question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
|---|---|---|
i hang around my friend who is sick for one day and i get sick, but my dog who lives with me all the time doesn't get sick from me... why is that? | The germs that get humans sick, don't necessarily make other animals sick. That's why malaria doesn't kill mosquitos, and the avian flu was so scary. | [
"Symptoms are not necessarily distinguishable from other kinds of distress. A dog might stand uncomfortably and seem to be in extreme discomfort for no apparent reason. Other possible symptoms include firm distension of the abdomen, weakness, depression, difficulty breathing, hypersalivation, and retching without p... |
the eu election results. can't really find a broken down explanation online. | _URL_0_ for an overall result.
Eurosceptics were the first party in important nations such as UK or France, but they overall get around a fifth of the seats in the European Parliament.
Traditional, eurosupporter parties such as EEP or S & D still have over the 50% of the seats together. | [
"The European Union made it clear that they would not recognize the results of the election. All 25 member countries of the EU summoned their ambassadors from Ukraine in order to register a sharp protest against what is seen as election fraud.\n",
"Varying estimates of the elections led to a scandal. On October 1... |
How strong/muscular were ancient warriors? Did they know enough about muscle growth to be the same build as many athletes/bodybuilders now? When did humans start becoming adept at bodybuilding? | In general, the population today is much larger than they were during ancient or medieval times. Better access to food, especially rich in protein and fat has allowed the human population (at least in the western world) to become much taller.
That said, the population back then were much more accustomed to hardships a... | [
"The origin of strength athletics lies within prehistory. Testing each other in feats of physical prowess has been something humans have done throughout their existence. This is encapsulated in the modern Olympic motto of \"Swifter, higher, stronger\". There are records in many civilizations of feats of strength pe... |
If the heart is a muscle that needs blood to function how does it and whose blood does it pump at first? | The heart gets its blood supply from two coronary arteries, and their branches. These arteries begin immediately after the aortic valve, the valve that prevents blood from flowing back into the heart from the aorta. It is composed of three leaflets, two of which have the opening to a coronary artery immediately adjacen... | [
"The heart is typically a muscular tube that runs just under the back and for most of the length of the hemocoel. It contracts in ripples that run from rear to front, pushing blood forwards. Sections not being squeezed by the heart muscle are expanded either by elastic ligaments or by small muscles, in either case ... |
I just read in a wikipedia page on Roman food that rations of wheat were distributed by the Roman state to as many as 200,000 individuals per month (1st century). What other kind of welfare programs did Rome have in place? | Speaking about the republic and earlier empire, and quoting Greg Woolf (Food, Poverty, and Patronage: The Significance of the Epigraphy of the Roman Alimentary Schemes in Early Imperial Italy), “neither charity nor state welfare can be shown to have been significant sources of assistance to the poor in the ancient worl... | [
"A Roman legionary had two meals per day: The \"prandium\"(breakfast) and the \"cena\"(dinner). For these meals, the soldiers were issued regular rations consisting mainly of wheat, which composed roughly 60–70% of a soldier's total rations. This would be consumed in the form of either bread or porridge. However, w... |
why can certain electrical items turn on for a split second when they're not plugged in? | I've never been able to see an item turn on when not plugged in, but certain ones I've seen remain on momentarily after being unplugged.
Either way, the answer is the same, capacitors. Capacitors are devices that store small amount of electrical energy. They are kinda like really fast charging/discharging batteries,... | [
"Due to the electromagnet in the contactor, if power to the machine should fail the contactor will automatically disengage. Unlike machines with an ordinary latching switch (such as a common light switch), when the power is resumed the machine will not operate until being turned on again. As a result, magnetic star... |
what is a bond and where does that money paid go to? | A bond is a promise to pay someone money at a future date. Governments and business will issue bonds to raise money. Investors give money to the government or business and get the bond in exchange. When the bond matures the government or business will give whoever holds the bond the money that they promised. In between... | [
"Thus a bond is a form of loan or IOU: the \"holder\" of the bond is the lender (creditor), the \"issuer\" of the bond is the borrower (debtor), and the \"coupon\" is the interest. Bonds provide the borrower with external funds to finance long-term investments, or, in the case of government bonds, to finance curren... |
Is there a limit on the mass of a spaceship built in space? (Due to gravity, etc.?) | The only theoretical limit would be the point at which it becomes a black hole. For a spherical spaceship with radius *r*, the upper limit on mass would be:
m = r*c^(2)/2G
Where *c* is the speed of light and *G* is the Newtonian gravitational constant. | [
"A notable difference between the orbital context of space architecture and Earth-based architecture is that structures in orbit do not need to support their own weight. This is possible because of the microgravity condition of objects in free fall. In fact much space hardware, such as the space shuttle's robotic a... |
If our stomachs churn/mix our food, why don't we feel it moving around? | The stomach isn't innervated with sensory neurons so no feeling, same reason why you don't typically feel any other internal organ doing its job | [
"The vagovagal reflex is active during the receptive relaxation of the stomach in response to swallowing of food (prior to it reaching the stomach). When food enters the stomach a \"vagovagal\" reflex goes from the stomach to the brain, and then back again to the stomach causing active relaxation of the smooth musc... |
if someone receives a full organ transplant will the organ be eventually replaced by the host's cells or will it remain as the the donor's cells for the rest of the host's life. | It will always be the donor's cells. It can be possible to wean off of antirejection drugs as your body gets used to the new organ, but if your whole liver is replaced by a donor liver, you do not have any of your own liver cells to replicate and replace the donor cells. | [
"Many societies have a system for organ donation, in which a living or deceased donor's organ is transplanted into a person with a failing organ. The transplantation of larger solid organs often requires immunosuppression to prevent organ rejection or graft-versus-host disease.\n",
"Bone marrow transplant can rep... |
what is the process for getting a job with mi5/mi6/secret service? | For the US Secret Service, candidates must be U.S. citizens and must submit to urinalysis screening for illegal drug use prior to appointment. All Secret Service positions require a Top Secret security clearance. All applicants must undergo a full, Secret Service-specific, Top Secret clearance process regardless of cur... | [
"The Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service serves as the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also commonly known as MI6), which is part of the United Kingdom intelligence community. The Chief is appointed by the Foreign Secretary, to whom he directly reports. Annual reports are also made to the Prime M... |
AskScience AMA Series: I am pfisico and I build instruments to study the cosmic microwave background radiation. Ask Me Anything! | My question is a bit more basic than the other's here. What is, as you see it, the most important, or most exciting, science currently going on that could use your CMB data?
| [
"Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs used the Holmdel Horn Antenna located on Crawford Hill to take measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation. They were awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for these efforts that supported the Big Bang theory. For more information, see \"Discovery of cosm... |
Can you heat a metal until it turns into a gas? If so, does this ever happen or is it just a theoretical state? | Absolutely; mercury vapor lights, some metal plateing processes use vaporizing the plateting material. | [
"Often, the metal's sensitivity to heat must also be considered. Even a relatively routine workshop procedure involving heating is complicated by the fact that aluminium, unlike steel, will melt without first glowing red. Forming operations where a blow torch is used can reverse or remove heat treating, therefore i... |
does anything significant happen to our bodies when we are shocked with low-level electricity? | We get shocked. We are mostly composed of water, which conducts electricity, and being exposed to electricity will jolt your whole body. That's why we react so quickly if we've ever been shocked.
