question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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What were some of the other options brought up before settling on the 3/5's Compromise at the Constitution Convention? | I'm afraid I can only touch on the Great Compromise a bit, but the 3/5 is in my wheelhouse.
Your student's suggestion was the actual position of the less-enslaving states: enslaved people count zero for representation because they are in essentially no other ways treated like human beings. Counting them for purposes o... | [
"The task of the convention became the creation of a position that both supported the Compromise of 1850 as the final solution to the sectional disputes over slavery while maintaining a strong position for protecting traditional Southern rights. They did this by approving what came to be known as the Georgia Platfo... |
why germany has maintained economic stability while greece has faltered | I think the answer that terminal_velocity gave has a lot of truth to it; namely Germany has a diverse exporting infrastructure, as well as a controlled import system.
But the most important thing to remember is that Germany has taxes, okay? Greece in the meanwhile has had huge problems with tax-evasion and under-taxi... | [
"The version of adjustment offered by Germany and its allies is that austerity will lead to an internal devaluation, i.e. deflation, which would enable Greece gradually to regain competitiveness. This view too has been contested. A February 2013 research note by the Economics Research team at Goldman Sachs claims t... |
Is it possible to kill a house fly with a static charge that you have accumulated? | Well you can accumulate a voltage of between [1000 and 10000 volts](_URL_0_) with static electricity and most electric fly swatters have a voltage of 1500 volts or less, so I would assume it is safe to say that a fly could be killed with a static charge. | [
"If perturbed or threatened, an adult bee moth will fall to the ground and pretend to be dead by lying on their backs in the exact form that they landed. This is beneficial when infiltrating a host wasp or bumblebee nest as the host will be less likely to attack when it believes that the moth is dead.\n",
"BULLET... |
Nearly half of the people who died from the Spanish Flu of 1918 were 20-to-40 year olds, a normally resistant population. Do we know why? What steps were taken to curb the outbreak (which killed more people than the Great War)? What sort of advances had we made by 1998 to prevent a recurrence? | There have been some studies that have shown that people who were exposed to the Russian flu pandemic of 1889-90 were the most likely to die if they contracted the Spanish flu.
Examinations of the virus structure of the Russian flu and Spanish flu have shown that they had vast differences in the structure of their re... | [
"A new strain of the virus emerged in 1918, and the subsequent pandemic of Spanish flu was one of the worst natural disasters in history. The death toll was enormous; throughout the world around 50 million people died from the infection. There were 550,000 reported deaths caused by the disease in the US, ten times ... |
why do our eyes/brains struggle to figure out how many numbers/letters are in something when one repeats it self vs when all are different (12333332 vs 60292813) | This is because it is easier for the human brain to count different numbers since you can know at which number you are looking at (The criterion is that the next number is visibly different than the previous).
When you have to deal with a repeatitive number, you "have" doubts whether you skipped or count twice a number... | [
"People have a limited ability to retain information, which worsens when the amount of information increases. For this reason, people alter information to make it more memorable, such as separating a ten-digit phone number into three smaller groups or dividing the alphabet into sets of three to five letters. George... |
Why did China not discover Australia/ the Pacific Islands? | hi! there's always room for more info on this topic, but FYI, there have been several posts asking about non-European discovery/settlement of Australia. Catch up on previous responses here:
China
[Why did the British/Europeans discover Australia and not the Chinese?](_URL_5_)
[Why did the Chinese or Japanese apparen... | [
"Although Chinese authorities did not assert claims to the islands while they were under US administration, formal claims were announced in 1971 when the US was preparing to end its administration. A 1968 academic survey undertaken by United Nations Economic Council for Asia and the Far East found possible oil rese... |
Why were D-Day landing craft designed the way they were? Opening the large ramp from the front seems almost suicidal to me. | The D-Day craft to which you are referring (the LCVP) was based heavily on the a boat designed by Andrew Higgins in the prewar years, ostensibly for "oil workers" but probably a smugglin' swamp boat during Prohibition. The Marine Corps was not happy with the contemporary Navy options for landing troops on beaches, and... | [
"Because of the need to run up onto a suitable beach, World War II landing craft were flat-bottomed, and many designs had a flat front, often with a lowerable ramp, rather than a normal bow. This made them difficult to control and very uncomfortable in rough seas. The control point (too rudimentary to call a bridge... |
how nearsightedness and farsightedness work | With nearsightedness, the eyeball is too long for the lens, so that the image often focuses *in front* of the retina. With farsightedness, the eyeball is too short for the lens, so that the image (if we pretend the retina is transparent) would focus behind the retina.
The result is that people who are nearsighted ... | [
"Foresight is a framework or lens which could be used in risk analysis and management in a medium- to long-term time range. A typical formal foresight project would identify key drivers and uncertainties relevant to the scope of analysis. \n",
"A particular place on this list should be reserved for the practition... |
why are savings account yields in australia 4%/year, and in the u.s. they are .025%/year? | Because the Australian Federal Reserve bank has a cash target rate of 2.5% - banks charge more than that for lending (I pay 4.9% on my mortgage) and also more than that for certain high interest online bank accounts (the 4% your sister is getting). _URL_0_. Australia has typically had higher interest rates but at the... | [
"India's gross domestic savings in 2006–07 as a percentage of GDP stood at a high 32.8%. More than half of personal savings are invested in physical assets such as land, houses, cattle, and gold. The government-owned public-sector banks hold over 75% of total assets of the banking industry, with the private and for... |
Limits of the Internet. What is the current limit of possible addresses? | The most commonly used version of the Internet Protocol (IP), IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses (often represented as 4 numbers between 0 and 255 separated by dots, such as 192.168.1.1). Of these, a maximum of about 4 billion addresses are possible. But due to the way these addresses are assigned, the actual number is much lo... | [
"BULLET::::- \"Computing:\" 2 = 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (≈3.40282367), the theoretical maximum number of Internet addresses that can be allocated under the IPv6 addressing system, one more than the largest value that can be represented by a single-precision IEEE floating-point value, the... |
why does it often say when trying to download something "download should start soon, if it does not press this button" instead of triggering the function of the always working button. | They're trying to load balance server requests so that no one server gets nailed with all of the download bandwidth. They give you the link so that if the fancy load balancer doesn't work you can still get the file from the main server.
