Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
why are some people more sensitive to touching hot objects than others?	I wouldnt know the scientific facts, but from what i gathered from my personal life, i think its about tolerance. My mother can sometimes seem impervious to heat, but i found that trough washing the dishes with steaming water, i too, started to form some sort of tolerance. I think it follows the same principal as with ...	[ "When a person touches a hot object and withdraws their hand from it without actively thinking about it, the heat stimulates temperature and pain receptors in the skin, triggering a sensory impulse that travels to the central nervous system. The sensory neuron then synapses with interneurons that connect to motor n...
What happened to body armor + helmets between the introduction of gunpowder and WW1?	Armor did not disappear right away after firearms started disseminating in the battlefield, not only because it could still be useful against all other sorts of weapons like swords spears or bows, but because the response to firearms was not to drop but to develop even heavier armor, which was actually effective at sto...	[ "Helmets were added back during World War I as artillery began to dominate the battlefield, to protect against their fragmentation and other blast effects beyond a direct hit. Modern developments in bullet-proof composite materials like kevlar have started a return to body armour for infantry, though the extra weig...
Adrenaline, Epinephrine, Noradrenaline, and Norpinephrine?	Adrenaline and epinephrine are two names for the same thing. (They're basically the same word — in Latin "ad-" means near or on, and "renal" means kidney-related. In Greek, "epi-" means on or around, and "nephric" means kidney-related. Unsurprisingly, adrenalin is named after a gland on your kidney that produces it.) ...	[ "Primarily referred to in the United States as epinephrine and norepinephrine, adrenaline and noradrenaline are catecholamines, water-soluble compounds that have a structure made of a catechol group and an amine group. The adrenal glands are responsible for most of the adrenaline that circulates in the body, but on...
How does using water irresponsibly remove it from the water cycle?	Technically, it will not. What it might do, however, is limit the amount of water within the tiny subspace of the water cycle which we (and the rest of the wildlife within our part of the ecosystem) can use directly, which is surface fresh water. The key thing to get here is that water transits from one reservoir to ...	[ "The evaporative phase of the cycle purifies water which then replenishes the land with freshwater. The flow of liquid water and ice transports minerals across the globe. It is also involved in reshaping the geological features of the Earth, through processes including erosion and sedimentation. The water cycle is ...
why do those yellow things form in the corner of your eyes when you sleep?	That's called rheum. Your eyes discharge a thin liquid, which normally you continually flush away during the day. This can combine with other gunk, like dead cells, dust, and so on, and helps keep your eye clean by flushing them out. At night, you don't do much 'flushing' since you aren't blinking, and so the gunk can...	[ "When the individual is awake, blinking of the eyelid causes rheum to be washed away with tears via the nasolacrimal duct. The absence of this action during sleep, however, results in a small amount of dry rheum accumulating in corners of the eye, most notably in children.\n", "Acute Haemmorrhagic Conjunctivitis ...
why do you not feel “wet” when under water?	Your body doesnt really feel a state, it feels a change in states. Its why it doesn't feel like you're moving at 1,000 MPH, even though the earth is spinning that fast. You'd feel it if it abruptly stopped though. Same with a car how you don't feel in motion, until it turns. When youre submerged fully in water, you're...	[ "The wetness of skin in different areas also affects perceived thermal comfort. Humidity can increase wetness on different areas of the body, leading to a perception of discomfort. This is usually localized in different parts of the body, and local thermal comfort limits for skin wettedness differ by locations of t...
if emotion is just a chemical in our brains, could we make a computer capable of feeling these emotions?	"Pretty good"? How about extremely good? Scientifically speaking, we are barely on the cusp of starting to understand how the brain works. You equate "emotion" with "a chemical", but how many emotions are there? I would estimate "a lot", but there aren't different chemicals for each emotion. It's about how the brain ...	[ "There have been many AI researchers that debate over the idea whether machines should be created with emotions. There are no emotions in typical models of AI and some researchers say programming emotions into machines allows them to have a mind of their own. Emotion sums up the experiences of humans because it all...
Western Traders in Istanbul	If you have the time to read a book to explain part of the book (I know, jokes!) then James Mathers' Pashas: Trades and Travellers in the Islamic World explores the relations between English/British traders with Ottoman authorities, and goes beyond just Constantinople.	[ "Istanbul is an increasingly popular tourist destination; whereas just foreigners visited the city in 2000, it welcomed foreign tourists in 2015, making it the world's fifth most-visited city. Istanbul is Turkey's second-largest international gateway, after Antalya, receiving a quarter of the nation's foreign touri...
if prostitution is illegal but pornography is not, why don't men looking for prostitutes just get hookers to be in their " film "?	From what I understand that's how you can legally solicit a hooker without being caught. I.E. if you were to say try to pick up an undercover officer you could ask for a "nude shoot for film" and an undercover officer won't do that, and it's not illegally soliciting a prostitute either.	[ "Prostitution that is the exchange of sex for money as there are no laws forbidding adults from being professional sex workers, but it is illegal to operate a brothel or to employ sex workers in any other way. Public order and vagrancy laws are used against street prostitutes. The affordability of prostitutes is th...
do advertisers on tv have different editions of commercials to air according to what happens in sporting events?	Sure. I remember when the Patriots were going for their perfect season in... '07? '08? and there was some commercial that had a bunch of the '72 Miami dolphins in "Perfect Season Land" or something (the '72 miami dolphins are the only team to have a perfect season) and I saw two versions of the ad. One that included th...	[ "The animated television commercials loosely take place in the plot of whatever title is being advertised, as well as its gameplay. The settings and actions were slightly different compared to the ones in the titles they advertised. For instance, in the first \"The Legendary Starfy\" title, Starfy was walking insid...
why do tesla veichles get 265 miles in range while other electric cars are substantially lower.	Bigger battery pack. That costs money. The battery pack alone on a Tesla costs more than other whole cars. The replacement pack costs around 30k	[ "Tesla said that after three years (by June 2015), Model S cars traveled over 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km), the first plug-in electric car to reach that total. In 2014 the Volt total was 629 million all-electric miles (1 billion km) out of a total of 1 billion miles traveled, while Nissan said the Leaf had accu...
how do astronomers know which planet is earth in pictures that are taken from a billion miles away?	> I always see photos of our galaxy with an arrow pointing at some super tiny dot saying "this is Earth". Do they really know that that particular dot is actually Earth? Those are all artistic renderings, not photographs. So they can point at an area about where we think our star is and call it Earth, because they d...	[ "BULLET::::- NASA released the first photograph to show \"almost the entire disc of the Earth\", taken two days earlier from the ATS-1 satellite from a height of 23,000 miles. Areas not obscured by cloud cover and identifiable in the photo were the southern portion of North America (with much of the United States),...
