Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
how is it that certain koi and other pond fish are so expensive?	The same difference between a $50 dog and a $5,000 dog. Pedigree, in addition the expensive Koi have been bred for specific patterns and colors. Its not like a breeder is just netting random fish out of a pond and assigning arbitrary prices.	[ "Whitebait is a delicacy and commands high prices to the extent that it is the most expensive fish on the market, when available. During average to good seasons, prices vary between $70 and $130 per kilogram, depending on locality. Proceeds from the sale of whitebait are also taxed, with the rate being 25% in the 2...
what makes some sounds scary/ominous while others happy/uplifting?	Consonance and Dissonance! Sounds are waves. Sometimes, those waves stack up into nice sounds because all the waves run on frequencies that go together well. This is consonance. Sometimes, those waves will be running in different ways, not really lining up you see, and that makes the frequencies sound like they want t...	[ "Inspired by the screams of a baby marmot, he conducted a study, published in Biology Letters, investigating nonlinearities in sound and their effect on response. The report found that the addition of non-linear elements produced stronger responses and valence, which implies that nonlinearities in sounds make them ...
what does it mean for a song to be in major/minor key?	There are 12 notes in western music (any higher or lower and the same notes repeat again, an octave higher or lower). If you played them all in a row, it would sound like a pretty boring linear progression. But if you only play 7 of them in selected intervals, you have a common western scale. A major scale hits these n...	[ "The song begins in the key of C major and that key is also prominent at the end. The keys of E minor and G major are also emphasized throughout the song. Since these keys are related to C major, they help reinforce the prominence of C major in the song. G major is also emphasized through the use of these keys and ...
why is it that when we feel sudden pain (like a sting) our hearing seems to amplify?	My guess, (not an expert) your body says "hey someones attacking us, focus" cuz adrenaline. Basically your whole body goes into defence/ready mode because it thinks it's in danger. I wpuldnt be surprised if your eyesight/smell/sense of balance get better immediately after that type of event	[ "A 2011 study by musicologists Michael Oehler and Christoph Reuter has led its authors to hypothesize that the unpleasantness of the sound is caused by acoustic resonance, as the shape of the human ear canal amplifies certain frequencies, especially those in the range of 2000 to 4000 Hz (the median pitches), at suc...
where do pharmacies get drugs from?	Actually the logistics and distribution are handled on the supply side - by the drug manufacturers themselves. Most companies will have some sort of warehouse/distrubution centre where orders from individual pharmacies are procesed and shipped directly (often through UPS/FedEx). source: Worked in logistics for a major...	[ "Pharmaceuticals are delivered mainly to pharmacies from the wholesalers Tambro AB and Kronans Apotek, These two companies trade in pharmaceuticals, known as single-channel distribution. Wholesalers in Sweden, two companies hold licenses to supply medical goods to pharmacies, Kronans Droghandel (KD) and Phoenix. Bo...
if sony and microsoft are always competing for market with their games consoles, why do both consoles always have similar specifications,(why doesnt one company just use a better graphics card to win over the market)	Same reason Toyota don't just make mid engine V12 supercar and sell it for peanuts...shits expensive. They need to find a balance between power, and being able to sell it cheap enough that enough people purchase it to warrant third-party developers producing titles for the platform.	[ "For consoles, the support of the target platform is usually the most considered factor. In the past, video games for consoles were written almost exclusively in assembly due to limited resources in terms of both storage and processing speed. However, as technology has advanced, so have the options for game develop...
if obesity is medically proven to cause negative health effects, how are parents not charged with child abuse/child endangerment?	Because it's a terrible idea and no politician who wanted to ever be re-elected would push for the Destory Families Because Your Kid Is Fat Act. I'm all for doing things to promote less fat kids (and adults), but what do you think is going to do more damage to a kid: being overweight, or being forcibly removed from the...	[ "According to research, It has shown that the psychological, social and behavioral consequences of childhood obesity shows that children who are overweight experience not only discrimination but overall body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, social isolation and depression.\n", "Psychological stress in a family m...
why are mice the preferred "testing" subjects in scientific experiments?	They are the right combination of breeding quickly, maturing quickly, being easy to care for, being easy to handle, and being close enough to humans to get meaningful results. We might get slightly more analogous results testing with gorillas, but a 400 pound animal that takes 15 years to mature, has one offspring a y...	[ "Mice are part of human experimentation. Many of the tests are related to new products that are launched on the market, but they are also required to try new medicines for the cure of chronic and deadly human diseases.\n", "Standard laboratory cages prevent mice from performing several natural behaviours for whic...
Did the MI6 support far-right extremists during the Years of Lead in Italy?	Hi there. I participated in [this discussion](_URL_1_) about Italian Politics in the 1970s which might answer some of your questions. There is also [this discussion](_URL_0_) about the alleged, and debunked, accusations of foreign participation in the "Years of Lead," although they mostly focus on American intelligen...	[ "At his arrival in Italy Pieczenik had been informed by Cossiga and the Vatican intelligence services that there had been a coup attempt in Italy in previous months, led by right-winged personalities of the intelligence services and of P2. Pieczenik was astonished by the presence of so many fascists in the Italian ...
how did i suddenly develop food allergies at 27 years old.	You may not like this, but the answer is: we don't know. People need to become sensitive to an allergen before any allergic reaction can take place, so that means they can't be allergic the very first time they are exposed. Since these people have been exposed numerous times to an allergen without reacting, and they s...	[ "Food allergies are immune reactions, typically an IgE reaction caused by the release of histamine but also encompassing non-IgE immune responses. This mechanism causes allergies to typically give immediate reaction (a few minutes to a few hours) to foods.\n", "If there is a family history of allergies, one may w...
why companies likes at & t, sprint, etc don't build more cell phone towers to compete with coverage?	They are constantly building new towers. Technology is improving at such a rate that you have to upgrade all your existing towers every few years. If you have so many towers, it can very difficult to upgrade every single one. They will usually prioritize upgrading their NYC towers so that 5 million customers get bet...	[ "Many governmental bodies also require that competing telecommunication companies try to achieve sharing of towers so as to decrease environmental and cosmetic impact. This issue is an influential factor of rejection of installation of new antennas and towers in communities.\n", "The telecommunication industry is...
why do windshield wipers make the window streaky for the first few strokes?	Because there are points on the blade with more pressure on them than others which is why there are streaks. After a few passes the parts with less pressure clean off as well as the parts with more pressure	[ "In March 1970, French automotive manufacturer Citroën introduced more advanced rain-sensitive intermittent windscreen wipers on their SM model. When the intermittent function was selected, the wiper would make one swipe. If the windscreen was relatively dry, the wiper motor drew high current, which would set the c...
why do people say that exercise is relatively useless for weight loss, compared to diet?	The issue here is that exercise burns a lot fewer calories than people assume it does. Let's say you go out and run a mile in 6 minutes flat. You're an average guy, a little heavy at 200 pounds. How many calories did you just burn? A thousand? 500? Surely enough to burn off that 12 oz. soda you drank earlier, right? We...	[ "Some popular beliefs attached to weight loss have been shown to either have less effect on weight loss than commonly believed or are actively unhealthy. According to Harvard Health, the idea of metabolism being the \"key to weight\" is \"part truth and part myth\" as while metabolism does affect weight loss, exter...
