question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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what would be the ecologic result if geese were extinct? | I imagine there would be a gaggle of problems if you removed any species, the biosphere is a lot more interconnected than you might think. | [
"Extremely successful at living in human-altered areas, Canada geese have proven able to establish breeding colonies in urban and cultivated areas, which provide food and few natural predators. The success of this common park species has led to its often being considered a pest species because of its depredation of... |
why are little girls (as a horror trope) so terrifying? | Horror tries to make the seemingly safe, unsafe. What's more harmless than a little girl? Now make that little girl evil and capable of doing terrible things. It flips the perception. | [
"A teenage girl who loves horror movies watches them all the time, yet is never frightened. Despite never being frightened, she begins to sleepwalk out of her house, resulting in her parents getting angry. They forbid her to watch any more horror movies in an attempt to prevent her sleepwalking, however there's a n... |
Does the induced warming/cooling feeling of products like IcyHot actually do anything, or is it just a placebo? | The active ingredients in IcyHot are topical analgesics; they prevent you from feeling the pain. | [
"A cooling sensation is achieved through the chemical phenomenon of the negative enthalpy of dissolution that occurs with bulk sweeteners, such as the sugar alcohols. The enthalpy of dissolution refers to the overall amount of heat that is absorbed or released in the dissolving process. Because the bulk sweeteners ... |
why does a piece of butter spin when you put it in the middle of a pot of boiling water? | It should spin even if the pot isn't boiling, just might be imperceptible.
& #x200B;
See when we suspend something in water there will likely only be 3 forces acting on it.
1. is obvious, the force of gravity pulling it 'down'
2. is slightly less obvious, the force the water exerts 'upwards' on the butter
3. is nea... | [
"BULLET::::3. The cream separates into butter and buttermilk. The buttermilk is drained off, and the remaining butter is kneaded to form a network of fat crystals that becomes the continuous phase, or dispersion medium, of a water-in-fat emulsion. Working the butter also creates its desired smoothness. Eventually, ... |
why don't planets orbiting stars eventually fall into them? | they do, or they drift off. the important part is that the decay rate is freakiskly low. not 0, but so remote that we don't really care. | [
"Most stars will not have their planets lined up and orientated so that they eclipse over the center of the star and give the viewer on earth a perfect transit. It is for this reason that when we often are only able to extrapolate a minimum mass when viewing a star’s wobble because we do not know the inclination ... |
Did everyone bite their nails before nail clippers were invented? | It is free to bite your nails and, more to the point, quite standard for nails to break off in the course of even light manual labor. So in some premodern societies where status is less based on conspicuous consumption than today, one of the things archaeologists have observed is that nail-grooming actually becomes a s... | [
"Prior to the invention of the modern nail clipper, people would use small knives to trim or pare their nails. Descriptions of nail trimming in literature date as far back as the 8th century BC. The Book of Deuteronomy exhorts in 21:12 that a man, should he wish to take a captive as a wife, \"shall bring her home t... |
why do companies allow piracy to varying degrees? why do they tolerate being ripped off? | Very few companies condone any form of piracy. But it's very difficult to combat piracy on the scale it's normally seen. When you have hundreds of thousands of people stealing your content it's incredibly costly to try and get the people doing it into court. And not worth the payoff ultimately, unless the person being ... | [
"Rolls Royce have argued that low-tech piracy activities aimed towards ships and their crews will reduce as a result of ships becoming autonomous. Ships can be constructed so that it will be difficult to board them, with cargo access and manual controls being made unavailable. In the case of a piracy event, control... |
At what point in evolutionary history did life begin to consume other life as a source of energy? | I think any answer here would be pure conjecture. The origins of life are not known, and all theories have holes. Even knowing all we do about the inner workings of a cell, We still can’t replicate conditions that spontaneously produce any semblance of life.
That being said, it would be extremely unlikely that any e... | [
"Until the 1970s, life was thought to be entirely dependent on energy from the Sun. Plants on Earth's surface capture energy from sunlight to photosynthesize sugars from carbon dioxide and water, releasing oxygen in the process that is then consumed by oxygen-respiring organisms, passing their energy up the food ch... |
Why did the Baron’s and Nobles support Stephen over Matilda during the Anarchy? | I plan on coming back to this, but in the meantime, I discussed the diplomatic history of the Anarchy [HERE](_URL_0_), which may shed some light on some of the frequent support shifts during the Anarchy. | [
"Henry I died in 1135, and Stephen and Matilda both had a claim to the throne. The monastic author describes the rebellion of the barons against Stephen, the escape of Matilda, and the tortures that the soldiers of the baronial powers inflicted upon the people. The author blames Stephen for the Anarchy for being \"... |
Say I just want to run into the convenient store. Does it use more gas to start my car or to leave it running? | For a modern car very little fuel is consumed doing startup. Don't leave it on. | [
"1.Invest in new technologies and develop new generation of cars would eventually help to use fuels or gas more efficiently. When buy a new products such as car, it is better to choose the one that has good gas mileage.\n",
"\" Gasoline is the main expense of the cars, practically on a weekly basis, or even more ... |
why when doing exercise do you tire relatively quickly, only to recover and regain stamina to continue? what causes this "second wind" effect? | Respiration.
When you exercise, your body respirates to keep your muscles going; this requires oxygen and is called aerobic respiration. When there isn't enough oxygen coming in, your body will start anaerobic (without oxygen) respiration. This is highly inefficient and causes lactic acid to build up in your muscles (... | [
"As a physical stressor, aerobic exercise stimulates cortisol secretion in an intensity-dependent manner; however, it does not result in long-term increases in cortisol production since this exercise-induced effect on cortisol is a response to transient negative energy balance. Individuals who have recently exercis... |
Why do we get 'Response Lag'? | It looks like the author is referring to a simple shift of focus.