Also ads. | [
"Drive-by downloads may happen when visiting a website, opening an e-mail attachment or clicking a link, or clicking on a deceptive pop-up window: by clicking on the window in the mistaken belief that, for example, an error report from the computer's operating system itself is being acknowledged or a seemingly inno... |
What has the sleep schedule of the US President looked like historically? | During his presidency Coolidge supposedly would sleep around 11 hours a day. When writer Dorothy Parker was told in 1933 that Coolidge had died she replied, "How can they tell?" Source: The American Age: US Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750, Walter LaFeber | [
"The President's Bedroom is a second floor bedroom in the White House. The bedroom makes up the White House master suite along with the adjacent sitting room and the smaller dressing room, all located in the southwest corner. Prior to the Ford Administration it was common for the President and First Lady to have se... |
What causes pianos to go out of tune, and why do they go out of tune faster if unplayed or in high humidity? | I can answer some of these. A piano goes out of tune when the various components change shape and deform over time. For example, the strings are under quite a lot of tension and will eventually begin to stretch or slip ever so slightly. It doesn't take much of this at all for a good musician to hear the changes. Humidi... | [
"Pianos go out of tune primarily because of changes in humidity. Tuning can be made more secure by installing special equipment to regulate humidity, inside or underneath the piano. There is no evidence that being out-of-tune permanently harms the piano itself. However, a long-term low-humidity/high humidity enviro... |
Has there ever been an attempt to create a SI unit of time? | The second is based on something physical - it's defined as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom".
It may seem somewhat arbitrary, because it isn't based on anything fundamental to the univer... | [
"In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of time is the second (symbol: formula_1). It is a SI base unit, and it has been defined since 1967 as \"the duration of periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom\". This ... |
how did manual telephone switchboards work? | In your local switchboard, everyone in the locality who had a house phone had a connection on the switchboard. If you lifted the receiver at your end, at home, a light would illuminate on your connection at the switchboard.
On the desk in front of the operator, there were two rows of jack connectors sticking out of t... | [
"Automatic telephone switching, which eliminated the need for telephone operators to manually connect local calls on a switchboard, was introduced in 1892; however it did not become widespread for several decades.\n",
"A telephone switchboard is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone ne... |
The movie zeitgeist | You may be interested in [this section of the FAQ](_URL_1_).
With Zeitgeist specifically, the answer generally is that no, there's no truth to it. [This](_URL_0_) lists some of them. A few illustrative examples:
1. Horus wasn't born of a virgin, as the movie states, but by Isis impregnating herself with Osiris' pen... | [
"\"Zeitgeist: The Movie\" is a 2007 film by Peter Joseph presenting a number of conspiracy theories. The film assembles archival footage, animations and narration. Released online on June 18, 2007, it soon received tens of millions of views on Google Video, YouTube, and Vimeo. According to Peter Joseph, the origina... |
Did the original Boy Scouts (British) have a tendency to wander into the army as they got older? What kind of effect did the early Scouts have on patriotism in Britain? | The early Boy Scout movement emerged hand in hand with patriotism in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century. The Boy Scouts creator, Robert Baden-Powell, noted the general despair amongst soldiers during the Boer war in South Africa because of the significant number of casualties in the army. Upon his return to L... | [
"The British Army also made use of Boer auxiliaries who had been persuaded to change sides and enlist as \"National Scouts\". Serving under the command of General Andries Cronjé, the National Scouts were despised as \"joiners\" but came to number a fifth of the fighting Afrikaners by the end of the War.\n",
"Shor... |
Regarding the Large Hadron Collider, what else in terms of the standard model are we still looking out for? Has finding the Higgs made any significant impact? | There are still some things in the Standard Model that are incomplete or aren't fully understood, such as the strong CP problem or the origin of neutrino mass, but the Higgs was the "last major piece," and the remaining issues are relatively minor in comparison. In other words, with the discovery of the Higgs, all of t... | [
"The Large Hadron Collider at CERN was designed to test the existence of the Higgs boson, an important but elusive piece of knowledge that had been sought by particle physicists for over 40 years. A very powerful particle accelerator was needed, because Higgs bosons might not be seen in lower energy experiments, an... |
Was the father of philosophy Thales of Miletus Greek or Phoenician? | The short answer is: we're not sure, but it's likely Thales came from a Phoenician family that migrated to Miletus. As far as I know, Herodotus is the earliest source we have that talks about Thales. And even this source is written about a hundred years after Thales had already died. So we have very little to base a cl... | [
"Thales of Miletus (; , \"Thalēs\", or ; 624/623 – c. 548/545 BC) was a pre-Socratic philosopher, mathematician and astronomer from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece; many, most notably Aristotle, regarded him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition, and he is otherwise h... |
What am I missing in Einstein theory of relativity? | If that is the example in the biography used to explain how simultaneity of events is relative, then it is not only a terrible example, but it just entirely misses the point of relativity.
In the example, the two observers are not moving with respect to each other. So they are in the same inertial frame. This means th... | [
"Albert Einstein developed his general theory of relativity starting with the assumption of the intentionality of correspondence between inertial and passive gravitational mass, and that no experiment will ever detect a difference between them, in essence the equivalence principle.\n",
"Special relativity was ori... |
What were the reasons the U.S. attempted to pull off a coup of the Iranian government in the 50s and eventually imposed the Shah? | This is a complex topic but I'll give it my best stab!
> I thought the Iranian public had a very positive view of the U.S. at the time and this started off a chain of events that led the very hostile relationship we currently have
Firstly, you're correct that the Iranian public had a relatively positive view of the ... | [
"In 1953, the government of prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq was overthrown in a coup organized by the governments of the U.S. and the UK. Many Iranians argue that the coup and the subsequent U.S. support for the shah proved largely responsible for the shah's arbitrary rule, which led to the \"deeply anti-American ... |
If someone was hemorrhaging uncontrollably, could you keep them alive by transfusing blood in at the same rate they were losing it? | People can certainly have more than their entire blood volume replaced and survive. Normal blood volume is around 70ml/kg, so about 5L on average. One unit of blood (packed red cells) is around 250ml, so once someone has received more than 20 units of blood they are close to having replaced their circulating volume. Tr... | [
"The main consequence of hemolysis is hemolytic anemia, condition that involves the destruction of erythrocytes and their later removal from the bloodstream, earlier than expected in a normal situation. As the bone marrow cannot make erythrocytes fast enough to meet the body’s needs, oxygen does not arrive to body ... |
Do all plants metabolize (convert CO2 to O2) at the same rate or do some plants generate O2 more efficiently than others? | There's variation among plants generally, but specifically an alternative carbon fixation pathway called Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) used in plants that are found in arid climates that is less efficient, but with the benefit that it allows the plant to shutdown respiration during the day when heat and dry air po... | [
"The glyoxylate cycle can also provide plants with another aspect of metabolic diversity. This cycle allows plants to take in acetate both as a carbon source and as a source of energy. Acetate is converted to Acetyl CoA (similar to the TCA cycle). This Acetyl CoA can proceed through the glyoxylate cycle, and some s... |
scientifically speaking, is there a hypothetical cure for every disease? | the short answer is that we don't know.
We've cured a lot of diseases and accomplished amazing things with science. at times it seems that everything is possible. But unless we cure ever disease, we won't really know.
My guess would be yes. But we can really only guess. | [
"Dr. Brian Bolwell, chief of hematology at the Cleveland Clinic noted that Dr. Mathé had proved an important principle: \"You can cure an incurable leukemia patient.\", and had developed both a technique and an important term, \"adoptive immunotherapy,\" to describe how a person’s own immune system can be used to c... |
what does the 'end task' command do differently than normally exiting out of a program? | There are three main ways to stop a program.
