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What did advertisements look like during your era of expertise?	Thanks for your question, but we've officially discouraged these far-reaching "area of expertise" questions in /r/AskHistorians! If you can narrow it down to a more specific period, though, this would be both acceptable and greatly encouraged.	[ "Other scholars have found evidence of advertising and promotion in eighteenth century France and Italy as well as Britain. Far from being primitive efforts, early advertising showed a high level of sophistication in its execution and abilility to reach mass audiences. In a major review of consumer society, McKendr...
why resting heart rate drops after taking up running?	The heart gets stronger, like every muscle. Which means it can pump more blood volume with each pump and so it has to do less pumps to move around all the blood. A little analogy: Take a bucket of water. You want to empty that bucket. Take a cup and start taking water out. You need a whole day till the bucket is empt...	[ "When the heart beats excessively or rapidly, the heart pumps less efficiently and provides less blood flow to the rest of the body, including the heart itself. The increased heart rate also leads to increased work and oxygen demand by the heart, which can lead to rate related ischemia.\n", "A number of investiga...
Why is the Holy Roman Empire called the Holy Roman Empire if it didn't contain Rome?	Historical reasons, mainly. When Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the West in 799, his Empire did contain Rome. Rome itself fell within the historical region considered to be the Kingdom of Italy, or Lombardy depending, though for a good portion of the time period the Holy Roman Empire existed Rome and surrounding te...	[ "The Holy Roman Empire was founded centuries after the fall of Rome but brandished the name of the Roman people and honoured the king with the title \"King of the Romans\". Despite this, the Holy Roman Empire was largely a Germanic affair with German kings, although its territory was considerably greater than prese...
How much (if any) effect did atomic testing have on the environment and weather?	The short answer is no, our nuclear testing has had no effect on the global climate. Most of the nuclear tests were in deserts, which typically don't contribute much to the global climate, while only several occurred at sea, which is a giant thermal bath: in short, a nuclear detonation really isn't that big, when com...	[ "In a newspaper column published in 1970, Dr Harold Pettit MD wrote:\"A healthy respect for the hazards of radiation is desirable. When atomic testing began in the early 1950s, these hazards were grossly exaggerated, producing a new psychological disorder which has been called \"radiophobia\" or \"nuclear neurosis\...
What kind of hunting methods did the Neanderthal use? And how did they differ from Ancient Man's?	Neanderthals and humans probably used fairly similar implements, although how they used them probably differed. Early hunting weapons were simply sharpened wooden spears, although I'm fairly sure that they've only been associated with homo populations before Neanderthals and humans - H. heidelbergensis. They're fro...	[ "Currently, the research mainly focuses on Neanderthals' hunting behaviour in the context of land use. This behaviour is examined particularly in cave sites such as the Balve cave or the Moravian Kůlna Cave and at the largest Middle Palaeolithic open air site in Neumark-Nord.\n", "Neanderthals made stone tools, u...
why do people in shows slip on banana peels?	Originally, it was supposed to be a reference to slipping on animal crap (which is much more slippery than a banana peel.) From there, it kind of became a thing of its own.	[ "Banana peel is also part of the classic physical comedy slapstick visual gag, the \"slipping on a banana peel\". This gag was already seen as classic in 1920s America. It can be traced to the late 19th century, when banana peel waste was considered a public hazard in a number of American towns. Although banana pee...
why dirt in a shower becomes pink if not washed after several days?	I'm not sure that it is dirt: an airborne bacterium technically known as Serratia marcescens ... "a forgotten but ubiquitous bacterium that can produce a red pigment called prodigiosin and likes to hang out as a pink film in the shower grout and toilet bowls of less-than-scrupulously clean homes. The pigment is so pers...	[ "Its bleaching, cleaning, deodorizing and caustic effects are due to oxidation and hydrolysis (saponification). Organic dirt exposed to hypochlorite becomes water-soluble and non-volatile, which reduces its odor and facilitates its removal.\n", "Due to its abundant presence in the environment, and its preference ...
why is cos(a) used when its the same thing as sin((a)+pi/2)?	For convenience, because it saves having to write out sin(a + & pi; / 2). Most of mathematical notation is shorthand for something. Even though the cosine function is the sine function with a phase difference of & pi; / 2, it's useful to treat it as a different function in many areas of mathematics.	[ "If sin(\"nx\") and cos(\"nx\") are expanded in terms of sin(\"x\") and cos(\"x\"), a trigonometric polynomial becomes a polynomial in the two variables sin(\"x\") and cos(\"x\") (using List of trigonometric identities#Multiple-angle formulae). Conversely, every polynomial in sin(\"x\") and cos(\"x\") may be conver...
why are forest fires considered good for the forest?	For almost 100 years, the common forest management theory was exactly the same as yours. Stop all fires in the forests. The problem was when fires broke out they were more intense and more damaging than they should have been. The current theory is regular low intensity fires are good for the over all forest health. Fi...	[ "A large contributor to fire susceptible forests is past land use; the higher air temperatures make wildfires more common. Wildfires are extremely detrimental for species inhabiting the landscape; they destroy habitats and it takes many years to restore the land to how it used to be.\n", "Efforts to battle forest...
If I shake hands with someone who just washed their hands, do I make their hand dirtier or do they make my hand cleaner?	You transferred some bacteria to his hands, which were destroyed if the disinfectant was still present in sufficient quantity (i.e. not evaporated). There's no such thing as "transferring cleanliness" much like there's no such thing as "transferring coldness." Hot things transfer heat to cold objects, much like there ...	[ "Hand washing (or handwashing), also known as hand hygiene, is the act of cleaning hands for the purpose of removing soil, dirt, and microorganisms. If water and soap is not available, hands can be cleaned with ash instead. \n", "The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA recommends hand washing ove...
How common was theft and robbery during the US/Canadian gold rushes?	It really depends on the period and location, but it was generally uncommon. Crime in Alaska and the Yukon during the gold rush period (1880-1917) was linked to three factors: transient population, the presence of law enforcement, and easy transportation into and out of the area. The book I'd recommend most is Will...	[ "Gold was discovered near Jarbidge in 1909, making it the site of one of the last gold rushes in the Old West and, incidentally was the site of the last stagecoach robbery in 1916. Its population swelled to near 2000 in 1911, but afterwards began a slow decline when the mining facilities were largely cannibalized f...
