Split (2)

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On YouTube I can watch extremely detailed videos of ancient Roman battles that show what each section of the army did and at what time. How is this known, exactly? Was there just a scribe sitting on a hill recording the battle?	Well yes, there were always reporters for the [Novum Eburicum Tempora.](_URL_0_) But seriously, it is worth just looking at the source material for this. The reconstruction of Teutoberg is more complicated than most in part because batlefield archaeology has actually played a role in shaping our understanding of it,...	[ "Little is known about the actual battle from historical texts save from its context which has been well documented. Much of what is known including troop positions and movements has been gleaned from archaeological work at the site of the battle.\n", "The two main sources on the battle are the \"History of Rome\...
When surgeons "run the bowel" is there a specific strategy to how it's pulled out, and how it's put back in?	Mercifully, real intestines aren't completely loose--they're tethered by tissue, called mesentery, which keeps them in some degree of order. You can pull bowel out to an extent, but it's not like one big loose rope the way it sometimes looks in movies/TV. That said, bowel twisting on itself (volvulus) can still be an ...	[ "When the resection is complete, the surgeon has the option of immediately restoring the bowel, by stitching or stapling together both the cut ends (primary anastomosis), or creating a colostomy. Several factors are taken into account, including:\n", "Surgical procedures to lengthen dilated bowel include the Bian...
why doesn't a lightbulb act as a short circuit?	Well, it does, kinda. A light bulb has a very thin wire. You might think that filament is about a millimeter wide, but the filament is actually a coil of a coil of the actual wire. The wire is much finer than a hair. Pushing electric current through that wire is hard. So only a small amount of electric current can fl...	[ "Incandescent light bulbs consist of an air-tight glass enclosure (the envelope, or bulb) with a filament of tungsten wire inside the bulb, through which an electric current is passed. Contact wires and a base with two (or more) conductors provide electrical connections to the filament. Incandescent light bulbs usu...
why do some toothpastes produce a lot of foam and some produce non at all?	Sodium Lauryl Sulphate. It is a detergent. It produces foam which carries off debris you scrub off your teeth. It also tastes kinda like mint and blocks all your sweet receptors which causes your OJ to taste bitter.	[ "Foams consist of two phases, an aqueous phase and a gaseous (air) phase. Foams have been used in many forms in the history of cooking, for example: whipped cream, ice cream, cakes, meringue, soufflés, mousse and marshmallow. It has a unique light texture because of the tiny air bubbles and/or a different mouthfeel...
Is there a benefit to building aerodynamic Spaceships?	In a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) or close to any planet with an atmosphere, there is still a thin trace of gases. Sometimes it's called "residual atmosphere". For most practical purposes it's a vacuum: you can't breathe and water boils at room temperature, but it can still cause drag on vehicles moving at high speed. This is...	[ "The spaceship of the film is very obviously not aerodynamic as it is not made for planetary exploration. It flies through the cosmic void, not through air. In the void there is no resistance and therefore no need for aerodynamics. It is designed for only one purpose, says Nicolas Bazz, interstellar travel, as fast...
how did currency exchange rates form in the very beginning?	Countries often initially had their currencies locked to a precious metal (typically gold or silver). For example pound sterling (GBP) derives its name from when 20 shillings was literally a pound of sterling silver, under Anglo-saxon rule. These are pretty easily exchangeable because the international value of that co...	[ "The exchange rate has been linked to the US dollar since the 1950s. Several regimes were adopted including initially the conventional peg in the sixties, regular crawling peg in the seventies and the eighties and crawling bands in the nineties. Over that time period, there were several exchange rate markets includ...