It'll probably depend on voltage but it can be anything from muscle pain(including abnormal heart rhythm) all the way to b... | [
"Electricity is hazardous: an electric shock from a current as low as 35 milliamps is sufficient to cause fibrillation of the heart in vulnerable individuals. Even a healthy individual is at risk of falling from a high structure due to loss of muscle control. Higher currents can cause respiratory failure and result... |
Am I causing myself any harm by heating my food in a plastic container? | Heat will thermally degrade some polymers into their constituent monomers and many of them are *potential* carcinogens. You are more likely to melt the polymer than break it down to monomers at microwave heat, however, so it isn't likely there is substantial contamination. Some contain plasticizers like BPA which may... | [
"Consumer groups recommend that people wishing to lower their exposure to bisphenol A avoid canned food and polycarbonate plastic containers (which shares resin identification code 7 with many other plastics) unless the packaging indicates the plastic is bisphenol A-free. The National Toxicology Panel recommends av... |
Historically, what has been the most successful form of government for an empire? | This is hard to answer because most empires changed government over time. The Roman Republic lasted centuries, and the Empire lasted over a millennia if you count Byzantium. The Holy Roman Empire did too, but how it was run changed over time. It's impossible to find an unchanged system for any length of time, even if t... | [
"Politically, it was typical for either a monarchy or an oligarchy, rooted in the original core territory of the empire, to continue to dominate. If governmental authority was maintained by controlling water supplies, vital to colonial subjects, such régimes were called hydraulic empires.\n",
"Since antiquity, mo... |
During the American Civil War, was Washington D.C. actually the "most fortified city on earth"? | Follow up question, what would these fortifications look like? How large was DC's Garrison? | [
"During the American Civil War (1861–65), Washington County contained a partial circle of defensive fortifications that made Washington one of the most heavily fortified cities in the world at that time. The forts surrounding Union-held territory in Virginia completed the defense circle. The Battle of Fort Stevens,... |
Does climate change effect the occurrence of different cloud types? | The effect that global warming has on clouds is actually a very difficult scientific question! To answer your questions directly though; 1) it would be difficult for a person to notice changes in cloud cover or cloud types without some systematic study - mostly because any significant changes will happen over 10, 20, 3... | [
"The number and type of CCNs can affect the precipitation amount, lifetimes and radiative properties of clouds as well as the amount and hence have an influence on climate change; details are not well understood but are the subject of research. There is also speculation that solar variation may affect cloud propert... |
portuguese drug laws | Well, I'm portuguese. My only experience is with marijuana so I will only talk about it. Marijuana isn't legal, but it isn't really criminalized, I mean, you can have with you up to 5g, if you have more, you'll be charged with Possession of drugs, but less than that it's generally fine.
About smoking, some places are ... | [
"The drug policy of Portugal was put in place in 2001, and was legally effective from July 2001. The new law maintained the status of illegality for using or possessing any drug for personal use without authorization. However, the offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison a possible punishment, to an adm... |
what is the science behind being a good socialiser? what makes a 'good conversation'? | The gift of bullshit is an important one. That's number one. Second, it does help to be educated across the board, but if this fails, fall back on number one. Don't talk about yourself either. Not everything has to relate back to you. Those people are the worst. | [
"BULLET::::4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. The easiest way to become a good conversationalist is to become a good listener. To be a good listener, we must actually care about what people have to say. Many times people don't want an entertaining conversation partner; they just want ... |
in print, especially transcribed interviews, what is the reason for the brackets? "jane said [tom] never had a bad thing to say about anyone." | The brackets are usually replacing a pronoun, a nick-name or first or last name only when context isn't present to make it clear who they're referring to.
It would say something like "Jane said he never had a bad thing to say about anyone", which is confusing if they haven't specified that it's Tom they're talking abo... | [
"That and almost everything else could be forgotten amidst Jane Ace's linguistic mayhem, much of it provided by her wry husband's scripts and enough improvised by her. (Mary Hunter's real laughter, at Jane's malaprops or Ace's arch barbs, was practically the show's laugh track, years before anyone ever thought of u... |
Why does 2-stroke engine exhaust smell different from 4-stroke? | Primarily because in a 2-stroke engine there's no dedicated lubrication system, so you have to mix oil directly into the gas. The combustion of that oil means you end up creating a lot of smoke compared to pure gas, which burns cleaner.
Additionally a car is going to have a lot more bells-and-whistles related to clean... | [
"The engine is also 4-stroke — unusual when almost all pedal-equipped mopeds used simpler 2-strokes. Soichiro Honda disliked the sharp noise of 2-strokes, and the 4-stroke does not require oil to be mixed with the gasoline at every fill-up.\n",
"Unlike a four-stroke engine, whose crankcase is closed except for it... |
how a sql index works? | Imagine I've got a pile of Lego, and I'm looking for a piece. Without an index is like looking at every piece individually until I find the one I'm looking for.
If I made a note of every piece of Lego was when I took it out of the box, when I wanted to find a piece, I could look up this list of Lego pieces and it wo... | [
"A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data without having to search every row in a database table every time a database... |
why are islamic extremist groups predominantly sunni muslims rather than shia? | Sunni Muslims make up about 85-90% of all muslim groups, however there are a pretty large percentage of Shia Muslim extremists, because of the Shiite population in Iran, Iraq and other areas in politically unstable regions (Sunni's are also in this area, but are more concentrated to Eastern Asian areas and Northern Afr... | [
"Within Islam, there has been conflict at various periods between Sunnis and Shias; Shi'ites consider Sunnis to be damned, due to their refusal to accept the first Caliph as Ali and accept all following descendants of him as infallible and divinely guided. Many Sunni religious leaders, including those inspired by W... |
what does it mean when the potus says that china is illegally manipulating it's currency. | You trade 2 baseball cards for 2 candy pieces, or you can trade 2 cards for 2 sandwiches, or 2 cards for 2 books. But then a new kid shows up and starts giving you a trade at 2 cards for 4 candies. Pretty sweet deal, you start trading a lot with that new kid.