How do extra chromosomes effect human reproduction? (x-post from askreddit)	Not sure if this is what you mean, but it depends on the syndrome. People with down syndrome have an extra "21" chromosome and are generally perfectly capable of reproducing. However, some chromosomal abnormalities do cause infertility. Women with Turner Syndrome are missing of have a damaged X-chromosome and are gen...	[ "The content of a chromosome would be changed mainly by mutation after duplication of the chromosome and translocation with other chromosomes. However, in mammals, since the chromosomal sex-determination mechanism would have been established in their earlier stages of evolution, polyploidy would have not occurred d...
can someone give me a bipartisan description of the iran deal, why obama wants it (using his logic) and why the republicans don't (using their logic)?	Sure. Obama thinks there is a path to a non-nuclear Iran that does not involve military action. The republicans (and Israel) think there is danger that Iran will get the bomb while Obama is talking, and therefore we should take military action against them immediately. Like most of American politics these days, con...	[ "In comments made in the East Room of the White House on 15 July 2015, Obama urged Congress to support the agreement, saying \"If we don't choose wisely, I believe future generations will judge us harshly, for letting this moment slip away.\" He said the inspections regime in the agreement was among the most vigoro...
how is the network fox able to have a show like cosmos, which endorses evolution and the big bang, when it shows conservative propaganda all day?	There is a difference between Fox and Fox News (although they occasionally show FNC programming on network).	[ "The series premiered on March 9, 2014, simultaneously in the United States across ten 21st Century Fox networks. The remainder of the series aired on the Fox Network, with the National Geographic Channel rebroadcasting the episodes the next night with extra content. The series has been rebroadcast internationally ...
explain like i'm five "the higgs bison"	First of all you need to know that we don't know why gravity works. Ok, so you know how electricity was this big mysterious force that we couldn't explain? Then we found out a particle, the electron, was the cause. So that's kinda what the Higgs is, a gravity particle. It gives matter mass and gravity. Each atom h...	[ "Bison occidentalis is an extinct species of bison that lived in North America and the Japanese archipelago from about 11,000 to 5,000 years ago, spanning the end of the Pleistocene to the mid-Holocene. Likely evolving from \"Bison antiquus\", \"B. occidentalis\" was smaller overall from its ancestor and other spec...
what causes the feeling of impending doom in a medical context, and why is it regarded as a reliable indicator of a patient's condition?	Do doctors ask if you've had any feelings of impending doom?	[ "Symptoms and conditions behind psychiatric emergencies may include attempted suicide, substance dependence, alcohol intoxication, acute depression, presence of delusions, violence, panic attacks, and significant, rapid changes in behavior. Emergency psychiatry exists to identify and/or treat these symptoms and psy...
why do people always apologize for formatting on mobile. i usually use mobile and i do it to. what's mobile do to formatting?	Because you're typing at speed, on a small keyboard. It's more about the errors in the typing, such as random spaces or misspelt words.	[ "While text-based communication eliminates audio and visual cues, there are other methods for adding emotion. Emoticons, or emotional icons, can be used to display various types of emotions. Similar to emotional displays in face-to-face communication, it was found that females tend to use more emoticons than their ...
How long did the epoch of recombination last?	For a lot of purposes one can treat the recombination epoch as instantaneous, but in fact it happens in a quite long time period (redshift z = ~900-1200). I would recommend to look at this [paper by mukhanov](_URL_0_), where he first of all mentions how the ionisation degree during that time period changes and explicil...	[ "In cosmology, recombination refers to the epoch at which charged electrons and protons first became bound to form electrically neutral hydrogen atoms. Recombination occurred about 379,000 years after the Big Bang (at a redshift of \"z\" = ). The word \"recombination\" is misleading, since the big bang theory doesn...
what is more hot, a microwave or an oven?	Actually, physically hot? An oven. However, where water is involved, a microwave can make something hot MUCH faster. This is because a microwave doesn't use radiant heat to warm things up.	[ "Microwave heating, as distinct from RF heating, is a sub-category of dielectric heating at frequencies above 100 MHz, where an electromagnetic wave can be launched from a small dimension emitter and guided through space to the target. Modern microwave ovens make use of electromagnetic waves with electric fields of...
Can Black Holes swallow or absorb one another? A 2nd grader asked me this and I didn't have an answer. (Astronomy question)	Yes, black holes can (and we very strongly suspect DO) merge. When this happens, they should spiral in together by emitting gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime that travel at the speed of light. These ripples distort space as they pass by, and some experiments such as [LIGO](_URL_0_) are trying to measu...	[ "Black holes are difficult to find because they do not let out any light. They can be found when black holes suck in other stars. When black holes suck in other stars, the black hole lets out X-rays, which can be seen by telescopes.\n", "Tyson then describes the nature of black holes, their enormous gravitational...
We all hear about how ancient armies marched for months across huge distances for battle. Truly what was this like and how fast could they march?	On foot, a well fed soldier could probably keep a good pace of 2 ~ 3 mph in good order in formation. This would probably add up to a solid 15 miles per day. 20 miles would be considered pushing it. Anything above this and it would be considered a forced march, sacrificing men, energy, and supplies for time and stra...	[ "The phalanx carried with it a fairly minimal baggage train, with only one servant for every ten men. This gave it a marching speed that contemporary armies could not hope to match — on occasion forces surrendered to Alexander simply because they were not expecting him to show up for several more days. This was mad...
If microwaves work by creating vibration in the water molecules of food, why does your plastic or ceramic container come out so hand-burning hot?	Microwaves aren't as simple as you made it sound. The primary tool of a microwave is the electromagnetic waves oscillating inside of it. The water molecule is a dipole, meaning that charge is unevenly distributed throughout. The electric field produced in the microwave excites the water molecules, and they rub together...	[ "Because microwaves transfer electromagnetic energy at a molecular level, and the vibration of the molecules creates heat through friction, it is difficult to properly check for this highly localized 'micro'-thermal effect or create conditions where study of the putative 'athermal' effect is possible.\n", "Microw...