How exactly does the rabies virus control human beings (stop them from drinking)?	Rabies infects neurones that control respiration and swallowing. There is an automatic cycle you usually don’t notice around breathing and swallowing. The rabies infection of the neurones controlling that cause it to become unreliable. An infected person starts to have trouble swallowing and the negative reinforcemen...	[ "After being taken up at the synaptic terminal or axon of the target neuron, the rabies virus is enveloped in a vesicle which is transported towards the cell body via axonal dynein. In the wildtype rabies virus, the virus will continue to replicate and spread throughout the central nervous system until it has syste...
why is nationalism bad?	Because it’s moved past nationalism, and into jingoism. Nationalism isn’t bad until it starts coming at the expense of others. Edit: had to double check definitions, and I was describing PATRIOTISM. I guess nationalism is defined as extreme patriotism coming at the expense of others.	[ "Nationalism is inherently divisive because it highlights perceived differences between people, emphasizing an individual's identification with their own nation. The idea is also potentially oppressive because it submerges individual identity within a national whole, and gives elites or political leaders potential ...
why is beef tenderloin so expensive?	[Here](_URL_0_) you have a chart showing where different beef cuts comes from. The more a muscle has worked in its lifetime the tougher the beef cut tends to become and the tenderloin hasn't done much work in compared to to the rest of the cow. You can serve it very rare and nice tenderloin will still almost fall apar...	[ "The tenderloin is the most tender cut of beef and is also arguably the most desirable and therefore the most expensive. The average steer or heifer provides no more than 500 grams of filet mignon. Because the muscle is not weight-bearing, it contains less connective tissue, which makes it tender. However, it is ge...
Hydrogen used as a energy storage system?	I'm not an expert on hydrogen production, but I have looked at industrialised hydrogen production for future nuclear application. Assuming the same processes would be applied I can answer the question, but obviously my answer is based on nuclear rather than solar energy sources. The main problem seems to be that the ...	[ "Methods of hydrogen storage for subsequent use span many approaches including high pressures, cryogenics, and chemical compounds that reversibly release H upon heating. Underground hydrogen storage is useful to provide grid energy storage for intermittent energy sources, like wind power, as well as providing fuel ...
why do ships sink vertically?	Its only if the breach in hull is only on one end or another. So when water start to fill up the ship one side gets heavier and goes down first. If the breack in the hull was all along one of the boards the ship would tilt towards that side before sinking and not vertically	[ "Instability is caused by the centre of mass of the ship rising above the metacenter resulting in the ship tipping on its side or capsizing, which is often referred to as \"foundered\" or \"foundering\". This can lead to a sinking if the openings on the upper side are not watertight at the time of the capsize. To r...
basic beliefs of taoism	Taoism can be summed up pretty generally as it all focuses pretty much around nature and being a natural and forefilling person; Daoism (Taoism) 道統 (Daoism and Taoism are the same thing) - A way of life (in China may be referred to as a religion) - 'To go with the flow', be positive, to agree with most things, to enj...	[ "Taoism is a religious or philosophical tradition of Chinese origin which emphasizes living in harmony with the \"Tao\" (, literally \"Way\", also romanized as \"Dao\"). The \"Tao\" is a fundamental idea in most Chinese philosophical schools; in Taoism, however, it denotes the principle that is the source, pattern ...
Why aren't sunrises fiery colors too?	Not an expert, but I remember hearing a lecture about this. I'm not sure I'd characterize sunrises as less fiery or bland, but there are certain atmospheric changes that make sunrises and sunsets different. Firstly, there are some physiological changes that may contribute. Sunsets can darken the sky faster than our ...	[ "Sunset colors are typically more brilliant than sunrise colors, because the evening air contains more particles than morning air. Sometimes just before sunrise or after sunset a green flash can be seen.\n", "Near sunrise and sunset, most of the light we see comes in nearly tangent to the Earth's surface, so that...
how come when you crack your knuckles underwater, it is incredibly loud, but when you try and scream underwater, the sound is muffled to a whimper?	Water transmits sounds quite well, so if an action vibrates the water to make a sound, you'll be able to hear it clearly in the local area. However, sound does not cross mediums very well. When you're trying to talk (or scream) underwater, the sound is being generated by vibrating air in your vocal chords. When this hi...	[ "Most hydraulophones sound continuously for as long as a finger hole is blocked. However, the WaterHammer hydraulophone produces sound from impact (water hammer) that dies down after being initially struck, thus sounding more like a piano than the more typical \"underwater pipe organ\" hydraulophone.\n", "It has ...
why is there such a large amount of rain falling across australia, when it is meant to be an el nino year and be very dry?	El Nino is the summer part of the phenomena. In winter it becomes El Nina and brings more rain. I would guess that in the southern hemisphere the season are reversed.	[ "The tropical areas of northern Australia have a wet summer because of the monsoon. During \"the wet\", typically October to April, humid north-westerly winds bring showers and thunderstorms. Occasionally, tropical cyclones can bring heavy rainfall to tropical coastal regions, which is also likely to reach further ...