You can quit from inside the program. The program does whatever it's programmed to do when you click quit, saving data and closing files and such normally.
You can use End Task (on windows), this is the operating system sending a signal to the program that tells the prog... | [
"The \"end\" case is a very simple case that works to simply delay the program to allow the user enough time to check that they have received their change and picked up their item. After 5000 milliseconds (5 seconds) the wait timer is used, up and the program continues back to the start page to wait for another use... |
how someone can have a big belly but is relatively skinny/normal? | Fat deposits vary from person to person and from source to source. A few of the hormones racing through your body affect the location of fat (cortisol directs it to the abdomen, for example) as well as your sex. (Women tend to have a 'donut' or bigger legs, men tend to have bigger bellies.) I don't know enough on the s... | [
"BULLET::::- Belly Kid (voiced by Zachary Gordon) – A kid who has a big belly. He was first ashamed of it, but Uncle Grandpa taught him the best features of having a big belly. He appeared in \"Belly Bros\".\n",
"Mr. Skinny is the 35th book in the \"Mr. Men\" series by Roger Hargreaves. Mr. Skinny lives in Fatlan... |
why does windows 10 take over 2 gb of ram to sit there doing nothing, while windows 95 needed less than 0.004 gb? | 1. It's not sitting there doing nothing. There's tons of stuff running in the background- updaters, anti-virus, Cortana, and more.
2. It doesn't actually need a full 2GB. But RAM that's not being used is just wasted, so it will load extra things into memory to speed up the computer if you have more RAM than you need. | [
"Windows 95 may fail to boot on computers with more than approximately 480 MB of memory. In such a case, reducing the file cache size or the size of video memory can help. The theoretical maximum according to Microsoft is 2 GB.\n",
"All 32-bit editions of Windows Vista, excluding the Starter edition, support up t... |
does the united states government heavily regulate media outlets? | No. The concept of [prior restraint](_URL_0_) is almost completely foreign to the US legal system.
Now, the government can always *ask* an outlet not to run a story, or at least to delay it, and sometimes the network or newspaper will oblige. But it's almost impossible to legally prevent a US newspaper or television n... | [
"Although the government censors the electronic media through the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), which is responsible for monitoring and regulating broadcast media, there's no established proof towards Government's control of the media. Radio stations remain susceptible to attacks by political groups. For ... |
what is a name server, what is a network domain, and how are the two related? | So a name server is like a telephone book, it takes the name of a website and converts that information into a usable IP address which is an internet protocol series of numbers like 8.8.8.8 which is used in this case to connect to _URL_0_ | [
"An example of a name server is the server component of the Domain Name System (DNS), one of the two principal namespaces of the Internet. The most important function of DNS servers is the translation (resolution) of human-memorable domain names and hostnames into the corresponding numeric Internet Protocol (IP) ad... |
how can long water fasting periods be healthy? | That is insanely unhealthy. I had a friend one time do a 40 day fast, did it more for some personal factors, not weight loss. He discussed it with his doctor and took the proper precautions and he did it.
Fasting should **never** be a method of weight loss. His obesity will simply complicate things... Terrible idea. | [
"There is no scientific evidence that prolonged fasting provides any significant health benefits. Negative health complications from long term fasting include arthritis, abdominal cramp and orthostatic hypotension.\n",
"Understanding the potential adverse effects of intermittent fasting is limited by an inadequat... |
How dependent is oceanic life on phytoplankton? Not just fish, but mammals and all life forms that live off or in the ocean? | [Extremeophiles](_URL_0_) would be okay. | [
"Phytoplankton serve as the base of the aquatic food web, providing an essential ecological function for all aquatic life. Under future conditions of anthropogenic warming and ocean acidification, changes in phytoplankton mortality may be significant. One of the many food chains in the ocean – remarkable due to the... |
why us telecos still use cdma technology, when majority of the world uses gsm for the communication? | The main reasons are a matter of timing, corporate greed and legacy.
Back when the US networks where starting to form, the switch from analogue to digital cellular technology was also happening and CDMA had some interesting advantages over GSM.
One of the most appealing features at the time (And still continues to be... | [
"CDMA or \"code division multiple access\" is a digital radio system that transmits streams of bits (PN codes). CDMA permits several radios to share the same frequencies. Unlike TDMA \"time division multiple access\", a competing system used in 2G GSM, all radios can be active all the time, because network capacity... |
Jesus Christ and John the Baptist - Bibical Scholars wanted | The association of Jesus with John is more or less universally accepted. There are a number of clues.
First is the baptism. John offered baptism for the remission of sin, a fact that caused the last three evangelists apparent embarrassment. Matthew and Luke have John denigrate himself at the event. John goes a step... | [
"Consequently, his work has a refreshing lack of negative presuppositions. As with his teacher C. H. Dodd, he was adamant that the gospels were reliable witnesses not only to the theology of the early church but to the theology of Jesus himself. His claim in particular that Jesus's friction with the Pharisees refle... |
what is the difference between relative humidity and dew point? | They are related in that they are both measures of the amount of water in the air.
Relative humidity compares how much water vapor is in the air to how much water vapor the air could possibly hold at the current temperature. It is a measure of how saturated the air is compared to how saturated it could be.
Dew point... | [
"A high relative humidity implies that the dew point is closer to the current air temperature. A relative humidity of 100% indicates the dew point is equal to the current temperature and that the air is maximally saturated with water. When the moisture content remains constant and temperature increases, relative hu... |
How did the Roman aristocracy treat/view plebeians? Were they treated differently at different points in the republic? | Much of the historical narrative that we have for the early Republic is dominated by the so-called struggle of the orders. This was sort of a civil rights campaign by the plebeians for equal rights. At this stage the patricians were a handful of established aristocratic families, and the plebeians were everyone else. A... | [
"Roman society is largely viewed as hierarchical, with slaves (\"servi\") at the bottom, freedmen (\"liberti\") above them, and free-born citizens (\"cives\") at the top. Free citizens were themselves also divided by class. The broadest, and earliest, division was between the patricians, who could trace their ances... |
why are governments post-actively banning the filming of slaughter house cruelty instead of pro-actively following animal abuse laws? | I don't know where the government is specifically making it illegal to film that - it already is based on normal privacy and employment law. If you trespass onto a private property to film, that's illegal. And if you gain employment there to film secretly, you've committed fraud - and you've probably violated a claus... | [
"Animal cruelty such as soring, which is illegal, sometimes occurs on farms and ranches, as does lawful but cruel treatment such as livestock branding. Since Ag-gag laws prohibit video or photographic documentation of farm activities, these practices have been documented by secret photography taken by whistleblower... |
Can anyone recommend any books or articles on ancient cultures and sharks? | This article might not quite fit the bill -- it's not specifically situated in an ancient period -- but it does do a good job of exploring the place of sharks in Hawaiian religion and culture.
