales and tends to disappear. This displacement creates a type of sensory deprivation and a kind of hallucinogenic effect on those i...
how do hospitals in the u.s. expect their patients to pay their bills? why are the bills so outrageous?	They expect you to have insurance (which you're required to have as of the end of this month). They also expect you to take everything you read on the Internet with a grain of salt and either understand the full story behind it and the actual outcome.	[ "In the United States, some Medicare patients have spent several days \"at\" the hospital, but never officially being \"in\" the hospital, which results in unexpected bills and makes them ineligible for Medicare payment for some future necessary services, especially skilled nursing care.\n", "This means that peop...
When did English language change from calling someone's age "Six and Twenty" to "Twenty Six"?	I don't know as to when/how this change may have occured, but I do know that in German this is how numbers such as '26', '51', '36', etc. are phrased. IIRC '26' in German is 'sechundzwanzig' (sech-und-zwanzig) which in English is literally 'six-and-twenty'. So this phrasing could be a hold-out from the English language...	[ "The issue of age was first addressed with the critical period hypothesis. The strict version of this hypothesis states that there is a cut-off age at about 12, after which learners lose the ability to fully learn a language. However, the exact age marking the end of the critical period is debated, and ranges from ...
we often see inter-species friendships in the wild, but it's always seems to be 2 animals. why aren't there entire groups hanging out together?	TL;DR: law of the jungle You are talking about a Timon-Pumbaa-Simba kind of group, with 3 or more species involved? Starting from the begin, you would need 2 individuals A and B that finds each other to start with, that are already in a stable friendly relationship meaning all basic needs (e.g. eating, drinking, sleep...	[ "Mutualism can contribute to the formation of interspecies friendships because it involves a pair of organisms experiencing mutually beneficial exchanges with each other which may lead to a long-lasting bond. The mutualistic relationship observed between coyotes and badgers after hunting ground squirrels together i...
If an object with mass (theoretically) attains infinite mass at light speed, how can a neutrino (theoretically) travel faster?	So the notion that an object gains mass as it travels faster is largely considered to be an outdated way of teaching the subject as it tends to lead to a lot of confusion. Specifically, while Newton defined momentum p=mv, relativistic momentum is defined to be p=mv/(1-(v/c)^2 )^1/2 . So if you take that denominator tog...	[ "It was assumed for a long time in the framework of the standard model of particle physics, that neutrinos are massless. Thus they should travel at exactly the speed of light according to special relativity. However, since the discovery of neutrino oscillations it is assumed that they possess some small amount of m...
why is it not safe to drink tap water when it's not clean, but perfectly okay to shower in it?	Your skin is remarkably resilient and meant to protect you. Some things are too large to pass through your skin into your blood, but when you eat them they can pass through your intestines (their job is to absorb stuff so they’re good at it). This happens especially with heavy metals like lead or mercury. You can hold ...	[ "Tap water remains susceptible to biological or chemical contamination. In the event of contamination deemed dangerous to public health, government officials typically issue an advisory regarding water consumption. In the case of biological contamination, residents are usually advised to boil their water before con...
When starving or extremely hungry, does the human body do anything to make "bad" tasting food more tolerable?	Absolutely. There are [stories](_URL_0_) of people lost at sea and they have described turtle blood as tasting like "the elixir of life" and getting cravings for fish eyes for the liquid and vitamins.	[ "Taste aversion is fairly common in humans. When humans eat bad food (e.g., spoiled meat) and get sick, they may find that food aversive until extinction occurs, if ever. Also, as in nature, a food does not have to \"cause\" the sickness for it to become aversive. A human who eats sushi for the first time and who h...
is ice in the center of an ice cube different from the ice on the outside of an ice cube?	Ice cubes don’t actually freeze the way you’re imagining. It’s not like an onion, where it freezes inward layer by layer. There’s a lot more flexibility in the freezing process as water and ice coexist and transform into one another. As the center-most water freezes, it will in fact exert a pressure on the ‘outer’ shel...	[ "An ice cube is a small piece of ice, which is rectangular as viewed from above and trapezoidal as viewed from the side. Ice cubes are products of mechanical refrigeration and are usually produced to cool beverages. They may be produced at home in a freezer with an ice tray or in an automated ice-making accessory. ...
How does the human body handle getting new antibodies from vaccines?	You do not have a set amount of free antibodies in circulation. Your white blood cells are capable of ramping up production of specific antibodies in response to specific exposures, but this does not dilute out other antibodies. Generally speaking, the production of one antibody also does not hamper the production of...	[ "The immune system recognizes viruses when antigens on the surfaces of virus particles bind to immune receptors that are specific for these antigens. This is similar to a lock recognizing a key. After an infection, the body produces many more of these virus-specific immune receptors, which prevent re-infection by t...
