Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
why does american thanksgiving land on the last thursday of november instead of a specific day?	Usually Thanksgiving commemorated end of harvest. In US being south its celebrated later than in Canada when it colder and harvest happens earlier. Why thursday? Most likely because its end of the week. Earlier feast(celebrations) would last 3 days, and then you need to be at church on sunday.	[ "BULLET::::- Thanksgiving Day was celebrated on November 30, as a national holiday, for the last time in American history. Historically, the U.S. President proclaimed the last Thursday of November as the holiday, after which department stores would begin the Christmas season. In 1939, President Roosevelt would move...
why do humans have the urge to do stupid things that would hurt yourself or other people (i.e. open car doors that are in motion or jump off a high ledge)?	Its called the call of the void and no one is entirely sure why it happens. the best explanation seems to be that it's your brain running a "bug check", making sure you don't actually want to jump, or whatever you were tempted to do.	[ "It is most comfortable for people to engage in behaviour which conforms to their own personal habitual norms. When things go wrong, people are more likely to attribute the negative outcome on any abnormal behaviour leading up to the mishap. After a car crash, people may say \"if only I didn't leave work early\", b...
What is under the beak of a bird?	What you’re referring to as the beak is technically called the ramphotheca. It’s made out of keratin, like hair or fingernails. It’s one piece of the larger structure of the beak. Below the ramphotheca is skin (dermis and epidermis). It supports blood vessels, nerves, and connective tissue, and also houses the cells th...	[ "The beak is slightly hooked and is relatively weak compared with those of other birds of prey. This is because it is adapted to tear the weak flesh of partially rotted carrion, rather than fresh meat. The nostrils are oval and are set in a soft cere. The nasal passage is \"perforate\", not divided by a septum, so ...
Carbon Fiber vs. Carbon Nano-tubes	What is commonly referred to as "carbon fiber" is usually in reality a [carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer](_URL_0_), which is basically a composite material consisting of sheets of [carbon fibers](_URL_2_) and some sort of epoxy bonding them together. Actual carbon fiber sheets are essentially "blankets" of mostly carbo...	[ "Carbon fibers are used for fabrication of carbon-fiber microelectrodes. In this application typically a single carbon fiber with diameter of 5–7 μm is sealed in a glass capillary. At the tip the capillary is either sealed with epoxy and polished to make carbon-fiber disk microelectrode or the fiber is cut to a len...
the answer to the math problem about the game show where there's three doors with either goats or a car behind them. (variable change)	This is called the Monty Hall problem, and [it's a favorite of this subreddit](_URL_0_). A key element to the problem is that Monty (the show host) knows where the car is and deliberately reveals a goat, which he's always able to do no matter which door you chose first. By doing so, he's giving you some information, ...	[ "This technique provides insights in other situations such as the Monty Hall problem, a game show scenario in which a car is hidden behind one of three doors, and two goats are hidden as booby prizes behind the others. Once the contestant has chosen a door, the host opens one of the remaining doors to reveal a goat...
Was the Bering Strait ever considered a potential flashpoint for a conflict between the USSR and US?	This is one of the questions I've been studying as part of research into the Cuban Missile Crisis in Alaska. Interestingly, less than you might think. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the perception was that a nuclear war would involve bombers and traditional air defense using fighter aircraft. This led to the const...	[ "The southeastern part of the Strait of Tartary was the site of one of the tensest incidents of the Cold War, when on September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, carrying 269 people including a sitting U.S. congressman, Larry McDonald, strayed into the Soviet air space and was attacked by a Soviet Su-15 interce...
why are some websites/apps/pictures you visit on your phone, not able to be screenshotted?	There are no hardwired functions in an android phone. All those buttons are just inputs to software. One of those pieces of software, that does the screen shots, checks the FLAG_SECURE layout parameter flag. If this flag is TRUE, then the screenshot doesn't include that window.	[ "Mobile images are used as the wallpaper to a mobile phone, and are also available as screensavers. On some handsets, images can also be set to display when a particular person calls the users. Sites like adg.ms allow users to download free content, however service operators such as Telus Mobility blocks non Telus ...
Traffic Engineers: What if freeway speed was limited to 30 mph during "rush" hour? Would it help?	Speed limit isn't the problem; in bumper-to-bumper traffic, people often aren't going over 30 mph anyway. What you really want to do is get people to drive smoothly, but that's difficult for two reasons: 1. You can't easily legislate that 2. In absence of external pressure (such as legislation and traffic enforcemen...	[ "The common limited access freeway speed limit is 65 mph. However, shorter length freeways such as US 202, Route 15, and Route 33 remain at 55 mph. In all 65 mph speed zones, the fines for speeding and other moving violations are doubled. Signs informing drivers of this appear after most 65 mph signs. Urban freeway...
Why is European electricity 230V 50Hz unlike USA's 120V 60Hz, and why AC rather than DC?	AC vs DC basically boils down to this: When the grid was built AC was easier to work with. Transformers could easily bump it up to high voltage for low loss during transmission. Then, at the local level another transformer can easily drop the voltage down for safety/practicality reasons. However, now we have the tech...	[ "Following voltage harmonisation, electricity supplies within the European Union are now nominally 230 V ±10% at 50 Hz. For a transition period (1995–2008), countries that had previously used 220 V changed to a narrower asymmetric tolerance range of 230 V +6%/−10% and those (like the UK) that had previously used 24...
How will our current fascination with using Anti-bacterial aid affect our future generations? Will we have better or worse immune systems?	There are a few questions you're sort-of asking, and I will do my best to answer them (although I warn you: I am educated in medicine and science, but I am neither an immunologist nor an infectious disease physician) You didn't really ask this, but to start- Zeroth: **Is our wonton use of antibiotics (antbacterials...	[ "Some emerging strains of pathogenic bacteria develop a resistance to antibiotics that are commonly used. Similarly, tumors can become unresponsive to chemotherapy. This resistance to multidrug treatments raised interest in finding new drugs that were capable of fighting these bacteria and tumors in a way that does...
why do people say that cows are "killing the environment"?	Two reasons: global warming, and resource consumption. Cows produce lots and lots and lots of methane. They are gigantic highly productive engines of fart. Methane is an intense greenhouse gas, much more effective at retaining atmospheric heat than carbon dioxide. So they're heating up the planet. They also drink LOT...	[ "Animals and plants are often negatively impacted by cars via habitat destruction and pollution. Over the lifetime of the average car the \"loss of habitat potential\" may be over based on primary production correlations. Animals are also killed every year on roads by cars, referred to as roadkill. More recent road...