What is the correlation between bra cup and breast volume/mass?	Not sure if this is what you want to know.. Cup size is based on bra band size (the measurement under your breasts) and full bust measurement. The difference between these measurements gives you your cup size. A larger band size will also have a larger cup size - ie. a 36 B will have a larger cup than a 34 B, since th...	[ "Breasts are made up of breast tissue, connective tissue, and adipose (fat) tissue. The amount of each of the three types of tissue varies from woman to woman. \"Breast density\" is a measurement of relative amounts of these three tissues in a woman's breasts, as determined by their appearance on an X-ray image. Br...
What is Gravitational Wave and why is it so important?	Gravitational waves are a prediction of Einstein's theory of gravitation, called general relativity. In a gravitational waves, space gets distorted in a particular pattern (a circle would deform into an ellipse, alternately elongated horizontally and compressed vertically and then compressed horizontally and elongated...	[ "Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime that propagate as waves at the speed of light, generated in certain gravitational interactions that propagate outward from their source. Gravitational-wave astronomy is an emerging branch of observational astronomy which aims to use gravitational waves ...
Can anyone tell me about African-American sailors on whaling ships in the early nineteenth century?	That sounds like a worthy topic for a book. Conveniently, someone has already written one: Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail by W. Jeffrey Bolster. It's also discussed in The Many-Headed Hydra by by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, although I can't really recommend that book. But while you...	[ "Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African-American Whalers is a 1999 book by Patricia McKissack and Frederick McKissack about the involvement of African-Americans in the history of whaling in the United States. \n", "William T. Shorey (July 13, 1859 – April 15, 1919) was a late 19th-century American whaling...
Would someone who completely loses their sight in their lifetime see blackness? Or is it similar to those born blind where they percieve absolutely nothing	People that were blinded later in life do see blackness. But being blind from birth has a different result. Think of it this way: People blind from birth see the same thing that you see out of your elbow; literally nothing. They do not have a conception of sight.	[ "Suffering from blindness affects not only the blind person but also members of his/her family. Where there are few paved roads and where terrain is rugged and mountainous, a blind person has incredible difficulty moving around and depends on a caretaker. There are no social services available to the blind, and ind...
Tidal forces on Enceladus generates heat through friction, hence liquid oceans, but where exactly does the energy in that heat come from?	The energy is taken from Saturns angular momentum (the rotational energy). [This video](_URL_0_) explains in a very intuitive way how tides work and how their effects are caused. I want to add that the tides on Enceladus work even tho it already is tidally locked. That is, because the eccentricity of its is still big...	[ "Tidal heating occurs through the tidal friction processes: orbital and rotational energy are dissipated as heat in the crust of an object. In addition, to the extent that tides produce heat along fractures, libration may affect the magnitude and distribution of such tidal shear heating. Tidal dissipation of Encela...
i'm in vancouver, bc, it is 4pm and i can obviously see the sun, but also the moon. can people of the direct opposite side of the earth see the moon aswell? or are they experiencing night with no moon?	They are in the middle of the southern Indian Ocean waaay the fuck off of Madagascar. They are experiencing 4am and right now cannot see the moon. Almost just like you, earlier in the day at 4pm they saw the sun and moon in almost exactly the same positions as you see them now. For them the sun went down around 8:50p...	[ "A second Australian series aired on 22-24 May, 2018. It featured a Guinness World Record for the most people simultaneously observing an object in the night sky, when approximately 40,000 registered citizens watched the moon for 10 minutes on the 23rd May.\n", "When Yusuf appeared on \"The Chris Isaak Hour\" in ...
if cis-gender just means you identify with as your biological gender, why is it used as a slur	Technically anything can be used as a slur if you put enough hatred behind how you say it. For example people who don't want children will often refer to people who have them as Breeders. Nothing offensive in the word itself, but in context they mean someone who just keeps popping out offspring with no real goal aside...	[ "The related concept of cissexism (also termed cisgenderism, cisnormativity or cissexual assumption, occasionally used synonymously with transphobia) is the appeal to norms that enforce the gender binary and gender essentialism, resulting in the oppression of gender variant, non-binary, and transgender identities. ...
difference between bombs, missiles, rockets and other large propelled munitions?	Bombs aren't self-propelled. In the military, a missile is a self-propelled munition that is guided. A rocket is unguided.	[ "Some military weapons use rockets to propel warheads to their targets. A rocket and its payload together are generally referred to as a \"missile\" when the weapon has a guidance system (not all missiles use rocket engines, some use other engines such as jets) or as a \"rocket\" if it is unguided. Anti-tank and an...
why does our skin leave white marks when we scratch or get scratched?	The skin is made up of several layers and the top layer is dead (gross right?). Well when you scratch you're scraping a bit of the layer off. This layer is slightly transparent so appears white when not in direct contact with the lower layers. Hope this helps.	[ "The condition manifests as an allergic-like reaction, causing a warm red wheal to appear on the skin. As it is often the result of scratches, involving contact with other materials, it can be confused with an allergic reaction, when in fact it is the act of being scratched that causes a wheal to appear. These whea...
Why do humans like to be popular?	Humans are social animals and our very survival depends on cooperation and coordination with other humans, especially in the environment we originally evolved in. Social dynamics create a "pecking order" within a group, and it is advantageous to an individual (or more accurately, their genes) to be as high as possible ...	[ "Popular people may not be those who are best liked interpersonally by their peers, but they do receive most of the positive behavior from coworkers when compared to nonpopular workers. This is a result of the differences between sociometric and perceived popularity. When asked who is most popular, employees typica...
If you impregnated yourself would it be a clone of you?	Nope. Keep in mind you have 23 pairs of chromosomes and the mother and father each pass down half of theirs, i.e., 23 individual chromosomes, because of meiosis; one of each pair is selected essentially at random. What you'd end up with is some chromosomes which actually were copies of your DNA, i.e., one of each of ...	[ "Professor Robert Winston, emeritus professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, said \"I do not know of any credible evidence that suggests Dr Zavos can clone a human being. This seems to be yet another one of his claims to get repeated publicity\".\n", "In the novel, characters can be cloned and c...
How was life in the Japanese puppet-state Manchukuo compared to life in China at the time?	That depended very much on whether you were ethnically Chinese, a recently arrived Japanese or Korean settler, or for that matter a Manchu or Mongol. Most Chinese remained farmers or took on other menial work in the cities, with a standard of living similar to that of their compatriots in free China. Meanwhile, new eco...	[ "The Soviet invasion and occupation of the defunct Manchukuo marked the start of a traumatic period for the more than one million residents of the puppet state who were of Japanese descent. The situation for the Japanese military occupants was clear, but the Japanese colonists who had made Manchukuo their home, par...