Do you recognize these people?	The "military uniform" appears to me to be a Knights Templar uniform of the Free and Accepted Masons. This would make it a fraternal uniform rather than a military one.	[ "The identity of the person honoured in the specific name is not given in Günther's description but it is thought likely to be the Scottish missionary and explorer Dr. David Livingstone (1813-1873) who was the first known European to discover Lake Malawi in 1856, collecting the first specimens of fishes from the La...
what causes libido, and why does it vary so much between people?	Doctor here and I want to clarify a point of confusion in a lot of these threads. Libido and the ability to have an erection are two different things. I have plenty of male patients who cannot achieve an erection but have tons of libido. The opposite is also true. Many men can have erections but lack interest in se...	[ "Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act upon the nucleus accumbens (primarily testosterone and dopamine, respect...
If you visited a random star, how could you quickly determine if there are planets orbiting it?	With today's science, you would have to photograph the system, while filtering out the star. Repeat every few hours, comparing photographs. Anything that moved is likely a planet. Add 200 years to technology and your computer would automatically filter out all known background stars... Leaving planets.	[ "Planets orbiting around one of the stars in binary systems are more easily detectable, as they cause perturbations in the orbits of stars themselves. However, with this method, follow-up observations are needed to determine which star the planet orbits around.\n", "The probability of a random planetary orbit bei...
What was the first animal recorded to go extinct?	Do you mean from a written history point of view of a recorded point of view? As an anthropology major I work with the "oldest known subject" of a species often. We have a lot of knowledge of species which have been extinct for a very long time, but we never give a very concrete "end" date to those species. We li...	[ "Many of the extinct animals were subspecies or color morphs such as the pied raven or disputed species like the tarpan or the gravenche. Most extinctions occurred in prehistoric times. The species gone extinct in the last 500 years were mostly from peripheral regions of Europe like the Caucasus, the North Atlantic...
if i cannot fall asleep, but i'm laying in bed: comfortable and relaxed, is my body still getting a healthy amount of recharging time?	Your body does, your brain doesn't. After some nights you end up going crazy. It happened to me, it was pretty serious.	[ "Some treatments involve lifestyle changes, such as avoiding alcohol or muscle relaxants, losing weight, and quitting smoking. Many people benefit from sleeping at a 30-degree elevation of the upper body or higher, as if in a recliner. Doing so helps prevent the gravitational collapse of the airway. Lateral positio...
Are several copies of the same memory stored in the brain?	Memories, contrary to popular belief, does not work like a video record. There are, in effect, no "copies" of memories at all. The brain is a cluster of neurons, roughly 100-150 billion neurons, or that is the estimate (to put that into context, that is a higher number than there are stars in our milky way). Memory, o...	[ "The brain does not store memories in one unified structure, as might be seen in a computer's hard disk drive. Instead, different types of memory are stored in different regions of the brain. Long-term memory is typically divided up into two major headings: explicit memory and implicit memory.\n", "Memories can b...
what is going on when we pop our backs?	Releasing built up pressure bubbles from strain or stress from joints in your back. Same thing thing when you pop (crack) your fingers.	[ "BULLET::::- \"Pop Turns:\" The lead \"pops\" the follow in a rock - step motion, and can then use his right arm to start the follow spinning (also letting go of the left hand), or step down on 3 to initiate rotation together which then often leads to a Throwout move.\n", "\"Pushing Buttons\" features a heavier s...
What prevents bighorn sheep from constantly getting (fatal) concussions? And could we adapt this anatomy for improvement of football helmets?	Bighorn sheep slam their horns together during mating season and they do not drop to the ground. They have unique adaptations that allow them to slam or bang their horns together and not drop dead. Concussions in humans are caused by events that make the brain hit the inside of the skull. This is why a human get concus...	[ "Helmets can be used to decrease closed-head injuries acquired during athletic activities, and are considered necessary for sports such as American \"tackle\" football, where frequent head impacts are a normal part of the game. However, recent studies have questioned the effectiveness of even American football helm...
eli 5: why do cells all look 2d under the microscope , how or when can you see a 3d cell?	Try Confocal laser scanning microscopy.	[ "Such cells are tuned to different frequencies and orientations, even with different phase relationships, possibly for extracting disparity (depth) information and to attribute depth to detected lines and edges. This may result in a 3D 'wire-frame' representation as used in computer graphics. The fact that input fr...
When did English supplant Latin as the language of science and mathematics?	For those who might answer, do you mean in England, or the world as a whole?	[ "Although Latin was once the universal academic language in Europe, academics no longer use it for writing papers or daily discourse. Furthermore, the Roman Catholic Church, as part of the Vatican II reforms in the 1960s, modernized its religious liturgies to allow less use of Latin and more use of vernacular langu...
does everyone hear their own accent and just consider it normal, or is there a universal set sound for people hearing those who sound the same?	Accents are all about perspective. Anyone who speaks a certain way that is from their point of view "normal" and "default." You too have an accent but just consider it normal yourself.	[ "It can be noted that use of language such as certain accents may result in an individual experiencing prejudice. For example, some accents hold more prestige than others depending on the cultural context. However, with so many dialects, it can be difficult to determine which is the most preferable. The best answer...