Goldberg-Hiller, Jonathan, and Noenoe K. Silva. “Sharks and Pigs: Animating Hawaiian Sovereignty against the Anthropological M... | [
"Among the most ancient and primitive sharks is \"Cladoselache\", from about 370 million years ago, which has been found within Paleozoic strata in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. At that point in Earth's history these rocks made up the soft bottom sediments of a large, shallow ocean, which stretched across much of ... |
how do recycling plants process liquids? | Yay! Something I can finally answer!
I work as a chemist at a waste disposal facility. At our plant we sort liquids into various catergories depending on what we think is in the containers.
These containers are then shipped off to a machine which essentially crushes all the liquid out of the containers making cubes o... | [
"Recycling plants such as those at Kaybob, West Whitecourt and Crossfield produced liquids-rich gas from \"retrograde condensation\" reservoirs. They stripped condensate and natural gas liquids and sulfer (which they alternately stored in blocks or sold, depending on demand and price), then re-injected the dry gas ... |
why do we feel the weird banging in our body when listening to loud live music | Sound is pressure waves moving through the air that vibrate your eardrums.
Your ribcage doesn't have much that is solid behind it to stop it vibrating to large, low frquency pressure waves. | [
"When exposed to a multitude of sounds from several different sources, sensory overload may occur. This overstimulation can result in general fatigue and loss of sensation in the ear. The associated mechanisms are explained in further detail down below. Sensory overload usually occurs with environmental stimuli and... |
Kingdom of Sardinia's place in Italian Unification in the nineteenth century | Well, there is no clean cut explanation.
Historically the Duchy of Savoia (mainly centered in Piedmont, capital Turin), was the more expansionist Italian state from the late seventeenth century onward.
The dukes played an active role in all the European wars of the period, shifting their alliance between France and A... | [
"In December 1859, the Grand Duchy was joined to the Duchies of Modena and Parma to form the United Provinces of Central Italy, which were annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia a few months later. On 22 March 1860, after a referendum that voted overwhelmingly (95%) in favour of a union with Sardinia; Tuscany was forma... |
Do we know of any chants that galley sailors would sing while they rowed? | It's unlikely that they sung - that would not be conducive to rowing, which is physically tiring. It has been theorised that they may have hummed, which is less tiring, but there is no substantial proof of this. [A reconstructed trireme was tested using various means of synchronisation - humming was reportedly effectiv... | [
"As a rule, the chantey in its entirety possesses neither rhyme nor reason; nevertheless, it is admirably fitted for sailors' work. Each of these sea-songs has a few stock verses or phrases to begin with, but after these are sung, the soloist must improvise, and it is principally his skill in this direction that ma... |
Why do certain musical scales sound happy, scary , eerie, etc? | i am not a scientist, but a reasonably educated musician.
the associations with scales is largely cultural. minor scales are not sad in all cultures. however, minor scales, because of how the notes compare to the harmonic series, tend to resolve downward to structural pitches rather than upward, which accounts for a ... | [
"What does music using a Bohlen–Pierce scale sound like, aesthetically? Dave Benson suggests it helps to use only sounds with only odd harmonics, including clarinets or synthesized tones, but argues that because \"some of the intervals sound a bit like intervals in [the more familiar] twelve-tone scale, but badly o... |
Is depression more frequent amongst people in developed countries? | A [2011 study](_URL_1_) reported:
> On average, the estimated lifetime prevalence [of depression] was **higher in high-income (14.6%) than low- to middle-income (11.1%) countries** (t = 5.7, P < 0.001). Indeed, the four lowest lifetime prevalence estimates ( < 10%) were in low- to middle-income countries (India, M... | [
"Depression is a major cause of morbidity worldwide, as the epidemiology has shown. Lifetime prevalence estimates vary widely, from 3% in Japan to 17% in the US. Epidemiological data shows higher rates of depression in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and America than in other countries. Among the 10 count... |
what is more dangerous for the human body. high ac or dc and why? | The biggest advantage to AC is that it fluctuates the level, which gives you more of a chance of disconnecting from it. DC will lock your muscles and keep you from letting go. | [
"The minimum current a human can feel depends on the current type (AC or DC) as well as frequency for AC. A person can feel at least 1 mA (rms) of AC at 60 Hz, while at least 5 mA for DC. At around 10 mA, AC current passing through the arm of a human can cause powerful muscle contractions; the victim is unable to v... |
How do changes in Earth's global temperature caused by Milankovitch cyclicity compare to other climate change sources (anthropogenic and other)? | [This page at skeptialscience](_URL_0_) discusses Milankovitch Cycles and cites the variation of solar forcing due to orbital eccentricity as ~0.45 W/m^2. Current estimates of anthropogenic alterations to the radiative balance ([see IPCC](_URL_1_)) are about 1.6 W/m^2. So variations in forcing due to Milankovitch Cyc... | [
"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), \"warming of the climate system is unequivocal\", and the global-mean temperature has increased by over the last century. This report also states that \"most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very... |
Washing clothing that was not color fast. | To cover the basics first, dyes before modern dyes were color fast and dry cleaning did exist. One of the most popular dyes still today is indigo. Interestingly it doesn't dissolve in water nor adhere to fabric, so how does this work? You need an alkaline solution such as lye, ammonia, or urine in order to dissolve the... | [
"Washing clothes was not easy. Washing powder was eventually replaced by ashes or by using infusions of plants such as soapwort, which lathers like soap. Ivy was used for black garments, worn by the numerous women in mourning.\n",
"Clothes washer technology developed as a way to reduce the manual labor spent, pro... |
Suppose we had working fusion reactors with the output and specifications we're working towards? What implications would it realistically have for other energy sources and humanity in general in terms of the other problems we have? | Hi! I'm a fusion researcher (tokamaks, specifically). These are some interesting questions. Let's see:
> I mean based on what size we predict them to be, amount of output per generator etc.
Some of the other replies have already talked about ITER for a sense of scale. An actual power-plant tokamak (a concept cal... | [
"Fusion reactors generally use hydrogen isotopes such as deuterium and tritium, which react more easily than hydrogen. The designs aim to heat their fuel to tens of millions of degrees using a wide variety of methods. The major challenge in realising fusion power is to engineer a system that can confine the plasma ... |
How have norms against attacking civilian populations developed and been applied by Western countries post WW2? | > The more specific question is: what instances after 1945 are there of Western militaries attacking civilian targets with the explicit or implicit aim of coercing the civilian population?
Well, for one, the Korean War which began in 1950 saw the US use B-29 bombers to bomb Pyongyang and other cities in North Korea. ... | [
"Technologically advanced countries can generally select their targets in such a way as to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties. This can fall by the wayside, however, during unrestricted warfare.\n",
"The exception towards the otherwise ferocious application of military justice was the widespread t... |
how do enzymes actually lower activation energy? | The reactants don't immediately form products, they'll form a transition state first, and the energy needed to form it corresponds to the activation energy.