To what extent was slavery new to Europeans at the beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade? Did they consider slavery immoral prior to this?	More of course can be said, but our [FAQ has several entries on slavery in Europe](_URL_0_).	[ "The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th through to the 19th centuries. The Atlantic slave trade was significant in transforming Africans from a small percentage of the global population of slaves in 1600 into the overwhelming majority by 1800. The sl...
do people with a lazy eye or cross eyes see normally?	I have severe (and still have it) [strabismus](_URL_0_) (what people think of as a lazy eye). I don't have normal vision, and in fact it's a little complex. First my peripheral vision is a little wider than normal. Secondly, this also caused a genuine lazy eye to develop (a lazy eye is when you prefer an eye's domina...	[ "Strabismus, sometimes also incorrectly called lazy eye, is a condition in which the eyes are misaligned. Strabismus usually results in normal vision in the preferred sighting (or \"fellow\") eye (the eye that the person prefers to use), but may cause abnormal vision in the deviating or strabismic eye due to the di...
the cost of the proposed nyc 2nd avenue subway line is $17 billion, or about $2 billion/mile. this is around five times as expensive as similar completed urban subway projects around the world even before inevitable cost overruns that have already occurred. what's the deal?	There's a few main reasons: * The age of NYC (it's been settled for ~400 years) and the tunnels mean that you run into all kinds of tunnels, utility pipes, and other objects that you don't know are there. This, combined with the fact that you have one of the most densely populated cities in the world above it makes co...	[ "In 2000, the estimated cost of the Central Subway project was $530 million. By 2001, the cost had risen to $647 million and completion was projected for 2009. When construction began in 2012, the cost had reached $1.6 billion. When the main contract for Central Subway construction was awarded in May 2013 to the lo...
What cultural traits do we find nowadays shared by India/Iran "branch" and the European "branch" that is actually coming from the common Indoeuropean heritage?	Calvert Watkins' book How to Kill a Dragon is something worth reading. He argues for a common IE poetic tradition, preserved primarily in Homer, the Avestas, the Rig Vedas, but evident elsewhere throughout IE. It's not exactly an argument you can summarize in a Reddit post, but it's quite compelling (and the bulk of ...	[ "The Indo-European languages are primarily represented by the Indo-Iranian branch. The family includes both Indic languages (Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Marathi, Gujarati, Sinhalese and other languages spoken primarily in South Asia) and Iranian (Persian, Kurdish, Pashto, Balochi and other lang...
Tuesday Trivia: Fad Diets	Definite favorite: the1964 "Drinking Man's Diet," propagated by a drinking accessory salesman (surprise!) named Robert Cameron (also an aerial photographer; a true renaissance drinker). The idea was that the carb allowance per day was super low, and thankfully alcohol has NO carbs! (fyi, this is not true; alcoholic dri...	[ "Sylvester Graham, of Graham cracker fame, is often given credit for creating the first fad diet in the 1830s. Graham promoted a religiously motivated vegetarian diet that emphasized an anti-industrial, anti-medical \"simpler\" or \"natural\" lifestyle, with meat and other rich, calorie-dense foods being declared s...
What exactly is a "single" photon?	Classically, you have an electromagnetic field, which can be described (redundantly) in terms of an electric field and a magnetic field. There is a vacuum, which is when these fields are 0 everywhere. Before quantum mechanics, we thought we could have an arbitrarily small amount of field. In the the modern understand...	[ "One can say that the photon is not a particle but as a mere quantum of energy that is usually exchanged in integer multiples of ħω, but not always, as it is the case in the above experiment. From this point of view, photons are quasiparticles, akin to phonons and plasmons, in a sense less \"real\" than electrons a...
how come string cheese doesn't taste as good if you just bite into it rather than pulling it apart first?	Texture is a pretty significant aspect of taste, and the texture is different if you do it that way.	[ "In the United States, string cheese generally refers to snack-sized servings of low-moisture mozzarella. This form of string cheese is roughly cylindrical, about 6 inches (15 cm) long and less than 1 inch (2.54 cm) in diameter. The common term is a \"cheese stick\" which is cut and packaged, either individually or...
if the senate can just reject the president's veto, what's the point in giving him the ability to veto things?	For a law to pass congress, it only needs a simple majority. The president then has the ability to veto the law. If it is vetoed, it goes back for another vote. The difference is that this time it must have a two-thirds majority in favor in both houses of congress rather than the simple majority required if the preside...	[ "Congress may override vetoes with a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate. The process has traditionally been difficult and relatively rare. The threat of a presidential veto has usually provided sufficient pressure for Congress to modify a bill so the president would be willing to sign it.\n", "Hamil...
why do some movie book adaptations completely change a characters appearance?	Many reasons could apply. Snape and Umbridge, for instance, would be so ugly you'd have trouble finding an actor who could fill their roles from among Hollywood's largely photogenic inhabitants. Other times it's because what works in print, doesn't work well on film for color reasons, or believability. For instance, in...	[ "In most cases adaptation, the films are required to create identities (for example, a characters' costume or set decor) since they are not specified in the original material. Then, the influence of film-makers may go unrecognised because there is no comparison in the original material even though the new visual id...
Chickens. Where did domesticated chickens come from? And how long have they been a staple of our diet?	The wild ancestor of chickens, varieties of junglefowl, are native to south and southeast Asia where they were domesticated. The genetic evidence indicates that Gallus gallus ([red junglefowl](_URL_0_)) is the primary source of genetic material in domesticated chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus), but that other jun...	[ "Chickens were domesticated at least 7,000 years ago, with fossils in China from c. 5400 BCE. The chicken's wild ancestor is \"Gallus gallus\", the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia. It appears to have been kept initially for cockfighting rather than for food.\n", "The chicken is one of the most widespread domesti...
Why did the Reichstag vote itself out of power with the Enabling Act? I suppose this made sense for Nazi legislators, but why did other people vote for this?	From an [earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_) Most of what remained of the opposition to the Hitler dictatorship in the rump Reichstag that voted for the Enabling Act were what have been called the liberal parties and the Centre, as KPD deputies and the SPD leadership had been imprisoned by the Reichstag Fire Decrees. Wh...	[ "On 23 March 1933, the entire DNVP \"Reichstag\" delegation voted for the Enabling Act, which gave the Cabinet the power to make laws without parliamentary consent, effectively making Hitler a dictator. Many Communist and Socialist representatives were unable to vote, being held in Nazi-organized holding camps at t...
eili5: the whole viva revolution with che guevara?	Che Guevara was one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s with Fidel Castro. He now enjoys immense popularity as a t-shirt.	[ "Guerrillero Heroico () is an iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda. It was captured on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the \"La Coubre\" explosion. By the end of the 1960s, the image, in conjunction with Guevara's subsequent actions and e...
what are the differences (practical and otherwise) of different company types?	Sole proprietorship: This is the farmer that sells his produce on the side of the road. It is very easy to create, but offers the owner 0 liability protection. Revenue generated by the business is taxed as income for the owner. General partnership: 2 or more people share ownership of the business. Very easy to create,...	[ "A large company has its powerful brand name that can be extended to its various divisions, the benefits of large economies of scale, and sheer economic might in the market that it operates. However, once the company becomes too large, output, business needs, and profit-maximizing strategies, may differ across divi...
why is gold so important for central banks of any country? what exact role it has to play in the economy?	None. It's been over 40 years since currencies were pegged to gold. It has little meaning in the greater economy now. Except in the general sense it's a commodity like other metals.	[ "Although central banks do not generally announce gold purchases in advance, some, such as Russia, have expressed interest in growing their gold reserves again as of late 2005. In early 2006, China, which only holds 1.3% of its reserves in gold, announced that it was looking for ways to improve the returns on its o...