Nuclear meltdown leading to critical mass?	No, there is not enough uranium in a rod to create a nuclear explosion.	[ "A nuclear meltdown may be part of a chain of disasters. For example, in the Chernobyl accident, by the time the core melted, there had already been a large steam explosion and graphite fire, and a major release of radioactive contamination. Prior to a meltdown, operators may reduce pressure in the reactor by relea...
how do wars and eras get their names?	Wars, until recently, didn't get a common name until long after the war was over. Take the American Civil War for example. If you had talked to some older people a generation or so ago, they would have learned in school that the war was called: The War Between the States; The War of Northern Aggression; The War of Sout...	[ "Prior to the Meiji period, era names were decided by court officials and were subjected to frequent change. A new era name was usually proclaimed within a year or two after the ascension of a new emperor. A new era name was also often designated on the first, fifth and 58th years of the sexagenary cycle, because t...
why is the phone "tone" what it is?	Are you asking why a dial tone is set to a specific Hz and dB level? Or, are you asking what function a specific tone does at a telco layer?	[ "A dial tone is a telephony signal sent by a telephone exchange or private branch exchange (PBX) to a terminating device, such as a telephone, when an off-hook condition is detected. It indicates that the exchange is working and is ready to initiate a telephone call. The tone stops when the first dialed digit is re...
When you break a magnet in half, why do the two pieces repel where they broke?	If you break the magnet along a line perpendicular to the axis of magnetization, the two pieces should attract because they become opposite polarities. However, if you break it along a line parallel to the axis of polarization, you end up with two magnets whose north poles and south poles are directly beside one anoth...	[ "The greater force exerted by rare-earth magnets creates hazards that are not seen with other types of magnet. Magnets larger than a few centimeters are strong enough to cause injuries to body parts pinched between two magnets or a magnet and a metal surface, even causing broken bones. Magnets allowed to get too ne...
Why do I only have 2 nipples when my cow has 4?	It's a function of the number of offspring per litter. Mammals with larger litters tend to have more nipples than those with fewer litters, with a minimum of two to maintain bilateral symmetry. Mammary gland formation and milk production are pretty energy intensive activities so evolution will favor the activity that...	[ "Almost all mammals have nipples. Why males have nipples has been the subject of scientific research. Differences among the sexes (called sexual dimorphism) within a given species are considered by evolutionary biologists to be mostly the result of sexual selection, directly or indirectly. There is a general consen...
Floating Feature: All the World is a Stade, so what will you share upon it from 776 to 202 BCE? Its Vol. II of 'The Story of Humankind'	You've probably heard of the time a bunch of Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes. But have you heard of the two times Spartan armies were defeated by women? The first case involves the early Spartan king Charilaos, who may or may not be a historical figure. Allegedly, he was persuaded to invade neighbouring Te...	[ "A Floating City, or sometimes translated The Floating City, () is an adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne first published in 1871 in France. At the time of its publication, the novel enjoyed a similar level of popularity as \"Around the World in Eighty Days\". The first UK and US editions of the novel appe...
why does opening the oven door while a cake is baking ruins the cake?	Because when you open the door, you letting hot oven air out thru a big gaping opening. The temperature in the oven cools down dramatically.	[ "A cake can fall, whereby parts of it sink or flatten, when baked at a temperature that is too low or too hot, when it has been underbaked and when placed in an oven that is too hot at the beginning of the baking process. The use of excessive amounts of sugar, flour, fat or leavening can also cause a cake to fall. ...
how do semi-explicit jailbait sites stay up?	Depending on the locale, full nude images of minors are perfectly legal as long as they are not explicit or implied sexuality (eg artistic photography/nudists etc)	[ "Prisons are covered with guards standing watch, CCTV, or a combination of the two. Neither of these can possibly cover every inch of a prison’s ground, which is why “…blind spots…allow inmates to conceal illicit activity from security staff”. Therefore, inmates purposefully look for these blind spots to commit vio...
since long-term effects of vaping are unknown, how are people sure its safer than cigs?	I think its more of a "it can't be worse" mentality. Vape juice has a shorter list of ingredients. None of them are yet associoted with cancer.	[ "BCG is very efficacious against tuberculous meningitis in the pediatric age group, but its efficacy against pulmonary tuberculosis appears to be variable. As of 2006, only a few countries do not use BCG for routine vaccination. Two countries that have never used it routinely are the United States and the Netherlan...
what is a payroll tax and how is it different from an income tax?	Income taxes go into the government's general fund, and can be used to pay for whatever. Payroll taxes are specifically allocated to Social Security and Medicare. Because payroll taxes are earmarked like that, people aren't nearly as bothered by them; they feel like they're directly investing in their future, rather t...	[ "In the United States, the term \"payroll tax\" usually refers to FICA taxes that are paid to fund Social Security and Medicare, while \"income tax\" refers to taxes that are paid into state and federal general funds.\n", "Payroll taxes are taxes imposed on employers or employees, and are usually calculated as a ...
Did Pre-Columbian Americans use lead in any way?	Yes. galena, a naturally-occurring lead ore, is found in archaeological sites dating back to the Archaic era. Poverty Point, a major archaic mound center in northeastern Louisiana, has yielded over 700 pieces of galena ([Walthall et al.](_URL_0_)). Galena is used for paint, as well as sparkling powder and small ornam...	[ "\"The earliest lead (Pb) finds in the ancient Near East are a 6th millennium BC bangle from Yarim Tepe in northern Iraq and a slightly later conical lead piece from Halaf period Arpachiyah, near Mosul. As native lead is extremely rare, such artifacts raise the possibility that lead smelting may have begun even bef...
WW2 British Service Records Research - Tips & Resources?	Fantastic! Great to see that connection. I'm afraid I can't be of much help with further information (I can't decipher that handwriting either...) Your best bet might well be the [WW2 Talk forums] (_URL_3_), they have a section on [Service Records] (_URL_2_) and another for the [Royal Artillery] (_URL_0_). Unfortunatel...	[ "The National Register of Archives (NRA) was established by the Commission in 1945, following the recommendations of the report on \"British Records after the War\" published by the British Records Association in 1943. It was designed as a central register, accessible to researchers, of the nature and location of l...
why are a chicks down feathers yellow and where does this colour pigment go as they mature?	Welp I cannot answer this question in entirety, but I do know: 1.Not all chicks are born "yellow" the "yellow" ones end up white but black chickens hatch black. 2. Just as with human teeth, chicks molt ( loose and regrow) their feathers 2x a year normally during spring and fall to keep a strong protective layer. I beli...	[ "Young chicks have mid-grey eyes and white down, but when the feathers erupt they are predominantly brown. The full plumage of juveniles is a range of browns and with dark streaks along the head and, more conspicuously, down the chest. Commonly there are white or light-colored spots and streaks as well, mainly on t...