In general, humans are very poor multitaskers -- in fact, some scientists think we don't multitask at all, and just switch rapidly between tasks (not the same things!). Short term memory is one aspect of this: you may need to "buffer" information in sho... | [
"A possible explanation for lag-1 sparing is that this phenomenon is heavily interconnected with attentional blink, but does not operate on the same cognitive mechanisms and requires different stimuli to occur. Specifically, for lag-1 sparing to occur, it needs visual input as practice targets. These targets can be... |
how does quantum entanglement provide quantum key exchange? | I wonder the same thing. My current understanding is that both sides of the exchange are monitoring their particles constantly, and so part of the key exchange is the time of the observation made to generate the encryption. | [
"Quantum decoherence can occur when one qubit from a maximally entangled bell state is transmitted across a quantum network. Entanglement purification allows for the creation of nearly maximally entangled qubits from a large number of arbitrary weakly entangled qubits, and thus provides additional protection agains... |
Birds and dogs behave according to the Earth's magnetic field. Do humans have any behaviors like this? | Sorry this isn't a very scientific answer, but on [the most recent "Skeptics Guide to the Universe" podcast \(mp3 link\)](_URL_0_), Dr. Steven Novella was quite skeptical of the claim dogs have magnetic sense based on what I think he was saying was shoddy scientific method in that study. He repeated quite a few times ... | [
"Animals including birds and turtles can detect the Earth's magnetic field, and use the field to navigate during migration. Some researchers have found that cows and wild deer tend to align their bodies north-south while relaxing, but not when the animals are under high-voltage power lines, suggesting that magnetis... |
why do chargers or power sources for some machines have a box in the middle of it's power cord and some don't? | The electricity coming out of the wall is AC (alternating current). Most electronics are powered using DC (direct current) which is entirely different from AC. The black boxes (typically known as transformers) act to convert the AC to DC as well as convert the voltage and clean up the electric signal. Some electronics,... | [
"A power box (USA) or feeder pillar (UK) is a cabinet for electrical equipment, mounted in the street and controlling the electrical supply to a number of houses in a neighborhood. A power box is simply a layman's term for a transformer, cutout enclosure, or other enclosure used in conjunction with underground elec... |
Why are there so few surviving Ancient Chinese ruins, compared to Rome and Greece? | Aside from the base, traditional Chinese structures were mostly constructed of wood, which made them more susceptible to corrosion. The Cultural Revolution as well as foreign invasions over the last few centuries also saw mass destruction as well as looting. The Porcelain Tower for example was destroyed during the Taip... | [
"Although mostly only ruins of brick and rammed earth walls and towers from ancient China (i.e. before the 6th century AD) have survived, information on ancient Chinese architecture (especially wooden architecture) can be discerned from more or less realistic clay models of buildings created by the ancient Chinese ... |
what is "cashback" when i use my debit card? and should i use it? | You should use it if you are low on cash at that moment, but there is no benefit beyond just taking cash from your account at an ATM. | [
"Debit card cashback (also known as cash out in Australia and New Zealand) is a service offered to retail customers whereby an amount is added to the total purchase price of a transaction paid by debit card and the customer receives that amount in cash along with the purchase. Debit card cashback is offered either ... |
What happens to old American flags when a state is added and the number of stars changes? | Unlike in Canada, there was actually a procedure in place for the most recent flag changeover. It was outlined in [Executive Order 10834](_URL_0_). The relevant part is in Section 25:
"Subject to such limited exceptions as the Secretary of Defense in respect of the Department of Defense, and the Administrator of Gener... | [
"Since 1818, a star for each new state has been added to the flag on the Fourth of July immediately following each state's admission. In years which multiple states were admitted, the number of stars on the flag jumped correspondingly; the most pronounced example of this is 1890, when five states were admitted with... |
why does heroin withdrawal cause convulsions/seizures? | Think of your brain like a factory. Your employees are opioid receptors in your brain. You've got enough to take care of just about any day to day business that comes your way, and everything goes pretty smoothly.
Then you get a new client, heroin. He needs A LOT more, so you hire a bunch of new employees to ke... | [
"Both medication and drug overdoses can result in seizures, as may certain medication and drug withdrawal. Common drugs involved include: antidepressants, antipsychotics, cocaine, insulin, and the local anaesthetic lidocaine. Difficulties with withdrawal seizures commonly occurs after prolonged alcohol or sedative ... |
why is it that human offspring are so helpless and fragile for several years. wouldn't a person who matures the fastest be most likely to survive since they can survive on their own? | The human brain is too big and complex to be formed quickly, and the human body, by growing slowly, doesn't need a lot of food to continue healthy development.
Growing really quickly would necessarily require that we dumb humans down and that our offspring would need to eat a great deal to support all the bodily growt... | [
"Prenatal malnutrition and early life growth patterns can alter metabolism and physiological patterns and have lifelong effects on the risk of cardiovascular disease. Children who are undernourished are more likely to be short in adulthood, have lower educational achievement and economic status, and give birth to s... |
Engine efficiency | You're right that using another heat engine to lower the temperature of the first heat engine's output reservoir wouldn't increase efficiency of the whole system, because you would have to power that second engine.
Think of the output reservoir as a big heat exchanger outside somewhere. It has to be a little hotter th... | [
"Volumetric efficiency in an internal combustion engine design refers to the efficiency with which the engine can move the \"charge\" of fuel and air into and out of the cylinders. It also denotes the ratio of air volume drawn into the cylinder to the cylinder's swept volume.\n",
"Any engine will have different B... |
Did people from New York City's 5 boroughs originally consider themselves to be part of the same city? | They did not. They were separate cities through much of the 19th century. City agglomeration became a tend in the 19th century, as advances in public transit (e.g. steam ships and street cards) helped tie metro areas together and create new suburbs and increased municipal services (fire to departments, water, etc) gave... | [
"On January 1, 1898, the consolidated City of New York was born, including the Bronx as one of the five distinct boroughs (at the same time, the Bronx's territory moved from Westchester County into New York County, which already contained Manhattan and the rest of pre-1874 New York City).\n",
"On February 1, 1984... |
Why can't I look at a word without reading it? | Because the human mind is an expert at pattern and relationship/structure detection and recognition. That is essentially how we think.
We are masters of pattern recognition, so when you glance at a word your pattern mind kicks in and you have no conscious choice but to 'decode' that pattern. (you read the word).
But ... | [
"BULLET::::- Sight word reading: reading words of increasing difficulty until they become unable to read or understand the words presented to them. Difficulty is manipulated by using words that have more letters or syllables, are less common and have more complicated spelling–sound relationships.\n",
"The field o... |
Reading recommendations on al-Andalus (Moorish Spain) | In my opinion, the two critical works are David Nirenberg's [*Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages*](_URL_1_) (1996) and Maria Rosa Menocal's [*Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain*](_URL_2_) (2002). Both books are bea... | [
"Al-Andalus, also known as Muslim Spain, Muslim Iberia, or Islamic Iberia, was a medieval Muslim territory and cultural domain that in its early period included most of Iberia, today's Portugal and Spain. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied the northwest of the Iberian peninsula and a part of present-d... |
nasa's announcement today. what is boeing and spacex and why is it all important? | Boeing is a major aerospace company, meaning they make spacecraft (and airplanes but let's stick with spacecraft), but they make them for governments. SpaceX is a newer company that is trying to manufacture reusable spacecraft that are affordable to private businesses.
Two important parts: Right now, the US doesn't ha... | [
"In 2006, SpaceX was awarded a contract from NASA to continue the development and test of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft in order to transport cargo to the International Space Station, followed by a NASA Commercial Resupply Services program contract on December 23, 2008, for 12 flights of ... |
How did they introduce leap year in 45 BC? | > Were they technologically advanced back then to determine that the calendar needed a leap year?
Yes and people had been for some time. I assume you're talking about the introduction of the Julian calendar as you mention 45BC.