Why are reflections (especially in liquid) clearer when viewed at an angle, as opposed to straight-on?	In the simplest of terms, photons are more prone to bounce off a surface as the angle the impact decreases. Think about throwing a ball at a window, if you hit it straight on, it has a good chance of penetrating the window. If you hit the window with a glancing blow, the ball is more prone to bounce.	[ "Specular reflection from a body of water is calculated by the Fresnel equations. Fresnel reflection is directional and therefore does not contribute significantly to albedo which primarily diffuses reflection.\n", "For added confidence, Fresnel predicted and verified that four total internal reflections at 68°27...
What are some of the effects of social isolation during childhood?	To what degree? [Genie](_URL_0_) is one of the most famous examples of extreme social isolation, and she ended up suffering from severe damage to her language capabilities as well as a host of other issues.	[ "Social isolation can begin early in life. During this time of development, a person may become more preoccupied with feelings and thoughts of their individuality that are not easy to share with other individuals. This can result from feelings of shame, guilt, or alienation during childhood experiences. Social isol...
Can Technicium-99m be used in PET scans?	No. Tc-99m scans are imaged by SPECT or using a Gamma Camera.	[ "Like PET, SPECT also can be used to differentiate different kinds of disease processes which produce dementia, and it is increasingly used for this purpose. Neuro-PET has a disadvantage of requiring the use of tracers with half-lives of at most 110 minutes, such as FDG. These must be made in a cyclotron, and are e...
If you were to spectate a person falling into a black hole, what would you see once they’ve passed the event horizon?	You would never see them cross the event horizon. Rather as they approached it, it would appear that they "freeze" just as they reach it. Any light they were emitting, say with a flashlight, would become red-shifted further and further until you could not longer detect them and any clocks you could see them carrying wo...	[ "Observers crossing a black hole event horizon can calculate the moment they have crossed it, but will not actually see or feel anything special happen at that moment. In terms of visual appearance, observers who fall into the hole perceive the black region constituting the horizon as lying at some apparent distanc...
When you hold a mirror in front and behind you, is there really an infinite copies of you in the mirrors?	No. Since mirrors don't reflect 100% of the light that hits them, eventually the light will have bounced back and forth so much that all of it has been absorbed. Even with theoretically perfect mirrors, there is a point at which the wavelength of visible light does not allow features of a certain size to be resolved, ...	[ "Looking at an image of oneself with the front-back axis flipped results in the perception of an image with its left-right axis flipped. When reflected in the mirror, your right hand remains directly opposite your real right hand, but it is perceived as the left hand of your image. When a person looks into a mirror...
if sound doesn't have mass, why is it not travelling at the speed of light?	Sound itself isn't really a thing. Sound is caused by vibrations of air (or another substance). This means that air particles are bouncing into each other, and this "wave" of bouncing particles continues until it reaches your ear and vibrates little pieces of your ear. Since these air particles have to bump into eac...	[ "Current commonly accepted physical theories imply or assume the photon to be strictly massless. If the photon is not a strictly massless particle, it would not move at the exact speed of light, \"c\", in vacuum. Its speed would be lower and depend on its frequency. Relativity would be unaffected by this; the so-ca...
why does socially conservative japanese culture tolerate weird trends and sexual fetishes?	It doesn't have the same Christian puritanism that you find in the US, because Christianity is not pervasive there.	[ "In Japan, sexuality was governed by the same social forces that make its culture considerably different from that of China, Korea, India, or Europe. In Japanese society, the primary method used to secure social control is the threat of ostracism. Japanese society is still very much a shame society. More attention ...
what happens to the excess electricity produced by a power plant?	They normally sell it to other power companies that need it, they can store a small amount of it (with some loss) by pumping water upwards at a hydro dam to let it fall back down later. Mostly though they are really good at knowing how much power people will use, because people as a whole are really predictable, so th...	[ "Generated power entering the grid is metered at the high-voltage side of the generator transformer. Any power losses in the generator transformer are therefore accounted to the generating company, not to the grid system. The power loss in the generator transformer does not contribute to the grid losses.\n", "A 2...
How were British villages named and why were they named as they were?	Very broadly, the great variety of British place names is a product of the islands' history of invasion. The names we use today are evolutions or distortions of older names that were often originally in other languages, not least Anglo-Saxon, Norwegian, Danish, and French. This can be incredibly helpful for historians...	[ "The village name is a common one in England, and is an Old English language word, meaning either 'village of the Britons' (\"wale\" being a word meaning Briton) or 'walled village'. The village is first recorded (in the 12th century) as \"Wauton\".\n", "Elsewhere, many villages and later towns took their names f...
Is there a genuine historical debate on "The Holodomor"	How does one define 'genuine'. There is undoubtedly disagreement, so I suppose your question is "is that disagreement motivated by political views?". Without knowing the inner hearts of individual historians, that is sort of an impossible question to answer definitely. The issue is that, where there is a lack of eviden...	[ "The legacy of Holodomor remains a sensitive and controversial issue in contemporary Ukraine where it is regarded as an act of genocide by the government and is generally remembered as one of the greatest tragedies in the nation's history. The issue of Holodomor being an intentional act of genocide or not has often...
why are cars shaped aerodynamically, but busses just flat without taking the shape into consideration?	A lot of busses are designed for urban environments where they are stopping and starting a bunch and not really reaching the high speeds where aerodynamics becomes more relevant.	[ "Articulated cars have a number of advantages. They save on the total number of wheels and trucks, reducing costs and maintenance expenses. Further, movement between cars is safer and easier than with traditional designs. Finally, it is possible to implement tilting schemes such as the Talgo design which allow the ...
Were there ever any european tribes that made it into the modern era?	Would the Sámi people / Laplanders of northern Scandinavia, Finland, and Kola Peninsula count? They were a semi-nomadic people that are protected under international conventions of indigenous people.	[ "When the first European explorers arrived, the most populous tribes were Algonquian peoples, which include the Anishinaabe groups of Ojibwe (referred to as \"Chippewa\" in the United States), Odaawaa/Odawa (Ottawa), and the Boodewaadamii/Bodéwadmi (Potawatomi). The three nations co-existed peacefully as part of a ...
When did being 'smart' (i.e.: nerdy) become an object of scorn? Is this a feature of mid-20th century culture, or do the roots run deeper?	Richard Hofstadter discusses this topic in "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" he argues that some discontent between the intellectuals (smart nerdy types) and the common working man has always existed. In America this Anti-Intellectualism (distrust or scorn for educated elite) was shaped by our puritan roots and...	[ "The possible religious component of Smart's condition was taken up by 20th-century critics as an explanation for why the 18th century saw Smart as mad. Laurence Binyon, in 1934, believed that religion played a major role in how society viewed Smart: \"Smart's madness seems to have taken the form of a literal inter...
why are planetary rovers built in clean rooms if they're just going to get covered in dust when they arrive at destination planet?	part of the idea is that we really don't want to introduce foreign bacteria to other planets. Foreign in this case means our own. If we are going to another planet to study bacteria, to learn about the evolution of other planets, it's pretty useless as a science experiment if we bring along our own shit too. And i...	[ "The two landing modules and the rover will be cleaned and sterilised to prevent contaminating Mars with Earth life forms, and also to ensure that any biomolecules detected were not carried from Earth. Cleaning will require a combination of sterilising methods, including ionising radiation, UV radiation, and chemic...
how animals (birds, squirels ect) dont freeze to death when its negative degrese outaide.	their feathers insulate them extremely well. and then they all huddle together.	[ "While freezing is sometimes said to be a humane way to kill certain arthropods, others dispute this. According to \"AVMA Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals,\" freezing is \"not considered to be humane\" when not preceded by another form of anesthesia. The British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (...