A catalyst (including enzymes) will make a transition state available which is lower in energy than the one which is used without the catalyst. Therefore the acti... | [
"Like all catalysts, enzymes increase the reaction rate by lowering its activation energy. Some enzymes can make their conversion of substrate to product occur many millions of times faster. An extreme example is orotidine 5'-phosphate decarboxylase, which allows a reaction that would otherwise take millions of yea... |
why do some people believe ai (artificial intelligence) will take over the world | In theory, it might be possible for an AI to improve itself, becoming smarter faster than humans can keep up with it. It could become capable of doing anything with any computer system in the world (that isn't physically isolated), such as taking control of power grids, banks, dams, satellites, military hardware, etc ... | [
"Anders Sandberg has also elaborated on this scenario, addressing various common counter-arguments. AI researcher Hugo de Garis suggests that artificial intelligences may simply eliminate the human race for access to scarce resources, and humans would be powerless to stop them. Alternatively, AIs developed under ev... |
how is normalizing relations with cuba going to affect the us economy? | It will have some positive effect, but I think you're right that it's not going to be hugely impacting one way or the other.
Lifting the embargo will take quite some time because our laws will have to change. There's no clear agreement that lifting the embargo is a good thing, and our lawmakers seem to be having a har... | [
"Economic hardships occurred in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela as oil and commodity prices declined and according to analysts because of their unsustainable policies. In regard to the economic situation, President of Inter-American Dialogue Michael Shifter stated: \"The United States–Cuban Thaw o... |
Is there a correlation between race and intelligence? | It turns out that there is an arguably large cultural bias on many of these intelligence tests, combined with confounding factors like low socioeconomic status (poverty) and minority status in the US. For this one specific test, there may not be doubt that there are differences (on average) between ethnicity groups - t... | [
"The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century. There remains some debate as to whether and to what extent differences in intelligence test scores reflect environmental factors as op... |
why does baking soda help get rid if mouth ulcers? | Baking soda is a base and often ulcers are irritated by the acidity of our saliva. So if you the baking soda with the saliva create a neutral environment for the sore to heal. | [
"Classical dietary and oral hygiene techniques of reducing sugar content and eating frequency, and removing plaque by effective brushing, are still very important practices for treatment as well as prevention. Also, biochemical techniques can be used to treat the bacterial infection directly. Agents such as chlorhe... |
What was Lenin's real nature in comparison to Trotsky or Stalin? | I would absolutely agree with the first part of his thesis: that Lenin was a brutal dictator and that the myth of Lenin being a good Bolshevik and Stalin being a bad Bolshevik is unsupported by evidence. Lenin clearly wanted to provoke a civil war in Russia, as documents uncovered since the opening of the Russian archi... | [
"Lenin favoured Stalin until, too late, their fallout in 1923 really opened Lenin's eyes to the danger of a future with Stalin in power. Trotsky failed to form alliances and was socially inept and never fully accepted in the Bolshevik party leadership, which he had joined late. However, Stalin, contrary to his oppo... |
Tuesday Trivia | Never Done: Women’s Work in History | Is today’s theme just an excuse for me to post a long winded ramble about my hobbies? Of course not.
But it’s time to talk about knitting and its fantastically understudied history. Knitting gets very little attention from “real” historians, its history and folklore was only passed orally for a long time, and today it... | [
"Makers: Women Who Make America is a 2013 documentary film about the struggle for women's equality in the United States during the last five decades of the 20th century. The film was narrated by Meryl Streep and distributed by the Public Broadcasting Service as a three-part, three-hour television documentary in Feb... |
why do commercial airplanes board passengers using the seemingly inefficient "zone" system, rather than filling the seats chronologically? | There was research done into the fastest way to board a plane. The result? Completely random boarding.
Imagine passengers get in line to board the plane in perfect order from rear to front. The first person in line reaches the back of the plane and proceeds to load his bags in the bins. The passenger behind him must w... | [
"Since airlines often fly multi-leg flights, and since no-show rates vary by segment, competition for the seat has to take in the spatial dynamics of the product. Someone trying to fly A-B is competing with people trying to fly A-C through city B on the same aircraft. This is one reason airlines use yield managemen... |
If the Earth is shaped like a pear does that mean atmospheric pressure at sea-level differs depending on latitude? | Where have you heard that the earth is shaped like a pear? | [
"The pressure of the atmosphere is maximum at sea level and decreases with altitude. This is because the atmosphere is very nearly in hydrostatic equilibrium so that the pressure is equal to the weight of air above a given point. The change in pressure with altitude can be equated to the density with the hydrostati... |
Henry VIII jousting in The Tudors | Jousting armour typically had excellent neck and forearm protection. As you note, it would be very dangerous to not have it.
One example of one of Henry's jousting armours:
_URL_4_
I believe this is the armour he wore for jousting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold tournament.
Jousting armours could be field armours... | [
"King Henry took part in the jousting, sporting Diane's black-and-white colours. He defeated the dukes of Guise and Nemours, but the young Gabriel, comte de Montgomery, knocked him half out of the saddle. Henry insisted on riding against Montgomery again, and this time, Montgomery's lance shattered in the king's fa... |
where do nicknames for enemy soldiers come from? | > In the US the bad guys are "Charlie"
No they aren't. That specifically refers to Vietnamese forces in the Vietnam war. The Vietcong (VC) is "Victor Charlie" in radio speak. That's where the charlie comes from.
> in the UK they are "Jerry"
Again, it refers to just Germans. Not just any aggressor. Jerry is just an... | [
"Giving nicknames to soldiers has long been a feature of military life. Private David McCook of Company B was referred to as the \"Skillet Wagon\" by men of other companies, because they were always borrowing his tin pans, buckets or cans for cooking. Private Matthews was called \"Marker\", while others sported suc... |
what exactly fills up when computer memory is full? | Imagine your device as a blank notebook. Now start writing all the 'data' or 'songs' down in the notebook. When it's full, so is your device. To put it as simply as possible. As far as the physical size of the device is concerned I'll go back to the notebook. As we get better at making notebooks we can make them with s... | [
"Although core memory is obsolete, computer memory is still sometimes called \"core\" even though it's made of semiconductors, particularly by people who had worked with machines having real core memory. And the files that result from saving the entire contents of memory to disk for debugging purposes when a major ... |
why do we use radioactive metals in nuclear power plants? | We don't choose uranium and plutonium because they are radioactive. We choose uranium and plutonium because they happen to split easily when they absorb a neutron.....AND produce more neutrons when they split to continue the reaction on their own.
You can split just about any element, but most atoms will require you t... | [
"Natural radioactive elements are present in very low concentrations in Earth's crust, and are brought to the surface through human activities such as oil and gas exploration or mining, and through natural processes like leakage of radon gas to the atmosphere or through dissolution in ground water. Another example ... |
If we ever get to do brain transplants, what would happen? Would the person with the new brain have the new brain old memories, or would all memories be forgotten? | **IF** it were ever possible, and that is a big if, you, and every conscious aspect of you, would be transported with your brain. Your mind is the product of the pink squish stuff between your ears. Move the squishy stuff around, and the mind follows.