Greek astronomers had long known (for at least a century by 45BC) that the year was not... | [
"The set leap day was introduced in Rome as a part of the Julian reform in the 1st century BC. As before, the intercalation was made after February 23. The day following the Terminalia (February 23) was doubled, forming the \"\"bis sextum\"\"—literally 'twice sixth', since February 24 was 'the sixth day before the ... |
why cant we use computers to solve the unsolved maths problems like the millennium prize problems etc? | Let's take the Riemann hypothesis. It's statement about *all* primes. The naive approach is to let a computer run through all primes, one by one, and check if the hypothesis is correct for that prime.
You know how many primes there are? It's a lot. Like a lot a lot. Infinitely many primes, in fact. Such a computer wou... | [
"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",
"Recent advances in computer science have not significantly changed that assessment. The game of checker... |
why is counting cards in blackjack so heavily frowned against or punished if all you're using is your mind. are you not allowed to calculate with your brain when playing a game? | The only reason the house exists is because the odds are stacked for them. Learning to count shifts the odds to you. If everyone did it they'd lose money and eventually cease to exist. This obviously takes the liberty of suggesting everyone possesses the intellect to do it, which they don't. But coming down on the few ... | [
"Blackjack can be legally beaten by a skilled player. Beyond the basic strategy of when to hit and when to stand, individual players can use card counting, shuffle tracking or hole carding to improve their odds. Since the early 1960s a large number of card counting schemes have been published, and casinos have adju... |
What did a typical day of 17th century philosophers look like? Where did they get their income from? | The 17th century? Presuming you're referring to European philosophy, and sampling on the substantially eminent: while I'm not sure it makes much sense to speak of a 'typical day', elite philosophers i) very commonly held lecturerships or professorships at universities, ii) were engaged to tutor and guide eminent folks ... | [
"Most of the important astronomers and natural philosophers (as well as artists) in the 16th and 17th centuries depended on the patronage of powerful religious or political figures to fund their work. Patronage networks extended all the way from Emperors and Popes to regional nobles to artisans to peasants; even un... |
How come the Middle Eastern world didn't undergo a "Muslim enlightenment" period, similar to the Christian enlightenment period in Western Europe? | First we need to recognize that this is an out and out counterfactual question which will not have a satisfactory answer. Explaining causality is difficult enough, explaining something as complex as why an entire intellectual movement *didn't* happen is impossible.
That being said I think I can point to the discussion... | [
"After Muhammad introduced Islam, it jump-started Middle Eastern culture into an Islamic Golden Age, inspiring achievements in architecture, the revival of old advances in science and technology, and the formation of a distinct way of life. Muslims saved and spread Greek advances in medicine, algebra, geometry, ast... |
Is quantum entanglement really as cool and mysterious as people make it out to be or are they misinterpreting the idea? | As a layman, I found [this](_URL_1_) article to be a very clear and helpful explanation of quantum entanglement. In particular, [ page 5](_URL_0_) describes Bell's inequality and exactly what is so unintuitive about it.
As for evidence for souls, it's not the first thing kooks have wilfully misinterpreted to fit thei... | [
"Many quantum information applications, such as quantum teleportation, quantum error correction, and superdense coding, rely on entanglement. However, entanglement is a fragile quantum property between particles and can be easily destroyed by loss and noise arising from interaction with the environment, leading to ... |
how does a pimp have so much control over a prostitute? (nsfw) | For the type of pimping you're talking about, its not physical bondage, it's a state of mind.
There's a girl.
She's predisposed to be needy, impressionable. Maybe she's young, maybe she's from out of town, maybe she has low self esteem, but she definitely is missing something in her life. She wants a rock.
She m... | [
"In street prostitution, the prostitute solicits customers while waiting at street corners, sometimes called \"the track\" by pimps and prostitutes alike. They usually dress in skimpy, provocative clothing, regardless of the weather. Street prostitutes are often called \"streetwalkers\" while their customers are re... |
What kind of tea would have been thrown into Boston harbor during the Boston Tea Party? | As it happens, there is a document reprinted in Benjamin Labree’s [*The Boston Tea Party, 1773*](_URL_5_), which details the exact composition of the crates of tea that were dumped into Boston Harbor in December 1773. The official report, filed in February 1774, lists the following: out of 340 crates carried on the Dar... | [
"The Boston Tea Party was an act of protest by the American colonists against Great Britain for the Tea Act in which they dumped many chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The cuts to taxation on tea undermined American smugglers, who destroyed the tea in retaliation for its exemption from taxes. Britain reacted harshl... |
why are we so obsessed with being lazy? | Hard work pays off eventually but laziness pays off immediately. | [
"One near contemporary presentation of lazy reason is the theme of the 1956 popular song \"Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)\". In the song, a young child repeatedly asks questions about her future, but is advised that \"Whatever will be, will be\":\n",
"\"The Right to be Lazy\" is an essay by Cuban-born... |
why is metal coins cheaper than paper/bills? | The initial cost of printing a bill may be cheaper than minting a coin, but coins can last much longer in currency because they are more durable. Paper notes get torn, washed, or crinkled and need to be replaced every few years, whereas coins will last decades. When was the last time you saw a paper bill from 1970 vs a... | [
"This has been a particular problem with nickels and dimes (and with some comparable coins in other currencies) because of their relatively low face value and unstable commodity prices. For a while, the copper in US pennies was worth more than one cent, so people would hoard pennies and then melt them down for thei... |
Are there examples of equations being right mathematically but wrong practically? | Yes, all the time. But it's never the equations fault. It's our fault for assuming simplifications that don't work.
IE the electrostatic force is proportional to 1/r^(2), but at r=0 we get infinity. The true answer isn't infinity, we just modeled the situation of r=0 improperly.
As to a black hole, there is a lot of... | [
"and so forth. The expressions on the right (with no parentheses whatsoever) are allowed to be written unambiguously \"because\" of the equalities on the left. Note that the associative property does \"not\" hold for expressions that include nonlinear operators, such as the antilinear time reversal operator in phys... |
who created the orcs? | Tolkien did.