- why do communications companies make themselves so impossible to get hold of?	Customer service is an expense. It doesn't generate any revenue for them and so it's a low priority. The only reason it gets any attention in most companies is because good customer service can prevent a customer from moving to a competetor but in most places communications companies have monopolies or duopolies so the...	[ "Under the Telecommunications Act, Bell Operating Companies, which includes Verizon, have the incentive to unbundle their elements. If conditions are met, elements that are unbundled need not be offered at TELRIC and prices only need to avoid being \"unjust, unreasonable, or unreasonably discriminatory.\" Enough in...
how much regular household garbage gets recycled if the homeowner doesn't recycle their trash?	In my area, not only does recycling sorting not happen at all to general garbage after pickup, but there is also a quota of recycling. Once that quota is met for the day, the remaining recycling also goes into the landfill with the general garbage. It's not very motivating.	[ "Disposal of recyclables in the garbage is prohibited from households, businesses and apartments. For businesses, that would include prohibiting the disposal of cardboard, paper, and yard waste in the garbage. For apartments and houses, disposal of glass, paper, cardboard, aluminum, and plastic in the garbage would...
why do pictures of screens have that striated star-like pattern?	Ultra simple explanation: screens display images with pixels, which are dots arranged in a grid to small see with the naked eye. A camera records an image with a grid of sensors. So you have two grids layered over each other. Where the grids don't line up you get a distortion. If you two pieces of window screen and ove...	[ "Photographs of a TV screen taken with a digital camera often exhibit moiré patterns. Since both the TV screen and the digital camera use a scanning technique to produce or to capture pictures with horizontal scan lines, the conflicting sets of lines cause the moiré patterns. To avoid the effect, the digital camera...
why are even numbers easier to deal with than odd numbers when doing simple math in my head?	_URL_0_ tldr; Odd numbers are asymmetrical and unattractive because we're hard wired from a young age to find even numbers appealing and relate-able.	[ "We can prove that the corner cells \"u\" and \"v\" cannot have an even and an odd number. This is because if this were so, then the sums \"u\" + \"v\" and \"v\" + \"u*\" will be odd, and since 0 is an even number, the sums \"a\" + \"b\" + \"c\" and \"d\" + \"e\" + \"f\" should be odd as well. The only way that the...
Why do we know so little about the dark ages?	A popular question that comes from a rather widespread misconception. Check out our [FAQ section](_URL_0_) on the "not-so-Dark" Ages and you'll see we do know an awful lot! (edited to sound less snobby)	[ "Most modern historians do not use the term \"dark ages\", preferring terms such as Early Middle Ages. But when used by some historians today, the term \"Dark Ages\" is meant to describe the economic, political, and cultural problems of the era. For others, the term Dark Ages is intended to be neutral, expressing t...
What causes material in an accretion disc to spiral inwards?	It loses orbital energy to friction as the particles in the disc collide with one another.	[ "An accretion disk is a structure (often a circumstellar disk) formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a massive central body. The central body is typically a star. Friction causes orbiting material in the disk to spiral inward towards the central body. Gravitational and frictional forces compress and r...
how many languages can a baby learn naturally during the language developmental stage?	Unfortunately there isn't going to be a concrete answer. Theoretically any child could learn an infinite number of languages, but in order to learn any number of languages, whether 1 or 1,000, it takes immersion in the language. Computers and flash cards can't provide this immersion; it takes human interaction with f...	[ "Prelinguistic language abilities that are crucial for language acquisition have been seen even earlier than infancy. There have been many different studies examining different modes of language acquisition prior to birth. The study of language acquisition in fetuses started back in the late 1980s when different re...
Did Britons at the time of Roman occupation know where the Romans were coming from? How aware were they about the extent of Europe as a continent, and life outside of the British Isles?	Short answer: Yes, they even met the Romans. Long answer: In Cunliffe, B. W. and de Jersey's Armorica and Britain: Cross-Channel Relationships in the Late First Millennium BC, it is stated that trade between Britons and European Gauls/Romans took place from the 2nd Century BC onwards. Their primary point of access wa...	[ "The Romans from Italy were the first Italians to settle in the British Isles along with other people from various parts of the Roman Empire. They came as far back as 55 and 54 BC when Julius Caesar (initially landing in Deal) led expeditionary campaigns in the south-east of England, and then again in AD 43 when Em...
what happens to submarines during tsunamis?	TL;DR: Not much, generally, when they're out to sea. They will get shoved or moved up and down. But that shoving process is usually slow and the sub doesn't bang into anything, so it survives just fine. A tsunami is a one or more very high-volume waves usually caused by an underground-under-water earthquake. A sud...	[ "Tsunamis are long-wavelength, long-period sea waves produced by the sudden or abrupt movement of large volumes of water—including when an earthquake occurs at sea. In the open ocean the distance between wave crests can surpass , and the wave periods can vary from five minutes to one hour. Such tsunamis travel 600–...
Can capacitive touch screens determine the shape or pattern of the object interacting with them?	Yes. The touchscreen has a regular grid of sensors on the device surface. Each one reports a value that describes the change in the electrical field due to presence of other objects. This data is normally decoded to finger touches, but that's just because it is assumed to be generated by fingertips.	[ "Projected Capacitance is used to allow interactivity through any non-metallic surface and involves the relationship between a conductive pad and a third object. In Touch Screen applications, the third object can be a human finger. Capacitance forms between the user's fingers and the wires in the conductive pad. Th...
why does earth’s magnetic field flip every (roughly) 200.000 years? what are the consequences?	Science is not sure of the why. Our current studies of liquid convection generated magnetic fields are just scratching the surface, see... _URL_0_ We are only sure that it happens, and we are sure because it leaves a clear record in mid-ocean lava flows.	[ "In some simulations, this leads to an instability in which the magnetic field spontaneously flips over into the opposite orientation. This scenario is supported by observations of the solar magnetic field, which undergoes spontaneous reversals every 9–12 years. However, with the Sun it is observed that the solar m...
What did the American Founding Fathers think of Cromwell? Was he an anti-royalist inspiration to them, or were his theocratic motivations too antithetical to their Enlightenment deism for them to admire him?	As always more can be said, this [answer](_URL_0_) by /u/DarthNetflix tells of varied but mainly positive opinions between the american founding fathers, from Hamilton referring Cromwell as a depsot to Jefferson and Adams visiting English Civil War battlegrounds of roundhead victories.	[ "Cromwell was a strong advocate of black-owned businesses and encouraged black economic success. He believed black people should try to frequent black-owned businesses. Cromwell was considered an important statistician and historian in the later part of his life. He had great contempt for efforts to minimize the co...