Now, there would be some things that would probably not be transpor... | [
"He proposes that every memory, skill, and passion is encoded somehow in the connectome. And when the brain is not wired properly it can result in mental disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's. Understanding the human connectome may not only help cure such diseases with treatments but... |
I can't think of the name of painting, nor the artist, that I can write a perfect paper about. | I think /r/tipofmytongue might be a better place for this. | [
"\"I see the painter as an instrument, a function, a conduit of the essential unity. My work is metaphor, never simile. I make no distinction between subject and object, inner and outer, maker and viewer. I am continually surprised by what arises on the canvas or the paper. I am not a 'creator'. How can one create ... |
What reasons made Justinian’s conquest of Italy take so long? | The conquest of Italy started off well in 536 with the quick taking over of Sicily and then Naples after some resistance. Once Belisarius reached Rome however things slowed down. He entered the city unopposed but there were significant challenges in holding they city. Food first of all there was the issue of feeding ... | [
"After taking areas occupied by the Vandals in North Africa, Justinian decide to retake Italy as an ambitious attempt to recover the lost provinces in the West. The re-conquests marked an end to over 150 years of accommodationist policies with tribal invaders. His first target was Sicily (known as the Gothic War (5... |
How is it that different dogs breeds have specific personality types? | Selective breeding by humans. If you want a good hunter then you breed the best hunters together, if you want a guard dog then you breed the animals that are more territorial. If you want a lap dog then you need to select the dogs that are less stressed by being around new and different humans. humans select the breedi... | [
"Dog types are broad categories of dogs based on form, function or style of work, lineage, or appearance. In contrast, modern \"dog breeds\" are particular breed standards, sharing a common set of heritable characteristics, determined by the kennel club that recognizes the breed.\n",
"Dog types are broad categori... |
How can animals sense danger and humans can't? | Animals have adapted to react to a variety of sensory inputs that are associated with weather changes or imminent disasters.
Dogs can sense the pressure and humidity changes in the air with an impending rainstorm. You'd always hear old people say "I can feel a storm coming, I feel it in my bones." They're feeling pres... | [
"In many areas, adventurers may encounter large predatory animals such as bears or cougars. These animals rarely seek out humans as food, but they will attack under some conditions. Some hazardous encounters occur when animals raid human property for food. Additionally, if travelers come upon an unsuspecting animal... |
why are you supposed to always add acid to water and never water to acid? | If water splashes up at you, it's not a big deal. If acid splashes up at you, it can be. | [
"Because the hydration reaction of sulfuric acid is highly exothermic, dilution should always be performed by adding the acid to the water rather than the water to the acid. Because the reaction is in an equilibrium that favors the rapid protonation of water, addition of acid to the water ensures that the \"acid\" ... |
I know that the Civil War armies were said to make a miserable show to Europeans, but how did the Continental Army perform by European standards? | Great question!
The answer to this will depend firstly on when in the way you're asking about, and secondly on what scale you grade an army's capabilities on.
At the start of the war, the Continental Army was, by almost every standard, terrible. The army that amassed outside Boston and later fought around New York C... | [
"Increasing military efficiency, morale, and discipline improved the army's well-being with better supply of food and arms. The Continental Army had been hindered in battle because units administered training from a variety of field manuals, making coordinated battle movements awkward and difficult. They struggled ... |
what is a cocaine analogue? | It means it acts on the e.g. brain receptors or whatever it is you're interested in, in the same way as cocaine does without all the other effects. Usually such analogues either take cocaine as a starting point for their synthesis or have a synthetic component very similar to part of the cocaine molecule. | [
"In the United States, cocaine is a Schedule II drug under the Controlled Substances Act, indicating that it has a high abuse potential but also carries a medicinal purpose. Under the Controlled Substances Act, crack and cocaine are considered the same drug.\n",
"This is a list of cocaine analogues. A cocaine ana... |
What are the actual bytes made up of in a computer? | That depends entirely on the type of medium. On a mechanical harddrive, those bits are magnetic. In RAM or within the CPU, they're represented by electrical currents or charges. Data could be written to paper as visual or physical data if someone chose to. The list goes on. Ultimately, "bits" are just an abstraction of... | [
"The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures.\n",
"A \"byte\" is a bit str... |
Is the ethical debate over killing and farming animals only a recent thing? Or did it span back further? | Although there are some of the probably older traditions around the world (like ancient Indian jainism, which advocated a path of non-violence towards all living beings, animals and humans alike) I'll limit my answer to ancient Greek philosophy – field of my academical interest.
We'll start with Pythagoras (Samos, c. ... | [
"Another concern about the welfare of farm animals is the method of slaughter, especially ritual slaughter. While the killing of animals need not necessarily involve suffering, the general public considers that killing an animal reduces its welfare. This leads to further concerns about premature slaughtering such a... |
what led to the end of people's beliefs in mythology as a religion? | That never happened. The vast majority of religion today are based on a mythology. Abrahamic mythology is still very prevalent today as organized religions. The Garden of Eden isn't any different than Pandora's Box or Thor crossing the Bifröst. The religions around some mythology's simply died out as other religions c... | [
"Mor's comprehensive analysis of world mythologies traces the origin of ancient spiritual beliefs, ceremonies, and rituals as related to Women. She argues that the goddess-centered beliefs that dated from humanity's Paleolithic age were violently destroyed and replaced by war-like patriarchal cultures and religions... |
Why does gravitational potential start at zero and become infinitely negative? | Potential energy is relative, not absolute.
One way of saying it is that you define where your zero point is and that becomes your reference.
Another way of saying it is that the you are really looking for a potential energy **difference** (Delta-U). | [
"where \"G\" is the gravitational constant, and F is the gravitational force. The potential has units of energy per unit mass, e.g., J/kg in the MKS system. By convention, it is always negative where it is defined, and as \"x\" tends to infinity, it approaches zero.\n",
"As with all potential energies, only diffe... |
if nothing can exceed the speed of light, how can we measure something as being 10,000 light years away without it taking 20,000 years to measure? | If we were measuring the distance with something like a laser range finder, that would be true.
Obviously nobody measure the distance to such far away object be pointing a beam at them and waiting until it gets bounced back.
This method is actually used with close by objects like the moon where astronauts left some m... | [
"\"If one considers the vast size of the diameter KL, which according to me is some 24 thousand diameters of the Earth, one will acknowledge the extreme velocity of Light. For, supposing that KL is no more than 22 thousand of these diameters, it appears that being traversed in 22 minutes this makes the speed a thou... |
what happens to food when exposed to air that justifies having a "consume within x days of opening" date? | Air has bacteria in it. Smoothies are great environments for bacteria to live in. Once it's opened, the number of bacteria will rapidly become high enough to threaten your health (and the taste of the smoothie).
| [
"Once opened for consumption, the product is immediately exposed to atmospheric oxygen and floating dust particles containing bacteria and mold spores, and all protections from the preservation process are immediately lost. At room temperature, mold and bacteria growth resumes almost immediately, and warmer tempera... |
kernels (computing) | The kernel is the heart of an operating system. The most basic kernel does very few things. It manages and restricts access to memory, it manages processes and threads, it manages communication between processes, and controls access to the disks.