There was a term 'Orcus' in Latin which was a deity of the underworld. This is where Tolkien likely got it from, but he was the first to use the word "orc" in reference to evil, humanoid creatures. | [
"The origin of Orcs is an open question. Tolkien developed various origins for his Orcs throughout his life but died before he could fully revise \"The Silmarillion\" with his final view on their origins and nature.\n",
"Orcs were a race first bred by Morgoth, which mostly lived in mountain caves and disliked sun... |
what is the difference between a voice played digitally versus a voice produced in person? | The folks at Amazon know the exact sound pattern of every time they use the word "Alexa" in an ad. They check the digital signature sent by your Echo, and if it's a commercial they ignore it. For a laugh, watch an old episode of the Castle TV show. The main character's daughter is named Alexa, and your Echo will get... | [
"In film, the filmmaker places the sound of a human voice (or voices) over images shown on the screen that may or may not be related to the words that are being spoken. Consequently, voiceovers are sometimes used to create ironic counterpoint. Also, sometimes they can be random voices not directly connected to the ... |
stereotypes of us cities/regions | San Francisco: Gay
Los Angeles: Shallow
Seattle: Hipster
Portland: Even more hipster
Washington DC: Corrupt
New York: Asshole
Philadelphia: Low class | [
"In 2004, the city was named one of the top 100 places to live, according to HomeRoute, a national real estate marketing company which identifies top American cities each year through its Relocate-America program. Cities are selected based on educational opportunities, crime rates, employment and housing data. The ... |
why are people getting arrested for peacefully protesting? | To hold a rally near the White House, you need a permit. This is for safety of everyone involved and to let the city know how many police to have available to assists/control...close roads, keep it safe. Without a permit, you are in violation of city law and get arrested.
This most recent event had no permit. | [
"The Ministry of Safety and Security issued a statement that read while protesting is legal, \"these rights do not imply that people should be barbaric, intimidating and hold illegal gatherings.\" The ministry defended the police's actions, saying that this was a situation in which people were heavily armed and att... |
what differences in brain structure/function cause depression, and how do antidepressants help? i've been told we don't *fully* understand the science yet, but what do we know so far? | Generally speaking, depression is associated with low levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin in certain parts of the brain. Having a balance of each is essential to “normal” functioning. Antidepressants such as SSRIs handle the serotonin, MAOIs prevent the breakdown of dopamine, and tricyclic antidepressants... | [
"Some studies have hypothesized that learning and memory are linked to depression, and that neurogenesis may promote neuroplasticity. One study proposes that mood may be regulated, at a base level, by plasticity, and thus \"not chemistry\". Accordingly, the effects of antidepressant treatment would only be secondar... |
North Korea's July 4th missile reached an altitude of 1700 miles. Why are scientists saying its range is only 4160 miles? Why couldn't it orbit/deorbit to anywhere on earth? | Note that NK is testing a *ballistic* missile. By definition, a ballistic missile follows a ballistic trajectory, e.g., it burns its fuel immediately, and the just goes where gravity (and air resistance, etc.) take it.
Getting an object into orbit, and deorbiting it accurately, is a considerably more complex task. Th... | [
"North Korea stated that the missile reached an altitude of around 4,475 km and traveled some 950 km downrange with a flight time of 53 minutes. Based on its trajectory and distance, the missile would have a range of more than 13,000 km (8,100 miles) – more than enough to reach Washington D.C. and the rest of the U... |
Why does the the cosmic background radiation have a uniform temperature of 2.7 K? | The light is redshifted not because it has traveled, but because the universe has expanded.
In the early universe, the photons were in thermal equilibrium with matter. When the universe was about 375000 years old, atoms formed, and the light *decoupled*, meaning that, generally speaking, it was no longer regularly int... | [
"The cosmic microwave background radiation is an emission of uniform, black body thermal energy coming from all parts of the sky. The radiation is isotropic to roughly one part in 100,000: the root mean square variations are only 18 µK, after subtracting out a dipole anisotropy from the Doppler shift of the backgro... |
how long would it take to see the stars when you take light pollution away? | As long as it takes for your eyes to adjust—light pollution isn’t a physical substance, so it doesn’t “linger”. So probably about 30 minutes. | [
"As noted below, such a cloud of collectors would alter the light emitted by the star system. However, the disruption compared to a star's overall natural emitted spectrum would most likely be too small for Earth-based astronomers to observe.\n",
"Light pollution is an ever-increasing source of sky brightness in ... |
what does "synthetic" really mean and why isn't everything synthetic? | It can mean that it was created in a lab rather than by natural process, or it can mean the thing that was created does not exist in nature and so was created in a lab. This applies to things that are changed chemically. A fruit mashed into jam by a human is not synthetic jam. It's not a very good definition, since coo... | [
"The term \"synthetic\" is also used incorrectly by lay \"experts\" in two different ways - to refer to the process used to manufacture all estrogens, including bioidentical estrogens, and to compounds that interact with estrogen receptors similarly to estrogen molecules, but that are not found in nature. Examples ... |
thyroid hormones and their individual purposes. | The thyroid gland uses iodine from food to produce two hormones: triiodothyronine, known as T3, and thyroxine, known as T4. These hormones affect every cell and organ in the body. They do everything from regulate the rate at which calories are burned to regulate our body temperature. They control the rate at which dyin... | [
"The thyroid hormones act on nearly every cell in the body. They act to increase the basal metabolic rate, affect protein synthesis, help regulate long bone growth (synergy with growth hormone) and neural maturation, and increase the body's sensitivity to catecholamines (such as adrenaline) by permissiveness. The t... |
why does israel continue to build/expand settlements in palestinian lands despite international condemnation? | Cause it does not care.
It gets the USA to veto any action against it at the UN. The P5 countries: US/RUSSIA/CHINA/UK/FRANCE can put a magic veto on any action they don't like against a country they support. So the UN has really no power at all, just puppet bullshit and more money wasting. The are also the biggest wea... | [
"Palestinians claim that Israel has undermined the Oslo accords and peace process by continuing to expand the settlements. Settlements in the Sinai Peninsula were evacuated and razed in the wake of the peace agreement with Egypt. The 27 ministers of foreign affairs of the European Union published a report in May 20... |
why can't most humans squat as fully and as deep as when we were babies/very young? | Sorry, the title should say adults, not humans haha. | [
"Young children squat instinctively as a continuous movement from standing up whenever they want to lower themselves to ground level. One- and two-year-olds can commonly be seen playing in a stable squatting position, with feet wide apart and bottom not quite touching the floor, although at first they need to hold ... |
difference between malware and viruses? | 'Malware' is just short for malicious software and 'virus' is a program that replicates itself and infects other files/systems. A virus is a form of malware.
What is malicious is open for interpretation though, I despise stuff like toolbars for your browser and other spyware while some crazy people like them. As such ... | [
"The best-known types of malware, viruses and worms, are known for the manner in which they spread, rather than any specific types of behavior. A computer virus is software that embeds itself in some other executable software (including the operating system itself) on the target system without the user's knowledge ... |
Can someone talk about the spread of Buddhism? | hi! here are a few previous threads to get you started
[Spread of Buddhism](_URL_0_)
[AMA: Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, the Three Great Traditions of China](_URL_5_)
[How did Hinduism, Buddhism & Indian culture spread through SE Asia?](_URL_1_)
[How did Buddhism spread to Japan and why it didn't spread to Euro... | [
"Buddhism is a world religion, which arose in and around the ancient Kingdom of Magadha (now in Bihar, India), and is based on the teachings of Siddhārtha Gautama who was deemed a \"Buddha\" (\"Awakened One\"). Buddhism spread outside of Magadha starting in the Buddha's lifetime.\n",
"Buddhism was founded in 500 ... |
Which shape will yield the greatest ratio of area to perimeter? | Given any closed curve of length L in a plane, the area A it encloses satisfies the *isoperimetic inequality*
> 4πA ≤ L^(2)
Equality holds if and only if the curve is a circle. So if you fix the perimeter of an area, the greatest area is achieved if the perimeter is a circle.