Tuesday Trivia \| Twists and Turns: Watershed Moments in History	Normally, when you're shot down in World War Two, you're having a bad day. Add in being shot down in the Pacific far from land and you'd be having a really bad day. Toss in that you were downed in the middle of the opposing fleet and it really couldn't get worse. But George H. Gay was witness to an amazing day, desp...	[ "\"Tell me how it happened\" was a nightly series that interspersed the most important historical facts of Argentina with the comings and goings of a family settled in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. The narration mixed documentary images from the historical archive of the channel with scenes performed by the actors, ...
i've seen a lot of people put post-it notes over their webcam. how easy is it for someone to hack our cams? eli5!	It is fairly easy. I had a customer's conference service turn it on without asking. There was a school district in Pennsylvania USA that was famously caught spying on kids using them. _URL_0_	[ "Having multiple webcam emulators installed on a personal computer may increase the risk of Camfecting. In the field of computer security, camfecting is the process of attempting to hack into a person's webcam and activate it without the owner's permission.\n", "The fraudulent process of attempting to hack into a...
why are houses in suburbs numbered in such a peculiar way?	Generally, odd-numbered houses are on one side of the street, and even on another. Most places have a system where the "hundred/thousands" places is related to how far away from some central or otherwise predefined point; for example, around here Main Avenue is the dividing line between South and North -- the address ...	[ "In most English-speaking countries, the usual method of house numbering is an alternating numbering scheme progressing in each direction along a street, with odd numbers on one side (often west or south or the left-hand side leading away from a main road) and even numbers on the other side, although there is signi...
Air Conditioning Question	I would close the door. Unless you have a box fan or some such actively moving cool air from the house below up to the 3rd floor, warm air will want to pool in that upper level.	[ "BULLET::::- Air conditioning – (often referred to as 'AC, A/C, or air con) is the process of removing heat and moisture from the interior of an occupied space to improve the comfort of occupants. Air conditioning can be used in both domestic and commercial environments.\n", "Air conditioning is the cooling and d...
Why did the Netherlands's Jewish population have such a high percentage killed in the Holocaust?	There were a three main reasons: 1) The Dutch have a system where all people need to register themselves at their local council, stating the address where they are living. In Dutch, this is called the Bevolkingsregister. At the time of the German occupation, one was required to give many details to the Bevolkingsre...	[ "Due to the high variation in the survival rate of Jewish inhabitants among local regions in the Netherlands, scholars have questioned the validity of a single explanation at the national level. In part due to the well-organized population registers, about 70% of the country's Jewish population were killed during t...
how to catch up/develop a well informed opinion on world news and politics?	Personally, I like Christian Science Monitor (even though I'm an atheist. They do good reporting) and The Economist. The BBC is also good for factual stories on world events.	[ "This also includes any official source of information by the government such as speeches by government officials. Government attitudes to foreign governments often lead to information released to citizens that influence the way they think about foreign governments and foreign peoples. One extreme example of this p...
what is happening between julian assange and ecuador?	I don't think there's all that much going on. The story is that, Julian Assange is wanted by several governments, including England, and his English passport has been revoked so he cannot leave the country. He was granted Asylum by Ecuador, and is now living inside the Ecuador embassy in London.	[ "On 11 April 2019, Ecuador withdrew Julian Assange's asylum and invited the police into its embassy to arrest him. Later in April Ecuador detained Ola Bini and froze his bank accounts saying that he was under investigation for cyber-attack charges. Ecuador authorities said Bini was a key member of Wikileaks and clo...
The bow is better than the musket - why did Napoleon not use archers?	The bow isn't better than the musket. people often exaggerate its effectiveness by looking at it in a purely abstracted sense, but in the muddy, gory details the musket is superior. Some reasons: 1. You say an archer can shoot twelve arrows a minute, but for how long, and aside from one every five second being way...	[ "Firearms have been in use since the beginning of the dynasty, and field armies in battle formation have found them convenient and useful to carry along...Since muskets have been transmitted to China, these weapons have lost their effectiveness...In battle formation, aside from various cannon such as the \"three ge...
How did the Rothschilds protect their money?	The quote explains it. Wealth was not kept as precious metal in a building. It was transferred into bonds, debts, and stocks. People can steal gold. They cannot steal money someone else owes you. I don't know much about the Rotchschilds, but I can make a parallel to Thomas Willing, a colonial financier and first p...	[ "The Rothschild family () is a wealthy Jewish family descending from Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire, who established his banking business in the 1760s. Unlike most previous court factors, Rothschild manag...
During the Roman Empire, what was the status of the amphora? Might one be proudly displayed during a formal meal, a bit like showing off an expensive bottle of wine today; or might a secondary vessel be used to present the wine to guests and the amphora be on par with an empty Coke bottle?	There were different types of amphorae. There were transport type amphora, of rough ceramic, that carried wine (or fish sauce or whatever) in the bellies of ships. These would be sold by the wine merchant in town, either a whole amphora or some measure of it. Your house would buy the wine and store it in a similar, ...	[ "Roman amphorae were wheel-thrown terracotta containers. During the production process the body was made first and then left to dry partially. Then coils of clay were added to form the neck, the rim, and the handles. Once the amphora was complete, the maker then treated the interior with resin that would prevent pe...
how does conception happen during a period?	It rarely does, but...sperm can live a long time (many days) up in there and some people can have very short cycles. But...to be clear, if you think of conception as the moment the sperm enters the egg (technical definition) then it really can't happen because there would be no uterine lining in which to embed and it ...	[ "The Upanishad gives details about how the conception takes place in the womb and how it develops over a period of nine months. After the union takes place in a particular (Ritu) season, the growth of the body in the embryo on the first day is a \"nodule\". It becomes a \"bubble\" by the seventh night; in 15 nights...
why are tattos permanent?	LIke someone said watch _URL_0_ Basically the ink has large metal clusters within the dye. Lots of the dye gets "washed away" by your skin cells but the metal chunks stay behind because they are so big. That's why tattoos fade but never really go away.	[ "The term \"falsetto\" is most often used in the context of singing to refer to a type of vocal phonation that enables the singer to sing notes beyond the vocal range of the normal or modal voice. The typical tone of falsetto register or M2, has usually a characteristic breathy and flute-like sound relatively free ...
What are mammalian bones composed of?	Bone is a complex living tissue that is constantly undergoing remodeling based on the loads it is placed under (see: Wolff's Law). Osteocytes are the main cells that compose bone tissue. These osteocytes can be classified into osteoblasts (bone builders/mineralizers) and osteoclasts (bone destroyers/demineralizers). Th...	[ "In non-mammalian vertebrates, the zygomatic bone is referred to as the jugal bone, since these animals have no zygomatic arch. It is found in most reptiles, amphibians, and birds. It is connected to the quadratojugal and maxilla, as well as other bones, which may vary by species.\n", "In most vertebrates, the ma...
why can i stuff my face and remain slightly underweight, but some people struggle not to become overweight who diet?	This is a very interesting documentary that I think will answer your question for you.. _URL_0_	[ "Being underweight is associated with certain medical conditions, including anorexia, type 1 diabetes, hyperthyroidism, cancer, or tuberculosis. People with gastrointestinal or liver problems may be unable to absorb nutrients adequately. People with certain eating disorders can also be underweight due to lack of nu...