1) Memory access. In order to run more than one program at a time, yo... | [
"The kernel is a computer program that is the core of a computer's operating system, with complete control over everything in the system. On most systems, it is one of the first programs loaded on start-up (after the bootloader). It handles the rest of start-up as well as input/output requests from software, transl... |
When did people start calling themselves "Italians" and "Germans"? | [This question came up about a year ago](_URL_0_), although it's a good question that can certainly merit more discussion.
For Italy, the short answer is, "When Napoleon crowned himself King of Italy." Prior to then the concept of an Italian language and culture was solely the purview of a small intellectual elite, wh... | [
"The English term \"Germans\" is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term \"Germani\" used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced \"Dutch\" and \"Almains\", the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century.\n",
"While in most Romance languages the ... |
In the second world war, was there ever an incident of a ship being captured by one side, then pressed into service for use against its former operator? | The IJN used several ships captured from the British, Dutch and Americans as convoy escorts. These weren't captured in the traditional sense - they were never boarded. Instead, they were scuttled in port by their former owners when capture of the port seemed likely. The Japanese would later salvage them, and press them... | [
"BULLET::::- While searching for survivors during the aftermath of Battle off Texel, the was seized, even though war conventions stipulated for navies never to do so. The Royal Navy justified the seizure as coded radio messages were monitored coming from the ship, the ship's wireless was destroyed, and the crew was... |
If one were to throw a magnet at a metal object, would it accelerate before it hits the metal? If so, where does the change in kinetic energy come from? | > would it accelerate before it hits the metal?
Yes, it would. The extra kinetic energy comes the potential energy that was stored in the system due to two magnets between positioned at a distance from each other. | [
"During spot welding, the large electric current induces a large magnetic field, and the electric current and magnetic field interact with each other to produce a large magnetic force field too, which drives the melted metal to move very fast at a velocity up to 0.5 m/s. As such, the heat energy distribution in spo... |
according to data we have discovered 14% of all organisms on earth. where does this number come from, if the other 86% of haven't been discovered yet (and therefore we don't know if they exist)? | Statistics like this are created based on looking at what is identified within a group.
Perhaps an easier example.
Let's say people are inspecting defects in a product. Someone in charge intentionally adds 10 defects. Then they watch and see what comes through the line, what is discovered by the process. If people... | [
"Although the number of Earth's catalogued species of lifeforms is between 1.2 million and 2 million, the total number of species in the planet is uncertain. Estimates range from 8 million to 100 million, with a more narrow range between 10 and 14 million, but it may be as high as 1 trillion (with only one-thousand... |
How do I calculate laser divergence? | The units of the result are [radians](_URL_0_).
This is a unit that is actually dimensionless. That is, an angle of one radian is an angle that forms a circular arc with a length equal to its radius. Meaning, radians measure the ratio between two lengths, thus it is not actually a unit at all.
Radians are used in mo... | [
"The beam divergence of a laser beam is a measure for how fast the beam expands far from the beam waist. It is usually defined as the derivative of the beam radius with respect to the axial position in the far field, i.e., in a distance from the beam waist which is much larger than the Rayleigh length. This definit... |
how do showers pump water to the highest floor? | I would say that it mostly depends on your location. A lot of places such as New York City have water towers placed on top of the buildings that feed via gravity.
A lot of small towns where you see large water towers up high above the town essentially do the same thing.
Then there will of course be situations where gra... | [
"Rainwater is harvested and channelled down the centre of the building, flowing through its bowl-shaped roof into a reflecting pond at the lowest level of the building. The rainwater is then recycled for use in the building's restrooms.\n",
"The basement also had a \"hydrozone water bottling unit\" that would fil... |
Do Large Lakes Serves as Natural Storm Breaks? | Yes, you're correct. **Lake modified air** can have an impact on these types of storms. Mostly in a way directly [opposite to this](_URL_2_) in the winter. In the spring/summer the lake is relatively cool compared to the land and induces subsidence (sinking air) that can inhibit thunderstorms which need [heat and risi... | [
"Sudden storms can whip up dangerous, steep waves on the surface of the lake. Their average height is , and their average length is . A prevailing north-easterly or south-westerly wind can push the water from the eastern basin of the lake (to the east of the Tihany Peninsula) into the western basin or on the contra... |
During the Carboniferous, O2 levels were 163% modern levels while CO2 was 800ppm. With so many plants, why were CO2 levels so high relative to modern levels? | Are you sure you mean the Carboniferous here? That period actually saw a huge drop in global CO2 level, indicated by "C" [in this graph](_URL_0_) around 300-350 million years ago.
Those pCO2 levels had been steadily falling since the Cambrian period, but likely saw an extra large drop during the drop as the climate t... | [
"The Carboniferous spans from 359 million to 299 million years ago. During this period, average global temperatures were exceedingly high: the early Carboniferous averaged at about 20 degrees Celsius (but cooled to 10 degrees during the Middle Carboniferous). Tropical swamps dominated the Earth, and the large amoun... |
What are the neurological differences, if any, between reading a physical book and reading online? | I'm not entirely sure about the standards of this journal, but it does have citations. I'll try to sum up the author's major points that are at least supported by studies:
1) Reading online requires much more "cognitive space" for a number of different reasons. The use of hyperlinks embedded within texts leads to more... | [
"BULLET::::- Shankweiler, D. P., Mencl, W. E., Braze, D., Tabor, W., Pugh, K. R., & Fulbright, R. K. (2008). Reading differences and brain: Cortical integration of speech and print in sentence processing varies with reader skill. \"Developmental Neuropsychology\", 33, 745-776.\n",
"Various approaches to reading p... |
Does Mars have enough mass to support a habitable atmosphere? | Titan, a moon of Saturn, has about 1/5 the mass of Mars but holds an atmosphere with 1.5 times Earth's atmospheric pressure. So theoretically yes.
One big difference is that Titan is much colder than Mars and nowhere near habitable, but it turns out even with Mars's higher temp, it should be able to hold onto a signi... | [
"According to scientists, Mars exists on the outer edge of the habitable zone, a region of the Solar System where liquid water on the surface may be supported if concentrated greenhouse gases could increase the atmospheric pressure. The lack of both a magnetic field and geologic activity on Mars may be a result of ... |
the american game-show 'jeopardy' | Standard quiz/trivia show. The players' scores are in "jeopardy" throughout because wrong answers subtract from their total. Another gimmick is that the clues are provided in the form of a statement and the participants have to respond in the form of a question.