I am an Englishman. Its the middle of WW1. What is a job I can have, and maintain, that doesn't earn me public scorn for not enlisting?	Mining, agriculture, ship building - industry didn't stop for war, although the introduction of [women into British industry](_URL_1_) did allow for more men to go and fight. Coal mining was grossly inefficient at this point (still done only with a manual pick and bucket) so a high complement of manpower was required t...	[ "BULLET::::- Every soldier during his three years of basic army service will learn a manual trade, and will be given an opportunity, while in the army, to spend much of his last year at home working in that trade.\n", "Following World War I, soldiers who had previously worked on irrigation activities along the Mu...
how the brain combines the information it receives from both of our eyes to form a single "instance" of the world? how it knows which information is seen from single/both eye/s and it combines it to see every thing only once?	It’s probably a too complex and still not a fully understood concept of neurosensorics. For one, the brain does not “remove” any duplicate images, these are effectively used for spatial perception. Also, some of the neurons in the optic nerve change their position at the chiasma opticum and follow to the other sid...	[ "The information about the image via the eye is transmitted to the brain along the optic nerve. Different populations of ganglion cells in the retina send information to the brain through the optic nerve. About 90% of the axons in the optic nerve go to the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus. These axons ori...
what does it mean when hawks and eagles have better eyesight than us? does it mean they can literally zoom in on creatures on the ground, or do they just see things in a higher resolution?	They can see more detail- they have the equivalent of 20/2 vision, they can see clearly at 20 feet away what a normal human needs to be at 2 feet away to see clearly. They also see a broader spectrum of light than humans, so they can see more colors than we can.	[ "In addition to eagles, birds such as hawks, falcons, and robins have extraordinary vision which enable them to gather their prey easily. Their eyes are stated to be larger in size than their brain, by weight. Color vision with resolution and clarity are the most prominent features of eagles' eyes, hence sharp-sigh...
What is the physiologic difference between whispering and speaking in your regular voice?	Take one hand and put it on your neck, palm on the front of your throat. Now, say "I am speaking louuuuuuuudly." You'll feel a vibration on your hand. That's your vocal cords flapping around in your neck. Try it again, but whisper. Where before you were pronouncing vowels with your vocal cords, now your vocal cords are...	[ "Whispering is an unvoiced mode of phonation in which the vocal folds (vocal cords) are abducted so that they do not vibrate; air passes between the arytenoid cartilages to create audible turbulence during speech. Supralaryngeal articulation remains the same as in normal speech.\n", "Whispering is generally used ...
what about canned spaghetti makes it taste so different?	So the big ingredient differences between [chef boyardee spaghetti sauce](_URL_1_) and [Prego spaghetti sauce](_URL_0_) are (references to all in one products are things like spaghetti and meatballs or ravioli that include pasta, sauce and meat or cheese in a single product): Ingredient\|Chef Boyardee\|Prego\|Impact :--\|...	[ "In areas and situations where in-season, perfectly ripe tomatoes are not available, canned tomatoes are often used as an alternative to prepare dishes such as tomato sauce or pizza. The top uses for canned tomatoes are Italian or pasta sauces, chili, soup, pizza, stew, casseroles, and Mexican cuisine.\n", "Spagh...
when people do coke in movies, what are they actually sniffing?	Lots of different recipes. For snorting they use powdered lactose, or a vitamin b power if there are lactose intolerance issues. Also, if the actor is using a straw or something to snort it, they will coat the inside with Vaseline so very little will actually go in the nose. Snorting anything will cause congest...	[ "BULLET::::- \"Sniff\": A shady looking, paranoid individual whose nose is always covered in white powder (the implication being that it is cocaine, but this is never stated), and who sniffs and snorts anything he sees.\n", "The 1978 film Up In Smoke contains a memorable scene where a woman snorts Ajax after mist...
why do we have tonsils?	Tonsils are lymphatic tissue, meaning tissue that is responsible for capturing, sequestering, and destroying infectious agents. The places in your body that have the most lymphatic tissue are the places that are the easiest to infect through. Your mouth is what you use to eat and breathe, daily, and so your tonsils are...	[ "Tonsils are part of the first line of defense in the mouth as they create white blood cells in order to fight diseases, bacteria and viruses that enter through the mouth. Due to being exposed numerous amounts of things that enter the mouth, tonsils can become infected, which is called tonsillitis. This occurs main...
how is it that water increases friction in small amounts, but decreases it in large amounts?	Water is both cohesive (it sticks to itself) and adhesive (it sticks to other things) but these effects are relatively weak and more noticeable on a small scale. When you lick your finger to turn a page, there is a thin layer of molecules which is adhering to your finger and the page, making them sticky. When you hav...	[ "This simple explanation is quite popular. There is, however, no evidence to show that increased pressure means increased friction and unless this is so, there can be no effect. Even if it does exist it must be quite insignificant compared with the gyroscopic and Coriolis drifts.\n", ", a single study has demonst...