Baseball Cards = $US Dollar. Candy = Chinese Dollar (Yuan).... | [
"Trump has vowed to label China as a currency manipulator on his first day in office. \"Washington Post\" fact-checker Glenn Kessler, citing experts such as C. Fred Bergsten, found that \"Trump's complaints about currency manipulation are woefully out of date,\" noting that \"China has not manipulated its currency ... |
Is there information on the distribution of stars by metallicity? | Overall disclaimer: The metallicity of any given star is a complex mess, especially when you start talking about stars cooler than our Sun (which represent the bulk of stars). It's really tough to measure the overall metallicity of a given star, even with high resolution spectroscopy, and it's doubly complicated when ... | [
"A star's metallicity measurement is one parameter that helps determine whether a star has planets and the type of planets, as there is a direct correlation between metallicity and the type of planets a star may have. Measurements have demonstrated the connection between a star's metallicity and gas giant planets, ... |
if 0.1 amps can be lethal to a human, then why don't i die when touching the contacts of a phone battery, which is 3.8 v and 1500-3200 ma? | When you touch the contacts of a battery, the current that flows through your body is governed by [Ohms law](_URL_0_).
Because your body, and in particular your skin, has a high electrical resitance, the current that results from a 3.8 Volt potential difference is in the range of micro Amperes, which typically will no... | [
"Voltages greater than 50 V applied across dry unbroken human skin can cause heart fibrillation if they produce electric currents in body tissues that happen to pass through the chest area. The voltage at which there is the danger of electrocution depends on the electrical conductivity of dry human skin. Living hum... |
How much gas could the world economy save daily by capturing the pump spillage after fueling up? | There was something on Gizmodo about this the other day: _URL_0_
| [
"The world's first industrial extraction of natural gas started at Fredonia, New York, USA in 1825. By 2009, 66 trillion cubic meters (or 8%) had been used out of the total 850 trillion cubic meters of estimated remaining recoverable reserves of natural gas. Based on an estimated 2015 world consumption rate of abou... |
How ubiquitous are infectious germs on household surfaces? | I wouldn't call any surface in a home sterile. Go ahead and take swabs of any surface and grow them, you will find growth. Even the dust from our skin contains germs, and that flies everywhere. Wind carries spores, and the air isn't pure since even a virtually airtight home still has it's doors opened and dirty occupan... | [
"Scientists are still trying to understand the microorganisms within PM particles and how they are spread through pollutants. Research indicated that many kinds of pathogens and bacteria can be spread through PM smog and cause diseases. For example, Chinese researchers have found that smog in Beijing contains signi... |
Why didn't China save Pakistan from India in 1971? | China wanted to avoid the war in South Asia as much as they could. They wanted Pakistan to come up with a political solution and to end it as soon as possible. Furthermore the Chinese realized that a war with India would not be as easy as it was in 1962.
India had a 'friendship treaty' with the Soviet Union, meaning t... | [
"While Western nations did not view Chinese actions favourably because of fear of the Chinese and competitiveness, Pakistan, which had had a turbulent relationship with India ever since the Indian partition, improved its relations with China after the war. Prior to the war, Pakistan also shared a disputed boundary ... |
why are brass knuckles called knuckle dusters? | Duster comes from the type of coat, and I suspect that it refers to a covering for your knuckles.
_URL_0_ | [
"Brass knuckles, also sometimes called knuckles, knucks, brass knucks, knucklebusters, knuckledusters, an English punch or a classic, are weapons used in hand-to-hand combat. Brass knuckles are pieces of metal shaped to fit around the knuckles. Despite their name, they are often made from other metals, plastics or ... |
Was Atahualpa immune to smallpox? | Could you elaborate a bit? Are you asking if he contracted smallpox prior to Cajamarca? | [
"In the years between 1524 and 1526, the European germ smallpox, introduced from the conquistadores in Panama and preceding the Spanish conquerors in Peru through transmission among natives, had swept through the Inca Empire. Smallpox caused the death of the Incan ruler Huayna Capac as well as most of his family in... |
How can anything ever reach any event horizon ? | According to an external observer, yes, that's completely correct. According to the poor bloke falling into the black hole, there's nothing special about the event horizon, just a continuation of the same old impending sense of utter doom. | [
"There is an event horizon in the universe where light (and therefore any information) cannot and will never be able to reach an object, because the cosmic acceleration outpaces the speed of light: the cosmological comoving horizon. If the object accelerates in one direction, a similar event horizon is produced: th... |
why can't the us (or any country in general) alleviate their external debt by collecting their external credit? | When you are talking about debt on a governmental scale, that is a highly structured, desirable investment option.
It is not like when you borrow fifty bucks to a friend and you can call up tomorrow and demand your money back. When money is loaned to the government, it is in the form of a bond. A bond has very specifi... | [
"Governments create debt by issuing government bonds and bills. Less creditworthy countries sometimes borrow directly from a supranational organization (e.g. the World Bank) or international financial institutions.\n",
"Since a sovereign government, by definition, controls its own affairs, it cannot be obliged to... |
At what level does the circulatory system of each indivdual start to differ? | Most of the major named arteries follow the same course, but there's a great deal of variation. There isn't some set point at which they occur (it's not like you can say '3 branches off the aorta, things start to diverge'), but generally smaller vessels and areas with a lot of anastamoses tend to feature more variabil... | [
"A circulatory anastomosis is a connection (an anastomosis) between two blood vessels, such as between arteries (arterio-arterial anastomosis), between veins (veno-venous anastomosis) or between an artery and a vein (arterio-venous anastomosis). Anastomoses between arteries and between veins result in a multitude o... |
How did medieval Russia interact with its nomadic Asian neighbors prior to the Mongol invasion? | I have a great deal of information on the subject, but I'm a little busy looking for information on another subject right now. Reply to me and I'll get back to you after I've gotten some work done on my paper.
Here's the real quick and dirty of it: Russian principalities interacted with steppe nomads a lot like how th... | [
"Mongol invasion of Rus can be divided in two phases. In winter of 1237-38 they conquered Northern Russia (principalities of Ryazan and Vladimir-Suzdal) with the exception of Novgorod, but in spring of 1238 retreated back to Wild Fields. The second campaign, aimed to Southern Russia (principalities of Chernigov and... |
Is it possible that psychedelics like psilocybin increase the spectrum of colors that we can see? | It really doesn't physically change how many colors we can see or how we hear. Your visual receptors have a specific range of wavelengths that they can detect, same with your ears. Taking a psychedelic won't change this fact. Psychedelics change your brain chemistry in certain ways that can make you see colors you woul... | [
"Psychedelic experience includes the full range of mystical or religious experiential phenomena. Two scientific studies have concluded that psilocybin (a typical psychedelic compound that occurs naturally in psilocybin mushrooms) reliably triggers mystical-type experiences. The more recent study at Johns Hopkins Un... |
is there a link between diet soda consumption (i.e. aspartame) and cancer? if not, why does the general public continue to think there is. | There are biased, non-peer-reviewed studies that make this link, but there's no real evidence of any link. Unfortunately some people like to latch on to any study that promotes FUD without considering any of the facts. | [
"In a report released on 10 December 2013, the EFSA said that, after an extensive examination of evidence, it ruled out the \"potential risk of aspartame causing damage to genes and inducing cancer,\" and deemed the amount found in diet sodas an amount safe to consume.\n",
"Coca-Cola has been under fire since 201... |
what determines the strength of someones vocal chords, e.g. how loud they are? | Loudness comes much more from breathing than from your vocal chords. The more air you can push past them, the louder you can be.