Why did Babylon become less and less important until it was abandoned?	_URL_0_ Old post by /u/daeres talks a bit about it	[ "The ruins of Babylon have suffered greatly due to looting and destructive policies. Parts of Nebuchadnezzar's palace and some of the old city walls still remain. Saddam Hussein commissioned a non-scientific, much controversial \"restoration\" of ancient Babylon on part of the site, in the process destroying much o...
how do individual campaign contributions work?	In US politics, it's pretty staightforward. You fill out a form on the candidate's campaign website with your credit card. You select how much money you want to give. Then they spend that money on their campaign. Or you could give them a check or something, but online is easiest. The individual limit is $2,600 per yea...	[ "Organizations other than individual candidates and their campaigns also contribute to election spending. Campaign expenditures made by groups not associated with, and independent of, a candidate's campaign are known as \"independent expenditures\". In addition to donating money to political campaigns (according to...
some people can do pullups using a single finger, how can such a small amount of muscle be able to lift such heavy weights like human bodies?	Hold on to the base your forearm and move your finger, you'll feel movement because there are [tendons](_URL_0_) connecting your finger to muscles in your forearm. Tendons are extremely strong and could support multiple times your body weight in some cases, so it is just up to how developed your forearm muscles are.	[ "This phenomenon can be highlighted by using the human body as an example. If you are trying to push a heavy object, doing so with arms fully outstretched is seldom effective. However, if you bend your arms slightly and tense your muscles, it allows you to push against much greater resistance. K*bots work in exactl...
If we replace bone at a cellular level every 7 years why do we have evidence of fractures 7 years after the injury?	A fractured bone is usually repaired by a process where a callus is formed (formation of cartilage). Regular bone tissue then replaces that cartilage. Callus formation is not perfect and forms a 'scar' just like scar tissue is formed over skin, for example. Since the cells are gradually replaced, the 'scar' still ...	[ "Bone fracture, which is a complete or partial break in the bone, is a very common condition that has more than three million US cases per year. Human bones have the ability to regenerate themselves by cycle of bone resorption and bone formation. The cell responsible for bone resorption is osteoclast, while the cel...
why do many workplace pcs still run on old software?	A few reasons: 1. Cost. Upgrading software is expensive. If an upgraded licence costs $50 that may not seem like much, but doing that for 5,000 machines gets really expensive really quickly. 2. Compatibility. Very often, companies will have custom or specialized software that may not function well with newer s...	[ "Since 2008, a set of TCP/IP routines for QuickBASIC 4.x and 7.1 has revitalized some interest in the software. In particular, the vintage computer hobbyist community has been able to write software for old computers that run DOS, allowing these machines to access other computers through a LAN or the internet. This...
Are conclusions reached by historical reenactors or people who are "living history" taken seriously by modern scholars? Have legitimate advancements in our understanding of historical life been the result of things like this before?	Not so much in my field. This is largely because reenactors and fashion/dress historians are looking at entirely different things. The average reenactor who takes a seriously deep interest in clothing is looking specifically at what was in fashion in a particular time and place, and how much access individuals had to ...	[ "Since the 1960s, there has been rising enthusiasm for historical reenactment. While the earliest groups had little claim for historical accuracy, the seriousness and accuracy of reenactors has increased. The largest such groups include The Vikings and Regia Anglorum, though many smaller groups exist in Europe, Nor...
Why do only some electrons in a p-n junction fill the holes to form the depletion layer?	These some electrons produce a potential difference, stopping further flow.	[ "When P and N-doped layers are created adjacent to each other, diffusion ensures that electrons flow from high to low density areas: That is, from the N to the P side. They leave behind the fixed positively charged dopants near the junction. Similarly, holes diffuse from P to N leaving behind fixed negative ionised...
Why doesn't thin film interference work with thicker films?	Interference happens when the film thickness is comparable to the wavelength of the light. For visible light that's in the hundreds of nanometers.	[ "Thin-film interference is a natural phenomenon in which light waves reflected by the upper and lower boundaries of a thin film interfere with one another, either enhancing or reducing the reflected light. When the thickness of the film is an odd multiple of one quarter-wavelength of the light on it, the reflected ...
why do people say redheads have no soul? is it because they're such a minority? when did it start?	South Park popularized the image in an episode parodying bigotry, and the phenomenon was further popularized by the viral "GINGERS HAVE SOULS" kid. Redheads were persecuted a bit in history, sometimes related to witches, and often stereotyped by the Irish hating Englishmen, but I don't think that the "no souls" joke c...	[ "A common belief about redheads is that they have fiery tempers and sharp tongues. In \"Anne of Green Gables\", a character says of Anne Shirley, the redheaded heroine, that \"her temper matches her hair\", while in \"The Catcher in the Rye\", Holden Caulfield remarks that \"People with red hair are supposed to get...
how are garages with remote openers safe if they sell universal remotes for garages, what is preventing people from breaking in by programing a different remote to my garage?	Your remote has to be paired with your garage opener. There are older styles with DIP switches where you set both the DIP switches on the remote and the opener to the same setting to open the door. Then there are the newer kind where the opener "learns" which remote is yours. The procedure will vary depending on the ma...	[ "Garage and gate remote controls are very common, especially in some countries such as the US, Australia, and the UK, where garage doors, gates and barriers are widely used. Such a remote is very simple by design, usually only one button, and some with more buttons to control several gates from one control. Such re...
what are our bodies actually doing when we "suck in" our gut?	Your “gut” ie your intestine is very soft. So when you contract your abdominal muscles, they push your lower abdominal cavity back. As well, you may notice you breathe in when you preform this. There is connective tissue all over your upper and lower chest cavity, when you breathe the diaphragm moves some other things ...	[ "The sucking reflex is common to all mammals and is present at birth. It is linked with the rooting reflex and breastfeeding. It causes the child to instinctively suck anything that touches the roof of their mouth, and simulates the way a child naturally eats. There are two stages of the action:\n", "In most vert...
Why are halogenated chemicals so dangerous to living organisms?	They don't have to be. For example table salt is NaCl and it is actually necessary for staying alive. So is having some iodide around for thyroid hormones. Elemental halogens are nasty because they are very reactive and very electronegative. HCl is a strong acid and is actually harmful because of the H+ it makes, not...	[ "Halogens are highly reactive, and as such can be harmful or lethal to biological organisms in sufficient quantities. This high reactivity is due to the high electronegativity of the atoms due to their high effective nuclear charge. Because the halogens have seven valence electrons in their outermost energy level, ...
what is the difference between 'random' and 'chance'?	Let's say you're rolling two dice. The chance of getting 2 is much smaller than getting 7 - to get 2, each die has to turn up 1, but to get 7, you can do 1+6, 2+5, 3+4, 4+3, 5+2, or 6+1. But, each roll is random - getting a 2 on your first roll doesn't change the chance of getting a 2 the second roll. There's no pa...	[ "Randomness is the lack of pattern or predictability in events. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Individual random events are by definition unpredictable, but in many cases the frequency of different outcomes over a large number o...