This inequality has higher dimensional... | [
"The measures for it are approximately 2,15m x 10,11m x 10,11m (6 ft 6 inches x 33 ft 4.25 inches x 33ft4.25in), thus having the perimeter of ≈32,48m (≈106,56ft) and the area of ≈219,75m² (≈730,96ft²).\n",
"The perimeter is the distance around a shape. Perimeters for more general shapes can be calculated, as any ... |
What was the Anglo-Saxon hierarchy like? How did the nobility function and what were similarities and differences with the nobles of continental Western Europe? | At the bottom you've got your serf, these are essentially slaves to the land they are on (and its landowner). There are a few distinctions between them and slaves but in practice there is little difference.
Your next highest are Ceorls. These are free men but lowest of the low. They are you peasant farmers, they will ... | [
"Traditional rank amongst European royalty, peers, and nobility is rooted in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Although they vary over time and among geographic regions (for example, one region's prince might be equal to another's grand duke), the following is a reasonably comprehensive list that provides informa... |
from where the light photons get energy to move at such a high speed?do they keep on moving forever? | You do not need energy to keep moving if you are already moving and are not affected by friction, resistance etc. You need energy to gain speed, that is, to accelerate, the more mass you have, the more energy you need. Photons do not have a rest mass. This is why they do not need energy to move at all and move forever. | [
"Light particles, or photons, travel at the speed of \"c\", the constant that is conventionally known as the \"speed of light\". This statement is not a tautology, since many modern formulations of relativity do not start with constant speed of light as a postulate. Photons therefore propagate along a light-like wo... |
Why do allergies seasonal or otherwise make people so tired? What is happening here? | Remember that Allergies are an activation of your immune system. Your body believes that it is under attack and is trying to fight it. It's the same tiredness that you feel when you're actually sick. Your body is using a lot of energy to attempt to remove the pathogen that it thinks is going to do harm.
From wikipe... | [
"Seasonal allergy symptoms are commonly experienced during specific parts of the year, usually during spring, summer or fall when certain trees or grasses pollinate. This depends on the kind of tree or grass. For instance, some trees such as oak, elm, and maple pollinate in the spring, while grasses such as Bermuda... |
why does lightning make these funny fractal lines when passing through mediums of high resistance? | It's for the same reason that river systems have that same pattern. Electrons are not flowing out of the source of electricity, but rather the electrons are being pulled towards the source. The electrons naturally move along the paths of least resistance, in the same way that water flowing from the ground naturally flo... | [
"Although the electrical breakdown mechanisms of air and PMMA plastic are considerably different, the branching discharges turn out to be related. So, it should not be surprising that the branching forms taken by natural lightning also have fractal characteristics.\n",
"This characteristic ensures the reliability... |
How tall will a human grow if raised in a zero gravity environment | Osteoperosis from a young age. I don't think this is possible. Bone loss is one of the effects of zero gravity. I imagine one born in space wouldn't live very long. | [
"In January 2018 Kanai received publicity after mistakenly tweeting that he had grown \"as much as 9 cm\" taller due to the absence of gravity. Microgravity allows the vertebrae in astronauts' spines to spread apart; typical growth for astronauts in zero-gravity is two to five centimeters. A 9 cm growth spurt might... |
can someone explain what happens if euro is dissolved and we go back to europe having individual currencies per country? | Given that this is ELI5 -- Bad stuff.
All countries need a currency in which to trade, and some currencies are more attractive to international traders than others. For example, you can't buy a jet engine with the Malaysian ringgit, rice with the Icelandic krona, or robotic factory equipment with the Saudi riyal. By c... | [
"The concept has been identified as a potential problem if the Eurozone breaks up or a member state decides to leave it, since debts in euros may turn into debts owed in another currency. Conversion would be at a rate determined by the nation in question, and no party to a contract or transaction will have the righ... |
If you had a lake full of gasoline and dropped a match into it, would it all immediately explode? | Liquid gasoline isn't explosive, but gasoline vapor is. If you dropped a match on it the vapors above the lake would explode. You need the right mixture of fuel and air combined with an ignition source, but you would presumably have that for some portion of the match's path while falling.
That explosion would end up v... | [
"It is believed that the fountain caused fumes of the fuel to fill the air which later ignited in a huge fireball that consumed the surrounding fields which had been soaked with fuel. The pipeline at the rupture point was estimated to carry around 10,000 barrels of gasoline at . The exact cause of the fire that ign... |
When did Germany and France become historical rivals and why? | The most reductive answer to this question is 1871, when Germany as a country came into existence on the basis of a humiliating defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. Not only was there no such thing as a country called "Germany" before then, but the harsh feelings and especially territorial losses the nascent Ge... | [
"Beginning with the French invasions of Germany in the late 18th century, France became the century-long rival of Germany. The rising German nationalist movement also considered France their greatest enemy because France not only had temporarily conquered much of Western Germany during the Napoleonic Wars but also ... |
why do linux things use .tar.gz so much? | /u/Caiobrz is mostly right, and I would just like to add a few things.
`tar` was using in the UNIX world for a long, long time just to, as you say, "tarball" things together. They were not compressed at all. `gzip` is relatively new - we used to use a different compression program long, long ago. Then we'd have .tar.... | [
"Like other Linux distributions, Yellow Dog Linux supports software development with GCC (compiled with support for C, C++, Java, and Fortran), the GNU C Library, GDB, GLib, the GTK+ toolkit, Python, the Qt toolkit, Ruby and Tcl. Standard text editors such as Vim and Emacs are complemented with IDEs such as Eclipse... |
what is the practical use for integration? | They undo differentiation. So to use your examples, if derivatives let you find acceleration from velocity from position, integrals let you find position from velocity from acceleration. | [
"Integration by parts is a heuristic rather than a purely mechanical process for solving integrals; given a single function to integrate, the typical strategy is to carefully separate this single function into a product of two functions \"u\"(\"x\")\"v\"(\"x\") such that the residual integral from the integration b... |
what would happen if prince george of cambridge or any other future heir to the british throne turned out to be gay? | I'm sure it has already happened, but in the past it would have been kept a secret and married a woman anyway.