Would it be possible to create a food that has everything a human body needs to sustain itself and where all of the food is absorbed so no waste is produced?	See [these past threads](_URL_0_). The short answer is no. Feces does not consist entirely of food you cannot digest. It is a form of elimination where metabolic products and unwanted molecules from normal cellular activity can be cleared from the body.	[ "Another form of upcycling food would be to break it down and use it as energy. Engineers have found a way to break the food down into a reusable bio-fuel by pressure cooking it and then they are able to make methane out of the remains which can be used to produce a lot of electricity and heat.\n", "Humans produc...
what is the difference between ark, mig, tig, and oxy acetylene welding. (?strengh, speed, efficiency?)	Hello there! I want to start off by apologising for how long this post is; I didn’t want to oversimplify it too much. Both MIG (metal inert gas) and TIG (tungsten inert has) are forms of arc welding. TIG may also be referred to as GTAW (gas tungsten arc welding) and MIG as GMAW (has metal arc welding). Typically wh...	[ "GMAW is one of the most popular welding methods, especially in industrial environments. It is used extensively by the sheet metal industry and the automobile industry. There, the method is often used for arc spot welding, replacing riveting or resistance spot welding. It is also popular for automated welding, wher...
Is there any evidence to suggest that any of the Native-American tribes had intentions to explore or travel beyond America?	Hi, John Herrington is Chickasaw and flew into space in 2002. Can you please specify a particular era you're interested in? Thanks!	[ "In 1792, Captain Robert Gray discovered Grays Harbor and entered the Columbia River, the first non-indigenous people to have done so. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the vast interior between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean. Although the expedition cement...
why do some letters have a completely different character when written in uppercase (a/a, r/r, e/e, etc), whereas others simply have a larger version of themselves (s/s, p/p, w/w, etc)?	First of all, let's talk about the words 'uppercase' and 'lowercase'. These words come from the early history of printing, when a person called a typesetter would assemble each page of a book letter by letter. Each letter was a profile on a piece of lead, called a sort. The sorts were kept in boxes called [*typecas...	[ "BULLET::::- There are no lower or upper case letters, but the first letter of a proper name was often written a bit larger. Though the Unicode standard has upper and lowercase letters, which are the same in shape, the difference is only their size.\n", "Minuscule (\"lowercase\") letters, punctuation and spaces o...
why are army and navy salutes done with opposite palm positions?	Whose? The US standards for saluting are all the same. Some people just do it funny.	[ "The Naval salute differs in that the palm of the hand faces down towards the shoulder. This dates back to the days of sailing ships, when tar and pitch were used to seal a ship's timbers from seawater. To protect their hands, officers wore white gloves and it was considered most undignified to present a dirty palm...
Would it have been possible for the free market alone to stop Standard Oil?	No large companies can succeed without significant government intervention in its favor, and Standard Oil is no exception. Government intervention - namely subsidies and clever uses of state-to-state differences in tax codes - allowed Standard Oil to get big, and it would be unfair to ask for the free market to bring i...	[ "The National Energy Program had a number of other flaws. It was based on a world price steadily increasing to $100 per barrel. The world oil price declined to as little as $10 per barrel in the years following. Since the federal government based its spending on the larger figure, the result was that it spent a gre...
How did we discover the concept of shell burning in stars?	It's more a model assumption than an actual discovery. We see heavy elements in the remnants of supernovea and we know that mostly Hydrogen and Helium are the elements they start out with. So you have to get the heavies via some internal processes. What exactly is going on inside is down to our knowledge of fusion pr...	[ "The Discovery Channel series \"MythBusters\" explored the incendiary paint hypothesis and the hydrogen hypothesis in an episode that aired January 10, 2007. While their experiments did not concern what actually started the fire, the show's hosts, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, demonstrated that when set alight wit...
general relativity. li5.	I explained this [here](_URL_0_) previously, but on a different question. Edit: The rubber sheet analogy is probably overused, but what it's saying is that space is kind of like a three dimensional version of the rubber sheet, and that things with mass distort it in similar ways. But then you just ask why gravity dist...	[ "General relativity is the geometrical theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915/16. It unifies special relativity, Newton's law of universal gravitation, and the insight that gravitation can be described by the curvature of space and time. In general relativity, the curvature of spacetime is produ...
how are psychiatric medications developed, if their mechanisms of action is often unknown?	A lot of the time they are discovered by accident. In other words they don’t usually intend to create psychiatric medicine, but find that certain other drugs just so happen to have beneficial effects for mental health.	[ "Psychiatric medications are prescription medications, requiring a prescription from a physician, such as a psychiatrist, or a psychiatric nurse practitioner, PMHNP, before they can be obtained. Some U.S. states and territories, following the creation of the prescriptive authority for psychologists movement, have g...
what happens if you're caught with fake bills?	I am in loss prevention. Or was. Currently out. Anyway.. The bank calls the store and says 'You had a $100 counterfeit bill on whatever date, and we have confiscated it." Then usually the store calls me, and I go watch all of the cash transactions and try and find who did it. 100% of the time its a dude, late 20s to m...	[ "In the United States, counterfeiters in small operations develop the fake currency using tools which often include; printers, an iron, and green colored water. Upon collecting bills, the Federal Reserve checks all notes, destroying any whose appearance fails to fit that of a federal bill.\n", "He became impossib...
How does the snake digestive system work; do they have one stomach or is their whole body a stomach?	When i owned larger snakes, i fed them mice or rats. Most the time the poop would be a little lump with fur. There is a flap near the end where they deficate from. You can also see the rat's body as it goes down the snake. The snake constricted to move it further down. Here's more in to it. _URL_0_	[ "The tarantula's digestive organ (stomach) is a tube that runs the length of its body. In the prosoma, this tube is wider and forms the sucking stomach. When the sucking stomach's powerful muscles contract, the stomach is increased in cross-section, creating a strong sucking action that permits the tarantula to suc...
why modern stock markets still have a physical trading floor	The trading floor really is only a glorified television studio at this point. While a very small amount of trading is done "in person" on the floor, pretty much all of it is computer based. It wouldn't make for good TV if the reporter was standing in front of a server farm talking about why the market was up or down th...	[ "Floor trading is the meeting of traders or stockbrokers at a specific venue referred to as a trading floor or pit to buy and sell financial instruments using open outcry method to communicate with each other. These venues are typically stock exchanges or futures exchanges and transactions are executed by members o...
The concept of 'Classics', the health of the discipline, and 'Classicist' versus 'Ancient Historian'	Right, this ought to be fun. All this is from the perspective of Roman and ancient Mediterranean legal history, including Greek law, which I sadly probably will never be able to read ("Graeca non leguntur"). 1) Mostly dead. A lot of fascinating and advanced research is still going on in specialized institutes which is...	[ "Classics, in the Western academic tradition, refers to the studies of the cultures of classical antiquity, namely Ancient Greek and Latin and the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Classical studies is considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities; however, its popularity declined during the 20th century. Ne...
