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train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
Was Britain's abolition of the slave trade a selfless act of virtue or were there any ulterior motives behind the decision?	Judging whether a action in the past, and one that involved millions of people no less, is virtuous or not is probably not the best way to see it. Ideas of virtue change, people have various and variable motivations for their actions, and motivations often overlap and change as we look at actions from different perspec...	[ "In this period, Britain was debating whether to abolish slavery throughout its empire. The British slave trade had been outlawed in 1807, but abolition was still a pressing political question in the late 1820s. Against this background, the two London showings and the showing in Liverpool, \"a city synonymous with ...
if an engine has 200 hp and 350 lb/ft torque and another has 300 hp and 250 lb/ft torque, which engine is more powerful and why?	HP = ( Torque x RPM ) 5252 Where Torque is measured in Lb-Ft. Power is what actually does work, and Torque is just one component of Power, the other being rate (RPM in this case). An engine that makes 1000 lb-ft of torque at 1000 RPM = 190 HP at 1000 RPM. An engine that makes 250 lb-ft of torque at 5000 RPM = 238...	[ "Power is provided by a supercharged 1.5-liter engine that produces 156 HP (115 kW) and 185 Nm (136 lb-ft) of torque. It is backed up by an IMA hybrid system that develops 20 HP (15 kW) and 78 Nm (58 lb-ft) of torque.\n", "Horsepower claims vary widely—from 6,978 to 8,897—but are probably around 8,000 HP. Superch...
how do prices on certain items stay the same despite inflation?	those prices are so small that increasing them with small increments would be useless. I will explain with something from my country (Turkey). In here, the smallest capacity bottled water has being sold for 0.5 try for so long that even our republic would be younger from it. We have approximately 0.08 inflation and if ...	[ "Conceptually, inflation refers to the general trend of prices, not changes in any specific price. For example, if people choose to buy more cucumbers than tomatoes, cucumbers consequently become more expensive and tomatoes cheaper. These changes are not related to inflation; they reflect a shift in tastes. Inflati...
there are so many way to die that have a really low probability, eg. by lighting - do these probabilities add up to make one of them happening to you likely?	There is a 100% probability that you will in fact die to some cause that is in itself improbable when compared to all possible causes.	[ "The Probability of Kill (or P) is usually based on a uniform random number generator. This algorithm creates a number between 0 and 1 that is approximately uniformly distributed in that space. If the P of a weapon/target engagement is 30% (or 0.30), then every random number generated that is less than 0.3 is consi...
Is gravity theoretically faster than the speed of light?	The speed of gravity -- say, as measured by the speed of gravitational waves -- is the same as the speed of light. The best paper on this is one by [Carlip](_URL_0_).	[ "BULLET::::- Some bimetric theories of gravity with variable speed of light like the Janus cosmological model hypothesize apparent faster-than-light interstellar travel with no acceleration nor deceleration, using the energy difference of the two conjugated metrics to reach relativistic speeds after a mass inversio...
Did Darwin discount evolution towards the end of his life?	["Shortly after his death, Lady Hope addressed a gathering of young men and women at the educational establishment founded by the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody at Northfield, Massachusetts. She had, she maintained, visited Darwin on his deathbed. He had been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, had asked for the local S...	[ "Darwin's theory radically altered popular and scientific opinion about the development of life. However, he lacked evidence and explanations for some critical components of the evolutionary process. He could not explain the source of variation in traits within a species, and did not have a mechanism of heredity th...
the difference between cisgender, transgender, and intersex	Cisgender is what most people are. Their physical sex, and gender identity are mostly in sync, so they feel 'normal' with themselves for the most part. Transgender -as can be assumed by the prefix 'trans' being the opposite of the prefix 'cis', is the exact opposite. Their physical sex does not match how their gender ...	[ "Cisgender (sometimes cissexual, often abbreviated to simply cis) is a term for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. For example, someone who identifies as a woman and was assigned female at birth is a cisgender woman. The term \"cisgender\" is the opposite of the word \"tr...
how did people add titlecards to silent movies?	They splice it into the reel. Basically that's how editing was done back then. You would have someone look each frame. The editor would then cut the reel in between the frames where you want to add something, then stick the added footage into that reel and finally reattach the rest onto the end of the added frames.	[ "Since the invention of the cinematograph, simple title cards were used to begin and end silent film presentations in order to identify both the film and the production company involved, and to act as a signal to viewers that the film had started and then finished. In silent cinema, title cards or intertitles were ...
If you were put in the very front line of a battlefield (swords, spears and shields) would that be an automatic death sentence?	Not a death sentence, and often a coveted honour. Our notion of the lethality of these engagements is mostly derived from movies sensationalising what happens in pitched battle. I wrote about this in more detail [here](_URL_0_).	[ "Combat ends when all combatants from one side or the other have either been rendered unconscious or dead (usually by having their hit points reduced to zero), or fled from combat. The player can also lose at combat by allowing all members of the party to succumb to sleep or paralysis effects.\n", "The military c...
How did Romans think of death? Was it something to be avoided, something inevitable, or something else entirely?	All depends on who you are and what mode of philosophy you follow, really! But that would be a cruel answer, so let's go ahead and look into some of it. I've been reading quite a bit of Seneca lately, and he offers some wonderful opinions on the matter. Some quick background on Seneca before we start - if you want to ...	[ "There was no real consensus, at least among surviving Roman texts and epitaphs, of what happened to a person after death or the existence of an afterlife. Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia claims that most people are of the opinion that after death one returns to the non-sensing state that occurred before ...
what is this 'dark flow' at the edge of our universe?	I seem to recall reading a recent article that suggests Dark Flow was just a mistake in the data. I will look for said article. _URL_0_ Points out errors in article that postulated the concept of Dark Flow NatGeo has a reprinting of the article _URL_1_ The answer the ELI5 Dark Flow is an idea that came about be...	[ "In astrophysics, dark flow is a theoretical non-random component of the peculiar velocity of galaxy clusters. The actual measured velocity is the sum of the velocity predicted by Hubble's Law plus a possible small and unexplained (or \"dark\") velocity flowing in a common direction.\n", "Dark portals are gates t...
How accurate is Durant's "Story of Civilization?"	It's difficult to comment on the accuracy of a work that runs to 10,000+ pages. I've only read (part of) The Age of Faith. It's very out of date. He's not a specialist in what he's writing about. He really likes pithy lines of analysis that seem archaic to me even for someone writing in 1950. And it's about as Euroce...	[ "The Durants strove throughout \"The Story of Civilization\" to create what they called \"integral history.\" They opposed it to the \"specialization\" of history, an anticipatory rejection of what some have called the \"cult of the expert.\" Their goal was to write a \"biography\" of a civilization, in this case, ...
how can a doctor refuse to treat a patient while respecting his hippocratic oath ?	First, many doctors don't swear a Hippocratic Oath. Some schools require different oaths, which may be modified Hippocratic Oaths, the original Hippocratic Oath, the Oath of Maimonidies, the Declaration of Geneva, or some other professional oath or covenant. In most of them, you'll find a line that says something lik...	[ "Some doctors remind that physician-assisted suicide is contrary to the Hippocratic Oath, which is the oath historically taken by physicians. It states \"I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel\". The original oath however has been modified many times and, contrary to popular...