Why wouldn't matter falling into a black hole decrease entropy in the universe?	This is a very good question. If you'd asked it in the early 70s - and guessed at the solution - you'd have become super famous. Instead, Israeli physicist Jacob Bekenstein (recently deceased) did and he got all the credit. Bekenstein conjectured that the answer is that black holes have entropy of their own, called th...	[ "If the universe can be considered to have generally increasing entropy, then – as Roger Penrose has pointed out – gravity plays an important role in the increase because gravity causes dispersed matter to accumulate into stars, which collapse eventually into black holes. The entropy of a black hole is proportional...
What is the biggest risk if a spacesuit loses pressure in outer space?	If you hold your breath there is a good chance your lungs will rupture. You would need to exhale as the sudden expansion of the volume of gasses in your lungs will rupture them. A human will lose consciousness quickly, though I can't find a source giving an accurate figure. It's blacking out that would ultimately lead ...	[ "If nitrogen is used to increase pressure as on the ISS, it is inert to humans, but can cause decompression sickness. Space suits typically operate at low pressure to make their balloon-like structure easier to move, so astronauts must spend a long time getting the nitrogen out of their system. The Apollo missions ...
why does cold air burn in our lungs?	Because your lungs are quite moist, as you breathe the cold air in it works like wind-chill, rapidly cooling the surfaces inside your lungs (and your lungs have a LOT of surface area). Your lungs, like most of your body, have nerve endings which detect this and send a pain signal to your brain Remember that cold air (...	[ "Ethnobotanist Daniel Siebert cautions that inhaling hot air can be irritating and potentially damaging to the lungs. Vapor produced by a heat gun needs to be cooled by running it through a water pipe or cooling chamber before inhalation.\n", "We use our nose and throat as a regenerative heat exchanger when we br...
why is the subject line/content of spam emails mainly gibberish nowadays?	To evade spam filters. Every spam filter in the world knows that "Erection" in the subject line very likely means spam. "Erectionn" is less likely to be flagged.	[ "The recipients may report the emails as spam if they don’t consider the message relevant or valuable to them. Personalization adds uniqueness to each message. Identical and generic emails are not only suspicious to humans, but also to spam filters.\n", "Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send an unsolic...
Why do some ships use a diesel electric engine for propulsion while others use a diesel engine directly attached to the propeller (with appropriate transmission)?	Diesel electric propulsion confers another advantage which hasn't yet been mentioned: the diesel engine / generator sets are not constrained to the propulsor shafting, and as such can be positioned anywhere in the vessel, even oriented athwartship, if that suits the vessel design. The diesel in a diesel electric can al...	[ "Another advantage of the diesel-electric transmission is that without the need of a mechanical connection, the diesel generators can be decoupled acoustically from the hull of the ship, making it less noisy. This has been used extensively by military submarines but surface naval vessels like anti-submarine vessels...
How can satellites provide continuous transmission to earth?	Satellite TV works most easily using [geostationary satellites](_URL_0_). These are ones whose orbital period is the same as Earth's rotation period, and they orbit around the equator, so they're always above the same point on the Earth. That's why satellite dishes are all pointing the same way, the satellite is always...	[ "Geostationary satellites also carry international telephone traffic but they are being replaced by fiber optic cables in heavily populated areas and along the coasts of less developed regions, because of the greater bandwidth available and lower latency, due to the inherent disconcerting delay in communicating via...
why is it that without glasses on, objects in a mirror can still be out of focus, even though the mirror is flat? (assuming you're in range for the mirror to be in focus)	Mirrors retain the angle of light which bounces off them so focusing is still necessary. If it didn't retain the angle then light from incoming from various directions at the same spot could have portions all reflected toward you. That would just give you a white wall and you couldn't see any image.	[ "A convex mirror or diverging mirror is a curved mirror in which the reflective surface bulges towards the light source. Convex mirrors reflect light outwards, therefore they are not used to focus light. Such mirrors always form a virtual image, since the focal point (\"F\") and the centre of curvature (\"2F\") are...
How much does the expansion of the universe effect the approach of Andromeda?	It doesn't. [Metric expansion doesn't occur within clusters of galaxies](_URL_0_).	[ "To put these numbers into their proper context, it may be worth reminding ourselves that the expansion of the universe is a significant factor on these distance scales. Eridanus II is moving toward the center of the Milky Way at 67 km/sec. However, applying the current value of the Hubble Constant (\"i.e.\" about ...
why does genetic malformation occur in the child if a brother impregnates his sister?	Lets say there is a genetic malformation and there is a 1 in 1,000 chance that any one person has the gene for it. You need two copies of the gene to have the malformation. That means that there is a 1 in 1,000 chance a mother could have it, 1 in 1,000 chance the father could have it, and a 1 in 4 they both pass it to...	[ "The result of this error is a cell with an imbalance of chromosomes. Such a cell is said to be aneuploid. Loss of a single chromosome (2n-1), in which the daughter cell(s) with the defect will have one chromosome missing from one of its pairs, is referred to as a monosomy. Gaining a single chromosome, in which the...
if companies continue replacing human labour with robots, will this not lead to the products these companies make becoming unsellable since most people are unemployed?	Yes, except that governments and corporations realize this and are moving to try and avoid that. One strategy that is proposed is a a guaranteed minimum income, in which the government makes sure that every citizen has enough to live on, and the people who can/want to find a job to earn more can still do that. Variou...	[ "The traditional consensus among economists has been that technological progress does not cause long-term unemployment. However, recent innovation in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence has raised worries that human labor will become obsolete, leaving people in various sectors without jobs to earn a ...
How do Google's driverless cars handle ice on roads?	Although driverless cars use GPS to determine where they are going they need to use a light radar (lidar) system for the fine details of the road layout. Currently, this lidar technology doesn't work in the rain due to the different reflective properties of the road surface and so the car requires the driver to take o...	[ "An ice road (ice crossing, ice bridge) is a winter road, or part thereof, that runs on a naturally frozen water surface (a river, a lake or an expanse of sea ice) in cold regions. Ice roads allow temporary transport to isolated areas with no permanent road access. They reduce transportation cost of materials that ...
we’re taught in school that white is all light/color combined, and black is the absence of color/light. so how do black pixels work on my monitor?	Many comments here aren't quite right. All LCD screens are backlit - this is where you get your white colors, because the backlight it white. There are then LCD layers that act as color filters in front of the back light, one for each color channel. LCD's are off by default - making for a white element for that color...	[ "White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of fresh snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on television and computer screens is created by a mixture of red, blue and green light.\n...
How can we take pictures of the sun?	You need a special filter to protect your equipment. If you expose a camera's light sensor to direct sunlight for more than a tiny bit of a second, it will get permanent damage. The filter is pretty much the same as the glasses you get for watching a solar eclipse, and they should be marked as meeting the same scientif...	[ "French physicists Jean Foucault and Armand Fizeau take the first detailed photographs of the Sun's surface through a telescope - the birth of scientific astrophotography. Within five years, astronomers produce the first detailed photographs of the Moon. Early film is not sensitive enough to image stars.\n", "The...