Sengoku Jidai 2.0 ; how was the geopolitical context of Japan after the fall of Tokugawa Shogunate different compared to the fall of Ashikaga Shogunate, and why did it peacefully transmit to the Meiji period without a large scale civil war like the Sengoku Jidai of the 16th century?	As /u/kumbhira pointed out, the Meiji Restoration was not exactly peaceful. However, it indeed did not fall into many decades of civil war. I wrote [here](_URL_0_) about some of the ways the Edo Bakufu (Tokugawa Shogunate) differ from the Muromachi Bakufu (Ashikaga Shogunate) and some of the ways the Edo Bakufu kept ...	[ "This precipitated a crisis that led to the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, during which Tokugawa and his allies, who controlled the east of the country, defeated the anti-Tokugawa forces, which had control of the west. Generally regarded as the last major conflict of the Sengoku period, Tokugawa's victory at Sekigah...
How did ancient Humans discover smelting ores? And how did they get the Idea to heat Rocks with Charcoal while blowing air?	Initial disclaimer: no no one really knows, as the process predates any written record. Now onto the educated speculation: We're used to the idea of copper ore and copper mines, but in ancient times, copper was available in surface deposits. Not as copper-bearing ore, but just copper, the orange metal we're all fam...	[ "Burned flints discovered near Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, dated by thermoluminescence to approximately 300,000 years, were discovered in the same sedimentary layer as skulls of early \"Homo sapiens.\" Paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin believes the flints were used as spear tips and left in fires used by the early...
why does the heart beat faster when holding breath	Because the oxygen isn't entering your heart anymore, and the heart pumps more to try and make up for it	[ "There are many ways in which the heart rate speeds up or slows down. Most involve stimulant-like endorphins and hormones being released in the brain, many of which are those that are 'forced'/'enticed' out by the ingestion and processing of drugs.\n", "The heart beats according to a rhythm set up by the sinus no...
how did we get to the moon with computers so weak compared to today	A few reasons. First, much of the electronics of the early space programs were analog, like old timey radios with a dial you could twist, or a cheapo washing machine. That kind of electronics doesn't need much computational power. Second, space travel didn't actually require a lot of advanced computation. Oxygen le...	[ "The digital technology on Earth during the time of the Moon landings was just in its infancy. The astronauts had relied on computers to aid in the Moon missions. The Apollo Guidance Computer was on the Lunar Module and the command and service module. Many computers at the time were very large despite poor specs. F...
How are asteroids detected? What are the chances we would even know if an asteroid that's big enough to wipe out all of humanity is on course to strike us?	Stare at the sky and see if you can spot moving objects. In detail you shoot the same spot in the sky in a interval of hours and compare if something moved when going back and forth between the pictures. The far away stars are static over these short timespans while in solar system objects move quite a bit. This proc...	[ "Sub-150m impacting asteroids would not cause global damage but are still locally catastrophic. They can, by contrast to larger ones, only be detected when they come very close to the Earth, which in most cases only happens during their final approach. Those impacts therefore will always need a constant watch and t...
Are babies physically able to speak?	Theoretically, yes. The PHYSICAL components of speech should be able to perform the actions necessary to produce the sounds, but it's the neuronal connections that actually matter. It's not even a matter of 'mental capacity' as it is strengthening and pruning synaptic connections in all the structures required for spee...	[ "Babies are born with the ability to discriminate virtually all sounds of all human languages. Infants of around six months can differentiate between phonemes in their own language, but not between similar phonemes in another language. At this stage infants also start to babble, producing phonemes.\n", "Language ...
how does movie distribution work for independent films?	Often independent films will pay a company to package and then distribute the movie for them or with them as part of the agreement for them making the film.	[ "Rather than relying solely on the traditional distribution system to distribute content, FilmDoo chooses to source films directly from all levels of the film distribution chain from filmmakers through to sales agents and distributors. Through this approach they have given international releases to films that had p...
if female orgasms are better than men’s, then why are men typically the ones who bother females about having sex and not the other way around?	"Better" is subjective. Has anybody ever been biologically male, and then biologically female, and compared the two? I don't think so. So we can't ever actually compare them.	[ "Another reason why women are more likely to have low sexual desire and less sexual activity compared to men may be because when enduring in copulation with a male, women's experience of achieving an orgasm is low. Therefore, a females gratification for sexual intercourse may be lower than a males, where a male is ...
how can an appendage be reattached to a body?	Apart from the risk of infection, most tissue will re-heal. They connect things like arteries to recirculate blood flow, and then bingo, it all works out	[ "The operation involves connecting the appendix to the abdominal wall and fashioning a valve mechanism that allows catheterization of the appendix, but avoids leakage of stool through it. If the appendix was previously removed or is unusable, a neoappendix can be created with a cecal flap.\n", "In the procedure, ...
why aren't we using flash on smartphones or new technology anymore, when it used to be a good option for animation?	apple does not own adobe. the basic capabilities of flash with regards to animation, streaming and vector graphics have all been included in web standards or have been given special treatment by proprietary browser capabilities. Additionally, the flash plugin was/is notoriously unstable, responsible for what some ...	[ "In 1996, Flash (originally known as FutureSplash) was developed. At the time, the Flash content development tool was relatively simple compared to now, using basic layout and drawing tools, a limited precursor to ActionScript, and a timeline, but it enabled web designers to go beyond the point of HTML, animated GI...
how some people can wear only a tee-shirt and shorts in freezing temperatures while others need to wear winter jackets in much warmer weather?	It depends on many factors: * Energy consumption rate * Body weight and fat * Age * Genetics * Many, many other ones	[ " Wearing several winter clothing layers make it easier to regulate body temperature when cycling in the winter. Hats, gloves, socks, arm warmers, leg warmers, scarves, neck gaiters and lightweight packable jackets, can be adjusted, added, or removed to help regulate your body temperature and personal comfort. In b...
Will magnets be more or less "powerful" depending on their distance from the Earth's core?	No, magnets function independent of altitude. If you bring them to the Earth's core however they will probably get too hot to function as magnets.	[ "Magnetars are characterized by their extremely powerful magnetic fields of ∼10 to 10 T. These magnetic fields are hundreds of millions of times stronger than any man-made magnet, and quadrillions of times more powerful than the field surrounding Earth. Earth has a geomagnetic field of 30–60 microteslas, and a neod...