Why is it that when lightning hits a lake the whole lake isn't affected?	This gets asked every so often, but the best short answer is that water is a good conductor, but not a great one. If water was a great conductor, we wouldn't need power lines. We could run the electricity through the water pipes. This means that the lightening that hits a lake doesn't spread out that far and aims for g...	[ "Lake effect thundersnow occurs after a cold front or shortwave aloft passes over a body of water. This steepens the thermal lapse rates between the lake temperature and the temperatures aloft. A difference in temperature of or more between the lake temperature and the temperature at about (the 850 hPa level) usual...
In "Kagemusha," the European-backed Japanese lord wears plate armor to battle. Did some Japanese warriors wear plate armor in real life? If so, was it more effective than Japanese armor?	The plate armour was combined with traditional (read: pre-Western contact) Japanese armour styles to better protect the wearer from musket balls and other various related firings. I talk about armour development in Japan [here](_URL_1_), with this relevant line: > Their armour was more to deal with arrows loosed fro...	[ "Scholars agree that Japanese armour first appeared in the 4th century, with the discovery of the cuirass and basic helmets in graves. It is thought they originated from China via Korea. During the \"Heian period\" (794-1185), the Japanese cuirass evolved into the more familiar style of body armour worn by the samu...
how does a deep space probe like rosetta maintain contact and transmit data back to earth?	Yep. It's may be difficult to realize, but radio waves have identical properties to visible light. This is because they are both forms of electromagnetic radiation. Radio waves travel at the speed of light and do not deteriorate in space. In the same way that you can see the light from the sun 300,000,000 miles away, r...	[ "Communication with spacecraft beyond earth orbit has traditionally been over point-to-point links through the Deep Space Network. Each such data link must be manually scheduled and configured. In the late 1990s NASA and Google began working on a new network protocol, Delay-tolerant networking (DTN) which automates...
How did a landed noble get their money from far away estates?	So what I think you're getting at is that it seems in the fragmented political and judicial landscape of post-Roman Europe, it would be very difficult to safely move revenues collected from one place to another. And you know what? You're absolutely right. It was incredibly difficult. The Roman Empire, for all its pro...	[ "The concept of nobility transferred to New Spain in a way not seen in other parts of the Americas. A noble title here did not mean one exercised great political power as one's power was limited even if the accumulation of wealth was not. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, most of those who had titles gained them...
why is jeremy corbyn regarded as anti-semitic?	A very good question! Evidence: The overwhelming majority of the media focus here is on people accusing Labour of antisemitism. There is very little evidence of Labour peers making antisemitic statements. Most of the so-called evidence is from the media focusing on a few events and twisting the narrative to suit t...	[ "In March 2018, in response to claims that he may be seen as antisemitic, Corbyn stated, \"I'm not an anti-Semite in any form\" and that he challenges \"anti-Semitism whenever it arises and no anti-Semitic remarks are done in my name or would ever be done in my name\". In the same month, Corbyn also said that he wo...
war reenactments	War reenactment (specifically American Civil War reenactment) began when veterans of the actual war wanted to remember their fallen comrades and teach what the war was all about. Since then, it has become a popular hobby among many different ages. There are a few different types of reenactors. Some are more casual, s...	[ "Large scale reenactments began to be regularly held at the Royal Tournament, Aldershot Tattoo in the 1920s and 30s. A spectacular recreation of the Siege of Namur, an important military engagement of the Nine Years' War, was staged in 1934 as part of 6-day long show.\n", "Military displays and mock battles and r...
Do space stations lose air from using air locks?	[_URL_1_](_URL_3_) [_URL_4_](_URL_4_) [_URL_0_](_URL_2_) As part of the depressurisation cycle the ISS quest airlocks use pumps to pump air from the airlock back into the station. The pumps reduce air pressure inside the airlock to 5 psi (34 kPa), 1/3 of that in the station. This reduced pressure is used to test th...	[ "An airlock is a device which permits the passage of people and objects between a pressure vessel and its surroundings while minimizing the change of pressure in the vessel and loss of air from it. The lock consists of a small chamber with two airtight doors in series which do not open simultaneously.\n", "In \"S...
why do some stores require you to be a member of their store to get sale prices? are they just selling everyone's information despite promising they don't?	Yes and no. These programs are backed by statistical sales analysis that you can draw various conclusions from. Loyalty programs provide troves of data on consumer behavior while also incentivizing loyalty and creating another avenue for the organization to push their brand image. Typically, consumers in these prog...	[ "Showrooming, the practice of examining merchandise in a traditional retail store without purchasing it, but then shopping online to find a lower price for the same item, has become an increasingly prevalent problem for traditional retailers as a result of online competitors, so much so that some have begun to take...
why does nearly every forum/social website use emoticons, but it seems like an unspoken taboo to use them on reddit? :(	Different places have different cultures. I'm guessing it's just the upvote system. Emoticons look childish, so they get upvoted less.	[ "The use of emoticons can be traced back to the 17th century, drawn by a Slovak notary to indicate his satisfaction with the state of his town's municipal financial records in 1635, but they were commonly used in casual and humorous writing. Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet were included in a proposal by ...
Is there something connecting the growing isolationist policies of 16-17 century East Asian countries or is it a mere coincidence?	WRT Korea this idea of the "hermit kingdom" is because of a Eurocentric worldview. Korea into the 19th century had a flourishing relationship, both diplomatic and commercial, with both Beijing and Edo. After the Jurchens and the Chinese merged into a single actor in the mid-17th century as the former conquered the lat...	[ "In Early Modern times, the major nations of East Asia attempted to pursue a course of Isolationism from the outside world but this policy was not always enforced uniformly or successfully. However, by the end of the Early Modern Period, China, Korea and Japan were mostly closed and disinterested to Europeans, even...
how much difference did all the allotments and garden vegetable patches, actually make to the food shortages in Britain during the war?	I've had a sniff around and there isn't very much information on this, for reasons I'll suggest at the end, but: The Telegraph [reports the Royal Horticultural Society](_URL_0_) (I can't find the original source) saying that (I think) the allotments produced 1.3 million tonnes of food during the war, while stating th...	[ "In 1946, with the war over, many British residents did not plant victory gardens, in expectation of greater availability of food. However, shortages remained in the United Kingdom, and rationing remained in place for at least some food items until 1954.\n", "Before the war Britain imported 70% of its food. Home ...
how do spiders get a string of web to go from one tree (for example) to another? do they shoot it? do they jump? i just don't understand!	Note, I don't know the exact species of spiders that do the following. Some spiders will literally jump and be carried by the wind to another tree. Some species will attach it to one tree, climb down the same tree, climb up another tree, and pull on its web to shorten it, then do it again until there are strands runni...	[ "Juvenile spiders start by bending over a small green leaf, eventually graduating to larger dead leaves (or the occasional other lightweight objects) that are hoisted up from the ground on silk lines at night.\n", "This spider builds a funnel-shaped web to catch its prey. It usually consists of a multitude of str...
what is mindfulness?	It is a process that with training allows you to be present in the moment, aware of what you feel and think.	[ "Mindfulness is gaining a growing popularity as a practice in daily life, apart from Buddhist insight meditation and its application in clinical psychology. In this context mindfulness is defined as moment-by-moment awareness of thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, characterized mainl...