Can anybody date this map based on the states around Germany?	It looks like post-Versailles Europe (1920-39), when Danzig was a free city. Oppeln is a little more interesting since it held a plebiscite in 1921 as to whether or not become part of Poland or Germany. It ended up going with Germany, but there had already been a conflict going on in Upper Silesia between the German ...	[ "The natural region classification of Germany, as used today by the Federal Office for Nature Conservation (\"Bundesamt für Naturschutz\" or BfN) and by most state institutions, is largely based on the work in producing the Handbook of Natural Region Divisions of Germany between the years 1953 to 1962. This divided...
How and why did the Chinese campaign “The Great Leap Forward” fail?	Check out [this ](_URL_0_) thread on a similar question from a few hours ago.	[ "The Great Leap Forward in China in 1958 corresponded closely with the myth of superabundance; economic planners reduced the acreage space for planting wheat and grains, trying to force farmers and agricultural labourers into accepting new forms of industry. As a result, production of wheat and grain was slowed dan...
why do people fill empty space between words with "uhh" and "umm" instead of silence?	To let you (the listener) know that they are still talking. In a polite conversation, when one person is silent that is usually seen as permission for the other person to talk. If I stop talking to think of a word, you might take that to mean that I am through talking. If I keep making noise, you know that I am still t...	[ "In linguistics, a filler, filled pause, hesitation marker or planner is a sound or word that is spoken in conversation by one participant to signal to others a pause to think without giving the impression of having finished speaking. (These are not to be confused with placeholder names, such as \"thingamajig\", \"...
why aren't movies pirated using cinema files on the day of release?	Snagged this right from [a Wikipedia article](_URL_0_): > Movies are supplied to the theatre as a digital file called a "Digital Cinema Package"(DCP).[19] For a typical feature film this file will be anywhere between 90 and 300GB of data (roughly two to six times the information of a Blu-ray disc) and may arrive as a...	[ "Pirated movies are usually released in several formats and different versions as better sources become available. The versions are usually encoded in the popular formats at the time of encoding. The sources for pirated copies have often changed with time in response to technology or anti-piracy measures.\n", "Pi...
why are the drugs that bind to specific receptors have such variability based on their specific chemical make-up?	I don't mean to be rude, but the other posts are half-baked. The answer you're looking for is actually pretty straightforward. There are two factors you need to consider: (1) agonist [efficacy](_URL_1_) and (2) agonist [binding affinity](_URL_0_). The former is a measure of the magnitude of the physiologic response the...	[ "It is this phenomenon that gives rise to drug specificity. Of course, drugs do not only act on receptors: they also act on ion channels, enzymes, and cell transporter proteins. these hydrogen bonds are so powerful than the ionic bonds.\n", "Drugs interact with receptors by bonding at specific binding sites. Most...
What was the highest rank in Nazi Germany that was acquitted of war crimes?	The question is impossible to answer really. By and large people were indicted for the specific things that they did, not "war crimes". The original high ranking defendants were charged with "count 3" of "war crimes". (_URL_0_) but even then there was much specificity in the testimony. But, to answer your question, K...	[ "Manfred Roeder (August 20, 1900 – October 18, 1971) was a military judge in Nazi Germany. Serving on the highest wartime court, he led the investigation and examinations and later the prosecution of the German Resistance group, the Red Orchestra. He shared responsibility for the dozens of death sentences handed do...
please help me understand cloud storage such as googledrive	The "Cloud" is really just a nickname for remote server storage. Right now, you have the file on your hard drive on your computer. When you "upload it to the cloud", you're just making a copy of that file on someone else's computer (in this case, Google's, and it's not a desktop computer but a massive server farm). Ye...	[ "Google Cloud Storage is a RESTful online file storage web service for storing and accessing data on Google Cloud Platform infrastructure. The service combines the performance and scalability of Google's cloud with advanced security and sharing capabilities. It is an \"Infrastructure as a Service\" (IaaS), comparab...
surge protectors	You mean whats the difference between a power strip and a surge protector? Basically, there is a "switch" in a surge protector that is controlled by high amounts of power. During normal operation, the switch is off. When there is a surge of power, the switch turns on and provides a different path for the flow of power....	[ "A transient surge protector attempts to limit the voltage supplied to an electric device by either blocking or shorting current to reduce the voltage below a safe threshold. Blocking is done by using inductors which inhibit a sudden change in current. Shorting is done by spark gaps, discharge tubes, zener-type sem...
Why did Eastern armies prefer curved swords over the straight swords of their western counterparts?	Part of this is just perception. When we think of Western armies with swords, we think of ancient and medieval armies with straight swords, and when we think of Eastern armies, we think of post-medieval armies with curved swords. But it isn't an Eastern vs Western division; it's mostly an early vs late division. Ancien...	[ "Soldiers in ancient Indian subcontinent are recorded as carrying a shield and spear in their hands while a sword, dagger, and battle-axe were held at the waist. These included both straight swords and slightly curved sabres. The stout, straight sword appears to have been common and can be seen in early sculptural ...
why do steering wheels automatically recenter themselves if you stop holding them during a turn?	It's actually caused by the caster angle of the front wheels. When you turn the car is actually lifted a bit higher due to the geometry of the steering system. When you release the wheel, the weight of the car wants to force the wheel back to straight. This is also helped along by something called trail. The point ...	[ "Because of the high centrifugal forces encountered during drifting, drivers are usually retained by a racing seat and five-point harness. This allows the hands to merely turn the wheel, instead of bracing the body in the seat. The same applies for the feet, which are free to move rapidly between clutch, brake and ...
What is the oldest known state to have existed?	It's a problematic question. How would you define a "state"? Is it a political entity with only one government wielding the power/commanding the armed forces? Is it an entity tied to an area, to a people, to an ideal? Definitions of "country", "nation" and "state" abound, so if you want an answer to your question you'l...	[ "In southern Illyria organized states were formed earlier than in other areas of Illyria. The oldest known state which can be discussed about from ancient sources is that of the Enchelii. The height of the Enchelean state was from the 8th–7th centuries BC, but the kingdom fell from dominant power around the 6th cen...
although sodium increases your blood pressure, potassium can apparently 'lower' your blood pressure. what is going on there?	To understand this it's going to get a little complicated, so let's start... Lets start with sodium and how it increases your blood pressure. Osmotic pressure explains why water will move from an area of high concentration to an area of lower concentration. Osmosis is constantly attempting to even out the number of so...	[ "The well known effect of sodium on blood pressure can be explained by comparing blood to a solution with its salinity changed by ingested salt. Artery walls are analogous to a selectively permeable membrane, and they allow solutes, including sodium and chloride, to pass through (or not), depending on osmosis.\n", ...
What causes the routing of major veins and arteries to be essentially the same from person to person?	There is definitely variations in the path of blood vessels. Anatomy books give many examples of this. One consequential example is the coronary arteries of the heart. 70% of people are right-dominant, meaning the right branch supplies the septum, while 10% av left-dominant, meaning the left branch (circumflex) supplie...	[ "The arteries are perceived as carrying oxygenated blood to the tissues, while veins carry deoxygenated blood back to the heart. This is true of the systemic circulation, by far the larger of the two circuits of blood in the body, which transports oxygen from the heart to the tissues of the body. However, in pulmon...