Monozygotic twinning question?	Short answer: it depends mostly on how you define a being, and splitting can happen in different ways at different stages. The first thing you need to know is that a zygote doesn't just form an embryo. It also forms extra-embryonic structures, such as the placenta, amniotic sac, and so on. For those who may not know,...	[ "The exact cause of the condition is unknown. Although various theories indicate incomplete separation of monozygotic twins as an etiological factor, abnormal adherence between the ectoderm and endoderm during gastrulation, polytopic primary developmental field defects, somatic and germ line mutations in developmen...
How can old movies be converted into blue ray format?	There is no direct translation between film and digital resolution, however, most relatively modern 35mm film is sharp enough to be scanned at at least 1080 lines width, and sometimes closer to 2000. There is some analysis of the quality of 35mm film at [this site](_URL_0_).	[ "On July 12, 2007, the movie became the first adult title licensed by the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) to be sold in the Blu-ray Disc format. It was also the first adult movie available in both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats. Other companies had released a very few adult films on Blu-ray by this point, but the...
why are all bigger holidays at the end of the month? (halloween, thanksgiving, christmas)	Coincidence? New years is literally the beginning of the month, as is July 4th. Christmas was moved to be closer to the pagan holidays of Yule and Saturnalia, while Halloween basically took over for Samhain (which began at sunset on Oct 31st and ended at sunset on Nov 1st). Canadian Thanksgiving is Oct 12th, right in t...	[ "The precise definition of feasts and festival days that are encompassed by the Christmas and holiday season has become controversial in the United States over recent decades. While in other countries the only holidays included in the \"season\" are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, St. Stephen's Day/Boxing Day, New Ye...
if we ever met other intelligent life, how the hell would we communicate with it? would it not be like communicating with animals?	We would have to use images or gestures as much as possible; in this case they would be trying to communicate with us as if we were animals.	[ "Humans have communication abilities that other animals do not. Being able to communicate aspects like time and place as though they were solid objects are a few examples. It is said that humans communicate to request help, to inform others, and to share attitudes as a way of bonding. Communication is a joint activ...
How did Jewish lenders in medieval Europe enforce their debts? Didn't they have little to no power?	One of the ways to think about the presence and status of Jewish communities in medieval Latin Europe is, "who benefited?" You probably have the basics of this idea already with the moneylending stereotype. Medieval Christian theologians and preachers tried very hard to make usury a sin, and no self-respecting rich per...	[ "Prohibited from nearly every other trade, some Jews began to occupy an economic niche as moneylenders in the Middle Ages. Only they were allowed to take interest on loans, since—while the Church condemned usury universally—canon law was only applied to Christians and not to Jews. Eventually, a sizable sector of th...
Can a moon have more mass than his planet?	The short answer is "no." The longer answer is that 1 object never truly orbit another object- really both objects orbit around their combined center of mass, called a [Barycenter](_URL_0_) when talking about planets and orbits. Often times we think of one object simply orbiting another because the object being orbit...	[ "The Moon is exceptionally large relative to Earth: Its diameter is more than a quarter and its mass is 1/81 of Earth's. It is the largest moon in the Solar System relative to the size of its planet, though Charon is larger relative to the dwarf planet Pluto, at 1/9 Pluto's mass. The Earth and the Moon's barycentre...
Is it just a coincidence that both native americans and europeans had bows before the columbian exchange?	This is an unsolved mystery. The prevailing theory at the moment is that the bow entered North America from Asia as part of the Arctic Small Tool Tradition around 3000 - 2500 BCE, a culture thought to be part of the Paleoeskimo migration into the American Arctic. From there, it diffused slowly through the rest of the c...	[ "From the 8th century, the bow and arrow appeared in the region, manufacture of pottery developed, and Native Americans increasingly depended on bison for survival. Obsidian objects found in various Texan sites attest of trade with cultures in present-day Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, as the material is not found...
why is it that most windows software works with old versions such as windows 7 or even xp, but most osx software needs more recent versions of the os to work?	Because Microsoft has a lot more enterprise customers who use Windows so backwards compatibility is a much higher priority for Microsoft. A lot of businesses have legacy software where the vendor literally went out of business, so for them it's either use the old version of Windows and never upgrade, or depend on Micro...	[ "Migrating from Windows 9x to XP can be an issue for users dependent upon MS-DOS. Although XP comes with the ability to run DOS programs in a virtual DOS machine, it still has trouble running many old DOS programs. This is largely because it is a Windows NT system and does not use DOS as a base OS, and because the ...
Why don't they launch space bound rockets out of tube like bullets from a barrel of a gun?	A gun barrel serves as a means to influence control over direction of a bullet's travel ( though it also keeps the explosive forces concentrated behind the projectile) Because the rocket is capable of being steered and carries it's own gunpowder, firing it through a tube is simply not required.	[ "Each rocket is slowly spun by rifling in its tube as it exits, which along with its primary fin stabilization keeps it on course. Rockets armed with high explosive-fragmentation, incendiary, or chemical warheads can be fired . Newer high explosive and cargo (used to deliver anti-personnel or antitank mines) rocket...
why are there so few different commercials on youtube? it seems there's only 3 commercials at any time, shouldn't yt be swarming with ad offers?	YouTube uses ad-targeting. They serve you ads based on their best guess of what you'd want to buy, judging from websites you've visited and other videos you've watched. E.g., the ads you're seeing are different from the ones I've been seeing. You've been gettIng deoderant and car ads, while they've been serving me ads...	[ "They exist to allow network television stations to send content to smaller local stations. The shows contain no commercials, just a small gap of blank video to allow the local station to insert their own. The exception for this is for \"barter\" syndicated programming, where only the commercials required to be sho...
what happens when a generator is running but no load is being applied?	Short answer: with no load generator is easier to turn. It gets more difficult to turn (and takes more energy) as the load increases. essentially it has to do with inductive reactance in the coils of the generator. in simple terms, a magnetic field moving near a conductor will induce an electric potential within that...	[ "There is no provision for operation during a power failure, when the base reverts to generator power. This would require limiting the output to less than or equal to what the generators can provide. Otherwise a cloud could pass over and cause the sudden drop in output to overload the generators, causing them to tr...
What do you catabolize first during starvation: muscle, fat, or both in equal measure?	Gluconeogenesis highly prioritizes fat metabolism for energy when carbohydrate based sources of glucose are low/empty. The entire purpose of fat is to be an energy source when other sources are low, whereas the purpose of muscles are either locomotion or stability. It would be hard to imagine evolution leaving you as a...	[ "Ordinarily, the body responds to reduced energy intake by burning fat reserves and consuming muscle and other tissues. Specifically, the body burns fat after first exhausting the contents of the digestive tract along with glycogen reserves stored in liver cells and after significant protein loss . After prolonged ...