Why can't we slow down New Horizons enough to go into orbit around Pluto?	Changing speed or direction in space requires thrust. Thrust requires fuel. Fuel is heavy. Since we use rockets to put things into space, they have to be as light as possible. New Horizons is moving very, very fast and Pluto doesn't have all that much gravity, so the spacecraft would require a long rocket burn to slow...	[ "\"New Horizons\" performed flyby maneuvers of Jupiter, Pluto and its moons in the 21st century. This type of maneuver allowed it to reach Pluto at high velocity without the complications of slowing down, after which it proceeded into the Kuiper belt on a solar system escape trajectory. \n", "Having completed its...
Did the Chinese ever make use of catapults (or any pre-gunpowder artillery)?	More can always be said about the topic, and linking old answers is not meant to discourage anyone from writing new replies. But while waiting for those to be written, the OP might be interested in reading [this thread](_URL_0_) with an interesting comment by u/wumao	[ "During the invasion of Transoxania in 1219 Genghis Khan used a Chinese catapult unit in battle, they were used again in 1220 in Transoxania. The Chinese may have used the catapults to hurl gunpowder bombs, since they already had them by this time. In the 1239-1240 Mongol invasion of the North Caucasus, Chinese wea...
Do animals live significantly longer lives in captivity?	Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I am going to speak not for household domestics (dogs, cats) but for other non-domesticated captive animals. For animals that require a lot of specialized care or ones that do not do well in captivity then their life span can actually decrease. More often then not, we are to blame because...	[ "In captivity, they often develop pathologies, such as the dorsal fin collapse seen in 60–90% of captive males. Captives have reduced life expectancy, on average only living into their 20s, although some live longer, including several over 30 years old and two, Corky II and Lolita, in their mid-40s. In the wild, fe...
Was Soviet engineering always so shoddy? Why was such shoddy quality allowed?	The engineering is generally less at fault that the construction/implementation. A big problem for the Soviet Union was in the quality of materials they used. In particular during the pre-WWII period the absurdly high quotas and emphasis on Stakhanovites (essentially glorifying the most productive worker) led to a fa...	[ "Soviet computer software and hardware designs were often on a par with Western ones, but the country's persistent inability to improve manufacturing quality meant that it could not make practical use of theoretical advances. Quality control, in particular, was a major weakness of the Soviet computing industry.\n",...
why do we have our nose and mouth canals joined together initially and then later separate into the wind pipe and oesophagus? if they were both separate right from the start, we wouldn't have to deal with problems like choking. is there any advantage to this?	because that's the way the general land based mammal's systems work. evolution means whatever mechanism survives gets passed on. not that you can't make a better system. the marine mammal's respiratory system doesn't mix the two. dolphins, whales, etc can't breathe thru their mouth. their blowhole is the only ...	[ "It is formed by indentations in the inferior nasal conchae, maxilla and lacrimal bone. The canal drains into the nasal cavity through the anterior portion of the inferior meatus, which is between the inferior concha and the floor of the nasal cavity.\n", "In terms of acoustics, nasals are sonorants, which means ...
how protein is made inside a cell?	It all starts with DNA in the nucleus. The cell makes a copy of a specific section of DNA that codes for the specific protein being made. The copy of the DNA is called RNA. The RNA gets modified into mRNA and leaves the nucleus and travels to a ribosome. The ribosome accepts the mRNA and, through a very complex process...	[ "The majority of the proteins of a cell are the product of messenger RNA transcribed from nuclear genes, including most of the proteins of the organelles, which are produced in the cytoplasm like all nuclear gene products and then transported to the organelle. Genes in the nucleus are arranged in a linear fashion u...
If the United States were to power itself purely on fission plants, how long would it be before we ran out of fuel? Also, what are the top considered ways to get rid of the waste?	I've said this before and I'll say it again - I think that the nature of nuclear waste is an asset for fission power. It is captured and stored on site. Imagine how little of a threat global warming would be if coal plants trapped 100% of their waste. There only really two ways to get rid of waste. The first is to ...	[ "Conventional, human manufactured, nuclear fission power stations largely use uranium, a common metal found in seawater, and in rocks all over the world, as its primary source of fuel. Uranium-235 \"burnt\" in conventional reactors, without fuel recycling, is a non-renewable resource, and if used at present rates w...
Which touch receptor encodes for the sensation of "wetness"?	Feeling wetness is a combination of the work of mechanoreceptors, cutaneous receptors, and thermoreceptors. Thermoreceptors feel temperature, cutaneous receptors feel texture, and mechanoreceptors feel pressure. Anything that feels cold and smooth may feel wet. You're more likely to feel wetness if the temperature is ...	[ "Touch or somatosensation (adjectival form: somatic), also called tactition (adjectival form: tactile) or mechanoreception, is a perception resulting from activation of neural receptors, generally in the skin including hair follicles, but also in the tongue, throat, and mucosa. A variety of pressure receptors respo...
How were 4-Fs and other unenlistable draftees treated on the US homefront during WWII?	> What on earth do they mean by "moral" tests? Is this simply a criminal background check, or was it also used for subjective elimination of people the recruiter decided were undesirable? That sounds vague enough to provide cover for disallowing anyone involved in adultery, homosexuality, gambling, drugs, even drink...	[ "The BFS only accepted applicants who were already serving in one of the part-time units, which had been mobilised for the duration of the war. Successful students were released from their units and allowed to proceed overseas. With the moratorium against sending drafts overseas, this meant local soldiers came to s...
the normandy beach landing	They did it as safely as they could. The problem was, the Nazi war machine could exploit the road network to move mechanized units quickly. In order to succeed, they had to get a lot of troops on the beach quickly before the Nazis could call in major reinforcements (part of the plan was faking the Germans out by maki...	[ "The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks and naval bombardments. In the early morning, amphibious landings commenced on five beaches codenamed Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah, with troops from the United States landing on Omaha and Utah, Britain landing on Gol...