Why do we need such a variety of foods to be alive?	A lot of what our body does is making energy from glucose and using it for protein synthesis and replication. We need certain amino acids and ions (specifically sodium and potassium) to complete these processes. We don't need to eat a variety of foods but processing other things into usable food elements would be expen...	[ "Fresh food is food which has not been preserved and has not spoiled yet. For vegetables and fruits, this means that they have been recently harvested and treated properly postharvest; for meat, it has recently been slaughtered and butchered; for fish, it has been recently caught or harvested and kept cold.\n", "...
Japan Historians: What rules governed domestic travel in Japan during the Edo period?	Finally, here's the promised response to your question! Part 1 of 2: Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of travel regulation in the Edo Period, where nothing is as it seems and everything is way more complicated than should be humanly possible. On paper, the Tokugawa shogunate controlled and limited every a...	[ "In the early years of the Edo period, many political, legal, cultural and intellectual changes took place. Among them was the rejuvenation of Japan's thousand-year-old highway system. Five roads were formally nominated as official routes for the use of the \"shōgun\" and the other \"daimyō\" and to provide the Tok...
why does the us have middle/junior high schools?	The original idea, at least in the US, was introduced to some schools in Columbus, Ohio in 1906. This is also around the time that going to high school started to become much more common, from 7% in 1890 to 32% in 1920. Middle schools becoming their own, separate institution probably had a lot to do with this increas...	[ "Most schools in North America have either a \"junior high\" or a \"middle\" schools, the Concordia district is rare in that the school district has both a junior high (grades 7-8) and a middle school (grades 5-6). Most school districts have one or the other but not both.\n", "Middle schools, or junior high schoo...
what the big deal is about the hateful 8 being filmed in "70mm."	Short answer: before digital filming, movies were recorded on physical film. Roles of film come in different sizes, 70mm being one of the biggest used by Hollywood studios. Some "epic" movies like Laurence of Arabia have been filmed on 70mm. 70mm allows for more detail than smaller film types. Tarantino, being a cinea...	[ "The film received negative reviews from critics. It has a rating of 22% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 82 reviews with an average rating of 4.21/10. The consensus states that \"its sadistic violence is unappealing and is lacking in suspense and mystery.\" The film also has a score of 19 out of 100 on Metacritic based...
What happened to Soviet prisoners after the dissolution of the Soviet Union?	The changes of the regime took place before the dissolution of the USSR and not followed after. Andrei Sakharov was freed from exile by the personal order of Gorbachev in 1986. The article 70 of the Criminal Code of RSFSR (punishment for the Anti-Soviet activity) was repealed in 1988. The prison camp Perm-36 for polit...	[ "After the Winter War, the Soviet POWs were returned to the USSR in accordance with the Moscow Peace Treaty. They were transported under heavy guard by the NKVD to special camps as suspected traitors. Prisoners were interrogated by 50 person research teams. After lengthy investigations about 500 of the prisoners we...
Why can't we have eInk computer monitors?	In a sense many e-readers are computers with an eInk (I take you mean electronic paper in general and not just eink) monitor. The main disadvantage is that it is slow and therefore you do not want to use this technology unless you have low framerates anyway (ereader, watches...). TL;DR: We can have such monitors, but...	[ "Modern computer monitors are easily interchangeable with conventional television sets. However, as computer monitors do not necessarily include integrated speakers, it may not be possible to use a computer monitor without external components.\n", "BULLET::::- Some modern monitors allow the user to manipulate the...
What is the molecular level description/justification of the Bernoulli Principle?	Pressure is related to the part speed of the molecule that goes towards the wall (like the bounce of a ball, the faster it goes, the more force it does). Temperature is proportional to the average speed of the particles, so if a fluid is going very fast (lets say to the right) and because its temperature doesnt change...	[ "Bernoulli's principle was discovered by Dutch-Swiss mathematician and physicist Daniel Bernoulli and named after him. It states that for an inviscid flow, an increase in the speed of the fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy.\n", "Raoult's law is a ...
AskScience! Explain how this snake oil "magnetic therapeutic device" works! :)	There is really too much to go into in depth, it's really not worth my time to dig through this steaming pile of crap. Simply put: This is a complete and total fabrication, none of what they say has any scientific merit what so ever. Your interpretation is dead one, the sensations are probably entirely due to sharp...	[ "The marketing concept for snake oil was likely transferred to the US from trade, immigration, and exposure to 18th-century British culture. However, the actual source of its use as a folk remedy was likely introduced, similarly to its introduction in the UK, by Chinese laborers involved in building the First Trans...
Why Didn't More Post-Colonial African Leaders Try to Challenge the Nation-State?	There are a couple of ways to answer this question. First off, it is important to realize that nationalism was an important force in anti-colonial movements from 1940 to independence. In advocating against European rule, activists also had to articulate a vision for what would come after, and in the 1940s or 1950s the...	[ "Treaties obtained from local chiefs in Africa were not aimed at having them accept their subjugation − superior force did that (just as it had for the chiefs themselves, earlier) − but were solely to impress on rival colonial powers that they had the means to convince their own populations of the justice of any mi...
what is the reasoning behind the kosher dietary laws?	If you look at them in terms of not killing your entire tribe when you're wandering in the desert with no refrigeration, then they make a lot of sense. Don't eat pork or shellfish because not preparing them properly can kill you, and there are times of year when shellfish are toxic. Don't mix meat and dairy and use ...	[ "The laws of \"kashrut\" (\"keeping kosher\") are the Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with \"halakha\" (Jewish law) is termed kosher, and food not in accord with Jewish law is termed \"treifah\" or \"treif\". Kosher laws address what kinds of animals can be eaten, and requires separation of milk and meat (dispu...