How do man made satellites avoid damage from the solar wind?	First of all, most of the radiation and charged particles in the solar wind are deflected by Earth's magnetic field so they don't reach the satellite. For the stuff that still gets through, satellites are shielded with several layers of materials. I don't know all the techniques but for instance the most satellites hav...	[ "BULLET::::- Space weather. All man-made satellite systems are subject to space weather and space debris threats. For example, a solar super-storm event composed of an extremely large and fast earthbound Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) could disable the geosynchronous or GPS satellite elements of WAAS.\n", "Solar cel...
how did the first explorers navigate the oceans?	Actually, stars were used to navigate in nearly every regard, including distance and location on sea. This is why stars and constellations have been categorized and named. The North Star was also very important as it was the “north” of traveling. Compasses, once invented, assisted this use of stars too. Stars were a l...	[ "On \"Cartographer\", we imagine that these explorers were from the tiny island of Numa in the Southern Indian Ocean. As advanced seafarers, they navigated every corner of the Earth. We have created a language unique to them and tell stories through song that describe their creation, discoveries and ultimate demise...
why trees produce different shapes/sizes of leaves.	A thing to remember about evolution (that I often see is either forgotten or never realized) is that so long as a trait works well enough, and doesn't kill an organism or weaken it to the point of applying direct evolutionary pressure, it will remain. Leaves are a balance between energy expenditure (to grow) and energ...	[ "The shape and structure of leaves vary considerably from species to species of plant, depending largely on their adaptation to climate and available light, but also to other factors such as grazing animals (such as deer), available nutrients, and ecological competition from other plants. Considerable changes in le...
Why is CO2 measured in tons if it is a gas?	Tonnes are a unit of mass. Gasses are matter and have mass. The mass of a certain amount is a constant. It will have the same mass at any temperature/pressure. The same cannot be said of volume, which deviates based on temperature and pressure.	[ "A kilogram of carbon, whether contained in petrol, diesel, kerosene, or any other hydrocarbon fuel in a vehicle, leads to approximately 3.6 kg of CO emissions. Due to the carbon content of gasoline, its combustion emits 2.3 kg/l (19.4 lb/US gal) of CO; since diesel fuel is more energy dense per unit volume, diesel...
How did the Medici maintain control over Florence's electoral system during the 15th century?	Although some public offices were indeed assigned by lot, when these weren't ad-hoc positions like special judges or ambassadors they tended to be rapidly rotating, with tenures of around a month. Candidates were nonetheless pre-selected by the leaders of the various Arti; and here lay the power and influence of Cosi...	[ "Florence had been under informal Medici control since 1434. During the War of the League of Cognac, the Florentines rebelled against the Medici, then represented by Ippolito de' Medici, and restored the freedom of their republic. Following the Republic's surrender in the Siege of Florence, Charles V, Holy Roman Em...
How sure are historians about the US/CIA involvement of the 1973 coup in Chile?	I think what Devine is getting at is there is a difference between being directly behind a coup calling the shots and being in support of a coup and some of the events leading up to it. As for the coup itself, Devine is correct that the coup was totally of the making of the Chilean military. There was no CIA puppet t...	[ "In the Chilean coup of 1973, Augusto Pinochet rose to power, overthrowing the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. A subsequent September 2000 report from the CIA, using declassified documents related to the military coup, found that the CIA \"probably appeared to condone\" the 1973 coup, but that th...
how come warm water tastes so bad?	> cold actually suppresses 'bad actors' that alter (or add to) the taste of water. Any slight impurities or anything that could make the water taste a little 'off' is easier to taste when it's warm. Drink a shitty beer sometime at room temperature vs icy cold. You can drink just about any swill at 4 deg C, not so muc...	[ "Some substances activate cold trigeminal receptors even when not at low temperatures. This \"fresh\" or \"minty\" sensation can be tasted in peppermint, spearmint, menthol, ethanol, and camphor. Caused by activation of the same mechanism that signals cold, TRPM8 ion channels on nerve cells, unlike the actual chang...
if ebola is a virus, why can't we just make a vaccine out a weak or dead version of the virus like we do with other vaccines?	Many viruses mutate too quickly or have too many different strains to create an effective vaccine, since vaccines generally only work against the precise virus used in the vaccine. I don't know if that's the case for Ebola specifically, but it is for many other viral agents like HIV.	[ "A vaccine against a particular virus is relatively easy to create. The virus is foreign to the body, and therefore expresses antigens that the immune system can recognize. Furthermore, viruses usually only provide a few viable variants. By contrast, developing vaccines for viruses that mutate constantly such as in...
offensive starbucks cups	We live in a society where people can somehow become a frenzied crowd offended by the most mundane things in life.	[ "Starbucks Corporation actually boosts the secondary market by creating mugs and cards that are regional. For instance, in 2013, there were regional cards only released in the city on the card. These included New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, and the first county card for Orang...