Most of Western Europe abandoned tribalism/clanship except Scotland, why was this the case?	There is quite a lot to unpack here in your question, but I am going to try to unpack it a bit and hopefully provide you an answer to satisfy your curiosity. For starters, there really isn't a march of civilization in play, and I'm reading a bit of an underlying assumption that clanship is a more primative form of so...	[ "The clan system of the Highlands and Islands had been seen as a challenge to the rulers of Scotland from before the 17th century. James VI's various measures to exert control included the Statutes of Iona, an attempt to force clan leaders to become integrated into the rest of Scottish society. This started a slow ...
How did Islam come to be an abrahamic religion? It makes sense to me that Christianity is, because Jesus was Jewish, as were his earliest followers. But the prophet Mohammed was not Jewish, nor were his early followers. So where did the idea originate that Muslims are descendants of Ishmael?	I'm slightly confused by the difference between your first and second question. I think you could make a very strong and very plausible argument that Islam would be an Abrahamic faith on the basis of its tenets regardless of the connection with Abrahams progeny, in the same way that I think you could argue that Mormoni...	[ "Both Judaism and Islam track their origins from the patriarch Abraham, and they are therefore considered Abrahamic religions. In both Jewish and Muslim tradition, the Jewish and Arab peoples are descended from the two sons of Abraham—Isaac and Ishmael, respectively. While both religions are monotheistic and share ...
why does my computer get hot, especially when playing games?	Computers are made up of lots of tiny little machines, and they all do different things, but almost all of them make heat by accident. Sometimes the heat comes from things that move inside your computer, like the hard drive where we keep things like pictures and movies and programs. Those hard drives spin really fast a...	[ "Also, computer graphics hardware usually generates a larger amount of heat, especially high end gaming pieces, and requires additional cooling systems to prevent overheating. This may further raise the cost, although some dedicated graphics cards comes with built-in fans.\n", "Reducing the heat output of the com...
How does mimicry in plants work, how can a plant "tell" what an insect looks and feels like?	The plants can't tell. The insects, however, can tell what the plants look like. So if a plant looks like a female bee, or whatever this is just a hypothetical example, then a male bee is more likely to try to mate with it and pick up pollen. Because those tricky plants who look the most like the bee are more likely t...	[ "Some forms of mimicry do not fit easily within the classification given above. Floral mimicry is induced by the discomycete fungus \"Monilinia vaccinii-corymbosi\". In this unusual case, a fungal plant pathogen infects leaves of blueberries, causing them to secrete sugars, in effect mimicking the nectar of flowers...
please break down mlm and direct selling?	Break down: It's a scam! Just a Ponzi scheme like marketing strategy where people are compensated for recruiting others to market some bullshit product or idea. You get compensated for every sale someone you recruited makes, you also get compensated for the sales made by recruits your recruits recruited. In successful...	[ "MLM salespeople are, therefore, expected to sell products directly to end-user retail consumers by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing, but most importantly they are incentivized to recruit others to join the company's distribution chain as fellow salespeople so that these can become down l...
why do webpages "bounce" back up to the top when loading the last few images when i have already scrolled down?	In JavaScript you can set the "focus" to be on any specific item on the page. It's likely that the focus is set to something at the top of the page. Javascript can be told to run after the page finishes loading, which is why it will wait until after images load. May be more noticeable on mobile since slower download sp...	[ "A flash of unstyled content (FOUC, also flash of unstyled text) is an instance where a web page appears briefly with the browser's default styles prior to loading an external CSS stylesheet, due to the web browser engine rendering the page before all information is retrieved. The page corrects itself as soon as th...
why do my front teeth hurt when i run.	Keep your mouth closed, Alaskan.	[ "The level of pain that a baby can handle will be different for each child. Some may appear to suffer more than others while they are teething. The soreness and swelling of the gums before a tooth comes through is the cause for the pain and fussiness a baby experiences during this change. These symptoms usually beg...
How is it that different breeds of Canis lupus familiaris (domesticated dog) can develop to be so different in specific individual populations around the world, yet not be subject to speciation?	Dogs have likely only existed as a separate subspecies of Canis lupus for ~ 40,000 yrs at max, which is too short a time for speciation to occur from wolves, much less different breeds of dog, even with geographical or other isolation. Most dogs are not "purebreds", anyway, so there is little chance for genetic drift....	[ "In 1986, a study of skull morphology found that the domestic dog is morphologically distinct from all other canids except the wolf-like canids. \"The difference in size and proportion between some breeds are as great as those between any wild genera, but all dogs are clearly members of the same species.\" In 2010,...
This morning on NPR they were discussing Liquid metal batteries: How do they work?	There's nothing special about sodium-sulfur batteries except for their high operating temperature and the danger of elemental sodium. It works the same as any other battery - described [here](_URL_0_) and [here] (_URL_1_). They cannot store sunlight except in the sense that you could use a photovoltaic cell to charge t...	[ "Molten-salt batteries are a class of battery that uses molten salts as an electrolyte and offers both a high energy density and a high power density. Traditional non-rechargeable thermal batteries can be stored in their solid state at room temperature for long periods of time before being activated by heating. Rec...
In AD 700 England was divided up into several Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Did they all speak mutually intelligible languages?	Anglo-Saxon dialects definitely existed, and were likely mutually intelligible. Historians can see variation from one text to another, something that has been used perhaps most extensively with Beowulf. Using the language of Beowulf, a compelling case has been made for a West Saxon origin, based on linguistic aspects o...	[ "Following the Norman conquest in 1066, the Norman language became the language of England's nobility. During the whole of the 12th century the Anglo-Norman language (the variety of Norman used in England) shared with Latin the distinction of being the literary language of England, and it was in use at the court un...
there's plenty of cow milk to buy, and some goat milk, but is there's a reason we don't produce and consume milk from other farm animals (like horses, pigs, etc)? what about cheese made from that milk?	Humans domesticated cows and have been selectively breeding them for milk production (among other things) for so many generations that they're in no way similar to their wild ancestors (who have been extinct for centuries by the way). So they basically kind of fell into that niche - it basically became easy. That s...	[ "In the Western world, cow's milk is produced on an industrial scale and is by far the most commonly consumed form of milk. Commercial dairy farming using automated milking equipment produces the vast majority of milk in developed countries. Dairy cattle such as the Holstein have been bred selectively for increased...
is it possible to be healthily overweight?	> Is it possible to be healthily overweight this is a tough question because of how we usually decide whats "overweight". If you have a lot of muscle you will technically be overweight, but will still be "healthy". The simplest answer is that excess fat will put unneeded stress on someones bodies cutting life span s...	[ "While the negative health outcomes associated with obesity are accepted within the medical community, the health implications of the overweight category are more controversial. The generally accepted view is that being overweight causes similar health problems to obesity, but to a lesser degree. A 2016 review esti...
if the nuclear deal that obama proposed is so good for iran, why haven't they taken it?	Because Iran wants the same capability that the U.S. and Israel have had for a long time. And we're telling them they can't.	[ "In an August 2015 op-ed for the \"Times of Israel\", Gottheimer explained his inability to support President Obama's Iran deal, saying that it was not \"in the best interest of the United States or our allies in the region,\" mainly because it would \"not preclude Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.\" He challe...
why are sweeteners in soft drinks very common (diet coke/coke zero for example), but not in other sugary foods such as chocolate bars, cakes or candy?	The same "zero" calorie sweetener you taste in a diet soda would taste drastically different if raised to a baking temperature prior to being served. Here is a good article detailing the whats and whys of how substitutes work in food prep: _URL_0_	[ "A sweetened beverage is any beverage with added sugar. It has been described as \"liquid candy\". Consumption of sweetened beverages has been linked to weight gain, obesity, and associated health risks. According to the CDC, consumption of sweetened beverages is also associated with unhealthy behaviors like smokin...