If it happened now and they came out, we'd probably just have a gay king. Not that big a deal if they don't produce an heir, it would just pass to the next in line. | [
"When King George III succeeded to the throne of Great Britain upon the death of his grandfather, George II, he was 22 years old and unmarried. His mother and advisors were anxious to have him settled in marriage. The 17-year-old Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz appealed to him as a prospective consort pa... |
why do people often worry that rape victims are actually lying? | The policy isn't to assume that there wasn't an issue or that someone was lying, but to assume (like we do in our legal system) that the accused is innocent until shown otherwise. | [
"The prevalence of rape myths is a major reason for rape victim blaming and stigmatization. Rape myths can cause victims of rape to blame themselves for their rape, or to not report their assault, and they can also shape the responses of judges and juries, causing a negative impact on rape victims. Some studies hav... |
people have been eating cheese for ages, way before refrigerators and airtight containers, but if i leave cheese on my table for a few hours it becomes inedible; how were they keeping it fresh in the past? | The cheesemonger would store large cheeses, that keep because they are sealed (with wax or muslin etc.) then serve smaller pieces cut from this to customers, who buy regularly and eat soon. Simple. | [
"Most “fresh” cheeses, unlike aged cheeses held for weeks or months, are aged for only days. This is not enough time to change the pH of the cheese enough to kill any harmful bacteria that may have been in the (unpasteurized) milk at the beginning of the process. The use of raw milk has led to a number of instances... |
When and why did the Spartan identity die out in Greece? | The fall of Sparta was a complicated issue involving their first ever land battle loss (with an army at full strength) to Thebes and spartan population decline. essentially they had so few natural born Spartans they had to allow helots to bolster their standing army.
check out: _URL_0_
and excerpt:
" The Spartans w... | [
"Mycenaean Sparta, like much of Greece, was engulfed in the Dorian invasions, which ended the Mycenaean civilization and ushered in the so-called \"Greek Dark Ages\". During this time, Sparta (or Lacedaemon) was merely a Doric village on the banks of the river Eurotas in Laconia. However, in the early 8th century B... |
How do different octaves of the same musical note compare in frequency, and how does it compare to different notes? | It is a very fundamental function of the frequency.
An octave is a doubling (or halving) of frequency. If we consider A above middle C, we've got a frequency of 440Hz. The A one octave lower is 220Hz. The A one octave higher is 880Hz. Another octave up is 1760Hz.
All of the other notes are based (roughly) on harmonic... | [
"For this reason, notes an octave apart are given the same note name in the Western system of music notation—the name of a note an octave above A is also A. This is called \"octave equivalence\", the assumption that pitches one or more octaves apart are musically equivalent in many ways, leading to the convention \... |
how do pension plans work? | A pension is what's called a defined-benefit plan. Defined-benefit means that the plan is going to pay out an amount of money that is set, and nothing that happens short of a default on the plan will stop that from happening. This is different than, for example, a 401k or IRA where the plan will only pay out what the... | [
"There are many ways to finance a pension and save for retirement. Pension plans can be set up by an employer, matching a monetary contribution each month, by the state or personally through a pension scheme with a financial institution, such as a bank or brokerage firm. Pension plans often come with a tax break de... |
what is postmodern ethics? | Postmodern ethics is way of approaching ethical dilemmas by examing the context and narrative. Generally speaking postmodernists tend to have a much narrower belief in freewill and so they feel that true questions of ethics need to be adressed at a higher more contextual level.
This would mean that theren
is no abso... | [
"Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or a mode of discourse that rejects the possibility of reliable knowledge, denies the existence of a universal, stable reality, and frames aesthetics and beauty as arbitrary and subjective. It can be described as a reaction against scientific attempts to explain reality with... |
Was the pike really the most used weapon in the Medieval Age? If so, why do movies depict the sword as the most used weapon? And why did european armies still use heavy cavalry as the main striking force if it was so easy countered? | Are you specifically talking about pikes or polearms in general? | [
"Pike and shot became a military standard in the 16th and 17th century. With the development of the bayonet the last major use of pike was the early 18th century with the weapon rapidly disappearing in Western European armies by the time of the Battle of Blenheim. A few pikes or half pikes and a few halberds were r... |
how come extremities can get below 98.6 f and be fine, but our core is much more sensitive to temperature change? | Because your core contains your organs that are essential to the process of life. Your limbs are expendible and don't contribute to these processes. Your heart still needs to pump blood, and muscles need to be warm to operate effectively, your liver needs to produce enzymes to metabolize toxins in your blood and it n... | [
"The core temperature of a human is regulated and stabilized primarily by the hypothalamus, a region of the brain linking the endocrine system to the nervous system, and more specifically by the anterior hypothalamic nucleus and the adjacent preoptic area regions of the hypothalamus. As core temperature varies from... |
why are we more sleepy when doing something as opposed to trying to sleep? | Sleepiness comes in waves. If you went to bed when you were sleepy, you'd be fine. But most people decide to go to bed when they are sleepy. Then they brush their teeth and dick around on their phone for an hour, and the moment is past. | [
"BULLET::::- Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through.\n",
"The need and function of sleep are among the least clearly understood areas in sleep research. Whe... |
A Question Concerning Anglo-American Relations | I've never heard of the United States pushing for Britain to take such extreme financial measures to purchase goods. Where did you read this? My recollection is that the British were more worried about finding enough tonnage that could actually visit American ports to trade because the neutrality laws prevented United ... | [
"The Anglo-American Special Relationship proved mutually beneficial, although it was never one of equals; the United States was far larger than Britain both militarily and economically. Lorna Arnold noted that:\n",
"The British relationship with the United States did not suffer lasting consequences from the crisi... |
When speaking in a foreign language, why does most people's accent remains their native? | It has to do with the sound sets of their native language. Some sounds exist in certain languages that do not in others. So when learning a language, people usually cannot emulate the sounds perfectly.
The reason some people will 'never' be able to speak like a native, is because by time a person reaches adult hood, ... | [
"When speakers have a foreign accent, they are often perceived to be less intelligent and are less likely to be hired. It is the same with an accent from a peripheral area, rather than the accent from the urbanized core: a peripheral person is typically perceived as speaking a \"less correct\" by those who are more... |
why are there no laws circumventing that prevent national media from outright lying on their headlines? | Simple; it's not worth it to go to the trouble of making what would be a difficult if not impossible to enforce law to prevent such minor damage. Anyone who can't be bothered to read the facts and come to reasonable conclusions is so foolish that no law is going to make them immune to manipulation. | [
"Major American newspapers, such as \"The Washington Post,\" have been criticized for deliberately withholding publication of articles reporting locations of Black Sites. The Post defended its decision to suppress this news on the ground that such revelations \"could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, pa... |
A late mediaeval knight is travellíng through an area he knows to be dangerous but in which an attack is not guaranteed. Does he wear his armour all day? | He'd probably be wearing an "Arming doublet", under a rather more dressy garment. It was a sort of padded jacket worn under armour, with mail gussets to protect armpits etc. See the illustrations here: _URL_0_ | [
"BULLET::::- Knight: A giant armored warrior. His thick armor & reflective shield force players to nullify his defenses with a dash attack before hurting him, lest they get cut down by a blow of his sword.\n",
"The Shining Knight is a master of the arts of combat of Arthurian times. Wearing his enchanted bulletpr... |
Was there any attempts to unify Italy or Germany prior to the 19th Century? | The Holy Roman Empire was, in many ways, a unified Germany (albeit a very loosely unified one).