Vocal coaches will tell you to practice breathing from the diaphragm which isn't as easy or natural as it may seem. There are tons of videos on YouTube demonstrating this. Basically try tak... | [
"The perceived pitch of a person's voice is determined by a number of different factors, most importantly the fundamental frequency of the sound generated by the larynx. The fundamental frequency is influenced by the length, size, and tension of the vocal folds. This frequency averages about 125 Hz in an adult male... |
why does japan have such a high conviction rate? | Fewer rules against how evidence is gathered, so the discovery and investigation parts of the system are faster with fewer pieces of damning evidence thrown out due to "procedural" or "paperwork" errors. | [
"Japan has a conviction rate of over 99%. In several cases, courts have acknowledged confessions were forced and released those imprisoned. To combat this, a law was passed in 2016 requiring some interrogations to be videotaped. However, this only applies to people accused of serious crimes, such as murder, arson a... |
why do some people get annoyed when you say america instead of the united states? | Depends on what you mean by 'most people.' It's that attitude that annoys people. I don't have a problem with it myself, and am used to saying it, but that's because I'm from the U.S. Someone from outside the U.S. but who is also from 'the Americas' might take offense that we are claiming everything as our own like col... | [
"BULLET::::- US/America/North America: The terms 'America' and 'American' are frequently used to refer only to the United States and its people. This sometimes causes resentment among some non-US Americans, especially Latin Americans, who tend to respond by referring to the people of the US as Unitedstatesian (or '... |
What would happen to a single photon in a perfect vacuum? | A photon in a perfect vacuum will travel in a perfectly strait line until it hits something. If you put a photographic plate in the way, you would see one dot of light surrounded by darkness. | [
"BULLET::::- Perfect vacuum is an ideal state of no particles at all. It cannot be achieved in a laboratory, although there may be small volumes which, for a brief moment, happen to have no particles of matter in them. Even if all particles of matter were removed, there would still be photons and gravitons, as well... |
Can 3 objects orbit each other? | Yes, it's not super rare. The most common configuration is that two of them are much closer together than the third one, and they orbit each other while the third one orbits both of them (Alpha Centauri may be like this).
_URL_0_ | [
"Considering possible hovering positions or orbits of the tractor around the asteroid, note that if two objects are gravitationally bound in a mutual orbit, then if one receives an arbitrary impulse which is less than that needed to free it from orbit around the other, because of the gravitational forces between th... |
How does heat transfer within a solid differ from heat transfer between a solid and air (convection)? | In equilibrium, everything will reach the same temperature. If we assume that the room as a whole is a closed system, the answer is as easy as calculating the total heat capacity and the total heat.
Let's make the problem even easier: We have a small room of 10 m^3 in volume. In this room, we have an iron cube that w... | [
"In conduction, the heat flow is within and through the body itself. In contrast, in heat transfer by thermal radiation, the transfer is often between bodies, which may be separated spatially. Also possible is transfer of heat by a combination of conduction and thermal radiation. In convection, internal energy is c... |
why are languages all so different... but body language is so similar everywhere? eye-rolls, shrugs, clapping, skeptical eyebrow raises etc.. | Body language is *not* similar everywhere. In fact, some gestures mean exactly the opposite of what you expect in other cultures. [Here's a page](_URL_0_) that talks about the topic.
And [another](_URL_1_) short page with some of the confusing gestures from around the world.
| [
"Languages, understood as the particular set of speech norms of a particular community, are also a part of the larger culture of the community that speaks them. Languages differ not only in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, but also through having different \"cultures of speaking.\" Humans use language as a w... |
How do the antibodies in a blood donors blood behave in the blood recipients body? | They work just fine; this is basis of [immunoglobulin therapy](_URL_0_). However, they don't work very long; half-life of various immunoglobulins is only a few days.
What blocks the significant response from the recipient's immune system is that the recipient has to be immunosuppressed to receive a transplant (in whic... | [
"Blood donors with exceptionally strong anti-A, anti-B or any atypical blood group antibody may be excluded from blood donation. In general, while the plasma fraction of a blood transfusion may carry donor antibodies not found in the recipient, a significant reaction is unlikely because of dilution.\n",
"The dono... |
why does a muscle become stiff when cold and limber when hot? | When cold, blood vessels contract so they are further from the skin's surface, losing less heat. This constriction means blood does not flow through the veins as much, limiting blood flow to muscles.
When hot, blood vessels expand so they are closer to the skin's surface to release heat. Wider vessels means more bloo... | [
"Increased muscular activity results in the generation of heat as a byproduct. Most often, when the purpose of the muscle activity is to produce motion, the heat is wasted energy. In shivering, the heat is the main intended product and is utilized for warmth.\n",
"Ice can be used to decrease inflammation of sore ... |
How do extended-reach oil wells change direction underground? | Not my field of specialty but since no one has chimed in yet I'll give it a go:
[Directional Drilling](_URL_1_) can be done by controlling the orientation of the drill-bit at the bottom of the hole. I think usually it is accomplished by [hydraulic actuators](_URL_0_) located on the sides of the drill bit. These actua... | [
"The earliest oil wells in modern times were drilled percussively, by repeatedly raising and dropping a cable tool into the earth. In the 20th century, cable tools were largely replaced with rotary drilling, which could drill boreholes to much greater depths and in less time. The record-depth Kola Borehole used non... |
how do radio signals (4g, wifi etc.) manage to retain their information after passing through trees, buildings and other obstacles? and how are they not mixed up, intertwined? | They are, the key is there are error correction and detection algorithms that work to counter the problem. In bad environments they don't always work.
Also, many newer devices actually utilize the attenuation and reflections to improve signal quality. Take a look into [MIMO](_URL_0_) technology. They do what is called... | [
"BULLET::::- Cognitive radio techniques: each radio measures the spectrum in use and communicates that information to other cooperating radios, so that transmitters can avoid mutual interference by selecting unused frequencies. Alternatively, each radio connects to a geolocation database to obtain information about... |
how do skin grafts work? | " how does that help the area you took it from."
It doesn't hurt it because you only take a small amount. It's more like gary has two apples, and both of your apples explode, so now you're going to starve. Gary gives you one apple so you won't starve, and now only has one apple.