Stellar nucleosynthesis and transuranic elements (in theory)?	Copying my same comment from your other thread: We don't know exactly what paths the r-process takes, or where they end. We have indications that fission is a major limiting factor to how high in mass the r-process can reach, but we don't know the structure and susceptibility to fission of the superheavies near the is...	[ "Stellar nucleosynthesis is the creation (nucleosynthesis) of chemical elements by nuclear fusion reactions within stars. Stellar nucleosynthesis has occurred since the original creation of hydrogen, helium and lithium during the Big Bang. As a predictive theory, it yields accurate estimates of the observed abundan...
what's so great about prince?	You generally have to listen to music in the context of the time, i.e. see what else was going on in the charts / mainstream at the same time and therein most often lies the difference - > people bring something new/extraordinary for that time, which is later hard to grasp as being so because everyone started doing th...	[ "The prince is consistently described by friends as adventurous (almost to the point of recklessness), warm, tender and extremely generous. But of all his qualities, the one most often mentioned is that of loyalty to his friends. One account describes how William was particularly kind to friends who were either \"i...
How efficient is the human body at absorbing nutrition from food intake?	The term you're looking for is the thermic effect of feeding. Its magnitude depends on the type of food. Out of the three macronutrients, protein has by far the highest metabolic cost. > This thermic effect seems to be influenced by the composition of food consumed. In general, the typical thermic effect of protei...	[ "One dietary Calorie contains 4184 joules of energy. The human body is a highly complex biochemical system that undergoes processes which regulate energy balance. The metabolic pathways for protein are less efficient than the metabolic pathways for carbohydrates and fat. Protein contains four calories per gram, alt...
Clinical trial of homeopathic treatment suggests it works, but it's really just sugar. How?	> British Homoeopathic journal I will also point out that the start point of this study is incredibly vague. They are treating 'influenza-like symptoms'. There is no standardisation of what the disease actually is - no serology or culture or PCR or quantification of the infective organism of any kind.	[ "Community-based clinical trials are clinical trials conducted directly through doctors and clinics rather than academic research facilities. They are designed to be administered through primary care physicians, community health centers and local outpatient facilities. In 1986, the Community Consortium held the fir...
how does a person get hacked through open ports? and what to do to prevent it?	An open port on your computer means that something is responding to connections on that port. a program is listening on the port and does things with what you send to it. It's not the port that is the actual problem. It's the program. The program (probably) has a very narrow set of intended uses, but what happens if y...	[ "The practice of attempting to connect to a range of ports in sequence on a single computer is commonly known as port scanning. This is usually associated either with malicious cracking attempts or with network administrators looking for possible vulnerabilities to help prevent such attacks. Port connection attempt...
What were the differences between the Northern Renaissance and the Italian Renaissance?	It is a confusing topic, both were pretty much the same event in some respects. I would say the most significant difference was that the Italian Renaissance was more driven by the revival of the pagan aspects of Classical Antiquity. The driving force of this was the Academy of Florence, it's founding father Marsilo Fic...	[ "The Northern Renaissance was the Renaissance that occurred in Europe north of the Alps. Before 1497, Italian Renaissance humanism had little influence outside Italy. From the late 15th century, its ideas spread around Europe. This influenced the German Renaissance, French Renaissance, English Renaissance, Renaissa...
Why exactly is there a pattern at the lower edge of this photo?	I used to do darkroom photography a lot, and to me that doesn't look like any sort of chemical burn or radiation. I've had photos turn out like it; it was due to the film being crinkled inside the camera or during development, which makes the areas of the film on the bottom of the photo develop unevenly around the spro...	[ "The foremost edge of the (\"orange\") square is drawn near the bottom of the painting. Because the viewer's picture plane is parallel to the bottom of the square, this line is horizontal. Lines connecting each side of the foremost edge to the vanishing point are drawn (in grey). These lines give the basic, one poi...
will technology ever exist in the next 50 years or so that will simulate gravity on spaceships, like in the movies?	The technology already exists to simulate gravity, such as by having a large rotating section, however it's not practical for our current work in space. You'd need a fairly large rotating structure (if it is small, the difference in gravity between your feet and your head would be disorienting, and it would have to spi...	[ "Some technologies portrayed as common in the film which had not materialized in the 2000s include commonplace civilian space travel, space stations with hotels, Moon colonization, suspended animation of humans, practical nuclear propulsion in spacecraft and strong artificial intelligence of the kind displayed by H...
Do deaf people who learn how to talk reciprocate their regional accent?	Deaf person here. A bit of background of myself: I am profound deaf from age of one due to spinal meningitis. I went to public school (not a school for deaf) with Signing Exact English (SEE) interpreter being available and took speech classes three times a week until I finished high school since the beginning of schoo...	[ "Children who go to hearing schools are faced with the need to learn to read and write the spoken language. Just like situations involving spoken languages having greater dominance over other languages, deaf people live in societies that are dominated in every aspect by hearing people and their values. Most deaf pe...
why do you have no service/internet access when you are in the middle of a phone call on your cell phone?	That doesn't happen to me, you might need to talk to your service provider, or have your phone checked out.	[ "The service is not free and is charged whether or not the calling party can reach the person on the other end (as the phone just might be off the hook for privacy reasons or the line might be connected to the internet). For this reason, it is usually only used in cases of emergencies as noted above.\n", "The ter...
Is a discrete fourier transform equivalent to calculating the fourier series?	Not really, no. Is it close enough? Yes. Is it pretty much the only option in digital signal processing? Yes. With anything discrete you will use summations instead of integrals and difference equations instead of differentials. What this means is instead of calculating the area under the curve, you are creating small...	[ "In the study of Fourier series the numbers could be thought of as the \"amount\" of the wave present in the Fourier series of . Similarly, as seen above, the Fourier transform can be thought of as a function that measures how much of each individual frequency is present in our function , and we can recombine these...
we can generally bleed from anywhere on our body. why then does it take 30 minutes and 3 staff members for me to give blood for a test? why cant they just jab the needle in anywhere?	Wtf? Do they have to restrain you and carry you in and out? I have blood taken all the goddamned time and it takes like 2 minutes and one philipino lady.	[ "BULLET::::- In some cases, patients may experience some bleeding, especially after bowel movements, up to 2 weeks after the banding (though this may be from the untreated hemorrhoids as well). This may last for several days or more. If the patient thinks it is severe or persistent (more than one tablespoon of bloo...