[Here](_URL_0_) is a map of the empire around 1800.
Also worth listening to: the HRE national anthem - [Gott Erhalte Franz den Kaiser](_URL_2_) - which was composed by Haydn in 1794 for Franz II Holy Roman Emperor (who d... | [
"As the Allies had decided that the province should remain a part of Italy, Italy and Austria negotiated an agreement in 1946, recognizing the rights of the German minority. This led to the creation of the \"Trentino-Alto Adige/Tiroler Etschland\" region, a new name for \"Venezia Tridentina\". German and Italian we... |
what is the purpose of robo calls that hang up on you right after you speak? | Not sure if this is always the case but I've read that they're just machines that call random phone numbers and if you answer, it will hang up and add you to a spam list. | [
"It does this by using ‘dial-out’ functionality, which allows users to join a conference call by clicking a link, rather than dialing in with phone numbers and access codes. Users are guided to a webpage where they can see who’s on their call and who’s speaking. With one click, they can share their screen, transfor... |
How do above ground power lines keep from shorting out in a rain storm? | In order for there to be a short to ground or to another phase, there would have to be a continuous path of water between the two (or the two would need to be so close that the air in between suffers a dielectric breakdown). The insulators that the wires are mounted on are designed such that the water does not flow off... | [
"Since overhead transmission wires depend on air for insulation, the design of these lines requires minimum clearances to be observed to maintain safety. Adverse weather conditions, such as high winds and low temperatures, can lead to power outages. Wind speeds as low as can permit conductors to encroach operating ... |
In all science fiction books and movies, they always say they are "___ earth years old. " Do we have a calendar yet for mars or any other planet that can coincide with earths systems? | [Searched](_URL_4_)
Relevant [discussion](_URL_5_)
Original question by [Greasy](_URL_3_)
> I mean, concepts such as years, months, days, time zones, daylight savings time, etc. would lose their meaning. I predict that we will use as a standard of time measurement something that will remain constant regardless of l... | [
"BULLET::::- 1999 – Larry Niven published the science fiction novel \"Rainbow Mars\". In this novel, in the 31st century, Earth uses a dating system based on what is called the \"Atomic Era\", in which the year one is 1945. Thus, what we call the year 3053 A.D. (the year the novel begins) is in the novel the year 1... |
Does reading or otherwise learning cause new brain cells to grow or new connections to form? | Yes, that's how learning works. If you learn something new and for a longer period of time, your brain "stores" this new information by creating new nerve connections - and/or removing old ones, depending on what you learned. | [
"New neurons are constantly formed from stem cells in parts of the adult brain throughout adulthood, a process called adult neurogenesis. The hippocampus is the area of the brain that is most active in neurogenesis. Research shows that thousands of new neurons are produced in the hippocampus every day. The brain co... |
the ammunition shortage | One theory, Obama is going to ban guns and ammunition so people are buying as much as they can.
Another theory, gun and ammunition manufacturers have convinced people that Obama is going to ban guns and ammunition so people should buy as much as they can. | [
"The 2008–13 United States ammunition shortage refers to a shortage of civilian small arms ammunition in the United States that started in late 2008 and continued through most or all of 2010, with an additional shortage beginning in December 2012 and continuing throughout 2013.\n",
"Most people attributed the amm... |
what makes a tree knot so tough to cut through? | A previous answer gives what happens when you SPLIT through using an axe - the wood grain isn't all lined up so it's much harder to cause the wood to fracture in a straight line. But what about when you CUT through using a saw?
The answer to this one is in how a tree grows. When sprouting from seed, it starts off as a... | [
"As a tree grows, lower branches often die, and their bases may become overgrown and enclosed by subsequent layers of trunk wood, forming a type of imperfection known as a knot. The dead branch may not be attached to the trunk wood except at its base, and can drop out after the tree has been sawn into boards. Knots... |
enforcing travel bans | Usually the US find someone travelled to a banned country via passport stamps or banking transactions. At that point the federal government fines the person. The easy way to avoid this is to only use cash and ask border agents not to stamp your passport. Cuba has a reputation for not stamping the passports of American... | [
"The Travel Ban was a preventative measure with the purpose to stop individuals, who were on the Consolidated List, from entering or transitting through the territories of United Nations member states. With the overall aim to limit the mobility of listed individuals and decrease likelihood of an attack by the liste... |
Do cats view humans as fellow cats or as separate creatures? What about dogs? | Cats look at humans as servants.
On a serious note:
I don't know about cats, but dogs do have an interesting relationship with humans. [This](_URL_0_) is a really interesting documentary called "Dogs Decoded" that I watched in my neuropsychology course. One of the more interesting things I learned is that dogs look at... | [
"The cultural assumption that cats are distant from people and lack affection compared to dogs has complications. Animals have individual characteristics based on their environment, particularly their past interactions with people.\n",
"Friendships between household Cats (\"Felis catus\") and humans is also very ... |
Why is it brighter and the colors are more vivid when it is cold outside? | As an amateur photographer I can say that humidity does have an effect on brightness and color. Especially for long distance scenery pictures. There is a correlation between humidity and temperature, so that would explain why there tends to be less haze when it is cooler outside. | [
"Lighter colors and also whites and metallic substances absorb less illuminating light, and thus heat up less; but otherwise color makes small difference as regards heat transfer between an object at everyday temperatures and its surroundings, since the dominant emitted wavelengths are nowhere near the visible spec... |
what does it take for the world to officially announce the beginning of a world war? | There is no such thing as "officially" announcing the beginning of a world war. The label "world war" is applied by the press, historians and the common people when they think it is appropriate.
If you are referring to recent events, they are not at all comparable to a world war. The world's major powers are involved,... | [
"Announcements that \"The War of the Worlds\" is a dramatization of a work of fiction were made on the full CBS network at four points during the broadcast October 30, 1938: at the beginning, before the middle break, after the middle break, and at the end. The middle break was delayed 10 minutes to accommodate the ... |
why do doors at businesses open outward, but residential doors open inwards? | If your house door opened outward, the hinges would be on the outside, and a thief could just take the door off the hinges and walk right in. So it's a security thing. | [
"Today, the exterior doors of most large (especially public) buildings open outward, while interior doors such as doors to individual rooms, offices, suites, etc. open inward, as do many exterior doors of houses, particularly in North America.\n",
"Inward opening doors are doors that can only be opened (or forced... |
Does body hair really have a significant impact on swim speed? | Significant is relative. In a sport where the difference between setting a record and coming in third place can be fractions of a second *everything* helps.