Could anybody provide a historical perspective on the 'Waco Siege', Koresh, and the Branch Davidians?	The Waco siege falls outside the '20 year rule'? I feel old. Rather than pass along what I saw when I spent over half my waking hours, during that time, glued to the TV networks' satellite uplink feeds, I'll pass along this: Malcolm Gladwell just interviewed one of the survivors about his newly released book, and comp...	[ "The Waco siege was the siege of a compound belonging to the religious sect Branch Davidians, carried out by American federal and Texas state law enforcement, as well as the U.S. military, between February 28 and April 19, 1993. The Branch Davidians were led by David Koresh and were headquartered at Mount Carmel Ce...
what are the advantages of filming tv shows in front of a live studio audience?	Do you mean a live audience vs a laugh track or a live audience vs no laughter at all? With a live audience the actors know if a joke is really funny or only in the mind of the writer. If a joke really does not land they can change it up a bit. You will also have actual laughter that fits with the joke instead of a st...	[ "The episodes are recorded in front of a live audience in Pinewood Studios, Iver, Buckinghamshire, except where the set used is too large, this is then filmed, and played out to an invited audience 'as-live'. Also, the show, unlike most British sitcoms but in common with most American television comedies, has no lo...
What do we really know about Shaka Zulu? How much is based on reality, and how much is based on myth?	A fair bit is based on oral history. We have only a few direct accounts from contemporaries. Henry Francis Fynn's diary (1824-1836) is one, though Fynn had his own agenda as a Port Natal trader. But for earlier eras, we rely on the [James Stuart Archive (5 vols.)](_URL_0_), transmitted knowledge, and other sources o...	[ "Shaka Zulu is a 1986 South African television series directed by William C. Faure and written by Joshua Sinclair for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), based on Sinclair's novel of the same name (1985). It is based on the story of the king of the Zulu, Shaka (reigned 1816 to 1828), and the writings...
how are daily contact lenses made?	Contact lenses are injection molded like any other plastic product. They are made from a highly detailable PDMS material.	[ "A contact lens, or simply contact, is a thin lens placed directly on the surface of the eye. Contact lenses are ocular prosthetic devices used by over 150 million people worldwide, and they can be worn to correct vision, for cosmetic, or therapeutic reasons. In 2004, it was estimated that 125 million people worldw...
why is it called "outer" space?	Well from a technical standpoint everything around you is space. So when you want to refer to space outside our planet, it's outer space. That being said, I actually never use outer space, I just say space, because outer space sounds a bit childish, like from a cartoon book.	[ "The word \"space\" in space architecture is referring to the \"outer space\" definition, which is from English \"outer\" and \"space\". \"Outer\" can be defined as \"situated on or toward the outside; external; exterior\" and originated around 1350–1400 in Middle English. \"Space\" is \"an area, extent, expanse, l...
How bloody truly was Omaha Beach?	I’ll refer you to two previous answers of mine. The first covers a few examples of what combat “looked like” during the landing in Omaha Beach, fighting in the hedgerows, and for formations at the head of the pursuit following Operation COBRA: _URL_1_ The second covers a specific piece of footage taken at Omaha Beach ...	[ "By the end of the day, the Americans suffered over 6,000 casualties. Omaha Beach is the code name for one of the five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, during World War II. The beach is located on the coast of Normandy, France, facing the English Cha...
why is reverse engineering sometimes impossible?	Likely because the rockets in question are the precise size that we need, and it's cheaper to use theirs than build our own. Alternatively, we can't build enough of our own rockets to put stuff into space, so we use theirs. But this has nothing to do with your question; it's not that reverse engineering is impossible,...	[ "There are many reasons for performing reverse engineering in various fields. Reverse engineering has its origins in the analysis of hardware for commercial or military advantage. However, the reverse engineering process in itself is not concerned with creating a copy or changing the artifact in some way; it is onl...
how come mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) are developing faster than larger devices (computers, smart tv, some game consoles)?	They aren't, really. However, people are willing to pay for bells and whistles on their phone that they don't buy for their PC, and people are more inclined to buy new phones--often once a year, especially if it is part of a contract with a carrier. Hence there is more drive to include special features, update frequent...	[ "Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have surpassed desktop computers in sales worldwide. This has led to a direct increase in consumers of internet technologies using wireless technologies and mobile computing.\n", "Due to the growing penetration of smartphones across Nigeria and mobile broadband ac...
When do historians think that Europe began to dominate the world?	Here is one perspective on the timeframe of the emergence of Europe towards world domination. In the 1400s, Europe did not seem particularly impressive. The Ottomans defeated the armies of Hungary and Poland in 1444, and again in 1448. They conquered Constantinople in 1453. Suleiman the Magnificent captured Belgrad...	[ "According to Wallerstein there have only been three periods in which a core nation dominated in the modern world-system, with each lasting less than one hundred years. In the initial centuries of the rise of Europe, Northwestern Europe constituted the core, Mediterranean Europe the semiperiphery, and Eastern Europ...
Monks and the monastery exist in both Buddhist and Christian traditions. Is this a convergence or do they share an origin?	I talked about this in a [recent thread](_URL_0_). The basic summary is that while I personally believe that the early desert fathers were influenced by the example of Buddhist monks they would have heard about in Egypt, there is no direct evidence nor is there any real historical consensus backing this up. This was a...	[ "Buddhist monasticism is one of the earliest surviving forms of organized monasticism in the history of religion. It is also one of the most fundamental institutions of Buddhism. Monks and nuns are considered to be responsible for the preservation and dissemination of the Buddha's teaching and the guidance of Buddh...
How feasible are rotating space stations/ships that create artificial gravity?	I ansered a similiar question a little while back but it applies perfectly here so here it is: The way we experience earth's gravity is as a downward accceleration of 9.81 meters per second per second (9.81m/s2, don't know how to make a superscript on reddit so I'm just gonna right it as 9.81m/s/s for accuracy). So in...	[ "BULLET::::- Rotating wheel space stations, such as the Stanford torus, are wheel-like space station which produce artificial gravity by rotation. Typical designs include transport spokes to a central hub used for docking and/or micro-gravity research.\n", "In the \"Expanse\" series by James S. A. Corey, space st...
if vesicles can fuse to membranes fairly easily, what’s there to stop a whole bunch of cells fusing together?	Cell membranes are different from vesicles. They contain anti-fusing lipids like Lysolipids. Also, they have phospholipids that are negatively charged and repel each other. Basically, it is energetically unfavourable for cell membrane fusion to occur and will not happen spontaneously. You need deliberate energy expend...	[ "It is also possible that both compartments produce the same cell adhesion molecules, but a difference in its abundance or activity could result in sorting between the two compartments. In vitro, transfected cells with high levels of a given adhesion molecule will segregate from cells that expressing lower levels o...
why do we as a society look at women who have sex with minors in a less serious way than men who have relationship with minors?	Because of the view that women are the 'weaker' sex often means they're viewed more positively, more easily forgiven, and generally more innocent. Men are seen as the evil predatory monsters. So are treated harsher/	[ "According to modern Feminists, women and girls are more prone to trafficking also because of social norms that marginalize their value and status in society. By this perspective females face considerable gender discrimination both at home and in school. Stereotypes that women belong at home in the private sphere a...
how can somebody be allergic to water?	Very little is known about it but it's characterized by hives breaking out on the skin when it comes in contact with water. So it's not really an allergy in that your immune cells are overreacting to water molecules. It's more likely some kind of adverse skin condition that involves a reaction with water molecules.	[ "Protamine has been reported to cause allergic reactions in patients who are allergic to fish, diabetics using insulin preparations containing protamine, and vasectomized or infertile men. These occur at rates ranging from 0.28% to 6%.\n", "An allergic reaction can be caused by any form of direct contact with the...