why do people like to romanticize monarchies, but then look at dictatorships in the worst light possible?	There is no difference between an absolute monarchy and a dictatorship. Almost all surviving monarchies are Constitutional Monarchies with a firm democratic presence, where the monarch is little more than a figurehead or spiritual leader. If you mean 'why do we romanticize them in literature', it's a simpler answer. ...	[ "The International Monarchist League, founded in 1943, has always sought to promote monarchy on the grounds that it strengthens popular liberty, both in a democracy and in a dictatorship, because by definition the monarch is not beholden to politicians.\n", "Monarchic dictatorships are regimes in which \"a person...
why do tendons take so long to regrow even though they are non complex and completely internal so no need to get rid of bacteria?	They're very tough and dense, without any blood vessels within so it's really difficult to get nutrients where they're needed for the repair.	[ "Conversely, tendons that have lost their original strength due to extended periods of inactivity can regain most of their mechanical properties through gradual re-loading of the tendon, due to the tendon's response to mechanical loading. Biological signaling events initiate re-growth at the site, while mechanical ...
Can an Oral Rehydration Solution like Pedialyte cure a hangover?	Rehydrating certainly helps, and so does replenishing lost nutrients. However, it's the breakdown of alcohol into acetaldehyde that gives you the nauseous feeling. I do like seeing the weekly Saturday mornings posts of this question.	[ "It also can be given intravenously as a source of bicarbonate for preventing or controlling mild to moderate metabolic acidosis in patients with restricted oral intake (for sodium bicarbonate) whose oxidative processes are not seriously impaired. However, the use in lactic acidosis is contraindicated. It can cause...
What holds a chunk of an substance together?	When you pick up a solid chunk of iron or gold, it is primarily the electromagnetic force which maintains rigidity and volume. Additionally the Pauli exclusion principle (which disallows fermions such as electrons to occupy identical quantum states together) is essential to the stability of matter and prevents matter f...	[ "In materials science, fragile matter is a granular material that is jammed solid. Everyday examples include beans getting stuck in a hopper in a whole food shop, or milk powder getting jammed in an upside-down bottle. The term was coined by physicist Michael Cates, who asserts that such circumstances warrant a new...
Why do clouds stay in "puffs" rather than just diffusing out all over the sky?	I'm a meteorologist. Hopefully I haven't screwed this up but I'm a bit out of practice since I spend most of my time at work looking at satellite pictures, radar, and weather models. Not on the science. I believe the simplest answer is that in these clouds, the rate at which water vapor mixes out of a cloud through tu...	[ "Scientists had initially dismissed the meteorological explanation of the clouds because the plumes only seemed to be unique to Bennett Island and not the other, similar islands, and because it was thought that the 1,000 foot high island was too low to generate orographic clouds. Orographic clouds normally form whe...
why isn't mens clothing as skin-tight/revealing as womens clothing?	Oh my dear young person, you should have been around in the 60's, 70's and 80's. You could count the hairs on each testicle, the clothes were so tight !	[ "Clothing designed to be worn by either sex is called unisex clothing. Unisex clothes, such as T-shirts, tend to be cut straighter to fit a wider variety of bodies. The majority of unisex clothing styles have started out as menswear, but some articles, like the fedora, were originally worn by women.\n", "A form-f...
What is this growing on the leaves?	Maple Mites or a form of little wasp. Eggs are laid then those bumps form around them to protect them.. think the bump is part of the leaf. Harmless.. no need to really do anything. _URL_0_	[ "The thin, partially recurved, spreading leaves form a dense rosette at the growth head of adult plants. They are smooth, dull green, deeply grooved (U shaped in cross-section) and have reddish-brown margins and slightly hooked teeth.\n", "The leaves are alternate, long and wide, stiff, yellow green and dull matt...
If a deep sea fish was brought to sea level, would It explode because of lack of pressure?	It does not explode per se but it does incur fatal injuries. Most fish have air filled sacs in their bodies called swim bladders. Fish can change the amount of air in them (slowly) to change their buoyancy. If you bring a deep fish up to fast they don't have time to regulate the amount of air in the sac, under less pre...	[ "Most fish that have evolved in this harsh environment are not capable of surviving in laboratory conditions, and attempts to keep them in captivity have led to their deaths. Deep-sea organisms contain gas-filled spaces (vacuoles). Gas is compressed under high pressure and expands under low pressure. Because of thi...
When we say that a mathematical problem has no analytical solution, is that due to our limited knowledge of math and it may be possible to find an analytical solution in the future, or do we know them to be completely unsolvable?	There might be cases of both. For example polynomial equations of order 5 or higher have been shown to be without analytical solutions in general. Other problems however might have analytical solutions that noone has found yet, but I believe this is the minority of problems.	[ "With more complicated equations in real or complex numbers, simple methods to solve equations can fail. Often, root-finding algorithms like the Newton–Raphson method can be used to find a numerical solution to an equation, which, for some applications, can be entirely sufficient to solve some problem.\n", "Not o...