If honeybees are non-native to North America, won't the original (or other) pollinators flourish and fill in the gaps left behind by the decreasing population?	[Apparently it's a bit of a myth that honey bees are non-native](_URL_2_). But that could just be a red herring and I get your point. [This online handbook on insect pollination of cultivated crops](_URL_1_) mentions the loss of native pollinating insects. So does [this article](_URL_0_). So it's not just honey bees ...	[ "Honey bees, which have traditionally been emphasized as important crop pollinators in Canada, did not exist in North America before they were introduced there by humans. In Western countries including Canada, honey bees have recently become prone to colony collapse disorder, which threatens the production of many ...
the uploader has not made this video available in your country.	Its likely the video contains material that is not licensed for worldwide use. International licenses are significantly more expensive than licenses for a specific region.	[ "These videos could also be found in local video platforms in China, where YouTube is blocked, including Tencent, Youku, and iQiyi. Tencent have set up a specific team to monitor its video platform, and permanently shut down 121 accounts and blocked more than 4,000 search keywords by January 2018. The Ministry of P...
Why is spacetime a Minkowski space and not a Euclidean space?	Euclidean space doesn't have a way to build a causal structure like Minkowski space does. In Minkowski space you can have vectors with positive, negative, or zero length. This allows you to define events that are timelike separated and which are therfore causally connected, events that are spacelike separated and there...	[ "Minkowski space is closely associated with Einstein's theory of special relativity and is the most common mathematical structure on which special relativity is formulated. While the individual components in Euclidean space and time may differ due to length contraction and time dilation, in Minkowski spacetime, all...
how for example, gun laws are so different from state to state and why they just cant be the same all over the country	> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. The 10th Amendment to the US Constitution (part of the Bill of Rights) specifically says that, outside of the powers specifically granted to the Federa...	[ "Gun laws in the United States regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition. State laws (and the laws of the District of Columbia and of the U.S. territories) vary considerably, and are independent of existing federal firearms laws, although they are sometimes broader or more limited in scope t...
Why did Saddam's forces succeed in fighting the Kuwaiti forces, then lose to the American/coalition forces?	Leaving aside the enormous issue of the obvious disparity between Kuwaiti and Coalition forces (both in scale and quality), Iraq's successful invasion of Kuwait benefited greatly from the experience of the Iran-Iraq War. Although the Iraqi military did not cover itself in glory in that conflict, the armed forces gained...	[ "In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was quickly routed by the United States in the First Gulf War (also called \"Operation Desert Storm\"). In the aftermath of the Iraqi army's defeat, rebellions broke out in Iraq; first in southern Iraq on March 1, and in the northern Kurdish region a few days later. By Ma...
philosophy, what is it and why do people study it?	What is philosphy? If you were to take a course an Intro to Philosophy course in college, you would learn about major schools of thought regarding human purpose, ethics, and rationality. The foundation of most of today's philosophy is based in Greek Philosophy -- the ideas of ancient philosophers like Plato, Aristo...	[ "Philosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level. It is the discipline searching for a general understanding of reality, reasoning and values. Major fields of philosophy include logic, metaphysics, epistemology...