Were there ever any members of the British Royal Family with genetic disorders? If yes, how was this handled from a PR stance? Were they ever in a position of leadership?	Absolutely, the Bowes-Lyon family has a number of members with known issues. [Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon] (_URL_0_), first cousins to the Queen, were committed to asylums and then abandoned by the Royals, with Nerissa dying in obscurity, buried in a paupers grave. Only outcry from the public following a TV docum...	[ "No living member of the present or past reigning dynasties of Europe is known to have symptoms of haemophilia or is believed to carry the gene for it. The last descendant of Victoria known to suffer from the disease was Infante Don Gonzalo, born in 1914, although dozens of descendants of Queen Victoria's (includin...
how do services like apple pay and android pay benefit apple and google?	Banks charge merchants a transaction fee for using credit cards. Apple has negotiated to get a small sliver of this fee for transactions done using Apple Pay (which is beneficial to the bank because it encourages more use of the cards and also is more secure, ultimately reducing expensive fraud costs). This really will...	[ "Apple allows PayPal as a mode of payment for App Store, Apple Music, iTunes, and iBooks. PayPal can increase usage by the platform of Apple. In addition, PayPal gets revenue from Apple services especially from App Store. Customers can use PayPal to purchase by connecting their PayPal payment system to Apple ID acc...
Are black holes final resting place for matter?	> If I have understood correctly only "Hawking radiation" can escape from a black hole. Even Hawking radiation doesn't really "escape" from a black hole; it originates in the neighborhood immediately outside of the event horizon. There is a corresponding decrease in the surface area of the event horizon. > Is the...	[ "Conjectures for the final fate of the black hole include total evaporation and production of a Planck-mass-sized black hole remnant. Such Planck-mass black holes may in effect be stable objects if the quantized gaps between their allowed energy levels bar them from emitting Hawking particles or absorbing energy gr...
how does saturn maintain such uniform patterns on its disks?	Saturn's rings are inside the Roche limit. That's the minimum distance a moon can orbit a body without being torn apart by tidal forces. Once a.moon gets closer than that it will break up and form a ring system. Initially it will be chunky and have lots of rocks of different sizes, but over time the larler rocks wil...	[ "In the outer parts of Saturn's magnetosphere beyond approximately 15–20 R the magnetic field near the equatorial plane is highly stretched and forms a disk-like structure called \"magnetodisk\". The disk continues up to the magnetopause on the dayside and transitions into the magnetotail on the nightside. Near the...
Are spiral galaxies shaped by gravity waves from black holes?	No, gravitational waves are far too weak to do this. Galactic spirals are thought to be caused by a coupling of rotation and varying density. If you have a radial density wave, and start to rotate it, spiral arms will form.	[ "Density wave theory is the preferred explanation for the well-defined structure of grand design spirals. According to this theory, the spiral arms are created inside density waves that turn around the galaxy at different speeds from the stars in the galaxy's disk. Stars and gas are clumped in these dense regions d...
Do reaction times from stimuli on different parts of the body differ depending on how far from the brain they are?	There are different types of nerves with different speeds of information transfer. But yes if two signals travel on the same kind of nerve the one that is farther away from the brain will take longer to reach it.	[ "Responses to multiple simultaneous sensory stimuli can be faster than responses to the same stimuli presented in isolation. Hershenson (1962) presented a light and tone simultaneously and separately, and asked human participants to respond as rapidly as possible to them. As the asynchrony between the onsets of bot...
why does pubic hair end at a relatively convenient length, while head hair seems to have no limit?	its not convenient. do everyone a favor and trim your bush.	[ "In most people, scalp hair growth will halt due to follicle devitalization after reaching a length of generally two or three feet. Exceptions to this rule can be observed in individuals with hair development abnormalities, which may cause an unusual length of hair growth.\n", "Because the hair on one's head is n...
Is reinforced concrete able to function as a faraday cage? And if so does it make a building save of EMPs?	The gaps between the iron bars in the concrete must be in the order of magnitude smaller than the wavelength of the signal. So it might function for low frequency radio.	[ "A Faraday cage is composed of a conductor that completely surrounds an area on all sides, top, and bottom. Electromagnetic radiation is blocked where the wavelength is longer than any gaps. For example, mobile telephone signals are blocked in windowless metal enclosures that approximate a Faraday cage, such as ele...
Were humans really responsible for the extension of American mega-fauna?	This really is more of an ecology question, but I studied ecology, not history so here we go. The short answer is that in the case of north and south American (and Australia) mega-fauna humans were most likely the primary cause of widespread extinction. Quite a lot of work has gone in to trying to suss out the role of...	[ "Research shows that species interactions play a pivotal role in conservation efforts. Communities where species evolved in response to Pleistocene megafauna (but now lack large mammals) may be in danger of collapse. Most living megafauna are threatened or endangered; extant megafauna have a significant impact on t...
Why have we not been able to return to the Mariana Trench till now?	Requestion: Why haven't we decided to return to the Mariana Trench until now?	[ "The Marianas Trench Marine National Monument is a United States National Monument created by President George W. Bush by the presidential proclamation no. 8335 on January 6, 2009. The monument includes no dry land area, but protects of submerged lands and waters in various places in the Mariana Archipelago. The Un...
why do stray cats bolt away like lightning when they see a human approaching from 10 feet away, yet show no fear when a 2 ton car barrels toward them?	Cats primarily rely on their sense of smell. But there's more to your question. How long does a cat have to perceive a human walking towards them at 2 miles an hour? How long a car traveling at 35?	[ "For mild-to-moderate CH cats, it is important to know that their ability to respond \"instinctively\" to a threat (scare/startle) may not be inhibited. Bolting, biting, scratching and clawing when scared or startled are instincts, and are controlled by a different portion of the brain. A mild-to-moderate cat that ...