I've heard that the mobilization of the country and the transition to a war economy at the outbreak of WWII is what ended the Great Depression, how much truth is there to that?	If you look at the literature on the Great Depression, you will find that economists and economic historians cannot agree on why the recession began or ended. This may seem a bit odd, since it seems that history based on hard facts that can be measured in interest rates, GDP per capita, stock values, etc., would be mo...	[ "On the home front, mobilization of the U.S. economy was managed by Roosevelt's War Production Board. The wartime production boom led to full employment, wiping out this vestige of the Great Depression. Indeed, labor shortages encouraged industry to look for new sources of workers, finding new roles for women and b...
why do people go to private universities in the united states	It's usually not about religion. I can think of four typical reasons. First, private universities often advertise having better student/teacher ratios, meaning smaller classes and more individual attention. Second, some private universities have very strong alumni networks, which may give graduates better career opp...	[ "In the US, many universities and colleges are private, mostly operating as educational and research nonprofit organizations, while there are also for-profit universities. About 20% of American college students attend private colleges. Most of the remainder attend state-supported schools.\n", "Private universitie...
Does an amputee's necessary daily caloric intake lower? What about a paraplegic?	If they live a similar enough lifestyle as a normal person an amputees necessary caloric intake would lower as there would be less tissue that they need to supply energy and nutrients for. A paraplegic may experience a milder version of this as the tissue is still there and must therefore be supplied with nutrients and...	[ "Creatine monohydrate could also be helpful for AMPD patients, as it provides an alternative source of energy for anaerobic muscle tissue and was found to be helpful in the treatment of other, unrelated muscular myopathies.\n", "Amphetamine is a stimulant that has been found to improve both physical and cognitive...
programming, how does it differ between different architectures?	It varies between different programming languages and compilers. Anyway, this sub really isn't this place for this kind of questions. Try /r/Programming or /r/learnprogramming.	[ "According to developer Eric Sink, the differences between system design, software development, and programming are more apparent. Already in the current market place there can be found a segregation between programmers and developers, in that one who implements is not the same as the one who designs the class stru...
why is it that if you refresh/go back/etc. on some websites it will save information you entered but not on others?	It all depends on the site but it has to do with cookies. Cookies are temporary stored information that are saved within the web browser. Some sites make it so if you’re on a certain page (like a sign up one) it will save the information that was assumed entered correctly. It’s mostly used for convenience but when site...	[ "Although this particular instance of the data has become inaccessible, it's important to note that the information can always be saved by other means before expiration (copied, or even via screen shots) and published again.\n", "The means by which a user can stop pages being recorded, and delete records of previ...
What are some of the earliest beverages we know of besides water?	The oldest non-water beverage is probably milk, as humans have been drinking the milk of other animals since we first domesticated them during the Neolithic period. The oldest alcoholic beverage, on the other hand is a subject of debate. Some say it's mead, others that it's a fruit-based alcohol, while others maintain...	[ "Professor McGovern explains: “The earliest chemically confirmed alcoholic beverage in the world was discovered at Jiahu in the Yellow River Valley of China (Henan province), ca. 7000-6600 B.C. (Early Neolithic Period). It was an extreme fermented beverage made of wild grapes (the earliest attested use), hawthorn, ...
why does google offer so many services for free?	If you are not the customer you are the product. Google makes tons of money from ads, the more they know about you the better they can target the ads you see. The more things you do with them or through them the more they know about you.	[ "Google Free Zone was a global initiative undertaken by the Internet company Google in collaboration with mobile phone-based Internet providers, whereby the providers waive data (bandwidth) charges (also known as \"zero-rate\") for accessing select Google products such as Google Search, Gmail, and Google+. In order...
When and why did the acceptance of "ethnic descriptions" change within those ethnic groups in the U.S.?	In many cases, these were labels created and applied by the majority upon the minority, who had no say in the matter and were not asked. Or at least this is how those minorities perceived it. In the case of Asian-Americans and the term “Oriental,” this happened after the Civil Rights movement, since large waves of As...	[ "Demographers state that, due to new waves of immigration, the American people through the early 20th century were mostly multi-ethnic descendants of various immigrant nationalities, who maintained cultural distinctiveness until, over time, assimilation, migration and integration took place. The Civil Rights Moveme...
History teacher needs help - First Bank of the United States.	Basically, the idea was to solve the problems with the previous fiat currency, the Continental, which had been printed into oblivion, and also to solve the inconvertibility problems -- with so many state and private banks issuing paper, you couldn't necessarily use paper from one bank somewhere else. By having a unifie...	[ "BULLET::::- \"Legislative and Documentary History of the Bank of the United States: Including the Original Bank of North America\", by Matthew St. Clair Clarke and David A. Hall. This collection of documents was aimed to include the entire proceedings, debates, and resolutions of Congress relating to the Bank of N...