Do freckles fade over time?	Yes and no. Freckles will come and go depending on how much sun exposure your skin gets. My freckles definitely multiply and then lessen between summer and winter when I'm getting different amounts of sun. I went to college in Florida after having grown up in Virginia and my freckle count quadrupled and they stuck a...	[ "The formation of freckles is caused by exposure to sunlight. The exposure to UV-B radiation activates melanocytes to increase melanin production, which can cause freckles to become darker and more visible. This means that one may have never developed freckles before, but after extended exposure to sunlight, they m...
how does 40 mm of rain submerge cars?	They are probably at low ground. So it rains over an area, and all the rain that isn't going down a drain needs to go somewhere. It travels to lower ground, causing flooding. Like going downhill. It pools at the bottom, submerging buildings and cars and such.	[ "The slim design of the vehicle allows it to be parked in spaces up to four times smaller than the average parking space. The height of the BugE brings the driver to a height level similar to other automotive drivers, and the scope of the fairing help to make the smaller vehicle visible in traffic. The one piece fa...
if cinemas now get movies as a digital copy how come they dont get copied and leaked online well before the dvd release date?	There are small watermarks in each copy that uniquely identifies it. If a theater were discovered to have leaked their copy, the movie studio would stop doing business with them, which would almost certainly cause the theater to go out of business. So theaters are heavily incentivized to be as protective as possibl...	[ "before having it released to Blu-Ray and DVD (entering its video window). During the theatrical window, digital versions of films are often transported in data storage devices by couriers rather than by data transmission. The data can be encrypted, with the key being made to work only at specific times in order to...
In shows you often see American WW2 troops carrying garands, thompsons, carbines, etc, when they go into battle. Did troops get to pick one? Or did they get assigned weapons? How did that work?	I answered a similar question some time ago [here](_URL_0_) but I’ll repeat it below.	[ "In US service, each gun was assigned an ammunition limber, which carried 14, sixteen-round boxes of ammunition as well as tools and accessories. The gun and its limber were normally together towed by a single horse or mule, but were manhandled forward if contact with the enemy was expected.\n", "The Combat Box w...
Thursday Focus \| Animals, Beasts and Other Creatures	Oh my god, the chance to share one of my favourite animal-related facts EVER. I'm not an expert in this area, but this fact has fascinated me ever since I found out about. So when cotton first hit Europe from Central Asia in the late medieval period, they didn't know how to explain it. It's like wool, but what kind of...	[ "It is often noted for its sluggish movements during the day and is believed to be largely crepuscular in activity. It preys principally on mammals, including armadillos, skunks, weasels, rodents and monkeys. It also hunts reptiles (principally snakes), fish, domestic lambs and occasionally birds, including tinamou...
why do old televisions "blip" toward the center when they turn off?	Old televisions used what is called a cathode ray tube. At the back of the tube there is a device called an electron gun which fires a beam of electrons at the screen. The screen is broken up into tiny spots called called pixels, and each pixel contains patches of material that will glow red, green, or blue when hit ...	[ "Properly working, adjusting a horizontal or vertical hold should cause the picture to almost \"snap\" into place on the screen; this is called \"sync lock\". A slowly rolling vertical picture demonstrates that the vertical oscillator is nearly synchronized with the television station but is not locking to it, ofte...
how do leeches survive when they are not attached to a host?	Same way we survive inbetween meals.	[ "When they are hungry, leeches use their anterior suckers to connect to hosts for feeding. Once attached, leeches use a combination of mucus and suction to stay in place while they inject hirudin into the hosts' blood streams. In general, sanguivorous leeches are non host-specific, and do little harm to their host,...
in the imitation game, and in real life, how did the turing machine know that it had cracked the code?	Flaw in the Enigma Code - Numberphile: _URL_0_ That video explains pretty well what was happening, the machine wasnt looking for words, rather looking for the combination of rotors that didnt produce a logical impossibility based on the fact that a letter would never convert to itself. Once the machine found a combina...	[ "Turing's original proposal was what he called the Imitation Game, which involves free-flowing, unrestricted conversations in English between human judges and computer programs over a text-only channel (such as teletype). In general, the machine passes the test if interrogators are not able to tell the difference b...
how are humans waterproof, yet we can still sweat water?	Imagine this: You have a mouthful of water, but your mouth is closed, and you go swimming in the pool. The water from the pool doesn't flow into your mouth, but if you squeeze your cheeks, the water comes out of your mouth. Your mouth is likened to the pores that sweat comes out of. For a slightly more complex explana...	[ "Although sweat is mostly water, there are many solutes which are found in sweat that have at least some relation to biomarkers found in blood. These include: sodium (Na), chloride (Cl), potassium (K), ammonium (NH), alcohols, lactate, peptides & proteins. Development of devices, sensing techniques and biomarker id...
what's the reality for sun protection? do we need spf 55+ every time we leave the house?	> Can someone please explain the science, data, and recommendations regarding the dangers of sun exposure? The "Sun Protection Factor" tells you how much longer it will take to cause damage. So if you're in conditions where you'd normally burn in 15 minutes (pretty strong sun), SPF 30 means you'll burn in 15 * 30 = ...	[ "The sun protection factor (SPF rating, introduced in 1974) is a measure of the fraction of sunburn-producing UV rays that reach the skin. For example, \"SPF 15\" means that of the burning radiation will reach the skin, assuming sunscreen is applied evenly at a thick dosage of 2 milligrams per square centimeter (mg...
- how do motion sensors work? (like ones used in lights and stuff)	These lights have electronic eyeballs that read how much light there is in an area. If the amount of light changes too quickly, usually because somebody walks in front of it and blocks the eyeball, it tells the lights to come on.	[ "Motion sensors are devices that use various forms of technology to detect movement. The technology typically found in motion sensors to trigger an alarm includes infrared, ultrasonic, vibration and contact. Dual technology sensors combine two or more forms of detection in order to reduce false alarms as each metho...
why do banks make people fill out a deposit slip at the teller's window, then make them use the atm card reader, when customers don't have to fill out anything at the atm to deposit checks?	Banks have VERY old technology and processes. If you only saw behind the curtain, most banks operate (at least some of their systems), with technology from the 1980's.	[ "Many credit cards can also be used in an ATM to withdraw money against the credit limit extended to the card, but many card issuers charge interest on cash advances before they do so on purchases. The interest on cash advances is commonly charged from the date the withdrawal is made, rather than the monthly billin...