I'm a concubine to a Sultan in the Ottoman Empire. What's my life like?	> To narrow it down, I live between the 1520s and 1570s. You picked an unfortunate timeframe - if you were a concubine to the sultan during this time period, then you were probably Hurrem Sultan, because from the early 1520s to the death of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566 he took no other concubines. After that, you...	[ "The concubines of the Ottoman Sultan consisted chiefly of purchased slaves. The Sultan's concubines were generally of Christian origin. The mother of a Sultan, though technically a slave, received the extremely powerful title of \"Valide Sultan\" which raised her to the status of a ruler of the Empire (see Sultana...
what makes the new reddit privacy policy different from the existing? anything in there to worry about?	The primary substantial difference is that IP addresses will be stored for 100 days, up from 90 days; according to Reddit, this is to allow for convenient quarterly analysis of usage. The other revisions are mostly rewording intended to make the policy easier to read, without affecting its substance.	[ "Google had publicly stated on January 24, 2012, that its privacy policy will once again be altered. This new policy will change the following for its users: (1) the privacy policy will become shorter and easier to comprehend and (2) the information that users provide will be used in more ways than it is presently ...
If you have been successfully vaccinated against a disease can you still catch it?	Could happen. Nothing ever happens in a vacuum. The outcome of an infection isn't determined solely by the host, the pathogen, or the environment, but by a combination of all three. It's conceivable that a host could have good immunity, but be exposed to an enormous dose of high virulent pathogen in an environment t...	[ "Some people cannot be fully protected from vaccine-preventable diseases by direct vaccination. These are often people with weak immune systems, who are more likely to get seriously ill. Their risk of infection can be significantly reduced if those who are most likely to infect them get the appropriate vaccines.\n"...
When interacting with the more intelligent animals, do they realize that we, as humans, are a much more intelligent species? Or do they simply view us as another animal?	I wouldn't necessarily say that other animals view us as the more intelligent species. A large part of the whole idea is that animals aren't going to really make any high-level inferences on what actions you preform. When animals and humans communicate, all the animals are understanding are the actions preformed by the...	[ "However, there are many non-human entities, plenty of which are intelligent, and many of which can apprehend, memorise, compare and even approximately add numerical quantities. Several animals have also passed the mirror test of self-consciousness. But a few surprising examples of mathematical abstraction notwiths...
What influences or impact did Mongolian rule have in the Chinese language?	If you mean influence from Mongolian, not much. Mongolian rule was pretty short, just under a century, and unlike with the Qing, there wasn't such an effort to make their language official. There were a handful of Mongolian words (but not only Mongolian) that showed up in dramatic performances at the time, but they wer...	[ "China had far longer direct contact with Mongolic peoples than Russia or other European countries had, and thus a longer history of studying their languages. However, the modern academic tradition of Mongolian studies in China faced a variety of early setbacks. 19th-century studies of Mongolia by Chinese scholars ...
How were wax seals and such not counterfeited?	Mine is one of the two answers /u/ubershiza linked to. However it's a three year old answer and frankly not a very good one. So let me try this again. I can't actually speak to wax seals, but I can address "and such", being the East Asian seals that were used throughout the area and, in some cases, still used today. F...	[ "These seals were transported in metallic boxes called skippets, which protected the actual wax seal from damage. The skippets themselves also were engraved with the seal design. Several skippets were made at a time, which the State Department used as needed. Usually skippets were made out of sterling silver, thoug...
why are cpus overclockable? why don’t manufacturers just increase the base clock speed?	They rate them at a clock speed that they feel meets a good balance of performance and reliability. By overclocking them you're increasing the risk of failure.	[ "Overclocking components can only be of noticeable benefit if the component is on the critical path for a process, if it is a bottleneck. If disk access or the speed of an Internet connection limit the speed of a process, a 20% increase in processor speed is unlikely to be noticed. Overclocking a CPU will not benef...
does the world actually create any new water? or is it 100% recycled?	It's almost entirely recycled, but it can be created by combining hydrogen and oxygen, either through burning, or through another chemical reaction.	[ "Cycled repeatedly through the planetary hydrosphere, all water on Earth is recycled water, but the terms \"recycled water\" or \"reclaimed water\" typically mean wastewater sent from a home or business through a sewer system to a wastewater treatment plant, where it is treated to a level consistent with its intend...
Is there a physiological difference between smoking an entire cigarette now, and smoking half of one now and the other half in an hour or so?	There's a concept in medicine of "pack-years" of smoking. That is, if you smoke a pack a day for sixty years or two a day for thirty, you have equivalently smoked sixty pack-years. This is done so as to standardize exposure. Unfortunately, it's not completely valid and masks some variability. As an example, take an e...	[ "A person's increased risk of contracting disease is directly proportional to the length of time that a person continues to smoke as well as the amount smoked. However, if someone stops smoking, then these chances gradually decrease as the damage to their body is repaired. A year after quitting, the risk of contrac...
Can neodymium magnets adversely effect the human brain? (or any other part of the body, for that matter)	The field that a neodymium magnet produces isn't fundamentally different than the field from an electromagnet. The real difference is that electromagnets can easily produce changing magnetic fields. A changing magnetic field induces electric currents in a conducting material. Since the neurons use electrical signals t...	[ "Researchers at Lancaster University found abundant magnetite nanoparticles in the brain tissue from 37 individuals aged three to 92-years-old who lived in Mexico City and Manchester. This strongly magnetic mineral is toxic and has been implicated in the production of reactive oxygen species (free radicals) in the ...
what is wild yeast, how is it alive? and what is fermentation?	Yeast is a kind of fungus and wild yeast is yeast that exists naturally in the air rather than specially bred yeast like brewers or bakers yeast. Fermentation is what happens when this yeast metabolises sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol (in other words it eats sugar and poops out booze and gas... :P). This is spec...	[ "\"Wild fermentations\" occur when autochthonous yeast are allowed to carry out fermentation; indigenous yeasts can spontaneously initiate fermentation without any addition of other yeast strains by the cider maker. Autochthonous yeasts are wild yeast strains that are endemic to the specific location in which a cid...
can anyone explain what is going on with northwestern u unionizing?	This is a very long topic, but I'll try to be brief. Basically, the players want to unionize because they want to get more rights and better benefits. They see that collegiate athletics (football especially) is become more and more profitable and the university's are raking in tons of cash- but the players are not see...	[ "The University and College Union (UCU), a trade union representing 110,000 staff at UK universities, began a strike on 22 February 2018 as part of an industrial action against 64 universities, represented by Universities UK (UUK). The dispute concerned proposed changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (US...
How did the myth of vampires emerge?	Perhaps the following excerpt from my draft Introduction to Folklore (which I hope to e-publish later this year) will help answer your question. Your question borders on literary interpretation, and that's a subject I'm not prepared to address (which is not to say your interpretation is invalid). Here's the excerpt: T...	[ "Legends of vampires have existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demonic entities and blood-drinking spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the f...