BUT NEITHER YOU OR GARY WILL DIE AND ... | [
"Skin grafting is patching of a defect with skin that is removed from another site in the body. The skin graft is sutured to the edges of the defect, and a bolster dressing is placed atop the graft for seven to ten days, to immobilize the graft as it heals in place. There are two forms of skin grafting: split thick... |
if a planet or meteor the size of pluto collided with earth what would it be like for the people on the opposite side of earth? what would they see or feel? | We would all be dead | [
"A large asteroid or comet could collide with the Earth's surface with the force of hundreds to thousands of times the force of all the nuclear bombs on the Earth. For example, the K/T boundary impact has been proposed to have caused extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Early estimates of thi... |
washington dc | Well... for one the whole point of the thing is that *it isn't a state or a part of a state*.
Its a neutral ground. Beholden to no state so that the Federal Government (representing all 50 states) can conduct its business.
So the reason no state (basically Virginia and Maryland) is trying to annex DC is because that... | [
"Law enforcement in Washington, D.C. is complicated by a network of overlapping federal and city agencies. The primary agency responsible for law enforcement in the District of Columbia is the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). The MPD is a city agency headed by the Chief of Police, currently Peter Newsham, who ... |
when the internet goes down in my neighbourhood, what normally happened? how is it fixed? | You probably have a router or a switch that lets you connect several computers at once to your single internet connection. Simply put, your ISP has larger, more powerful routers and switches that Connect the neighbourhood to a larger part of the internet.
something with these probably failed. it could be a software er... | [
"Under certain conditions, a network component shutting down can cause current fluctuations in neighboring segments of the network leading to a cascading failure of a larger section of the network. This may range from a building, to a block, to an entire city, to an entire electrical grid.\n",
"One way natural di... |
why is the law to own a pistol 21, while to own a long gun is 18? | It isn't everywhere, it varies by State. As far as potential
Justifications for it, Long guns can be used for hunting, and are good for self defense in the home as well. Hand guns are good for concealement, and are the weapon most likely to be used in crimes. | [
"At the age of 18 or up, it is legal to buy a pistol with a purchase license from a private seller, at the age of 21, it is legal to buy a firearm from a Federally licensed (FFL) dealer. No purchase license is required to purchase a long gun (a firearm that is more than 26 inches long) in Michigan. According to sta... |
How far do slugs travel? | Based on a quick google search, a slug can travel .013 meters per second, and typically lives for 18 months. At this rate if it slept 1/3rd of it's life (based on snail numbers, didn't see anything in 5 seconds of searching around for slugs), it would travel a maximum total of 254 miles in it's lifetime. Slugs like t... | [
"These sea slugs sometimes occur in abundant numbers during breeding time, swarming with over 1,000 individuals per square metre, as has been observed on numerous occasions. These swarms are all oriented in the same direction, determined by the flow of the tide. They follow each other at the same speed, forming col... |
one of the primary enemies of nazis were communists. so why did stalin ever make a pact with hitler in the first place? | The pact wasn't an alliance. It was a non-aggression pact, so that each would keep out of the other's business.
It didn't work. | [
"As Stalinism came to dominate the Comintern, the united front strategy was dropped. In the period preceding Adolf Hitler's electoral victory in Germany, the Comintern argued that the social democrats were \"social fascists\" and that they, rather than the Nazis, represented the real danger. Following Hitler's vict... |
how to buy stocks(from a company)? | You can buy stocks from any brokerage, some of the bigger national ones are Charles Schwab, etrade, Scottrade, Morgan Stanley, and even many of the major retail banks.
I think at your current knowledge level, you should consider buying index mutual funds, instead of trying to day-trade stocks, or other more advanced ... | [
"There are other ways of buying stock besides through a broker. One way is directly from the company itself. If at least one share is owned, most companies will allow the purchase of shares directly from the company through their investor relations departments. However, the initial share of stock in the company wil... |
Is this a meteorite? (Here are pictures and surface x-ray results) | The high ferrite composition and the mix of some heavier elements(though in fewer percentages) would lead one to believe it might be a meteorite. The resource places are going to do the exact same thing you did. They're gonna use probably a higher end x-ray spectrograph and get more accurate results. Your best bet is t... | [
"Caroline Smith, meteorite curator at the Natural History Museum in London, stated that the pictures and video footage of the burning crater indicated that it was not a meteorite crater: meteorites are not aflame when they strike Earth. Smith also pointed out that there were no other reported sightings of any fireb... |
what is that bright halo around light that we always see? | You have two components in your eyes that actually "see". They are called "Rods" and "Cones". "Rods" are spread throughout your retina while "Cones" are almost exclusively found in your Fovea (the middle of your visible range where there is a dense cluster of cones). The perception of these different components actuall... | [
"In optics, the Arago spot, Poisson spot, or Fresnel bright spot is a bright point that appears at the center of a circular object's shadow due to Fresnel diffraction. This spot played an important role in the discovery of the wave nature of light and is a common way to demonstrate that light behaves as a wave (for... |
el15: how many fps does the human eye see? | This article goes into great detail about how the human eye interprets movies and the real world.
_URL_0_
For those that don't want to read, this quote pretty much sums it up.
" Seeing framewise is simply not the way how the eye\brain system works. It works with a continuous flow of light\information."
An example t... | [
"The human eye can detect a luminance range of 10, or one hundred trillion (100,000,000,000,000) (about 46.5 f-stops), from 10 cd/m, or one millionth (0.000001) of a candela per square meter to 10 cd/m or one hundred million (100,000,000) candelas per square meter. This range does not include looking at the midday ... |
Why doesn't all the hydrogen in the sun undergo fusion simultaneously? | When two hydrogen nuclei (protons) managed to slam together hard enough to fuse, they form a "diproton" (effectively a Helium-2 nucleus). This is a hideously unstable particle, and the vast majority of them simply immediately decay back into two protons, to no net effect. The tiny fraction that instead decay into deu... | [
"Because lithium-8 and beryllium-12 form natural stopping points on the table of isotopes for hydrogen fusion, it is believed that all of the higher elements are formed in very hot stars where higher orders of fusion predominate. A star like the Sun produces energy by the fusion of simple H-1 into helium-4 through ... |
why do fat/obese/overweight people generally have a lot of strength even if they do not work out? | They gotta carry their fat ass everywhere they go | [
"Obesity induced from lack of exercise also contributes to a decrease in general mental health. Overweight children and teens are more likely to suffer from poor self-esteem, negative body image, teasing, and bullying.\n",
"Obesity is a physical marker of poor health, increasing the likelihood of various diseases... |
if a 5 year old were to fall into a coma and wake up 20 years later, how would they act? | Probably like a two year old.