What's a good history of Subsaharan Africa?	If you're OK with a dense read, John Iliffe's Africans: The History of a Continent (2d ed., 2009?) is an interesting overview that extends across the continent in space and time and introduces a lot of concepts that help to define the whole. He's big on thematic subjects, but he does cover a very long stretch of tim...	[ "One subclade, now known as R1b1a2 (R-V88), is found only at high frequencies amongst populations native to West Africa, such as the Fulani, and is believed to reflect a prehistoric back-migration from Eurasia to Africa.\n", "Cadamosto's accounts are also invaluable for historians of Africa, providing the first w...
Where was the North getting its tobacco during the US Civil War? Was there a shortage?	It would have been very difficult for Northern civilians to get their hands on tobacco products during the war (in fact the Internal Revenue Act placed a tax on luxury items -- [tobacco](_URL_0_) was included in that). If you were a soldier, however, it was pretty easy to procure tobacco. Since most of the war was fo...	[ "While the use of tobacco products was growing in popularity, the American Civil War afforded the fledgling company an opportunity that brought enormous financial success, leading to Macdonald Brothers becoming the preeminent company in the field in Canada. Virtually all of the tobacco growers were located in state...
What is the history and development of the EMS number "911" in America?	So Gary Allen has a really complete time line of the history of 911 in the USA. _URL_0_ here. I would recommend reading that. It's complete with correct resources and self sourced history. Edit: his article answers your questions as well!	[ "The first 911 system was installed in Haleyville, Alabama, in February 1968, as a way to quickly connect a subscriber to the local police station. The system was rapidly adapted and improved by other telephone companies, evolving into the E911 system, which provides both caller location and identification. A pione...
Question regarding electromagnetism, copper coils, and magnets.	What matters is the change in magnetic flux. When you have a magnet going through a donut of copper coil, the flux doesn't change at all, and you won't get any voltage out of it.	[ "Most often, magnet wire is composed of fully annealed, electrolytically refined copper to allow closer winding when making electromagnetic coils. High-purity oxygen-free copper grades are used for high-temperature applications in reducing atmospheres or in motors or generators cooled by hydrogen gas.\n", "BULLET...
Is there less gravity the higher up you go?	As you move closer to the center of mass of an object, the apparent force of gravity feels higher. I've been wondering the same. Here is my reasoning, would somebody please correct me if it's wrong: As you go closer to the center, there's less mass below you, so that decreases the force of gravity. However, you're als...	[ "Gravity decreases with altitude as one rises above the Earth's surface because greater altitude means greater distance from the Earth's centre. All other things being equal, an increase in altitude from sea level to causes a weight decrease of about 0.29%. (An additional factor affecting apparent weight is the dec...
what is wireless spectrum and why can't we make more of it?	When we talk about light, we usually think of the thing that comes from the sun and light bulbs and colors. We can think of this light as a wave. Each color is a different wavelength of this wave. Blue is a certain wavelength. Green is a different one. With red being the largest (lowest energy) and violet being th...	[ "In recent years \"wireless\" has gained renewed popularity as a more general term for devices communicating using electromagnetic radiation, either radio waves or light, due to the rapid growth of short-range computer networking, e.g., wireless local area networks Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, as well as cell phones, to d...
Did nuclear tests kill lots of nonhuman animals?	The tests definitely did kill animals who were inadvertently nearby, but I don't think we have good documentation on how many. There are anecdotal accounts of people coming across rabbits at the Trinity site and lots of work was done to study the effects of nuclear testing on the creatures and ecosystem at the Pacific ...	[ "The high rate of test animal survival was due in part to the nature of single-pulse radiation. As with the two Los Alamos criticality accidents involving the earlier demon core, victims who were close enough to receive a lethal dose died, while those farther away recovered and survived. Also, all the mice were pla...
I'm going to be a teacher's assistant in January on a class about ancient world history, with a focus on video games portraying this time. What are some games appropriate to this time period/ any theses or scholarly articles on the subject?	How ancient would you like the game to represent? Rome II: Total War has a fairly realistic look at logistics and armies of the time period, and an interesting look at some of the (very high level) politics. Shogun II: Total War as well for the samurai-era in Japan. Have you considered board games as a complement ...	[ "BULLET::::- Drabble, Margaret, (2010), The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws, p. 66. \"Irving Finkel, the colourful curator of the Department of Ancient Near East at the British Museum, is an expert on games of the ancient world. All games, he claims, fit into groups -- race games, all-in-a-ro...
why do people think that vegetables taste gross, even though they have the most nutrients that the body needs?	Having specific nutrients isn't tremendously important to your body. You can get unfortunate diseases from nutrient deficiency, but it takes a long time to become a problem; a little bit of scurvy won't kill you. The most important thing to your body is getting enough energy from food. In the wild, high-energy foo...	[ "Vegetables play an important role in human nutrition. Most are low in fat and calories but are bulky and filling. They supply dietary fiber and are important sources of essential vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. Particularly important are the antioxidant vitamins A, C, and E. When vegetables are included in...
How are many animals born with innate knowledge that doesn't require them to learn from experience?	One way this could be answered, from a cell biology perspective, is that there is nothing on earth which is born without innate knowledge. A lymphocyte (a type of white blood cell) knows immediately from the moment of division how to [recognize and attack certain organisms](_URL_0_), and this thing which looks very m...	[ "There are two ways in which animals can gain knowledge. The first of these two ways is learning. This is when an animal gathers information about its surrounding environment and then proceeds to use this information. For example, if an animal eats something that hurts its stomach, it has learned not to eat this ag...
why does our saliva have an ass odour at times?	The mouth is a dark, damp, warm environment. Perfect place for bacteria to grow. Think about it- when you sleep, your mouth is often closed, sometimes for as long as 8 hours a day. And lets be honest, who brushes their tongue vigorously every night before they go to bed? All of those left over food particles and bacter...	[ "Normally, saliva is slightly acidic and has a pH less than 7, but it can vary between 6 and 8. The pH inside the mouth depends on the salival flow rate because the higher the flow rate of saliva the more salival bicarbonates are present. Bicarbonates in the saliva raise the pH inside the mouth. When there is no or...
Byzantine Art, why was it considered to be realistic and natural in it's own time despite being obviously stylized and a betrayal of the Hellenistic aesthetic?	I think that an important distinction to be made here is the difference between "realistic" and "naturalistic". While naturalistic art refers to works that convincingly portray things the way they appear in real life, realistic art portrays things the way they are, including symbolic and spiritual elements as well as...	[ "In any case, the debate is purely modern: it is clear that most Byzantine viewers did not consider their art to be abstract or unnaturalistic. As Cyril Mango has observed, \"our own appreciation of Byzantine art stems largely from the fact that this art is not naturalistic; yet the Byzantines themselves, judging b...
different types of salts and what the do.	I'm going to assume you are talking about food salts, as the word salt in a scientific sense refers to compounds resulting from acid-base reactions (someone correct me on this if I am wrong, it has been awhile since chemistry). The basic varieties are: * Table Salt -- This is the standard salt that comes out of salt ...	[ "Edible salts, also known as table salts, are derived from mining (rock salt) or evaporation (including sea salt). Edible salts may be identified by such characteristics as their geographic origin, method of preparation, natural impurities, additives, flavourings, or intended purpose (such as pickling or curing).\n...