the differences between heavy cream, whipping cream, evaporated milk, half-and-half, etc.	milk is quite a fatty substance. they're healthy fats though. whole milk is mostly as it is when it comes out the cow, except it's boiled and homogenized. homogenization is blending it so that it doesnt separate like it would naturally do. cream comes out of the cow at the same time as the milk. heavy or double cream...	[ "Upon standing for 12 to 24 hours, fresh milk has a tendency to separate into a high-fat cream layer on top of a larger, low-fat milk layer. The cream often is sold as a separate product with its own uses. Today the separation of the cream from the milk usually is accomplished rapidly in centrifugal cream separator...
why are the senate and house so different?	The main reason is that the entire house is elected every two years (such as today), but only 1/3 of the senate is elected. So it's not that the senate "went red" it's that most of the senate seats that were up for reelection were democratic seats, so it was very difficult for them to have not only held their seats bu...	[ "The Senate is widely considered both a more deliberative and more prestigious body than the House of Representatives due to its longer terms, smaller size, and statewide constituencies, which historically led to a more collegial and less partisan atmosphere. The presiding officer of the Senate is the vice presiden...
different kinds of therapies (cognitive, behavioral, etc).	Cognitive therapy aims to change your thinking processes so that you can rationalise problems and anxieties better. Behavioural therapy aims to change your actions to break out of a cycle or get into a better routine and making you feel better/more productive as a result. Therapists are trained in both and choose which...	[ "The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (formerly the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy) is for those with a more cognitive orientation. The ABCT also has an interest group in behavior analysis, which focuses on clinical behavior analysis. In addition, the Association for Behaviora...
would a "universal basic income" lead to communism?	Basic income was advocated for by Milton Friedman; after Adam Smith, he's probably the most influential free market economist. Communism has nothing to do with basic income, which is completely compatible with capitalism. Communist is an economic system in which all property is communally owned and manufacturing depen...	[ "By the beginning of the 21st century, capitalism had become the pervasive economic system worldwide. The collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991 significantly reduced the influence of Socialism as an alternative economic system. Socialist movements continue to be influential in some parts of the world, most notably La...
Does Quantum Mechanics Allow for the Possibility of Different Eventualities?	This is a very good and deep question. The short answer is -- we don't know. I know this is shocking for such a basic question so let me explain: The Schrodinger Equation governs the evolution of the universe in terms of a wave function and it is completely deterministic (and reversible to boot). But according to t...	[ "A primer on quantum mechanics (such as from David J. Griffiths' \"Introduction to Quantum Mechanics\") suggests that the very notion of having a molecule choose a state over all others purely based on an exterior system, with no simultaneous effects on said molecule, is completely contrary to how quantum mechanics...
Is it possible for the neurological effects of autism to wear off as a person gets older? If so, how?	Typically improvements in symptoms are seen through skill acquisition. If a child (or adult) with ASD has great parents and/or professionals in their life they can learn to mitigate many of the impairing effects of Autism. Wear off probably isn't quite the right term however, because on the flip side a person with ASD...	[ "Some studies have reported diagnoses of autism in children due to a loss of language or social skills, as opposed to a failure to make progress, typically from 15 to 30 months of age. The validity of this distinction remains controversial; it is possible that regressive autism is a specific subtype, or that there ...
How would a graviton enact an interaction with a photon near a black hole?	> But I had a question regarding how photons would be pulled into a black holes event horizon if the speculated gravitons max speed is c. It really has nothing to do with it. How photons are pulled into a black hole is fully described by general relativity. You don't need quantum gravity for it. And your question is ...	[ "The photon sphere is a spherical boundary of zero thickness in which photons that move on tangents to that sphere would be trapped in a circular orbit about the black hole. For non-rotating black holes, the photon sphere has a radius 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius. Their orbits would be dynamically unstable, h...
What was British gun culture like in the 1950s?	Have not seen that film, but were these BB guns or actual firearms?	[ "Like British gun culture, Canadian gun culture is also largely represented by sport-shooting and hunting and less on self-defense. Sport-shooting has always been a popular activity for both gun-owners and non-gun-owners in Canada. It is also a bridge and a leeway between American and British attitudes towards fire...
Can you see LADEE pass over the moon from Earth?	Short answer: no LADEE is a small spacecraft, it's only 2.37m high and if it were visible then so should all the other spacecraft there now as well, including the Apollo descent stages, lunar rovers, debris etc. Even Hubble wouldn't be able to make it out.	[ "Lovell is one of only three men to travel to the Moon twice, but unlike John Young and Eugene Cernan, he never walked on it. He accrued over 715 hours, and had seen a total of 269 sunrises from space, on his Gemini and Apollo flights. This was a personal record that stood until the Skylab 3 mission in July through...
why and how does full moon affect tides? how is full moon any different to the other stages of the moon?	Because the sun also affects the tides as well. When the moon is full (or new), the Moon, Earth, and Sun are all lined up, meaning the gravitational effect the Sun and Moon have on the tides are combined and at full strength. These are called ~~"neap"~~ "spring" tides. This is contrasted when the Moon, Earth, and Sun ...	[ "Scientists have confirmed that the combined effect of the Sun and Moon on the Earth's oceans, the tide, is when the Moon is either new or full. and that during lunar perigee, the tidal force is somewhat stronger, resulting in perigean spring tides. However, even at its most powerful, this force is still relatively...