3 rounds: Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy, and Final Jeopardy
... | [
"Jeopardy! is an American media franchise that began with a television quiz show created by Merv Griffin, in which contestants are presented with clues in the form of answers, and must phrase their responses in the form of a question. Over the years, the show has expanded its brand beyond television and been licens... |
what is the premise of the 'shadow' that carl jung wrote about? | The idea is that we look at ourselves in a good light, and this casts a shadow that hides from us our true selves.
He believed that we had to face that shadow in our journey to self realization. Facing that shadow means recognizing that all the worst parts of humanity are in you too. If you were born in Nazi Germany t... | [
"Carl Jung stated the shadow to be the unknown dark side of the personality. According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. Jung writes that if these pr... |
how can the suns rays make you feel mentally/psychologically better? | Mostly your brain (pineal gland) produces two kinds of "drugs" (hormones): one for the day (serotonin) and one for the night (melatonin). This is part of your inner clock. Serotonin keeps you awake and melatonin makes you sleepy. Light, specially sunlight, stops the production of melatonin. So if you would stay in dark... | [
"If the Sun is strong and favourably placed the soul will feel strong, one may make efforts for self-realisation, live splendidly, travel far and wide, engage in strife or hostility that yields good dividend, rise in position and status, gains through trading, and benefits from father or father will benefit. If the... |
how can people take old videos and upscale them to 4k? | That video was recorded in 1985 on film from my understanding.
Film itself has a resolution way beyond 4K depending on the grain size. As long as the film is preserved, it can be re-scanned using a higher resolution scanner.
We will probably get an 8K cut in a few years. | [
"On December 25, 2013, YouTube added a \"2160p 4K\" option to its videoplayer. Previously, a visitor had to select the \"original\" setting in the video quality menu to watch a video in 4K resolution. With the new setting, YouTube users can much more easily identify and play 4K videos.\n",
"Videos can be viewed b... |
why does water and air feel different at the same temp? full question below. | Transmission of energy. Water holds and absorbs tremendously more energy than air, that's why it takes so much more airflow volume to create the same cooling effect as water. | [
"If formula_7, formula_8 is positive though generally much smaller than formula_4. Because water is much more dense than air, the displacement of water by air from a surface gravity wave feels nearly the full force of gravity (formula_10). The displacement of the thermocline of a lake, which separates warmer surfac... |
The Great Arab Revolt | I'll try to answer your question, sorry if it doesn't satisfy you.
First, despite its name (and what was believed to be by Arab and Turkish nationalist historiography), there was no general "Arab Revolt" against the Ottoman Empire. Firstly, Husayn, the leader of the revolt, was not an Arab nationalist, and he did not ... | [
"The Arab Revolt (, ; ) or Great Arab Revolt (, ) was a military uprising of Arab forces against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. On the basis of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, an agreement between the British government and Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, the revolt was offic... |
A poor family living in the woods circa 1500; how did they find husbands and wives for their children? | The average woods-living family would not have been quite as isolated as the family in that movie. Remember that they were explicitly ostracized and thus unable to associate with society. But the average family would have had plenty of opportunities to meet new people.
While you did specify time and place, the answer... | [
"Families of the woodsmen produced their own food through gardening and hunting, as well as their own clothing. In some cases, their sewing of intricate laces became well known outside the forest, resulting in additional family income. Because of their isolation from society in general, woodsmen and their families ... |
What is the largest molecule, and how is a single molecule defined (as opposed to an amount of a certain compound)? | My guess (depending on your definition) would be some sort of plastic, seeing as how they basically form long chains from repeating units (*monomers* forming *polymers*). For plastics, this size can either be defined as the number of individual units (monomers) incorporated into the chain, or by the weight of the entir... | [
"Usage of the term to describe large molecules varies among the disciplines. For example, while biology refers to macromolecules as the four large molecules comprising living things, in chemistry, the term may refer to aggregates of two or more molecules held together by intermolecular forces rather than covalent b... |
why does some movie theaters get to show a movie a day or two before it's actual release date? | They're called advanced screenings, and they have several purposes.
They're leveraged for publicity and marketing for many shows. A private screening for film critics means getting reviews out early. Including a few VIPs and well-connected people can build hype. A few people describing how they saw the show early and ... | [
"This list charts films the 50 biggest worldwide openings. Since films do not open on Fridays in many markets, the 'opening' is taken to be the gross between the first day of release and the first Sunday following the movie's release. Figures prior to the year 2002 are not available. Country-by-country variations i... |
how are damages caused by disasters calculated and reported? how accurate should i expect them to be? | I have done damage calculations for FEMA for flooding in two scenarios:
While a flooding event is going on, we take live data from water gauges, run them through models, estimate the size of flood waters, then calculate the number of structures (data quality varies) that intersect with the estimated flood extent, and ... | [
"Disasters take a variety of forms to include earthquakes, tsunamis or regular structure fires. That a disaster or emergency is not large scale in terms of population or acreage impacted or duration does not make it any less of a disaster for the people or area impacted and much can be learned about preparedness fr... |
how does social science work? | Social science is very much a soft science. It is a science, in that the Scientific Method is applied to try and find facts. However, there is an inherent, recognized difficulty in accurately measuring and testing in these fields.
Philosophy itself, while under the umbrella of social science, is not necessarily a scie... | [
"Social science – study of the social world constructed between humans. The social sciences usually limit themselves to an anthropomorphically centric view of these interactions with minimal emphasis on the inadvertent impact of social human behavior on the external environment (physical, biological, ecological, et... |
How far has the crown gone through the royal family tree to find the closest living relative? | Depends how you look at the War of the Roses. In terms of the most distantly related successor, Henry VII was the third cousin once removed of Richard III. However, this took place in the Wars of the Roses when there were often several competing claims, and Henry claimed that Richard was never the rightful king in the ... | [
"The following is a simplified family tree of the English and British monarchs. For a more detailed chart see: English monarchs family tree (from Alfred the Great till Queen Elizabeth I); and the British monarchs' family tree for the period from Elizabeth's successor, James I, until the present day. For kings befor... |
Did the 'Cult of the Feathered Serpent' play a significant role in the end of Mayan civilization? | No, not really.
The "Feathered Serpent Cult" is a name that archaeologists and iconographers have given to a pan-Mesoamerican explosion of imagery associated with Quetzalcoatl/Kukulkan dating to the Epiclassic period (around the time of the Classic Maya collapse). It appears to be a larger religious movement associate... | [
"During the epi-classic period, a dramatic spread of feathered serpent iconography is evidenced throughout Mesoamerica, and during this period begins to figure prominently at sites such as Chichén Itzá, El Tajín, and throughout the Maya area. Colonial documentary sources from the Maya area frequently speak of the a... |
why, despite the various laws against it, is vigilantism wrong? | Per the Constitution, accused criminals have a lot of rights. They need to be investigated by the police, tried by the DA, represented by a lawyer, found guilty by a jury, and sentenced by a judge. There's a lot of people involved in that, who should be making sure everyone else is doing their job correctly, and afford... | [
"Antifragility is a property of systems that increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. It is a concept developed by Professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, \"Antifragile\", and in technical papers. As Taleb explains in his book... |
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