Can someone identify if these two American Civil War uniforms are from different sides?	/u/ThisOldHatte is correct: Confederate officer and enlisted. This photo hit the internet as part of the exhibit "[Photography and the American Civil War" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,](_URL_0_) April – Sept 2013. ‘Captain Charles A. and Sergeant John M. Hawkins, Company E, “Tom Cobb Infantry,” Thirty-eighth Regi...	[ "Both armies in the American Civil War initially included uniforms in the color, including the 7th New York Militia, but it was primarily identified with those of the Confederate States of America. By 1863, all troops were asked to obey the Regulations for the Confederate States Army and have cadet grey uniforms.\n...
what's bad about internet explorer?	tl;dr; Up until Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer (IE) was very much behind modern advances in Web browsing and also required a different way to do things than other browsers. Since IE was installed on every PC, it still was the market leader in browsers so Web Developers had to use more tedious and non standard m...	[ "Probably the biggest generic security failing of Internet Explorer (and other web browsers too) is the fact that it runs with the same level of access as the logged in user, rather than adopting the principle of least user access. Consequently, any malware executing in the Internet Explorer process via a security ...
Why does the pitch of a sine wave decrease when the volume is turned up on a set of speakers?	This is a perceptual effect. See [here (pdf)](_URL_0_) section 2B and fig 2 When the level increases, the perceived pitch decreases for frequencies < 1000 Hz and increases for f > 2000 Hz. This is coherent with your observation. The loudspeakers always vibrate at the same frequency. There is no "max velocity" or ...	[ "Even within one church, the pitch used could vary over time because of the way organs were tuned. Generally, the end of an organ pipe would be hammered inwards to a cone, or flared outwards, to raise or lower the pitch. When the pipe ends became frayed by this constant process they were all trimmed down, thus rais...
i thought the internet was a series of interconnected routers and computers that communicate however they want. how does one institution in one state control this communication even for people in other parts of the world?	The internet is mostly run by companies who own infrastructure (like wires and shit). The institution you're talking about (assuming the FCC) gets to decide what these types of companies are allowed to do. Right now they are FORCED by the FCC to treat all traffic equally. We are worried that the FCC will change the...	[ "For the Internet, the physical medium and data link protocol can vary several times as packets traverse the globe. This is because the Internet places no constraints on what physical medium or data link protocol is used. This leads to the adoption of media and protocols that best suit the local network situation. ...
why does requesting a longer delivery time online increase the costs to deliver?	It means they have to hold the package somewhere as opposed to sending it through the normal process. The standard shipping options (next day air, 2 day, ground, ect) are established processes for the shipping company and have a very specific set of steps from pick up to delivery. Wanting it delivered later requires t...	[ "As e-commerce continues to become a growth engine for many brands, the last leg of delivery, ending up at the consumer's home or business, has become more challenging. Thanks to the Amazon Effect, consumers want more convenient options for fast, free delivery, putting pressure on other businesses to compete for th...
How do scientists determine which two elements to use when synthesizing new elements?	Different reactions have different probabilities of producing the desired species in the final state. The kinds of reactions they are using are low-energy fusion reactions. The dynamics of these compound nuclear reactions are complicated, but certain pairs of target and projectile work better than others. In the case ...	[ "The quest for new elements is usually described using atomic numbers. As of 2010, all elements with atomic numbers 1 to 118 have been observed. Synthesis of new elements is accomplished by bombarding target atoms of heavy elements with ions, such that the sum of the atomic numbers of the target and ion elements eq...
where do the suits for playing cards originate from? (hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades)	The playing cards you're talking about were popularized in Egypt around the 11th century. The cards had for suits: polo sticks, coins, swords, and cups. The cards were hand made, so the symbols on them evolved as the concept of the 52-card deck moved from the Mediterranean to northern and western Europe over the next 3...	[ "Card games first arrived in Italy from Mamluk Egypt in the 14th century, with suits very similar to the Swords, Clubs, Cups and Coins and those still used in traditional Italian and Spanish decks. The four suits most commonly encountered today (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) appear to have originated in Fran...
In WW2, were there Nazi soldiers who surrendered immediately because they did not support Hitler and were forced to fight?	Nazi was a political party, soldiers who were also party members would be considered part of the ideological hard core group. For purposes of answering your question, can you specify if you mean German soldiers who were members of Hitlers National Socialist German Workers Party, German soldiers who were not Party membe...	[ "Some Soviet prisoners of war who survived German captivity during World War II were accused by the Soviet authorities of collaboration with the Nazis or branded as traitors under Order No. 270, which prohibited any soldier from surrendering.\n", "If the Germans discovered people were involved in the resistance, ...
why is asphalt black? would concrete or another material not work better?	The tradeoff between asphalt and concrete is complicated, and there are lots of reasons to choose one or the other: * Asphalt is a lot quicker to build. This particularly matters when resurfacing existing roads (as opposed to surfacing newly-built roads), because minimizing the amount of time the road is shut is very ...	[ "Asphalt is found in lakes or in seeps where oxidization of petroleum takes place. It is black or brown in color due to its hydro-carbon composition and comprises nitrogen, sulphur and oxygen. It is made up of an emulsion of mineral elements and bitumen.\n", "For many years, the black sand was used in the buildin...
What would the effects be for a person that has had a BMI:50+ body fat throughout their life if it was surgically removed in a short period of time?	Besides the psychological effect of having a completely new proprioceptive identity (you build your interactions with the physical world depending on your body shape), there very well could be increases in usable strength as there are not pounds of excess tissue, better breathing, more efficient heart pumping. Insulin...	[ "BULLET::::- A body mass index (BMI) over 27 causes a 33% decrease in likelihood to have a live birth after the first cycle of IVF, compared to those with a BMI between 20 and 27. Also, pregnant women who are obese have higher rates of miscarriage, gestational diabetes, hypertension, thromboembolism and problems du...
Why was it that Ireland played such a large part in Christianizing England and the rest of Continental Europe?	This is a big question that has no single answer, but I'll address two factors that I see as critical: (1) charismatic eremitism, i.e. holy men in the woods, and (2) monastic communities, each with their own saintly mascots and a commitment to proving their mascot's worth. The importance of hermits is in some ways sel...	[ "It was not until the end of the 17th centuries that the Crown of England gained full control of Ireland by means of a series of military campaigns in the period 1534–1691. During this period, the island was progressively colonised by English and Scottish Protestant settlers. Most of the Irish remained Roman Cathol...