Value of older texts versus newer texts for learning?	It's completely true that we know a ton more because of the research of the last 100 years, as said by the others here, but that won't necessarily cause a problem if you are dealing with a source that just presents straight facts with little to no interpretation. But if you are reading a history that has a thesis abou...	[ "However, primary sources – particularly those from before the 20th century – may have hidden challenges. \"Primary sources, in fact, are usually fragmentary, ambiguous and very difficult to analyse and interpret.\" Obsolete meanings of familiar words and social context are among the traps that await the newcomer t...
Why were the colors brown, yellow, and green so popular in the 70's?	There's an excellent discussion of this in one of the definitive books about cultural color usage, ["Pantone: The 20th Century in Color"](_URL_1_). Pantone, for those unfamiliar with the company, is the long-time publisher of the de facto standard for color management and description in the print industry, the Pantone ...	[ "BULLET::::- In the late 1990s, bright colors began to make a comeback in mainstream fashion, as a backlash against the darker tones associated with the grunge and skater subculture. Popular colors included plum, chocolate, and navy, all of which replaced black, which had become ubiquitous. Other fashion trends pop...
how does drinking water get from the stomach to the bladder, rather than the anus?	The [colon](_URL_0_), the final part of the digestive tract, has a primary function of absorbing useful water out of your waste products before you pass them as feces.	[ "In humans, the bladder is a hollow muscular organ situated at the base of the pelvis. Urine collects in the bladder, fed from the two ureters that connect the bladder with the kidneys. Urine leaves the bladder via the urethra, a single muscular tube ending in an opening – the urinary meatus, where it exits the bod...
In Game of Thrones bastards of lords get a generic last name, like Snow or Rivers, was there anything like that in actual medieval times?	So, you're a king/nobleman and your mistress has given birth to a child. Historically, rich and powerful men fathering bastards was more an issue in monogamous societies like medieval Christian Europe - in polygamous societies, rich men could exhaust themselves with as many concubines/wives as they wanted. (Note: in ...	[ "The family name Scurfield appears to be of Old Norse, or Viking origin. “Scur” in Old English is “shower” as in rain. In Old Norse “skur” also carries the meaning shower, as in shower of rain, or a shower of arrows. The most likely origin of the surname Scurfield, therefore, is the name of an ancient field of batt...
Medieval: How Were Arquebuses and other early firearms carried?	Depictions showing handguns [carried at the shoulder](_URL_2_) like pikes and other weapons often were show up pretty early on and generally remains the norm for centuries. Aside from tools for cleaning and mending their weapons, each soldier would have needed a pouch containing bullets and leather or cloth patches to ...	[ "The arquebus, in use from 1410, was one of the first hand-held firearms that were relatively light (it still required a stand to balance on) and a single person could operate one. One of these weapons was first recorded as being used in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, although this was still very much a medieval ...
why do you feel both warm and cold when having the common cold?	The Body raises its' temperature as this kills/slows the infection. Human cells can tolerate the slight increase so only the infection is targeted. You feel cold for two reasons: One is your body itself making you feel cold, this makes you shiver to heat up(and also seek blankets and heaters). The other is you sweat...	[ "The common cold, or simply the cold, is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract. The cold is indeed common, and is a significant cause for absences from work and school. Even before the discovery of vitamin C, folklore had it that certain fruits were effective in both preventing and treating the ...
what makes japanese cars (honda/toyota, etc.) more reliable than german (mercedes/ bmw/ audi, etc.) and american cars (ford/ chevy, etc.)	When Japanese companies first tried to break into the American auto market, their quality and reliability were horrible. They literally were a joke. So they decided to get very very serious about improving. They brought in American quality experts (Juran and Deming, most notably) and actually listened to what...	[ "However, the Japanese cars continued to improve and gained a reputation for quality, reliability, high fuel efficiency and value for money. The Japanese cars were also on average cheaper than their more premium Western counterparts. Only a handful of Western companies such as Ford, Morris and Fiat were able to mat...
how do norad, google, and other sites track santa?	NORAD, NORth american Aerospace Defense command, is capable of tracking anything from planes to rockets to flocks of birds. A sleigh full of toys and a bunch of reindeer stick out like a sore thumb on their radar, it looks nothing like a plane. We'll never know how he manages to visit everyone in just one night. He ma...	[ "A number of websites created by various organizations track Santa Claus each year. Some, such as NORAD Tracks Santa, the Airservices Australia Tracks Santa Project, the Santa Update Project, and the MSNBC and Bing Maps Platform Tracks Santa Project have endured. Others, such as the Dallas/Fort Worth International ...
how can someone's dna be 18% of sub-saharan africa? i thought dna is split 50/50 between the mother and father's side.	Think about it this way: if you think in terms of starting with 100% on only one side you will get exactly what you found, always a division by two. But the other partner can also have some part of their DNA be from that region, so say one parent is 25% and one is 12.5% then you get 18.75%. But you can do this for g...	[ "Genome-wide data could only be successfully extracted from three of these individuals. Of these three, the Y-chromosome haplogroups of two individuals could be assigned to the Middle-Eastern haplogroup J, and one to haplogroup E1b1b1 common in North Africa. The absolute estimates of sub-Saharan African ancestry in...
why can’t we just make bigger batteries?	Well, for one, Lithium ion batteries are expensive, require lots of shielding to prevent dangerous short circuits, and they tend not to have a long life. Essentially, our current, best rechargeable batteries are expensive and dangerous for use at the level of an electrical grid.	[ "The batteries employ nanotubes, potentially slowing commercial adoption due to excessive cost. Commercial adoption also requires larger devices. E.g., a newspaper-sized device could be powerful enough to power a car.\n", "Improvements in battery technology such as lithium ion have allowed for tools which can be ...
what are the us secret courts?	In the US, it's not generally legal to spy on someone without a warrant (a legal authorization for the government to spy on you or search your stuff). A warrant has to be issued by a judge. However, some parts of the government use spying techniques that are secret they don't want to disclose what they're doing or how ...	[ "What some believe was a network of secret prisons was most probably a series of facilities used temporarily by the United States when needed, officials say. Interim \"black sites\" – secret facilities used for covert activities — can be as small as a room in a government building, which only becomes a black site w...