Why isn't there a general formula for solving quintic polynomials like there is for quadratics, cubics and quartics?	The question really shouldn't be "Why isn't there a 'Quintic Formula'?", the question should be "Why is are there Quartic, Cubic and Quadratic Formulas?" Because, if you think about it, it really doesn't make much sense that there should be such formulas. What's happening is you are taking a single class of really simp...	[ "Although the quadratic formula provides an exact solution, the result is not exact if real numbers are approximated during the computation, as usual in numerical analysis, where real numbers are approximated by floating point numbers (called \"reals\" in many programming languages). In this context, the quadratic ...
What diseases can you honestly catch from a public toilet seat if it's not properly cleaned?	_URL_0_ verifies the general gist of everyone's thoughts here. (Not my expertise.)	[ "There is no direct experimental evidence on disease transmission by toilet aerosols. Whether or not aerosols can contain norovirus, SARS coronavirus, or other pathogens has not been directly measured as of 2015. The combination of cleaning and disinfecting surfaces is usually effective at removing contamination, a...
how do phone games that advertise paying you (supposed) real money, earn that money?	They earn money from advertisements and end up giving out only a tiny amount of that. You will find that most of those kind of games are some sort of chance games and have a high threshold to actually cash out. It will then usually have something you can buy to increase your chances either with your points or real mone...	[ "In 2011, revenue from free-to-play games overtook revenue from premium games in the top 100 games in Apple's App Store. The number of people that spend money on in-game items in these games ranges from 0.5% to 6%, depending on a game's quality and mechanics. Even though this means that a large number of people wil...
How did Martin Luther King react to JFK's assassination?	[Here's a video on it from CBS, an exact interview from him on it](_URL_0_) He said it was "shocking" and "upsetting", and in general seemed to have been sad to lose a friend	[ "Kennedy then restlessly wandered around the hotel, checking in on his staff. When asked if King's murder had reminded him of the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, his brother, Kennedy replied, \"Well, that. But it makes me wonder what they might do to me too.\" He told speechwriter Jeff Greenfield, \"You know...
the rank rear admiral	According to Wikipedia: > It originated from the days of naval sailing squadrons and can trace its origins to the Royal Navy. Each naval squadron would be assigned an admiral as its head, who would command from the centre vessel and direct the activities of the squadron. The admiral would in turn be assisted by a vic...	[ "In the Royal Canadian Navy, the rank of rear-admiral (RAdm) (\"contre-amiral\" or \"CAm\" in French) is the Navy rank equivalent to major-general of the Army and Air Force. A rear-admiral is a flag officer, the naval equivalent of a general officer. A rear-admiral is senior to a commodore and brigadier-general, an...
Dear historians of reddit, where do you get your history news, and which journals should I read to keep up to date with history?	I have access through my university as a student, so I usually look at what electronic journals are published in my areas of research and interest (not usually the same things...) Typically each journal has some sort of group or association behind it with a website, so I can see at least the headlines if I can't get th...	[ "Below are a number of links to sites reporting or summarizing current research or thinking. Many are reprints of articles made available to the public at no charge. The historical researcher will find their bibliographies of great interest.\n", "While the majority of \"Booknotes\" subjects have been authors of b...
Books on Nazi Germany's Occult?	I don't know if they will have specifically what you're looking for, but there is quite of bit of information on this subject in the [FAQ](_URL_0_)	[ "Appendix E of Goodrick-Clarke's book is entitled \"The Modern Mythology of Nazi Occultism\". In it, he gives a highly critical view of much of the popular literature on the topic. In his words, these books describe Hitler and the Nazis as being controlled by a \"hidden power . . . characterized either as a discarn...
why is dentistry stressed as so important it needs to be regularly visited?	You need to visit a dentist for an in-depth cleaning, which is a procedure which is difficult for individuals to do at home, unlike routine foot care. Oral health problems are relatively common, but can be very severe and irreversable (if you lose a tooth, there's no growing it back). Maintenance is relatively inexpe...	[ "Dentistry usually encompasses practices related to the oral cavity. According to the World Health Organization, oral diseases are major public health problems due to their high incidence and prevalence across the globe, with the disadvantaged affected more than other socio-economic groups.\n", "As an integral pa...
tessellation	A tessellation is a repeating pattern of the same shape often flipped and/or rotated in order to make a pattern with no spaces. A checkerboard is a tessellation, as the pattern repeats itself. But it's a simple one. Honeycombs are also tessellations as the pattern repeats itself endlessly, and it's always the same s...	[ "A real physical tessellation is a tiling made of materials such as cemented ceramic squares or hexagons. Such tilings may be decorative patterns, or may have functions such as providing durable and water-resistant pavement, floor or wall coverings. Historically, tessellations were used in Ancient Rome and in Islam...
How do cells "know" their location in the body, especially during embryogenesis?	I'm a Developmental Biologist and study this processes. This is a complex system, but here's my very short answer: It all comes down to "Signaling". In a developing organisms send and receive signals from one another telling each other what to do, and what they are doing. These signals then activate genes that become ...	[ "Cells may draw on the energy they store in the resting potential to drive action potentials or other forms of excitation. These changes in the membrane potential enable communication with other cells (as with action potentials) or initiate changes inside the cell, which happens in an egg when it is fertilized by a...
What were common language learning methods a hundred years ago?	Linguist here. This is from memory from a teaching class required for my major some years ago. I'll dig out my old textbook if you'd like me to cite sources. In the US, the Grammar-Translation method was the way to learn a language. If you've taken a Latin class, you probably learned by Grammar-Translation (although s...	[ "Innovation in foreign language teaching began in the 19th century and became very rapid in the 20th century. It led to a number of different and sometimes conflicting methods, each claiming to be a major improvement over the previous or contemporary methods. The earliest applied linguists included Jean Manes ca, H...
What is it on the atomic scale that makes materials either heat up/cool down slower?	There are two main things you want in a material if you want to be able to quickly heat it up: 1. Its temperature should steeply increase after it absorbs a fixed input of heat. 2. It must be able to quickly exchange heat with its environment so that it can quickly soak up thermal energy. The first point can be quan...	[ "As a material cools, the relative motion of its component molecules/atoms decreases - its temperature decreases. Cooling can continue until all motion ceases, and its kinetic energy, or energy of motion, disappears. This condition is known as absolute zero and it forms the basis for the Kelvin temperature scale, w...