You don't spend 15 years in a coma and come back without some severe mental deficits. | [
"People may emerge from a coma with a combination of physical, intellectual, and psychological difficulties that need special attention. It is common for coma patients to awaken in a profound state of confusion and suffer from dysarthria, the inability to articulate any speech. Recovery usually occurs gradually. In... |
Who actually wrote the Magna Carta? | I was going to summarise [this lecture](_URL_1_) from May but fortunately _URL_2_ has it online! The person giving this paper is one of the leads on the AHRC-funded [Magna Carta Project](_URL_0_), which represents the culmination of several years of study by scholars from the University of Easy Anglia and Kings College... | [
"Magna Carta is an English charter originally issued in 1215 which influenced the development of the common law and many later constitutional documents, such as the 1689 English Bill of Rights, the 1789 United States Constitution, and the 1791 United States Bill of Rights. \n",
"\"1215: The Year of Magna Carta\" ... |
Magnitude or depth, which is more important to strength of an earthquake? | In terms of perceived strength at a location (i.e. the [intensity of an earthquake](_URL_1_)), both the depth and magnitude will matter, as will horizontal distance from the epicenter (this together with depth will determine how far seismic waves have had to travel to reach your location and generally waves attenuate w... | [
"In seismology, the depth of focus or focal depth refers to the depth at which an earthquake occurs. Earthquakes occurring at a depth of less than are classified as shallow-focus earthquakes, while those with a focal depth between and are commonly termed mid-focus or intermediate-depth earthquakes. In subduction zo... |
Baltic and North Seas meet but don't mix because of the differing density. Is a difference in density sufficient to cause immiscibility? | They may have a boundary like that but diffusion happens between the two bodies. It is not correct to think they wall each other off. Keep in mind that this is a surface picture only. | [
"The Baltic Sea's salinity is much lower than that of ocean water (which averages 3.5%), as a result of abundant freshwater runoff from the surrounding land (rivers, streams and alike), combined with the shallowness of the sea itself; runoff contributes roughly one-fortieth its total volume per year, as the volume ... |
how does pi contain every word or combination of words? | This is a common misconception.
Pi is an irrational number. Irrational numbers are numbers that can't be expressed as a quotient of two whole numbers. One minor property of irrational numbers is that when you try to write them as decimal fractions, you get an infinite and non-repeating sequence of digits.
There are a... | [
"Mnemonic phrases or poems can be used to encode numeric sequences by various methods, one common one is to create a new phrase in which the number of letters in each word represents the according digit of pi. For example, the first 15 digits of the mathematical constant pi (3.14159265358979) can be encoded as \"No... |
how can someone with a peanut allergy develop a semi-immunity to peanuts? | Immunotherapy has been applied to many allergies, yes.
There's two general competing mechanisms that drive allergy.
The first is what you could call the "pro atopic" side. This is the allergic response, and in these types of allergies it is mediated by a class of antibody called IgE. To simplify it a lot, more IgE ... | [
"Peanut allergy is a type of food allergy to peanuts. It is different from tree nut allergies. Physical symptoms of allergic reaction can include itchiness, hives, swelling, eczema, sneezing, asthma, abdominal pain, drop in blood pressure, diarrhea, and cardiac arrest. Anaphylaxis may occur.\n",
"The clinical tri... |
why after staring for too long into a light source (i.e. the traffic light), that pattern gets burned onto our sight? | Im no expert but I think this is because the cones/rods which sense light in our eyes "adapt" when exposed to light and become less activated so when you look away it takes some time to adapt again and you see a negative of that image for a while afterwards | [
"Some witnesses describe the light as appearing to approach them several times before retreating. Others report that the lights were able to keep pace with them when they were in a moving motor vehicle.\n",
"A 1972 article in the \"Wilmington Star-News\" argued that \"most investigators\" had believed the light w... |
Recycling of International Space Station? | To move anything from Earth orbit to Lunar orbit, you need about three times its mass as propellant. To do that for the entire space station, that would mean about 1,350,000 kg of propellant. To get all that to low Earth orbit, would mean about 11 Saturn V launches, or double that for Falcon Heavy.
As to why small pie... | [
"The crew continued the task of building and enhancing the International Space Station by delivering the U.S. Destiny Laboratory Module. It was the first NASA lab to be permanently used ever since the days of Skylab nearly three decades earlier. It was manufactured by Boeing at the Michoud Assembly Facility and the... |
how are the red blood cells separated from your blood during platelet donation? | If you want to separate something like blood that's made of water and different types of cells, you put it in a *centrifuge*, which is a machine that simply spins a hollow drum with test tubes in it ***really, really*** fast. As you spin the drum, the red stuff is forced to the bottom of the tube since it's heaviest, t... | [
"Donated blood is usually subjected to processing after it is collected, to make it suitable for use in specific patient populations. Collected blood is then separated into blood components by centrifugation: red blood cells, plasma, platelets, albumin protein, clotting factor concentrates, cryoprecipitate, fibrino... |
why are things cheaper in the countryside? | MUCH cheaper land. Other things may be less expensive (like fruit and meat if you're in a farming area), and some things may be more expensive (like electricity, internet access, and utilities). However, anything you're buying locally has to have a store, and for most stores, rent and property taxes is one of their l... | [
"Smaller communities have fewer choices in food retailers. Resident small grocers struggle to be profitable partly due to low sales numbers, which make it difficult to meet wholesale food suppliers' minimum purchasing requirements. The lack of competition and sales volume can result in higher food costs. For exampl... |
Accessible Viking Primary Sources | So the problem with the "from the Viking's perspective" part is that they were pre-literate during much if what we call the "Viking Age" (c.800-c. 1050). All of the sources from this time period are thus written by Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Arabs, etc. The sagas and later stuff are all pretty far removed from the period ... | [
"Modern scholars consider \"Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib\" to be a piece of \"brilliant propaganda\" written in a \"bombastic style and full of patriotic hyperbole.\" Although the chronicle remains a valuable source of information about the Viking Age in Ireland, its accuracy is uncertain.\n",
"Information about the V... |
can the shape of earbuds damage your ears/hearing. | It could if you decide to jam something that does not fit into your ear. Imagine a ten centimeter diameter hole in piece of paper, now imagine trying to fit a 20cm diameter rod through that same hole, it's going to rip the hole if forced through. TLDR: one size does not fit all and its up to the user to realise this... | [
"Dysfunction of the three small bones of the middle ear – malleus, incus, and stapes – may cause conductive hearing loss. The mobility of the ossicles may be impaired for different reasons including a boney disorder of the ossicles called otosclerosis and disruption of the ossicular chain due to trauma, infection o... |
Why do our mouths fill with saliva right before we vomit? | To protect your teeth from stomach acid, which essentially turns your enamel into gum. This is also why you shouldn't brush your teeth directly after, and not at all if you don't have fluoride mouthwash to use prior to brushing. | [
"Saliva contains digestive enzymes called amylase, and lingual lipase, secreted by the salivary glands and serous glands on the tongue. The enzymes start to break down the food in the mouth. Chewing, in which the food is mixed with saliva, begins the mechanical process of digestion. This produces a bolus which can ... |
why do i still need the disk for ps3 games after it's 'installed'? | Because it's not the entire game being installed.