Why can we create computers that are unbeatable at chess, but not at poker(in the long run ofc)?	Probably the main difference between checkers/chess and poker is that the players in poker do not have [complete information](_URL_6_). In chess you always know exactly what the state of the game is and where all the opponent's pieces are. In poker you do not know all the other players cards and you don't know their ...	[ "Since around 1997 chess engines have been able to defeat even the strongest human players. Nevertheless, it is considered unlikely that computers will ever solve chess due to its computational complexity.\n", "Since 2005–06, human–computer chess matches have demonstrated that chess computers are capable of defea...
What is the point of including parallel worlds in the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics?	MWI postulates the concept of the other universes as a means to explain "apparent" wave function collapse, or the concept in quantum mechanics that "selects" a single quantum state from a superposition of states. Let's exam what this means with a tiny bit of math. Let's say you have a quantum state that is the superp...	[ "Discussing the theme of parallel universes, in an encyclopedia article which can usefully be applied to the concept of timestreams, Brian Stableford and David Langford write, \"A parallel world is another universe situated 'alongside' our own, displaced from it along a spatial fourth Dimension (parallel worlds are...
why do the founders of torrent websites like pirate bay get charged with copyright infringement, but not people who download the content?	Mostly because it is REALLY hard to track down each individual downloader and many have done so little that the court case and process of tracking down the offender would be more trouble than it's worth. A larger entity that has committed more offenses can be found easier, can be sued for more, and taking them out coul...	[ "Often sites hosting torrent files claim that they are not breaking any laws because they are not offering the actual data, rather only a link to other places or peers that contain the infringing material. However, many prosecution cases and convictions argue to the contrary. For instance, Dimitri Mader, the French...
Human teeth evolution	Keep in mind evolution doesn't 'do' things. It merely happens as a result of the environment a species lives in and the current physiological make of the species. Also, cats and dogs do lose their teeth like humans do. The common link is they are all mammals that breast feed at birth. So the simple reason we don't ke...	[ "Changes to the dental morphology and jaw are major elements of hominid evolution. These changes were driven by the types and processing of food eaten. The evolution of the jaw is thought to have facilitated encephalization, speech, and the formation of the uniquely human chin.\n", "General patterns of dental mor...
Why isn't blood from a transfusion rejected by the body?	For one, red blood cells are extremely simple. They don't have a lot of flags on their surface that organ cells do. So they're less of a target for the immune system. While cells do, but it's okay if white cells die after a transfusion, you are only interested in the red cells (and the plasma). The other reason, re...	[ "An incompatible blood transfusion causes a transfusion reaction, which is mediated by the humoral immune response. This type of reaction, called an acute hemolytic reaction, results in the rapid destruction (hemolysis) of the donor red blood cells by host antibodies. The cause is usually a clerical error, such as ...
What was the meaning behind the split snake "Join or Die" flag in the 1754 Pennsylvania Gazette?	I'm not sure about the situation in Georgia, but my guess is that Georgia's absence could have something to do with the limbo Georgia was in during this period. The trustees of the colony had more or less given up and signed over control to the Crown in 1752, yet Georgia did not officially become a royal colony until 1...	[ "In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Franklin published his famous woodcut of a snake cut into eight sections. It represented the colonies, with New England joined together as the head and South Carolina as the tail, following their order along the coast. Under the snake was the message \"Join, or Die\". Thi...
odd land formation (link inside)	Looks man-made to me, but without a better picture I can't be sure.	[ "For about as far as the camera can see, the land is flat, but shaped into polygons between 2–3 meters in diameter and are bounded by troughs that are 20 cm to 50 cm deep. These shapes are due to ice in the soil expanding and contracting due to major temperature changes.\n", "It is a ground subsidence with a circ...
why men cannot be tested for hpv but women can?	The test involves looking at the cervix, which men don't have. So unless a man shows symptoms of three virus (warts) there's no other way to know. Blood tests don't show the virus.	[ "There isn't a wide range of tests available even though HPV is common; most studies of HPV used tools and custom analysis not available to the general public. Clinicians often depend on the vaccine among young people and high clearance rates (see Clearance subsection in Virology) to create a low risk of disease an...
how does alcohol absorption work?	Well, generally speaking one adult can consume one standard drink per hour. One standard drink is 1 beer, 1 glass of wine, or one shot of liquor. Now, that does not factor in the proof of the alcohol. Drinking a 180 proof shot is different than a 90 proof. Generally if you consume 1 drink per hour you will be fine. The...	[ "Alcohol absorption can be slowed by ingesting alcohol on a full stomach. The belief that the food absorbs the alcohol is a common misconception. Alcohol absorption is slowed because the stomach sphincter closes in order to break down the food. The alcohol cannot be absorbed through the stomach, thus cannot be abso...
how spam mail companies/persons stay in business if hardly any people ever fall for their scams.	It costs nothing to spam people, so they still make a profit even if only a handful of people fall for it.	[ "His companies were major senders of Email spam and he was at one time referred to as the 'Spam King' and at one point his company was sending some 100 million emails a day. He and his companies have been sued several times for mass sending unsolicited advertisements.\n", "Email spam exemplifies a tragedy of the ...
what survival instinct does music play on?	The answer is most likely no, it has little or nothing to do with our survival. That's one of the things that separates us from other animals, we have tastes. The reason why one would have a favorite song is basically for the same reason one would have a favorite colour or favorite flavor of ice cream. As a society, we...	[ "One part of the adaptive function question is whether music constitutes an evolutionary adaptation or exaptation (i.e. by-product of evolution). Steven Pinker, in his book \"How the Mind Works\", for example, argues that music is merely \"auditory cheesecake\"—it was evolutionarily adaptive to have a preference fo...
what makes student loan debt seemingly so much harder to deal with than other types of debt?	Higher interest rates as compared to other loans. Plus the initial amount of money can be more than say, a car loan.	[ "The growing problem of student debt has become more prominent, inspiring numerous documentaries that examine its causes and effects. One factor that contributes to the amount of debt is the interest rates on the loans. Another factor is the new guidelines developed by the federal government, which now decides who ...
what determines how deep someones voice is?	Several factors that mostly have to do with the shape of your body: 1) Length of your larynx (vocal cords). Men tend to have longer and more robust vocal cords due to testosterone. Just like strings on a piano, the longer the cords the lower the tone. 2) Shape of your chest cavity. Your chest cavity gives a place ...	[ "The pitch of a male voice is about half as high in males in comparison to females. Even after controlling for body height and volume, the male voice remains lower. Some scientists have suggested that human voice evolved through intersexual sexual selection, via female male choices. Puts (2005) showed that preferen...

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