Is James McPherson too critical of George McClellan?	Ethan Rafuse made a creditable attempt to defend McClellan in his 2011 biography McClellan's War, and while somebody other than I could better assess him as a tactician, strategist, or battlefield commander, I think Rafuse does manage to debunk some of the McClellan myths. The famous incident where Lincoln called on...	[ "McClellan's experiences in the war would shape his military and political life. He learned that flanking movements (used by Scott at Cerro Gordo) are often better than frontal assaults, and the value of siege operations (Veracruz). He witnessed Scott's success in balancing political with military affairs and his g...
how are babies born with "hardcoded" reflexes that they can do first time, without practice?	Hardcoded is the exactly correct word to use. They are born with neural pathways in their brains that will automatically respond to stimuli, residing in a more primitive part of their brain. For many animals, that more primitive part of their brain is almost all that they have, so all of their behavior is hardcoded, ...	[ "Newborn babies have a number of other reflexes which are not seen in adults, referred to as primitive reflexes. These automatic reactions to stimuli enable infants to respond to the environment before any learning has taken place. They include:\n", "Primitive reflexes are reflex actions originating in the centra...
how do people who suffer from epilepsy safely drive?	They can’t. Exceptions not withstanding (minor cases, controlled by medication,etc) Licenses can be denied over medical issues.	[ "Those with epilepsy are at about twice the risk of being involved in a motor vehicular collision and thus in many areas of the world are not allowed to drive or only able to drive if certain conditions are met. In some places physicians are required by law to report if a person has had a seizure to the licensing b...
purpose of the f keys on the top of your keyboard.	Back in the bad old days, there was no such thing as a "mouse"- all you had was your keyboard. But some software still needed the "menus" that we take for granted in most every program we use today. So, the F keys were implemented as a quick and easy way to access those menus. Programs could draw those menus across t...	[ "The Fn key, short form for \"function,\" is a modifier key on many keyboards, especially on laptops, used in a compact layout to combine keys which are usually kept separate. It is typically found on laptops due to their keyboard size restrictions. It is also found on many full-sized \"multimedia\" keyboards as th...
What is the prevalence of assassinations in historical conflicts?	As required, I will provide a lengthy answer. In the past assassinations were often an option, though like today most had some sort of security detail. An example of which (though perhaps an extreme one) can be found in the Mongol Empire, where Genghis Khan had a private defensive force called the Kheshig. The force w...	[ "Murders were carried out throughout the whole war with a varying degree of intensity. For example, in the district of Fougères, in conflict between some Chouans and a fluctuating number of Republicans, 219 people were assassinated or executed by Chouans and 300 by Republicans. This did not include deaths during fi...
Why wasn't the Holy Roman Empire ever centralized?	I think I give a thorough answer, here: _URL_0_	[ "The Holy Roman Empire was a highly decentralized state for most of its history, composed of hundreds of smaller states, most of which operated with some degree of independent sovereignty. Although in the earlier part of the Middle Ages, under the Salian and Hohenstaufen emperors, it was relatively centralized, as ...
What alleged psychodellic property or ingredient of nutmeg makes people high?	Myristicin, an anti-cholinergic. Like other anti-cholinergic drugs it will cause dry eyes/mouth, confusion, headaches and nausea. In certain doses it can cause mild hallucinations. The effects vary widely from person to person and can last for 2-3 days. I've frequently heard a nutmeg high being described as like a ...	[ "Nutmeg has deliriant and hallucinogenic effects as well due to some of its psychoactive chemicals, such as myristicin, which may be anticholinergic like the tropane alkaloids of the nightshade plants, or as suggested by Alexander Shulgin, partially metabolized into the \"empathogen-entactogen\" MMDA.\n", "The pr...
why do objects in space tend to orbit in a disc-shaped pattern?	Conservation of angular momentum, basically. Imagine a big cloud of particles, each moving with some random velocity. The cloud will have some well-defined center of mass, obviously, so each particle that makes up the cloud is going to be in orbit about that center of mass, the orbit determined by where the particle s...	[ "In a flat disk of objects with eccentric orbits a small initial vertical perturbation is amplified by the inclination instability. The initial perturbation exerts an vertical force. On very long timescales relative to the period of an object's orbit this force produces a net torque on the orbit due to the object s...