Because of entropy temperatures tend to decrease but do (would) temperatures below absolute zero also follow this?	Entropy usually increases as you add energy. The change in entropy (dS) times the (absolute) temperature (T) equals the change in energy (dU); dU = TdS What 'negative temperatures' are all about is that if you decide to define temperature by the relationship above (T = dU/dS). It's possible in certain circumstances to...	[ "This effect can be explained by looking at the change in entropy of the system. At zero temperature only the lowest energy level is occupied, entropy is zero, and there is very little probability of a transition to a higher energy level. As the temperature increases, there is an increase in entropy and thus the pr...
why when you're deep in thought or thinking about a memory, you seem to completely zone out of your current surroundings and feel as if you're almost reliving the memory or thought?	This is an excellent question. In fact, this question may actually be about what makes humans unique. First, let's consider something all organisms share: the need to understand their environment. While we may not look alike, our nervous systems have a lot in common with those of lobsters (and most other organisms; I ...	[ "It has long been known that when individuals process items in an elaborative fashion, such that meaning is extracted from items and inter-item associations are formed, memory is enhanced. Thus, if a person gives more thought to central details in an arousing event, memory for such information is likely to be enhan...
where do the blood vessels go after a chicken is cooked?	Blood vessels are held open by the blood pressure inside them. When the chicken is drained of blood, the blood vessels will collapse, like a small stretched rubber band springing back. The blood vessels are still in the chicken meat, but far too small for you to notice. Only large vessels like major arteries are visib...	[ "The remaining carcass (including other meat, bones, and skin) is then put in a specially-designed press, similar to a wine press. Pressure is then applied to extract duck blood and other juices from the carcass. The extract is thickened and flavoured with the duck's liver, butter, and cognac, and then combined wit...
why are people banned from living "off the grid"?	What do you mean by "living off the grid?" You can live off the grid in the sense that you can live out on your land in the middle of nowhere with minimal connection to the outside world, provided local building codes and zoning laws allow it. You can't live off the grid in the sense that you ignore the government an...	[ "It is often done to residential buildings only occasionally occupied, such as vacation cabins, to avoid high initial costs of traditional utility connections. Other persons choose to live in houses where the cost of outside utilities is prohibitive, or such a distance away as to be impractical. In his book \"How t...
why are there no smartphones with e-ink displays?	e-ink doesn't come in full color, and is extremely slow to update. That's fine for reading a book. Absolutely unusable for scrolling through a webpage, contact list or anything else. Now one could have a second e-ink display for things like the time and a list of notifications. But that takes work to create, and if p...	[ "The Motorola F3 was the first mobile phone to employ E Ink technology into its display, taking advantage of the material's ultra-low power consumption. In addition, the Samsung Alias 2 uses this technology on the keypad, to allow orientation to change. The October 2008 limited edition North American issue of \"Esq...
why does your scalp produce more dandruff as more flakes come off?	dandruff is just dead skin. scalp is word we use to call skin on top of your head. your body regularly sheds skin all over. the thing with scalp skin is that it's easily trapped by hair instead of falling off your body where you don't notice it.	[ "Not all flakes are dandruff. For example, some can merely be product buildup on the scalp skin. This could result from the common practice of applying conditioner to scalp skin without washing. This would dry upon the scalp skin and flake off, appearing like dandruff and even causing itchiness, but have no health ...
Can someone survive only drinking alcoholic drinks?	You could drink weak alcoholic (less than 3%) beverages indefinitely. Before most northern european countries had freely available clean drinking water most people drank weak beer as a matter of course, as beer is largely sterile of parasites or harmful organisms (having been boiled at the start of the beer making proc...	[ "Michael Niederman of \"New York Theatre Review\" notes, \"Caporale takes us on a millennia-long journey into just how much Western civilization has been influenced by the introduction and preservation of alcohol consumption. Basically, it is his thesis that without alcohol, it is very likely that we wouldn’t even ...
what is wahhabi/salafist islam? what is the shiite equivalent?	They are schools of thought in Sunni Islam founded by Mohammed bin Abd al Wahhab. Both are about returning to the practices of early 7th century Islam (as the name Salaf refers to "ancestors") and discarding tradition/innovation/philosophy that has been built up since then. They take a very literal and strict reading o...	[ "Adherents to the Wahhabi movement identify as Sunni Muslims. The primary Wahhabi doctrine is affirmation of the uniqueness and unity of God (\"Tawhid\"), and opposition to \"shirk\" (violation of tawhid – \"the one unforgivable sin\", according to Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab). They call for adherence to the beliefs and prac...
why do certain types of noise enhance our abilities to focus and study whereas others don't?	A constant (background) noise gives your brain time to shut it out, while when it is quiet, any sudden sounds alert your brain something's up	[ "A sensory neuron's efficiency can be increased further if noise is eliminated as early as possible before pooling occurs, through linear filtering. The removal of noise in the beginning is crucial because once a signal and noise with similar timings combine, it is harder to separate them. Linear filtering involves...
What is the physical difference between blood cells?	This might be helpful in understanding the common precursors and differentiations of the blood cells. _URL_0_	[ "The red blood cell membrane comprises a typical lipid bilayer, similar to what can be found in virtually all human cells. Simply put, this lipid bilayer is composed of cholesterol and phospholipids in equal proportions by weight. The lipid composition is important as it defines many physical properties such as mem...
Franklin Delano Roosevelt would be hit by repeated accusations of socialism or communist during the implementation of the New Deal . But what did actual Communists and Socialists think of the New Deal?	The Left isn't a monolithic entity but I can talk as to the CPUSA's reactions. Generally, they were opposed. During the Depression, they saw it as a small concession to save Capitalism, but by the War they had abandoned that stance in favor of a United Front against Fascism. Many communists saw the Depression itself ...	[ "During the 1930s, Nock was one of the most consistent critics of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs. In \"Our Enemy, the State\", Nock argued that the New Deal was merely a pretext for the federal government to increase its control over society. He was dismayed that the president had gathered unprecedented pow...
if i give someone $1 million, why do i have to pay a gift tax?	In what jurisdiction? There're a lot of them. One justification for it would be that it's an exorbitant amount of money to just receive for no real point of merit so it's acceptable to take a cut to help subsidize various government services and reduce the tax burden on people that came across their income themselves....	[ "One way to avoid U.S. Federal estate and gift taxes is to distribute the property in incremental gifts during the person's lifetime. Individuals may give away as much as $15,000 per year (in 2018) without incurring gift tax. Other tax free alternatives include paying a grandchild’s college tuition or medical insur...
there seem to be significantly fewer contradictions in the quran than in the bible. is this simply because of a lack of research, or is it objectively less contradictory?	unless I am mistaken the Koran was written by one man, while the Bible was written by many across several centuries.	[ "For quite some time, there was a theory that there is no coherence in Qurān. It was asserted that Qurān is a collection of different verses having no logical connection with each other. In the late 19th and early 20th century Western scholars propounded the theory and some of them proposed chronological order on t...
what causes certain people to constantly tap or have their hands busy?	Not really sure but maybe it's to keep the brain occupied?	[ "The tapping rate is a psychological test given to assess the integrity of the neuromuscular system and examine motor control. The finger tapping test has the advantage of being a relatively pure neurologically driven motor task because the inertial and intersegmental interactions are so small that biomechanical in...