What will happen if a UTI goes untreated?	First what is a urinary tract infection (UTI). A UTI is essentially just inflammation of the urinary lining in response to an infection. When detecting a UTI we generally are looking for two things: bacteriuria (the presence of bacteria in the urine which generally does not have detectable bacteria) and pyuria (signs o...	[ "Luteolysis in primates (including humans), however, is not caused by prostaglandin, and removal of the uterus will not prolong the life of the corpus luteum. However, primates do respond to PGF2a, and asthmatics should take great care when handling this hormone as PGF2a is bronchoconstrictor.\n", "In accordance ...
why do prestigious brands allow discount supermarkets to copy them	In some cases the Main company might actually own the "fake" company and sell bad batches/same product under a new name so that they get alot more profit	[ "Discount stores tend to offer a wide array of products and services, but they compete mainly on price. They offer extensive assortments of merchandise at prices lower than other retailers and are designed to be affordable for the market served. In the past, retailers sold less fashion-oriented brands. However, in ...
Is there a minimum energy required for a photon to exist?	There is no minimum limit on photon energy required to exist, though that depends on the size of the universe you're dealing with. A photon cannot have a wavelength larger than the universe or world you're dealing with within you are measuring entropy, and this is part of how the maximum possible entropy of a volume is...	[ "The energy of a photon can be related to classical fields through the correspondence principle which states that for a large number of photons, the quantum and classical treatments must agree. Thus, for very large formula_42, the quantum energy density must be the same as the classical energy density\n", "The ph...
Why might a cat's eyes change color?	Cat eye color is fairly variable. Most kittens are born with blue eyes and undergo changes in the color of their eye pigments between 3-12 weeks of age. By about 3 months of age a kitten's eyes should have matured into an adult color and stop changing.	[ "The odd-eyed coloring is caused when either the epistatic (dominant) white gene (which masks any other color genes and turns a cat completely white) or the white spotting gene (which is the gene responsible for bicolor and tuxedo cats) prevents melanin (pigment) granules from reaching one eye during development, r...
why mobile phone cameras don't have more manual settings?	(tag your post) Most people have no idea how to use exposure, ISO, and other advanced camera options. If Apple provided manual options for these in their default camera app, people might set it up wrong and then blame the tool for their photos being crappy. So Apple's stock app tries to handle it itself, and most of...	[ "While cell phone cameras without auto-focus are not ideal for reading some common barcode formats, there are 2D barcodes which are optimized for cell phones, as well as QR Codes (Quick Response) codes and Data Matrix codes which can be read quickly and accurately with or without auto-focus.\n", "A mode dial or c...
Did Alexander the Great hold any religious views that would have been considered unusual by his contemporaries? Was he a monotheist?	Having read Arrian and Plutarch, I was under the impression that Alexander was conventionally pious. He certainly is said to have dedicated altars to the gods of the Olympian pantheon on many occasions, something that cost him time and money. He consulted famous oracles, not something that a newly converted monotheist ...	[ "This identification is, however, disputed \"(see also Dhul-Qarnayn#Identification)\". The reason being is Dhul-Qarnayn is described in the Quran as a monotheist believer who worshipped Allah (God). This would remove Alexander as a candidate for Dhul-Qarnayn as Alexander was a polytheist. Moreover, some modern scho...
American social mobility and wealth compared to Europe during the gilded age?	So a major factor in immigration was the Great Depression of 1873 caused by an influx of American and Russian grain that lowered the price of grain and caused one of the most surefire capital investments - wheat futures - to begin to fail. Why is that important for European immigration? Because if the price of grain ...	[ "Famous instances of great economic and social mobility include Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford, Additional popular examples of upward social mobility between generations in America include Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton, who were born into working-class families yet achieved high political office in adult life....
why do people tag things (as in graffiti)? not like murals, but like illegible text tags in public bathroom or on a dumpster. what is the point?	Its a kind of "I was here". Graffiti has been around for millennia, the pyramids have graffiti inside them from their builders, The ruins of Pompei have graffiti on them. It's an ancient tradition carried on through to today.	[ "Graffiti is a term applied to a range of illegally created marks in which there has been an attempt to establish some sort of coherent composition that people could resonate with, or one that conveys messages. Such marks are made by an individual or individuals, who might not be professional artists, upon a wall o...
why people are sometimes compelled to watch things they know will make them sad/cry?	[Here](_URL_0_) is a good article. This quote sums a lot of it up: > A lot goes on in our brains when we watch sad, emotional, or tragic films, and what’s surprising is that a lot of this brain activity actually promotes feelings of happiness, closeness in our relationships, and a sense of community.	[ "People shown extracts from films known to induce fear often overestimated the elapsed time of a subsequently presented visual stimulus, whereas people shown emotionally neutral clips (weather forecasts and stock market updates) or those known to evoke feelings of sadness showed no difference. It is argued that fea...
In aviation, why were tailwheel landing gear developed before tricycle gear?	This could be in the Short Answers section, because the answer is fairly simple. Tail-draggers ( like, a DC-3 or Piper Cub) could land on grass covered landing strips. On landing, the tail ( sometimes a skid on some earlier planes) would act as a drag on the back of the plane, keep it pointed in the correct direction ...	[ "Tricycle gear aircraft are easier to land because the attitude required to land on the main gear is the same as that required in the flare, and they are less vulnerable to crosswinds. As a result, the majority of modern aircraft are fitted with tricycle gear. Almost all jet-powered aircraft have been fitted with t...
What are some often overlooked long-term effects of WW 1 on Europe?	You might consider consulting an environmental history of WWI. Folks don't typically think of the environmental effects of a war, such as deforestation (caused by industrial demand for timber) or pollution (caused by the need for massive amounts of industry).	[ "By 1916 a new factor was emerging—a sense of national self-interest and American nationalism. The unbelievable casualty figures in Europe were sobering—two vast battles caused over one million casualties each. Clearly this war would be a decisive episode in the history of the world. Every American effort to find a...
What was the status of slavery in the Person Empire (500-330 BC)?	[This thread](_URL_0_) has some discussion from myself and /u/Aithiopika on slavery in the Achaemenid Empire through a particular case, with links to another discussion as well. The short of it is that. no, Cyrus did not abolish slavery, but slavery doesn't seem to have been integral to the socioeconomics of most of t...	[ "Slavery was known in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as in almost every other ancient civilization, including Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, Ancient Iran, Ancient Greece, Ancient India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphate and Sultanate, Nubia and the pre-Colu...
how did people discover electricity and how did they invent the first electronic device?	Essentially it all began because we observe electromagnetic effects in the world around us. For example static effects on metal shavings, lightning etc. This sparked curiosity by proponents like Benjamin Franklin. However the main leap was when we discovered that if you change the position of a magnet (In this case, na...	[ "The history of \"electronic\" began with 1918 of the founding of Lviv electrical enterprise \"Contact\" - one of the first electrotechnical enterprises in Halychyna (production of electrical appliances, electricity meters, electric motors and products based on them, telephones and switchboards, electrical products...
capillary action. i know what it is, but i cannot quite understand how/why it works. where does the force/energy come from that allows the fluids to move?	It's the attraction between your fluid and the wall of the container (adhesion) and the attraction between molecules of your fluid (cohesion). In other words, the energy comes from electromagnetic interaction. Take this for example. A ball suddenly pops into existence on a slope. It spontaneously rolls down the slope....	[ "Capillary action (sometimes capillarity, capillary motion, capillary effect, or wicking) is the ability of a liquid to flow in narrow spaces without the assistance of, or even in opposition to, external forces like gravity. The effect can be seen in the drawing up of liquids between the hairs of a paint-brush, in ...
do animals have phobias?	Horses really don't like water surfaces (not really phobic since they don't trust the ground they cannot see, and being flight animals they really care for their legs).	[ "Herpetophobia is a common specific phobia, which consists of fear or aversion to reptiles, commonly lizards and snakes, and similar vertebrates as amphibians. It is one of the most diffused animal phobias, very similar and related to ophidiophobia. This condition causes a slight to severe emotional reaction, as fo...