why do we combine words together accidentally when speaking?	Your brain forms sentences by trying to put together words that represent what you're thinking. Sometimes your brain knows the words, but doesn't send the signals to the muscles in your face quick enough for your mouth to form each individual word correctly, so you blend a couple words together, and people wonder why y...	[ "I had noticed that when people talk, they talk \"over\" one another, especially people who talk fast or who are arguing or describing something. So we wrote the dialogue in a way that made the beginnings and ends of sentences unnecessary; they were there for overlapping.\n", "Merge can also operate on structures...
how do rape kits/paternity tests work if sperm only has 50% of the father's dna?	Each sperm only has 50%. There are many many millions of sperm. The odds that all of them miss any part of the father's DNA is essentially zero.	[ "DNA profiling is also used in DNA paternity testing to determine if someone is the biological parent or grandparent of a child with the probability of parentage is typically 99.99% when the alleged parent is biologically related to the child. Normal DNA sequencing methods happen after birth, but there are new meth...
Why is recent history often excluded or extremely rushed in history classes?	Historian James Loewen attends to this question in his book for popular consumption: "Lies My Teacher Told me". The short answer is: the recent past in too well known, and therefore too controversial. he studies the number of pages in history text books dedicated to to recent past, first in books from the 1980's, the...	[ "But what made history even at school was the plots in satire, criticism and humor created by Luiz Fernando Reis where they constitute a formula that spoke Inflation have criticized politicians asked Diretas Já that please and spoke to the public. However the revisionist school, and this style, culminating in vario...
Did 'Population: ' signs actually appear outside towns in the American West? If so what was their purpose?	American expansion always included strong elements of boosterism: wanting to believe that your town was bigger and better, or would soon be bigger and better, than other nearby towns. Because I’ve never seen any suggestion that population signs were posted for view by passing railway passengers, I believe the practice...	[ "Some of the first roadside signs—ancient milestones—merely gave distance measures. Hazard warnings were rare though occasional specimens appeared, such as the specific warning about horse-drawn vehicles backing up which was carved in stone in Lisbon's Alfama neighborhood in 1686. The early signs did not have high-...
what is a w-4?	Essentially, the government requires that your employer collect your income tax on your wages and send that to the government. In order to do that, your employer needs some way to estimate how much you'll pay in taxes. To do that, they need information from you about how much you expect to pay in taxes. So you ...	[ "The W84 is an American thermonuclear warhead designed for use on the BGM-109G Gryphon Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM). It is a derivative of the B61 nuclear bomb design and a close relative of the W80 warhead used on the AGM-86 ALCM, AGM-129 ACM, and BGM-109 Tomahawk SLCM cruise missiles.\n", "The W82 was ...
why do child victims of abuse gravitate towards people similar to the abuser?	Abuse is all about control. A lot of abuse involves making its victims feel worthless, like they can never do better, like they cannot find happiness or deserve happiness, etc. Control is part of how abusers keep their victims silent. Victims of child abuse often have little exposure to healthy relationships. They al...	[ "Victims of manipulation and abuse frequently feel responsible for causing negative feelings in the manipulator/abuser towards them and the resultant anxiety in themselves. This self-blame often becomes a major feature of victim status.\n", "Aside from the motive (which is to gain attention or sympathy), another ...
how does uhaul/any other car rental company keep vehicles equally distributed across the country?	Car rental businesses hire people to drive vehicles to other locations. I’m sure Uhaul has something similar in place.	[ "In the sharing economy, transfer cars, relocation cars, or driveaways are rental cars that need to be transferred back to their original branch after a one-way rental. Rental car companies have traditionally used truck and train transporters to re-position their fleet until this model was disrupted by websites whi...
How accurate is the Romanticized telling of the American Civil War?	"how much more complex was the civil war than simple fighting about slavery" The short answer here is that it wasn't more complex than that. Slavery was absolutely the central political controversy of 19th century America. The southern states had enjoyed legislative and judicial power over the federal government for d...	[ "This historical fiction novel, written by Paul Fleischman, highlights the events surrounding the first major battle of the American Civil War, the Battle of Bull Run. It is told through the first-person perspectives of 16 different characters, both Union and Confederate. .\n", "The mockumentary \"\", which detai...