Some games have a pre-install to store information on your PS3 so loading times in-game will be kept to a minimum. If they were installing the entire game to your PS3's hard drive then you would run out of space after the first game. | [
"The Linux Kit turns the PlayStation 2 into a full-fledged computer system, but it does not allow for use of the DVD-ROM drive except to read PS1 and PS2 discs due to piracy concerns by Sony. Although the HDD included with the Linux Kit is not compatible with PlayStation 2 games, reformatting the HDD with the utili... |
if a "double-yolk" egg was fertilized, would it, hypothetically, hatch 2 chiclets? what about a triple-yolk? | It depends on if there was a bird embryo on each yolk. The babby chicken is the little white (or red) goopy wisp thing you see on the yolk. The yolk is just the chick's food supply. | [
"In normal monozygotic twin development, one egg is fertilized by a single sperm. The egg will then completely split into two, normally at the two-cell stage. If the egg splits in the early blastocyst stage, two inner cell masses will be present, eventually leading to the twins sharing the same chorion and placenta... |
can dogs understand other dogs when they bark? | Dogs don't bark in a language like how you speak English. Languages are an invention which must be taught to our children and requires constant care and revision to be mutually intelligible. Dog barks are extremely simple vocalizations. Though it is probable that dogs have a better idea of why another dog is barking t... | [
"Stanley Coren identifies 56 signals which untrained dogs make and people can understand, including 10 barks, 5 growls, 8 other vocalizations, 11 tail signals, 5 ear and eye positions, 5 mouth signals and 12 body positions. Faragó et al. describe research that humans can accurately categorize barks from unseen dogs... |
what was the purpose of the holocaust? why did hitler want to kill millions of people, and how did he select the ethnic/minority groups? | He saw the "Aryan" race as superior, which was essentially Caucasian and strictly not Jewish. He wanted to wipe out all "undesirables". This didn't entail Jews alone. He sought to wipe out Roma and Sinti people, homosexuals, political enemies such as communists, and only wanted chosen individuals within the Aryan race ... | [
"The military campaign to remove certain classes of persons (above all, Jews) from Germany and other German-held territories during World War II, often with extreme brutality, is known as the Holocaust. It was carried out primarily by German forces and collaborators, German and non-German. Early in the war, million... |
Why can a rocket fly straight up without wings and doesn't tip over? | Large commercial rockets are actively steered. Either the engines are 'gimbaled' (the angle is adjusted) constantly, or small sideways-pointed rockets are fired as needed, to push the rocket where the computer is programmed to send it.
Smaller rockets without adjustable engines or controls normally cause the rocket to... | [
"Another problem in this maneuver is that higher lift from the faster moving outside wing will roll the airplane to the left (or to the right). Most pilots find holding forward right (or left) stick necessary throughout the pivot.\n",
"If the engine kept pushing the nose straight up even as the rest of the rocket... |
Were the German bunkers on Omaha beach much further from the shire than popularly dramatised in thr film Saving Private Ryan? | One of the historical 'inaccuracies' about Saving Private Ryan is that the film does shorten the beach considerably. Omaha Beach has a very shallow slope and the distance between the low tide and high tide marks can be as much as 400-500m. The landings were timed to start at low tide in order that the various beach obs... | [
"Midway between the old harbour and the camping ground an old German bunker, constructed around the time of World War I, appears on the beach. During World War I, it formed part of \"Sicherungsstellung Nord\", a German line of 900 bunkers spanning the region of Sønderjylland, constructed to halt an eventual English... |
how does an automated check-out tell the difference between the different notes (eg: £5, £10, £20) and different coins? how does it tell these from regular paper (notes) or items of a similar shape/weight (coins)? | _URL_0_
Notes are scanned and matched up to images stored in the software, which also checks for some security features. If you produce a sufficiently good fake, it will be accepted, but it would be easier to pass it to a human.
Coins fall into slots which are the correct sizes. The slots have valves which only open ... | [
"Electronic counting systems, with no moving parts, exist that count both notes and coins on the same machine and sum the value of all denominations counted. They are normally used to count individual deposits or the content of cash drawers and do not sort or check for counterfeit or damaged notes.The machine uses ... |
Has any other ancient civilization/Empire other than from India come up with the Philosophy of Nonviolence? | Gandhi's own belief in non-violence was strongly influenced by Leo Tolstoy's, expressed in his book *The Kingdom of God is Within You*, whose pacifism is credited to his religious views as a Christian. Tolstoy wrote in *A Confession, The Gospels in Brief, and What I Believe*:
> The passage which served me as key to th... | [
"The political philosophy most closely associated with modern India is the one of ahimsa (non-violence) and Satyagraha, popularised by Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian struggle for independence. In turn it influenced the later movements for independence and civil rights, especially those led by Martin Luther King, ... |
Why is the ethnic majority of China referred to as "Han Chinese"? | You're right in thinking that the Han was a dynasty of China. It lasted from 206BCE to 220CE, and was an incredibly important dynasty in Chinese history in terms of scientific, cultural and political developments. Think of it as the Classical Chinese period.
The reason that we talk about 'Han Chinese' is because of th... | [
"11 - 92% of the Chinese believe that they are of one race, the Han Chinese, unlike the other most populous nations such as India, the United States, Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey which recognize themselves to be highly multi-racial and multi-cultural\n",
"Han Chinese people, the largest ethnic group in China, are... |
Hi Reddit! How fast can the effects of gravity be felt? I don't really know how to word this, check out the text for further description. | Gravitational waves would travel at the speed of light, so we'd move normally for about eight minutes. | [
"Critical response for Professor Heinz Wolff's Gravity has generally been lukewarm, receiving an overall score of 63 on Metacritic. The website IGN awarded it 59 out of 100, citing it had potential to be a sleeper hit, but was too light on content for the price tag.\n",
"The effects for negative g-force can be mo... |
Does covering your mouth when you sneeze/cough actually help prevent the spread of disease? | Yes it does; [while not the best scientific source, a good visual representation](_URL_0_) | [
"Prevention is by not smoking and avoiding other lung irritants. Frequent hand washing and flu vaccination may also be protective. Treatment of acute bronchitis typically involves rest, paracetamol (acetaminophen), and NSAIDs to help with the fever. Cough medicine has little support for its use and is not recommend... |
Why did we have to send a probe to Pluto to get a photo of it? | The photo of the black hole is not a "photo" in the sense you are thinking. It is a visualization of very high-frequency radio waves. While these are still electromagnetic waves just like visible light, they are way outside of our visible range. This is necessary to "penetrate" through all of the super-heated matter th... | [
"In July 2015 NASA published photographs taken as the New Horizons space probe passed within 7000 miles of Pluto. A photo of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, shows a large dark area near its north pole. The dark area has been unofficially called Mordor Macula.\n",
"On February 12, 2015, NASA released new images of P... |
how do programs like ccleaner clean the windows registry? | Registry cleaners are pretty much useless these days, as Windows is pretty good about keeping the registry clean itself. Regardless, cleaning the registry doesn't really result in much of a performance impact.