How did people react when Coca Cola removed cocaine, or was that just a myth?	It is true! Cocaine was only made illegal in the US in 1914, before which Cocaine tonics, powders and pills were thought to cure various ailments from headache to impotence. By 1903, public opinion had turned against cocaine, leading Coca-Cola to remove nearly all of the drug from the popular drink. But only in 1929...	[ "In 2007, Cocaine was temporarily pulled from shelves in the United States, after the Food and Drug Administration published a warning letter stating that Cocaine \"was illegally marketing the drink as both a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement\". The FDA cited statements made on Cocaine's packaging an...
if the japanese invented haikus, how are they translated effectively?	I’m so disappointed. You missed the opportunity on that one. Japan invented Haiku, are we translating Their poems correctly??	[ "The first haiku written in English date from the early 20th century, influenced by English translations of traditional Japanese haiku, and the form has grown in popularity ever since. Many well-known English-language poets have written what they called haiku, even though they sometimes weren't real haiku. Haiku ha...
what's difference between front and all?	Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Front is the top posts of your subscribed subreddits, and all is the top posts of all subreddits.	[ "In oceanography, a front is a boundary between two distinct water masses. The water masses are defined by moving in different directions, i.e. on one side of the front the water is generally moving in one way, and on the other side of the front, the water is moving in another. Depending on the directions of the wa...
how do grasshoppers morph into locusts?	Locusts are just a name for grasshoppers who are in a swarming phase. They are still grasshoppers. It happens due to overcrowding. Certain external pressures can result in a population-explosion, and when grasshoppers bump into each other they get a rush of serotonin. This causes them to change color, eat much mo...	[ "Locusts are the swarming phase of certain species of short-horned grasshoppers in the family Acrididae. These insects are usually solitary, but under certain circumstances become more abundant and change their behaviour and habits, becoming gregarious.\n", "Locusts are the swarming phase of certain species of sh...
what stops a country from abandoning it's currency?	Countries do this all the time. However, unless they actually address the cause of inflation, changing the currency doesn't help -- inflation doesn't magically disappear because you changed the name of the currency. Zimbabwe (the most famous recent hyperinflation) devalued its currency 3 times, but since it never add...	[ "Assume that a country's currency is depreciating. To prevent this, the country's central bank may decide to intervene in the foreign exchange market. To prop up the value of the nation's currency, the central bank may resort to creating artificial demand for its currency. It can do this by using some of its foreig...
what is the "circle" that we see around streetlights and other kinds of lights?	It's a result of light refracting in your eye (or in water droplets in the air, depending on the kind of halo you're seeing). If you have vision problems such as near-sightedness or glaucoma, it can make these halos far more prevalent..	[ "“Road lighting”, as distinct from \"street lighting\", encompasses the lighting of all types of highway, public maintainable streets and roads. “Street lighting” is term-specific to “streets” – that is: to highways allowing direct access to buildings or spaces in built-up areas.\n", "Some street lights in New Yo...
Could Quantum Entanglement be used to create 'perfect' encryption?	Yes, you could use quantum entanglement to create a one-time pad. This is a form of encryption where the key is as long as the plaintext, and the encrypted message is therefore completely useless to anyone without the key, since there are just as many keys as possible messages. ...but you're going to have to meet to g...	[ "Quantum decoherence can occur when one qubit from a maximally entangled bell state is transmitted across a quantum network. Entanglement purification allows for the creation of nearly maximally entangled qubits from a large number of arbitrary weakly entangled qubits, and thus provides additional protection agains...
exposed veins	You have blood vessels all over your body at different depths because everything needs a blood supply to get the oxygen and nutrients it needs to keep growing, living, and working. Some vessels are deeper in your body and some are shalllow enough to be seen. Some are even so close to the surface that you can see them...	[ "Veins are classically thought of as being the result of growth of crystals on the walls of planar fractures in rocks, with the crystal growth occurring normal to the walls of the cavity, and the crystal protruding into open space. This certainly is the method for the formation of some veins. However, it is rare in...
at what age are humans considered to be at their prime? sexually, psychically, mentally.	I believe for most of human history life expectancy was only around 30. So probably before then. Dammit...	[ "Some studies suggest that people commence sexual activity at an earlier age than previous generations. However, the 2005 Durex Global sex survey found that people worldwide are having sex for the first time at an average age of 17.3, ranging from 15.6 in Iceland to 19.8 in India (though evidence has shown that the...
Why are some artificial flavors totally different from the flavors they are trying to emulate?	Flavor profiles are normally based upon many different flavors working together, there is not really one thing which makes vanilla taste like vanilla. However in most cases anything which is made to taste like vanilla is acheived using the chemical Vanillin [Chemical Structure](_URL_0_) which is a simple example becaus...	[ "The compounds used to produce artificial flavors are almost identical to those that occur naturally. It has been suggested that artificial flavors may be safer to consume than natural flavors due to the standards of purity and mixture consistency that are enforced either by the company or by law. Natural flavors, ...
Does digital data have a physical form?	That's a good question! If you break open a standard HDD and look at the disk, what you'll see is that is has a perfectly smooth and reflective finish. This is a coating of material on the platter that's really good at holding a magnetic field. To write data, an electromagnet on the arm rapidly changes polarity to ind...	[ "A modern digital computer represents data using the binary numeral system. Text, numbers, pictures, audio, and nearly any other form of information can be converted into a string of bits, or binary digits, each of which has a value of 1 or 0. The most common unit of storage is the byte, equal to 8 bits. A piece of...
Why is torque a vector? Right hand rule is a bit arbitrary isn't it? What does the direction of the torque vector signify?	Torque causes an object to rotate, and rotation in 3 dimensions is determined by an axis, the direction of rotation about that axis, and an angle. The torque vector direction determines the axis and the direction of rotation about that axis. (Since we are talking about continuous rotations, the angle part isn't really ...	[ "It follows from the properties of the cross product that the \"torque vector\" is perpendicular to both the \"position\" and \"force\" vectors. Conversely, the \"torque vector\" defines the plane in which the \"position\" and \"force\" vectors lie. The resulting \"torque vector\" direction is determined by the rig...
how port scanning works and how one can infect a pc through ports.	You see if a computer responds to requests more or less. It tells you what services are accessible on the computer. You use it in hopes of determine there's a vulnerable service running.	[ "Port scanning is simply a way to figure out which ports are accepting and listening to connections. The hacker would just use a program that lets him know which ports are open by scanning all the ports on a network and trying to open them. There are many other type of scans, such as SYN, Idle, FIN, X-Mas, and Null...
how does strep throat cause so many disorders and illnesses?	Because a sore throat is just a symptom. Strep throat is caused by the bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes. It's easily treated with antibiotics, and complications are unusual in healthy adults, but if it's untreated and the bacteria does spread to other parts of the body, it can cause infections in other locations, o...	[ "It is caused by bacteria which if untreated can lead to many other problems in the body. Strep throat is most common in childhood but can affect people of all ages. It may present with throat pain, difficulty swallowing, painful and swollen tonsils, fever, headache, skin rash and flu. The diagnosis of strep throat...
if a single rear window is rolled down in the car, why does the wind sound choppy and the car feels like it's shaking? why isn't this the case when a single front window is rolled down?	None of these answers seen to examine why it only happens with a single rear as opposed to a single front...	[ "One problem with this system is that once the spring or the top plate becomes worn, the driver of a car with this system may hear a loud \"clonk\" noise at full lock (i.e. steering wheel turned to the extreme left or extreme right positions), as the strut's spring jumps back into place. This noise is often confuse...