Hair does increase drag. In fact, the material that the swimsuit is woven out of makes a difference. Everything that can be done to give someone an edge is done... | [
"Athletes may depilate as an enhancement to their abilities. For example, male and female competitive swimmers may remove their body and pubic hair in order to help streamline their bodies and to allow their swimsuits to fit more closely to their bodies. Bicyclists also remove body hair to decrease the effects of \... |
why do some of my bed sheets feel super silky smooth and cool, whilst others are rougher and warmer, despite both being 100% cotton? | Thread count will have a lot to do with it. Higher thread counts should typically be smoother (also more expensive). | [
"The quality of bed sheets is often conveyed by the thread count—the number of threads per square inch of material. In general, the higher the thread count, the softer the sheet, but the weave and type of thread may affect the \"hand\" of the material so that a sheet with a lower thread count may actually be softer... |
What would a Tudor kitchen look like? | I'm going to speak specifically about Henry VIII, as it's him and his court who I am most familiar with on this particular topic, and because I personally think it's the perfect example of the height of Tudor opulence.
Henry's own personal favorite foods included:
> venison, game pies stuffed with oranges, haggis,... | [
"Today, the Hall with its elaborate timber roof survives as well as the kitchen—possibly the most complete medieval kitchen in England. The kitchen still contains many original features, including two open fireplaces, each large enough to roast an ox, and two bread ovens served by a third chimney. The Hall is over ... |
why do contact lenses weaken the muscles of the eyelid over time? | They don't. Is there a reason that you think this is the case? | [
"Eye strain can also be a result of the distortion caused by the refractive properties of certain types of spectacle lenses. The subtle blurriness caused by this distortion in peripheral vision, requires eye muscles to strain in order to retain clear vision. Such prolonged distortion can lead to an increase in stra... |
Why does my body/legs/knees ache when I don't get enough sleep? | There are a few reasons why you need to sleep. Your lymph system is 10x as active when your body is in it's resting phase. And during that phase, your cells go through a giant waste removal process. Just like your own body, every single cell in your body has its own butthole, and they all create shit, and need to remov... | [
"Pain is typically related to tensing the abdominal wall muscles, so any type of movement is prone to aggravate pain. Lying quietly can be the least painful position. Most patients report that they cannot sleep on the painful side.\n",
"Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is generally a long term disorder that causes a ... |
If sound can be cancelled by producing another sound-wave in anti-phase, and light is packets of waves, is it possible that light can be cancelled out using anti phase? | Yes, all waves, including sound and light, experience destructive interference when two coherent waves meet out of phase. This is what leads to optical interference effects such as the swirling colors on soap bubbles, the colors on peacock tails, the color patterns on the bottom of a CD, etc. The reason that you see co... | [
"Interference is the process by which two waves superimpose to form a resultant wave of greater or less amplitude. Interference usually refers to the interaction of waves that are correlated or coherent with each other. In constructive interference, the two waves are of the same phase interfere in a way such that t... |
what happens when a power company generates too much power? | When you take electricity from a generator, it becomes stiffer to turn. If the engine turning the generator keeps producing the same amount of power, then if the electricity taken from the generator reduces, then the generator (and engine) will speed up - like how if you are driving a car at steady speed with the accel... | [
"Commercial and industrial power users might impose load shedding on themselves, without a request from the utility. Some businesses generate their own power and wish to stay within their energy production capacity to avoid buying power from the grid. Some utilities have commercial tariff structures that set a cust... |
What's the history of the term "Judeo-Christian?" Why don't we talk about "Abrahamic _____s?" | Well, I think it has a bit to do with the history of the usage. It used to be just "Christian". People talked about Christian history, and Christian values, and Christian morality, and Christian tradition. If you look at the Google ngram viewer, "Judeo-Christian" doesn't even register until 1933, and gradually picked u... | [
"The current American use of \"Judeo-Christian\" — to refer to a value system common to Jews and Christians — first appeared in print in a book review by the English writer George Orwell in 1939, with the phrase \"the Judaeo-Christian scheme of morals.\" Orwell's usage of the term followed at least a decade of effo... |
Why are the people of American Samoa not born American citizens? How did the US acquire American Samoa? | The American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States. In 1901 the case Downes v Bidwell the Supreme Court held that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment does not extend birthright citizenship to U.S. nationals who are born in unincorporated territories. Here is a link to the court's decision-... | [
"American Samoa officially became a U.S. territory in 1900 with the Treaty of Cession of Tutuila and in 1904 with the Treaty of Cession of Manu'a. Since the end of World War II, persons born in American Samoa are United States nationals, but not United States citizens. This has allowed Samoans from American Samoa t... |
Were the Vikings that raided Britain and elsewhere all elite warriors, or were they common folk? | *Víking* just means pirate. Apart from the few specifically named heroes (saga-characters like Egill Skallagrímsson, Gunnar Hámundarson, etc.) there's no suggestion that they were in any way or form part of an elite. Some may have been very wealthy (the ones in charge of expeditions, ships, and the like) but on the who... | [
"Viking raids began in England in the late 8th century, and were largely of the 'hit and run' sort. However, in 865 various Viking armies combined and landed in East Anglia, not to raid but to conquer the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. The annals described the combined force as the Great Heathen Army. In 871... |
Do airplane seatbelts do anything? | I've been in severe turbulence with the seat belt sign on.
Even the stewardess was strapped in.
A guy two rows up was not buckled in.
All of a sudden the plane dropped and unbuckled guy smashed his melon on the overhead carrier. He was not only a danger to himself but had he hit another person, he could've caused... | [
"Seats are attached to rails underneath the floor which run along the aircraft fuselage. If the airline wants to reconfigure the seating, this is a minor operation. For passenger safety, all airline seats are equipped with seatbelts.\n",
"The seat-belt airbag is designed to better distribute the forces experience... |
How do scientists determine if a rock sample or metal sample had and extraterrestrial origin? | This can be done in any number of ways depending on the object. The easiest way is to get an established meteorite researcher to look at the sample (though this is hardly perfect). A better way is to make a thin section from which meteorite researchers can then look and see what it is. Now if you have an iron meteorite... | [
"This last point is very difficult to prove. Before the Ediacaran, the biostratigraphic markers usually used to correlate rocks are absent; therefore there is no way to prove that rocks in different places across the globe were deposited at precisely the same time. The best that can be done is to estimate the age o... |
How were Czechs treated within Austria-Hungary? | It's complicated. It was basically the industrial center, out of the five older carmakers [two are Czech](_URL_1_). So nobody would have said they cannot work right. Still, the working class Czech immigrants in Vienna were generally looked down upon, [despite their numbers being large](_URL_4_) (and there was not reall... | [
"In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise and the introduction of the dual monarchy left the Czechs and their aristocracy without the recognition of Bohemian state rights for which they had hoped. Instead of celebrating a coronation in Prague, they had to witness the coronation in Budapest (8 June 1867). In Bohemia... |
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