One of the big things that registry cleaning does is remove entries that refer to files/folders that no longe... | [
"Most Windows applications still store their user settings in individual .ini (initialization) files spread across the disk. They additionally use the Windows Registry to store information which might be of interest for other software. For such programs the Windows Registry acts rather as a bulletin board, than as ... |
I've just read a very short article about Old French Sign Language. What we do know of deaf life, culture and community in 18th century Paris? How was deafness depicted in general in France in this period? | Do you have a link to the article? | [
"In France, the first sign languages developed in the 18th century. Old French Sign Language was used in Paris' deaf community, before l'Abbé Charles Michel de l'Épée started his deaf school in 1760 in Paris. L'Épée's lessons were based upon his observations of deaf people signing with hands in the streets of Paris... |
Someone told me it was "too cold to snow". How? | The amount of moisture in the air is dependent upon its temperature, below a certain point there is too little moisture for precipitation.
There are various large stretches of the Antarctic that qualify as deserts because they have so little precipitation due to this principle. But -2 is certainly warm enough to snow.... | [
"After a successful trial with Norwegian club Bodø/Glimt he joined them on initially on loan in 2012. Having moved from Senegal to the Arctic Circle, Ndiaye admitted it was a culture shock.—\"When I got up on the first day and opened the front door I was terrified. I had never seen snow before, or at least only on ... |
what keeps movies unreleased? what stops any movie studio employee from just downloading a movie that hasn’t come out and leaking it to the internet? | Because theft and distribution are crimes. People aren't keen on having their lives ruined to show off some movie. | [
"\"There are websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them. This website has been permanently shut down by court order because it facilitates the illegal downloading of copyrighted motion pictures. The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their liv... |
how is it that the mars curiosity rover is able to go years without fuel/recharging and how are we able to send such a strong signal? | Curiosity, the MSL rover that was successfully landed in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012, uses one MMRTG to supply heat and electricity for its components and science instruments. Reliable power from the MMRTG will allow it to operate for several years.
In February 20, 2015, a NASA official reported that there is enough ... | [
"When fully illuminated, the rover triplejunction solar arrays generate about 140 watts for up to four hours per Martian day (sol). The rover needs about 100 watts to drive. Its power system includes two rechargeable lithium ion batteries weighing each, that provide energy when the sun is not shining, especially at... |
We all hear about species being extinct. But how often does a new species "evolve" into a new one? | [This article](_URL_0_) (PDF) seems to put it at about 3 new species per year but it is very debatable. Speciation may occur in burst and there are many other factors. Hopefully someone else can dig up more information. | [
"If a population cannot move or change sufficiently to preserve its long-term viability, then obviously, it will become extinct, at least in that locale. The species may or may not survive in other locales. Species extinction occurs when the death rate over the entire species exceeds the birth rate for a long enoug... |
why do i get sleepy when i get nervous? | You might have some kind of chemical imbalance, disease, or infection. You should get that checked out. There isn't really an ELI5 answer to this. | [
"Seriously anxious people find it difficult to control their worry and typically experience symptoms like Restlessness, Fatigue, Difficulty in concentrating, Irritability, Muscle tension and Sleep disturbance.\n",
"According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine there is a wide range of potential causes, incl... |
how come chinese words in english are spelled funky? | Zhou is not pronounced like Joe. Chinese words are generally spelled according to their pinyin (phonetic system) which has correlates English letters to pronunciation. | [
"Foreign words, mainly proper nouns, continue to enter the Chinese language by transcription according to their pronunciations. This is done by employing Chinese characters with similar pronunciations. For example, \"Israel\" becomes \"Yǐsèliè\", \"Paris\" becomes \"Bālí\". A rather small number of direct translite... |
During the California gold rush why didn't the American government at the time leave it for other immigrants | The gold of the California gold fields - as it was understood in 1849 and the early 1850s - was an extensive resource, meaning that it was broadly distributed in small amounts. It took tens of thousands of people to process hundreds of thousands of tons of dirt to find the gold they were seeking, and at that, $4 - roug... | [
"In January 1848, two weeks after California was ceded to the United States, gold was discovered in California, resulting in a flood of fortune seekers gravitating to the state in the following months and years. Due to the ambiguity of existing laws regarding squatting on federal land, individual mining camps devel... |
Were there any European explorers prior to 1700 who attempted to cross the pacific ocean from Asia? | If you are asking if Europeans had been crossing the Pacific before 1741, the answer is a ***clear yes***. Magellan's expedition in 1519-1522 was the first to cross the Pacific in from east to west direction, going from Magellan's straits to Phillipines. And it was followed up by many more till 1741
If you are askin... | [
"In 1519, an expedition sent by the Spanish Crown to find a way to Asia was led by the experienced Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan. The fleet explored the rivers and bays as it charted the South American coast until it found a way to the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Magellan.\n",
"In the second hal... |
How important was the Act of Union (1707) to the growth of the already existing English empire? Would England itself have had a comparable empire in size to the British Empire had it not formed the Kingdom of Great Britain with Scotland? | This question would be better suited to /r/HistoricalWhatIf | [
"In 1707, the Acts of Union received their Royal assent, thereby abolishing the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland and their respective parliaments to create a unified Kingdom of Great Britain with a single Parliament of Great Britain. Anne formally became the first occupant of the unified British thron... |
what can someone do if they have your ip address? can they see all your internet activity and places you've posted? can they identify who you are? | If they *only* had your actual IP address, they could DDOS you and potentially locate you within a rough geographic area. But that's about it.
If they had your IP but also purchased or collected date from cookies and such, they could learn a lot more. | [
"In 2010 the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland found that IP addresses are personal information and that under Swiss privacy laws they may not be used to track Internet usage without the knowledge of the individuals involved.\n",
"Finding \"relevant\" and \"reachable\" IP addresses is the objective of the reco... |
why does 'latin' mean hispanic? | Likewise, Hispanic means you're from Hispania, or Spain. It doesn't really make sense to call someone from say, Venezula an Hispanic, even if they speak Spanish. That's like saying someone from Minnesota is English.
Regardless, Hispanic is still used that way. | [
"Though often used interchangeably in American English, \"Hispanic\" and \"Latino\" are not identical terms, and in certain contexts the choice between them can be significant. \"Hispanic\", from the Latin word for \"Spain,\" has the broader reference, potentially encompassing all Spanish-speaking peoples in both h... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.