why is photography equipment so expensive?	So much goes into making a lens. The kind of glass used, aperture blades, image stabilization, and autofocus mechanisms are a few of numerous things you have to think about. If you're a photographer at the superbowl, would you want a lens that takes 5 seconds to focus? Game changing moments happen in split seconds. As ...	[ "While most professional medium-format cameras are very expensive, some inexpensive plastic imports, such as Diana and Holga, are gaining in popularity, particularly with toy camera enthusiasts. Many of these cameras are sold through the Austrian Lomographische AG. Due to the poor quality of the cameras, the exact ...
the rice experiment	> but it appears that many people have attempted this experiment with very interesting results. Example: _URL_0_ And a lot of people have tried it, gotten an unfavorable result and not posted a video about it. Selection bias at it's finest.	[ "The scientific details of the rice were first published in \"Science\" in 2000, the product of an eight-year project by Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg. At the time of publication, golden rice was considered a significant breakthrough in biot...
how does a man without the bottom part of his body pee?	It depends? If he still has his kidneys: he can either have a catheter in his bladder OR (if he looses his bladder) you can have a catheter in your kindeys as well. If he also doesn't have his kidneys: he doesn't pee. It all works with dialysis, which will filter anything out of your system what would be filtered by y...	[ "For men, because of the flexible and protruding nature of the penis, it is simple to control the direction of the urine stream. Many men urinate in a standing position although they could urinate sitting down or squatting.\n", "When not urinating into a toilet, squatting is the easiest way for a female to direct...
why do religious leaders wear funny hats?	For the same reason that the [Peaked Cap](_URL_0_) is worn in many military forces: it can be a potent and easy to recognise symbol of authority.	[ "Non-conical hats worn to signify an occasion's informal and festive status include decorated top hats, hats made from balloons, the beer hat or \"beer helmet\" (invented in 1983 by Buffalo Bills fan Jeremy Gumbo), and Mickey Mouse ears. In more extreme cases, partygoers may wear other objects such as lampshades or...
what is the difference between williams syndrome and down's syndrome?	Williams Syndrome (WS) and Down Syndrome (DS) are discrete disorders with many differences. WS is caused by deletion of genetic material, while DS is caused by an additional chromosome 21. DS is much more common. WS and DS both have distinct facial features. Both involve learning difficulties and developmental delays. ...	[ "Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder that affects many parts of the body. Facial features frequently include a broad forehead, short nose and full cheeks, an appearance that has been described as \"elfin\". Mild to moderate intellectual disability with particular problems with visual spatial tasks such as ...
why is it that your arm can lose blood, fall asleep for 20 minutes, and be fine when blood is restored, but cutting blood off to your brain for even a minute (e.g. having a stroke) can have irreversible damage?	1) Falling asleep on your arm doesn't block all bloodflow. Even the brain can survive significant amounts of time in low-oxygen (aka: Hypoxia), though it should still be avoided. 2) Muscles, especially when not in use, use far less oxygen than nerve cells (by a factor of 10, IIRC). This means that they will starve fas...	[ "The most common nerve injuries during surgery occur in the upper and lower extremities. Injuries to the nerves in the arm or shoulder can result in numbness, tingling, and decreased sensory or muscular use of the arm, wrist, or hand. Many operating room injuries could be solved by simply restraining the arms and l...
blue light filter glasses and why they're good for people who stare at screens for long times	Part of your brain is responsible for telling you when to sleep and when to not sleep. It uses a chemical you may have heard of, melatonin. When your eyes perceive blue light, nerves send a signal to this region of the brain and aid in destroying melatonin. This all comes from sunlight. During the day, sunlight is rain...	[ "In photography and optics, a neutral-density filter, or ND filter, is a filter that reduces or modifies the intensity of all wavelengths, or colors, of light equally, giving no changes in hue of color rendition. It can be a colorless (clear) or grey filter, and is denoted by Wratten number 96. The purpose of a sta...
why are most blockbuster movies/films first released outside of north america?	We've reached the point now where a blockbuster film can make as much as 80 percent of its overall box office gross outside of the United States. Basically, it makes NA jealous, and more hype which generates better profits. So, because money. Edit: Also, it actually helps to cut down on pirating as it makes the movie...	[ "Home-made blockbusters came in 2000s and begin to dominate their home market, putting American blockbusters in second place. \"\", directed by Charles Binamé, was a major success at the box office in 2002. The next year, 2003, was called \"the year of Quebec cinema's rebirth\" with Denys Arcand winning the foreign...
how many years of memories can the brain support?	There's no way to know because we don't live that long, but probably not. As you get old, time starts moving a lot faster and your perspective can get warped. If a regular person spends 50 years married to a person, that's the most important relationship in their life. If a 10,000 year old person spends 50 years with s...	[ "The research teams at USC and Wake Forest are working to possibly make this system applicable to humans whose brains suffer damage from Alzheimer's, stroke, or injury, the disruption of neural networks often stops long-term memories from forming. The system designed by Berger and implemented by Deadwyler and Hamps...
How was Buddism spread across the east from India to Japan? Was there a missionary format as with Christianity or was it more word-of-mouth?	Buddhism as a religion does not have a central authority who directed the proselytising of Buddhism. It spread mostly in a very organic, and natural manner. To understand why / how this happened, it is important to establish the reason why Buddhism originated in the first place. Around the time Buddha was born, Vedic ...	[ "Christian missionaries had mixed success in the Far East. Early Christian missionaries had very mixed success in countries in Asia. In countries like Japan, the first Christian missionaries arrived in Kyushu in 1542 and came from Portugal and brought gunpowder and Christianity with them. Jesuit priest, Francis Xav...
why will wearing somebody's glasses ruin my eyes?	Glasses with the wrong prescription, or poorly fitted glasses, cause eye strain, which will give you a headache. I don't know that it will cause long term harm, but it will feel terrible. Fitting glasses is an art, while determining the prescription is more of a science. The prescription includes an exact distance t...	[ "There have also been concerns over potential eye pain caused by users new to Glass. These concerns were validated by Google's optometry advisor Dr. Eli Peli of Harvard, though he later partly backtracked due to the controversy which ensued from his remarks.\n", "A recent study estimated that from 2002–2003 there...
how do the nations that are rescuing the migrants in the mediterranean deal with the migrants after they have saved them?	They take them to Italy, and Italy processes them. Whether Italy is helped in any way with the costs and logistics....	[ "The Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) is an international humanitarian organisation based in Malta dedicated to providing aid and emergency medical relief to refugees and migrants around the world. \n", "During the European migrant crisis, many are fleeing war-torn Syria. Thousands of migrants, mostly from Syr...