Do bugs shiver when cold?	Shivering is reflex of warm blooded mammals such as ourselves to produce more body heat when we are losing too much of it to the environment. Insects do not maintain a constant body temperature. Their physical activity is limited by the environment they are in. I remember Evan Rachel Wood describing filming certain ...	[ "The chill-coma temperature in relation to flying insects is the temperature at which flight muscles cannot be activated. Compared to honey bees and carpenter bees, bumblebees have the lowest chill-coma temperature. Of the bumblebees \"Bombus bimaculatus\" has the lowest at . However, bumblebees have been seen to f...
microwave background & the temperature of the big bang	Well we can do one of those things. By the expansion of the universe, even light expands (goes to a longer wavelength). Longer wavelength - > lower energy, so it's as if the temperature of the stuff emitting the light was colder. Right now the light looks as if it was emitted by a 2.75 Kelvin object (pretty darned col...	[ "The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the thermal radiation assumed to be left over from the \"Big Bang\" of cosmology. The CMB is a snapshot of the oldest light in our universe, imprinted on the sky when the universe was just 380,000 years old. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions ...
Does honey production/consumption help or harm the bee population?	Not sure if there is a good conclusive scientific answer, grounded in reliable data, to this question. It might be context sensitive. I've read reports that in London, at least, the "grass roots" effort to help the bees [are doing more harm than good](_URL_0_). But then, there is also [this](_URL_1_), touting how be...	[ "With that said, honeybees perform some level of pollination of nearly 75% of all plant species directly used for human food worldwide. Catastrophic loss of honeybees could have significant impact, therefore; it is estimated that seven out of the 60 major agricultural crops in North American economy would be lost, ...
how come a mother's mother is called a grandmother, but a mother's aunt is called a great aunt and not a grand aunt?	according to [this source](_URL_0_) Grand aunt is also acceptable. In this case grand and great are synonymous but grand is derived from French where great is derived from Old English	[ "A great-aunt or grandaunt(sometimes written grand-aunt) is the sister of one's grandparent. A half-great-aunt or half-grandaunt is the half-sister of one's grandparent. A great-aunt-in-law or grandaunt-in-law is the wife of one's great-uncle or granduncle (brother of one's grandparent). A great-aunt-in-law or gran...
why aren't polygamist rights treated similarly to gay rights?	Polygamy is a far more complicated change - to make polygamy work, you have to rewrite every law about what a marriage is, what the rights connected to it are, and so on. For example, if A, B and C are all married to each other, what happens when they divorce? Does each get 1/3 of the household income paid to them in ...	[ "Opposition to same-sex marriage is based on claims such as that homosexuality is unnatural and abnormal, that the recognition of same-sex unions will promote homosexuality in society, and that children are better off when raised by opposite-sex couples. These claims are refuted by science, which shows that sexual ...
What did people in the far north do during the winter darkness before electric lighting?	They used open flame for lighting, in lanterns, candles, torches etc. To save more expensive candles one could burn shingles in a contraption like [this.](_URL_0_)	[ "The Stewarts usually wintered abroad to escape the worst of the Scottish winter. Murdostoun was the first house in Scotland to receive electric lighting in September 1882. The electricity was generated by a steam powered generator. They acquired a motorcar in 1908 and the telephone was installed in 1910.\n", "In...
How did the early hominids leave Africa?	On foot - you can cross from Africa to Asia on foot in Egypt, or at least, you could before the Suez Canal was built. No swimming necessary. It was also a gradual, multi-generational spread, not a single group moving from Egypt to Siberia in a decade or anything.	[ "Until the 1980s, scientists assumed that hominins had been restricted to the African continent for the whole of the Early Pleistocene (until about 0.8 Ma), only migrating out during a phase named Out of Africa I. Thus, the vast majority of archaeological effort was disproportionately focused on Africa. The Dmanisi...
What are the most reliable statistics we have regarding arrests and executions during the Stalin era?	Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov The American Historical Review Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 1017-1049 _URL_0_	[ "Official figures put the total number of documentable executions during the years 1937 and 1938 at 681,692, whereas the total estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet repression during the Great Purge ranges from 950,000 to 1.2 million, which includes executions, deaths in detention and those who died shortly af...
the hierarchy of the catholic church: pope, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons	This is going to be confusing -- > From the bottom up: * Deacon: A deacon is some Joe Smoe who was trained to read the bible, and preform mass. Usualy only for rural places where a priest isn't always available. * Priest: Front line of the church. Preforms mass, confers most sacraments (eucharist, marriage, bap...	[ "Ordained clergy in the Roman Catholic Church are either deacons, priests, or bishops belonging to the diaconate, the presbyterate, or the episcopate, respectively. Among bishops, some are metropolitans, archbishops, or patriarchs. The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, the supreme and universal hierarch of the Church, an...

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

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