Force without acceleration?	In the equation F=ma, F is the sum of all forces acting on the object. In the case of you and the chair, your body is being pulled down to the chair by gravity but you're not accelerating straight through the chair so there must be a force acting against you pushing you back up. This force is the chair pushing aga...	[ "BULLET::::- Acceleration – In physics, acceleration is the rate of change of velocity of an object with respect to time. An object's acceleration is the net result of any and all forces acting on the object, as described by Newton's Second Law. The SI unit for acceleration is metre per second squared Accelerations...
why did the usa invest in making new counterfeit proof $100 bills when a counterfeiter can just make older style $100 bills and still use them.	Gotta do it sometime. Eventually the previous 100s will be very rare like the ones before them (from the '90s) are now. So 10 years from now, the previous series of 100s will be quite rare and will elicit more suspicion when attempted to spend, thereby making counterfeits of the old series less viable/passable.	[ "In 1996, the U.S. Treasury had made a focused effort to stop counterfeiting by releasing new bills. The first to be released was the $100 note. While on a shopping trip with his new wife, Natalie, Williams held the new note in his hand and became obsessed. It was his first time seeing the new bill, which had been ...
If time slows as you speed up does the speed of light stay the same?	The speed of light in a vacuum will always be measured as c, by anybody. Relativity explains the differences required for someone in a different reference frame to measure the same value of c. You are always at rest in your own reference frame, and thus you never personally experience time dilation. You see the rest...	[ "Calculating the sum (iteratively) shows that to get to the speed of light the time required is only 97 seconds. By continuing beyond this point (exceeding the speed of light, again ignoring special relativity), the time taken to cross the pool will in fact approach zero as the number of iterations becomes very lar...
how do hallucinogenic drugs make you trip?	Basically... The chemicals make the little neurons in your brain that affect your five senses activate randomly/sequentially.	[ "Shamans consume hallucinogenic substances in order to induce a trance. Once in this trance, shamans believe that they are able to communicate with the spirit world, and can see what is causing their patients' illness. The Aguaruna of Peru believe that many illnesses are caused by the darts of sorcerers. Under the ...
Do men's or women's brains release more oxytocin during sex?	I don't know, but the amount of hormone released might be irrelevant. The effects of oxytocin and the sensitivity to those effects is very different among men and women. The pro-social effects of oxytocin are faster and stronger on women than men. Oxytocin also has sexually dimorphic effects on men and women in other ...	[ "According to the researchers, several reasons may explain why the male brain is more vulnerable to neurotoxicants than the female brain. The availability of glutathione may be greater in females. They may also have greater sulfate‑based detoxification capacity than males. Co‑exposure to testosterone may increase t...
I have two Window fans and two windows in a 11 1/2 x 11 1/2 Room. What would be the best way to cool my room down?	Blow air in at night. Close the windows and blow the cool air around your room during the day. If you become certain that the air inside is hotter than the air outside, open a window and blow air inside. And always remember, fans cool PEOPLE. Not ROOMS. They cause evaporation to occur which cools your skin. When ...	[ "Window fans are designed to fit into open windows, and often have expandable side panels to cover the entire window opening. Most units have either one large fan, or two small fans mounted side by side.\n", "A window fan is a fan designed to be placed inside the frame of a window. Window fans have been used for ...
I need your help r/askhistorians. I've been trying to get a meaningful response to this but it continues to evade me: To what extent are accounts of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 (known as the Holodomor) accurate and reliable?	You may find some edifying material in this thread: _URL_0_ As well as some contextualizing information on Holodomor denial in this one: _URL_2_ Here is a link to the final report of the Holodomor commission, an independent, non-governmental and self-generated body, which establishes with certainty that the famine d...	[ "The US Commission on the Ukraine Famine was a commission set up on December 13, 1985, “to conduct a study of the 1932-1933 Ukrainian Famine in order to expand the world’s knowledge of the famine and provide the American public with a better understanding of the Soviet system by revealing the Soviet role”. Its find...
Can blind people donate their eyes or parts of their eyes, to restore sight in someone else?	Eye donation consists primarily of replacing the cornea (the clear part of the eye) into the living recipient from the donor. As long as the cornea is healthy, the person can donate irrespective of blindness due to other causes.	[ "Suffering from blindness affects not only the blind person but also members of his/her family. Where there are few paved roads and where terrain is rugged and mountainous, a blind person has incredible difficulty moving around and depends on a caretaker. There are no social services available to the blind, and ind...
how come some animals seem to be able to wake up and be alert instantly, while with humans we often need a good 30 minutes to feel awake.	Who is this "we" you speak of? I know plenty of people who can just get up and go. It's not really that hard.	[ "All living animals have an internal clock, the circadian rhythm, which is close to 24 hours' duration. For humans, the average duration is 24 hours 20 minutes, and individually some people have more or less than 24 hours. Everyday exposure to the morning light resets the circadian rhythm to 24 hours, so that there...
Why do rare events that result in death, such as terrorism, elicit more fear than more common events, such as riding in a faulty elavator?	We are aware of mundane risks like elevators or cancer. Terrorism, on the other hand, is dramatic and shocking. But you're making an assumption that may not be true. There are lots of people who live lives terrified by the possibility of boring, common causes of death.	[ "Rare or extreme events are events that occur with low frequency, and often refers to infrequent events that have widespread impact and which might destabilize systems (for example, stock markets, ocean wave intensity or optical fibers or society). Rare events encompass natural phenomena (major earthquakes, tsunami...
Why do ionic solids not attract each other and snap into place?	The entire crystal has a net neutral charge otherwise it would fly apart due to electrostatics so there is no net force attracting two different crystals together. Additionally, the surfaces of the materials are not perfectly smooth. You actually have only a small fraction of the surfaces actually in contact due to s...	[ "Ions in ionic compounds are primarily held together by the electrostatic forces between the charge distribution of these bodies, and in particular the ionic bond resulting from the long-ranged Coulomb attraction between the net negative charge of the anions and net positive charge of the cations. There is also a s...

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