At what period in the Roman Empire was the Latin that we learn today used?	It depends, of course, on what you are taught. But almost all major courses teach 'classical Latin' as a default standard, and that standard is a slightly idealised version of Latin that represents literary writing in the middle of the 1st century BC, covering the end of the Republic and the start of the empire. It cry...	[ "The Latin letters' ancestors are found in the Etruscan, Greek and ultimately Phoenician alphabet. As the Roman Empire expanded in late antiquity, the Latin script and language spread along with its conquests, and remained in use in Italy, Iberia and Western Europe after the Western Roman Empire's disappearance. Du...
how the heck does google maps know the distance from a to b?	(The following is based on general knowledge of path finding algorithms, not on the actual inner workings of Google Maps. Feel free to correct me.) One way could be the following. Google saves a list of intersections and crossroads. If a piece of road connects two of such intersections, then Google adds (to some other...	[ "BULLET::::- Distance refers to Google's attempt to return those listings that are the closest the location terms used in a user's query. If no location term is used then \"Google will calculate distance based on what’s known about their location\".\n", "The Normalized Google Distance (NGD) is a semantic similari...
How is a musical scale derived?	For the most part the musical scale is a local culturally accepted organization of frequencies. In western music, the diatonic scales (like the major scale) are really common, however in other cultures completely different scales are used. There are some that go beyond an octave and don't have thirds or fifths. Despi...	[ "A musical scale is a discrete set of pitches used in making or describing music. The most important scale in the Western tradition is the diatonic scale but many others have been used and proposed in various historical eras and parts of the world. Each pitch corresponds to a particular frequency, expressed in hert...
in relativity, why is it called space-time as opposed to just space?	It's called spacetime because relativity tells us that space and time are not two unrelated concepts. Space and time seperately don't look the same for all observers. What is space for one observer, can be time for another. If you've ever taken classes on relativity, this is exactly what the Lorentz transformations tel...	[ "Special relativity places space and time on equal footing, so that one considers the geometry of a unified spacetime instead of considering space and time separately. Minkowski geometry replaces Galilean geometry (which is the three-dimensional Euclidean space with time of Galilean relativity).\n", "Time has his...
How long would bodies be preserved on the Moon? If astronauts died there, what would happen to their bodies?	The lunar surface temperature at the equator fluctuates between 100 Kelvin and 390 Kelvin (116C). Apollo 11 landed at 0.8° N, 23.5° E. If there were any that bacteria could survive extreme temperatures(??) they might have an opportunity to decompose the bodies. Also cyclic thawing and refreezing would slowly start turn...	[ "As the surviving astronauts slowly die of disease and in-fighting, they decide to try to ensure life will continue to survive: they take a flask of bacteria and drop it into a crater filled with liquid water, in the hope that some form of life will develop.\n", "The film concludes with a statement giving the \"o...
How did Native Americans deal with wildfires?	Well, a big part of the question is that the huge, devastating wildfires we see periodically in the Western U.S. in the present were almost never a danger in the past. Paleoclimatic data (particularly from tree-ring samples) seems to indicate that these really huge wildfires were much rarer in the past than in the pres...	[ "But it is now understood that Native Americans caused significant modifications to habitats by clearing of forest and intentional burning. Fire scientists and ecologists have identified fire scars in trees, charcoal layers in lake sediment and, most recently, charcoal and other materials from desert ciénaga sedime...
[seriously] eli5 the war in syria	There are many political groups in Syria. They all were repressed under a dictator, Hafez Al-Assad. Hafez was friendly to the US and Europe, so they didn't mess with him. When he died in 2000, people expected his son Bashar Al-Assad would make changes. He didn't and people got annoyed over time. When the Arab Spring s...	[ "Foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War refers to political, military and operational support to parties involved in the ongoing conflict in Syria that began in March 2011, as well as active foreign involvement. Most parties involved in the war in Syria receive various types of support from foreign countries a...
why do a lot of people say "macs are just better for doing graphical design"?	I don't think I'm that old. Back in the late 1990s, I wouldn't work with anything but Apple computers for desktop publishing work and graphic design. Macs at the time were incredibly stable compared to PCs, had gorgeous display, supported a wider variety of fonts out of the box, had more accurate color depiction and ...	[ "Most importantly, graphics give a good look to artwork whenever it is applied. Graphics contribute to the general outlook of a designed artwork, this, in turn, lure interested members of the public to look at the work of art or purchasing it.\n", "Many graphical user interfaces (GUIs), including macOS, Microsoft...
Since Mars doesn't have a magnetic field, how would this affect our ability to use electricity-based technologies there?	It would make no noticeable difference on any of those things.	[ "Mars does not have an intrinsic global magnetic field, but the solar wind directly interacts with the atmosphere of Mars, leading to the formation of a magnetosphere from magnetic field tubes. This poses challenges for mitigating solar radiation and retaining an atmosphere.\n", "The loss of the Martian magnetic ...
if the evidence for the holocaust can stand by itself, why is it illegal to deny the holocaust in several european countries?	Most countries in the world do not have any kind of concept of unlimited free speech. The idea is that certain kinds of speech can be just as mentally harmful as violence is physically harmful, and thus they should be illegal just like violence is.	[ "Holocaust denial, the denial of the systematic genocidal killing of approximately six million Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, is illegal in 16 European countries and Israel. Many countries also have broader laws that criminalize genocide denial. Of the countries that ban Holocaust denial, so...
Why did the Eastern Roman Empire survive during the fifth century, when the Western Empire fell?	This is a vast topic, so whilst I will attempt to cover all the important points, do note that there is always more to say on this question. First of all, we have to note that there were issues beyond any Roman'' control. Michael Kulikowski's recent Imperial Triumph: The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine (2016...	[ "After the dissolution of the Western Empire in the late fifth century, the Eastern Roman Empire remained stable through the beginning of the Middle Ages and retained the ability for future expansion. Justinian I reconquered North Africa, Italy, Dalmatia and finally parts of Spain for the Eastern Roman Empire. Howe...
How significant was allied strategic bombing of Germany in WW2?	I think it says something about Reddit that its first reaction to the Allied bombing of Germany is to think about some dinosaur bones, and not the 635,000 people that died as a result of it, but I digress. Adam Tooze, in The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy argued that one of the mos...	[ "The strategic bombing campaign against German industrial cities, military installations and a wide variety of other targets continued throughout World War Two and made a decisive contribution to Allied victory. Although the Royal Air Force suffered significant losses of both men and aircraft, the campaign severely...
Do you think language is an evolutionary continuity?	I'm no biologist, but .. Obviously, other animals have vocal forms of communication, and different species have different levels of sophistication in their vocalizations. You can always point to grammar and whatnot to make the case that human language is fundamentally different from vocalizations in other animals. Bu...	[ "He argues instead that from a biological viewpoint the evolutionary origins of language is best conceptualized as being the probable result of a convergence of many separate adaptations into a complex system. A similar argument is made by Terrence Deacon who in \"The Symbolic Species\" argues that the different fe...

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