why is it that drugs like marijuana & cocaine are banned in most countries, yet alcohol isn't?	Because alcohol is much more engrained into our culture than marijuana or cocaine. The government would love to take it away but they can't due to the severe impacts on society. Plus, it's so easy to make alcohol yourself that all it would mean is that people weren't paying tax on their alcohol, but they would still dr...	[ "Advocates of prohibition argue that particular drugs should be illegal because they are harmful. Drug Free Australia for example argues \"That illicit drugs are inherently harmful substances is attested by the very nomenclature of the 'harm reduction' movement.\" The U.S. government has argued that illegal drugs a...
why don't more websites host their downloads via torrents?	Torrenting requires people to already have a properly configured client. For a lot of people that's an intimidating requirement, and the current Internet culture is (understandably) such that most people would rather accommodate ignorance than try to correct it. For downloading a Linux distribution, if you've already d...	[ "All the sharing is done by the user's computer, which is actively uploading and downloading as long as the program window is open. This differentiates it from other services like Torrific (presently down), which does the sharing on the server side, allowing the user to download the torrent by HTTP in the end. So w...
Where can I find out more about the history of the OSS and CIA?	I think you'll enjoy this: [The Good Shepherd: Intelligence in recent public media](_URL_0_). A round-table discussion with CIA historians on the movie.	[ "Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency is a 2003 book by W. Thomas Smith Jr. It is an encyclopedic work on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the only independent agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with intelligence-gathering. The work chronicles the history of the agency fr...
how are cell and landline calls almost instanteous when talking with someone (most the time)?	Electricity flows through copper (and laser light through fiber optic cables) at over 100,000 km/sec. Your voice actually travels faster on a wire than it does through the air!	[ "The term is typically used with mobile telephony systems, in which there are simply not enough radio channels available in a given cell or cells. This causes blocked calls or dropped calls. However, it can also apply to landline phones, in which not enough trunking telephone circuits are available into and out of ...
What do Historians think of Paul Johnson's "A History of the American People"?	Not to discourage further responses, but a /u/kieslowskifan post from a couple of years ago [answered a similar question](_URL_0_).	[ "The book challenges modern notions of American history; the author argues, among other viewpoints, that America's founding fathers were conservatives, the War on Poverty made poverty worse and that hundreds of American liberals had ties to the Soviet Union during the McCarthy Era. It also contests the cost-effecti...
Do we get a dopamine surge from learning new things? And if so, could learning ever be used as a form of therapy for depression?	Although this isn't the scientific answer you may be looking for, I've noticed this several times personally. One example I'll share happened a few days ago. Not too long ago I decided to take up French. On Tuesday I had a major breakthrough with my speech and comprehension that made me completely overjoyed. Seemingly...	[ "\"Dopamine neurons are activated by novel, unexpected stimuli, by primary rewards in the absence of predictive stimuli and during learning\". Dopamine neurons are thought to be involved in learning to predict which behaviours will lead to a reward (for example food or sex). In particular, it is suggested that dopa...
how do we know voter fraud does not occur in the u.s.? is it possible that it occurs undetected? what evidence should voter fraud theoretically leave behind?	I suppose that there is no way to "know" that people don't commit voter fraud undetected. However, several organizations and government entities have looked into it, and have found that the rate of in-person voter fraud is ridiculously low. Typically in-person fraud occurs when someone goes to the polls and says that...	[ "There is no empirical evidence that voter fraud occurs often enough to have any plausible impact on elections. One study, commonly cited by President Trump and other Republicans, purported to show that non-citizens vote in large numbers in the United States, but the findings of the study were later shown to be dri...
Were the majority of Jewish victims of the Holocaust Orthodox or not?	It's really not much about narratives, so much as it's about looking at the demographic information of the places where Jews were murdered and how many people were murdered in those places. About half of the Jews murdered were from Poland (2.7-3 million- 85-90% of Poland's Jewish population), which had a very large Ort...	[ "Most Modern Orthodox Jews reject the idea that the Holocaust was God's fault. Modern Orthodox rabbis such as Joseph Soloveitchik, Norman Lamm, Randalf Stolzman, Abraham Besdin, Emanuel Rackman, Eliezer Berkovits, and others have written on this issue; many of their works have been collected in a volume published b...
In Leyman's terms, how do you split an atom?	You fire a neutron at the nucleus to destabilize the atom. I once heard a great analogy between atoms and water balloons. The nucleus of an atom is similar to a water balloon in the sense that as each become larger they are less stable and more prone to "bursting".	[ "The operation of merging two binary heaps takes Θ(\"n\") for equal-sized heaps. The best you can do is (in case of array implementation) simply concatenating the two heap arrays and build a heap of the result. A heap on \"n\" elements can be merged with a heap on \"k\" elements using O(log \"n\" log \"k\") key com...
The impact if our moon was an icy body.	Not 100% sure what you're asking, but maybe I can help clear some things up: The sun is about 400,000 times brighter than the moon. If Earth's moon were as bright as Saturn's moon, Enceladus, which has an albedo of .99, the sun would still be about 5,000 times brighter than the moon. This would have no impact on...	[ "The first man-made impact upon the Moon was when the Luna 2 probe crash-landed just to the west-southwest of the crater rim on September 13, 1959, according to the claim of one Hungarian astronomer who claimed to see an explosion of dust.\n", "Scientists hypothesize that some of the first water brought to Earth ...
why do ingrown hairs end up 2-4 times the length of other hairs?	Hair doesn't stop growing, it just falls out. It might look the same length in an area because the hairs fall out at about that length. Maybe an ingrown hair doesn't fall out because it has a better anchor?	[ "Pseudofolliculitis barbae can further be divided into two types of ingrown hairs: transfollicular and extrafollicular. The \"extrafollicular\" hair is a hair that has exited the follicle and reentered the skin. The \"transfollicular\" hair never exits the follicle, but because of its naturally curly nature curls b...
How will the ISS 'land'?	The same thing that’ll happen to every object in orbit eventually. The atmosphere actually extends up to where the ISS is, it’s just so thin it’s basically nothing. That’s still enough to very gradually slow it down, making its orbit go lower and lower. Right now, they periodically boost it back up, but eventually it...	[ "The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars. Th...
how did the cavemen draw on the cave wall? and how did the paintings survive for so long?	They used natural pigments made from plants and animal parts, and probably painted with their fingers. A dry cave is a very peaceful place, especially if it's been sealed off by a rock slide or something similar. Without animals or water to rub the color off the stone it can stay for thousands of years, especially if ...	[ "The cave paintings were first spotted in 1994 by the French explorer . In 2018, a team of scientists investigating the cave, led by Maxime Aubert from Griffith University and Pindi Setiawan from the Bandung Institute of Technology, published a report in the journal \"Nature\" identifying the paintings as the world...

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