What was the furthest outpost of the Roman Empire?	The best candidate is the Roman fort on the [Farasan Islands](_URL_1_) in the southern Red Sea, which hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. Roman control of this area was completely unknown until the 2004 publication of an inscription attesting to the presence of a detachment of the Legio II Traina Fortis and auxil...	[ "During the time of the Roman emperor Augustus, Mauretania was a vassal state, and its rulers, such as Juba II, controlled all the areas south of Volubilis. But the effective control of Roman legionaries reached as far as the area of Sala Colonia (the castra \"Exploratio Ad Mercurios\" south of Sala is the southern...
why are people considered "social animals", and why is it that people could go crazy if they don't have any social interaction?	Our nature as "social animals" is a consequence of evolution. Our diminished physical ability compared to the rest of the animal world (and of other groups of humans) lead to the most socially cohesive groups of humans being able to survive being preyed on or attacked, and also lead to intangible benefits like "herd ...	[ "The basic reason that social animals live in groups is that opportunities for survival and reproduction are much better in groups than living alone. The social behaviors of mammals are more familiar to humans. Highly social mammals such as primates and elephants have been known to exhibit traits that were once tho...
Why don't you have to "ground" cars before fueling, but it is a necessity to do so when fueling airplanes?	As fuel passes through the pipes connecting the nozzle to the fuel tank, it creates a separation of electric charges. This results in a build-up of charge, usually in the fuel pipe itself. At some point, if the charge builds up enough, it will cause a spark (electrons flowing from a place of excess negative charge to t...	[ "Normally the portion of the aircraft's weight that exceeds the maximum landing weight (but falls within the maximum take-off weight) is entirely composed of fuel. As the aircraft flies, the fuel burns off, and by the time the aircraft is ready to land, it is below its maximum landing weight. However, if an aircraf...
how does the southern hemisphere have different seasons than the northern hemisphere? i simply can't seem to wrap my head around this.	The Earth spins like a top, which is what causes day and night as each side faces the sun in turn. But the "top" isn't straight up and down, it is tilted. When the Earth is on one side of the Sun, the north pole is pointed more towards the sun, and the south pole is pointed away. As the Earth circles around to the othe...	[ "Seasons result from the tilt of the Earth's axis compared to the plane of its revolution around the Sun. Throughout the year the northern and southern hemispheres are alternately turned either toward or away from the sun depending on Earth's position in its orbit. The hemisphere turned toward the sun receives more...
if slaves in america were so expensive, why were they beaten and killed?	The level of constant abuse is vastly overdone in Hollywood movies. They want to express how terrible slavery was but don't have enough time to put it into perspective. So they show it all at once when it isn't exactly realistic; such things did happen, but not likely to be as often or all at once.	[ "The average slave was worth a lot of money to a slave owner-about $1,000 in the 1860s, so owners would pay bounty hunters to bring runaway slaves back to them or pay upon delivery of the runaway slave.\n", "The captives were not the only ones who were mistreated on slave ships, as Rediker points out the lash \"o...
what generates a magnetic field that protect a planet from solar wind from the sun?	Earth's magnetic field is generated by the movement of molten iron alloys in the outer core. > Why is a magnetic field so important for the planet? It acts to deflect charged particles from the sun, preventing them from pushing off small parts of our atmosphere similar to sandblasting a surface. > Can we restart...	[ "If a planet's magnetic field is sufficiently strong, its interaction with the solar wind forms a magnetosphere around a planet. Early space probes discovered the gross dimensions of the terrestrial magnetic field, which extends about 10 Earth radii towards the Sun. The solar wind, a stream of charged particles, st...
why did the uk universities tripling student fees seem to have no affect on the quality of learning?	The government cut the funding to the universities, but this cut had to be balanced, so the government let the universities charge the students more. So from the perspective of the universities nothing really changed. So they don't have any extra money to give back to the students.	[ "Many commentators suggested that the 2012 rise in tuition fees in England would put poorer students off applying to university. However, the gap between rich and poor students has slightly narrowed (from 30.5% in 2010 to 29.8% in 2013) since the introduction of the higher fees. This may be because universities hav...
Is there such a thing as mitochondrial "cancer?" I.e., are there any diseases resulting from known or suspected errors in mitochondrial DNA that disrupt the mechanism of mitochondrial replication?	This is an interesting question and has multiple answers. In short, yes there are mutations in mitochondrial DNA that cause specific clinical conditions. The most well studied are the fission and fusion proteins that control how mitochondria divide and replicate. If there is improper fission and fusion then you can ...	[ "Cellular DNA integrity is often compromised in cancer. Genome instability can refer to the accumulation of extra copies of DNA/chromosomes, chromosomal translocations, chromosomal inversion, chromosome deletions, single stranded breaks in DNA, double stranded breaks in DNA, the intercalation of foreign substances ...
Why do elephants and rhinos die after their tusks are removed?	Removing the horn in itself doesn't kill the animal. Poachers are often careless and the animal may die from infection or it's injuries, or they just kill the animal before removing the horn. (obviously, the rhino wouldn't just let them take it without a fight, and I doubt anesthetic for a rhino is common or inexpensiv...	[ "Elephants are under threat due to poaching, habitat destruction, man-animal conflict and encroachment. Ignorance and a lack of awareness have resulted in the continuous enslavement of these animals as working elephants- to beg, for display in temples, for performances and entertainment, ceremonies and physical lab...
why do chemicals meant to "protect" plants like capsaicin, caffeine, nicotene etc. end up having strange benefits when consumed by humans?	Dosage and physiology. Effects on a 0.1 to 10 gram insect or 100 gram bird or lizard are vastly different to those on a 70kg human. Its the same reason that such a tiny proportion of drugs successfully tested on animals end up on prescription.	[ "Plants need to defend themselves from attack by micro-organisms, in particular fungi, and they do this by producing anti-fungal chemicals that are toxic to fungi. Because fungal and human cells are similar at a biochemical level it is often the case that chemical compounds intended for plant defence have an inhibi...
My laptop generates so much heat that it becomes painful to the touch. Could this massive amount of thermal energy be harnessed and converted to other useful energy, such as to charge the laptop battery itself?	In short no, because the waste heat from a laptop is pretty low quality. If you were really so inclined, yes, you could use the laptop as the power source for a heat engine (a Stirling engine would probably be a good starting point). For the sake of argument, let's say that the laptop is reaching an average tempera...	[ "A common practical solution to this problem is to place the laptop on a table or desk, or to use a book or pillow between the body and the laptop. Another solution is to obtain a cooling unit for the laptop. These are usually USB powered and consist of a hard thin plastic case housing one, two, or three cooling fa...

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