How did the relative cost of a medieval knight compare to the cost of a modern battle tank?	I mean the very terms "medieval" and "knight" are problematic in their own right as the medieval period is not particularly closely defined and knights can be anything from Hungarian riders to great lords of England and France. The latter would obviously spend vastly more money on their equipment than the former. The s...	[ "In feudal Anglo-Norman England and Ireland, a knight's fee was a unit measure of land deemed sufficient to support a knight. Of necessity, it would not only provide sustenance for himself, his family, esquires and servants, but also the means to furnish himself and his retinue with horses and armour to fight for h...
Did businesses really flourish in the Nazi Regime?	Many businesses enjoyed an extremely close relationship with the Reich government. The most notorious one, [IG Farben](_URL_3_), --a chemical conglomerate formed in 1925 and made up of Bayer, BASF and others-- was so deeply implicated in committing crimes against humanity--being the supplier of Zyklon B, the poison use...	[ "In the 1930s, Nazi Germany transferred many companies and services from state ownership into the private sector, while other Western capitalist countries were moving in the opposite direction and strove for increased state ownership of industry. In most cases, this was a return to the private sector of firms which...
Why do American lawyers have such a bad reputation? When did disrespect toward lawyers start?	A major issue is defense laywers. People don't understand that there is a difference between due process and guilty v innocent. A defense lawyer, regardless of whether or not the jury finds him guilty has to make sure his client has their rights observed. While this can be explained by say, a public defender (I just ta...	[ "Americans' mistrust and dislike of lawyers was a frequent topic of dissection in social problem films such \"Lawyer Man\" (1933), \"State's Attorney\", and \"The Mouthpiece\" (1932). In films such as \"Paid\" (1930), the legal system turns innocent characters into criminals. The life of Joan Crawford's character i...
Did ancient civilizations have ancient civilizations?	One of the best and most well-known examples of this is Classical Egypt and their understanding of the Pyramids, which were well over a thousand years old by that point. As such, I will refer you to older AskHistorians posts that address that specific piece of the answer. [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) [_URL_3_](_URL_2_) I exp...	[ "Sumerians were the first people to develop complex systems as to be called \"Civilization\", starting as far back as the 5th millennium BC. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh. Mesopotamia was home to several powerful empire...
if you wore an oxygen mask that simulates the elevation of 5,000 feet, would it make breathing at 6,000 feet easier, the same, or harder?	I assume by "oxygen man simulating 5,000 feet" you are actually talking about a tanker full of normal air that has been pressurized to match that elevation, and not a tanker full of just oxygen. It would be easier. That is what any pressurized container meant for human life is trying to do. Airplanes are pressurized so...	[ "Oxygen masks are used by climbers of high peaks such as Mt. Everest. Because of the severe cold and harsh conditions oxygen masks for use at extreme altitude must be robust and effective. The oxygen storage tanks used with the masks (called oxygen bottles) are made of lightweight, high-strength metals and are cove...
the movie "primer."	In short: multiple time lines running parallel to each other. In long: See this image _URL_0_	[ "\"Primer\" is of note for its extremely low budget, experimental plot structure, philosophical implications, and complex technical dialogue, which Carruth, a college graduate with a degree in mathematics and a former engineer, chose not to simplify for the sake of the audience. The film collected the Grand Jury Pr...
Why can't the core of a star be "more" than iron?	A star is held up by the equilibrium between the inward force of gravity and the outward pressure of fusion energy. However, fusing iron or any heavier elements than iron doesn't produce a net output of energy, but rather extracts energy from the environment. So when that sort of reaction occurs in stars, it cannot sus...	[ "The core of a star is kept from collapsing by the heat generated by the fusion of nuclei of lighter elements into heavier ones. At various stages of stellar evolution, the nuclei required for this process are exhausted, and the core collapses, causing it to become denser and hotter. A critical situation arises whe...
How did the Soviet Union attempt to domestically and internationally justify plainly different standards of living between party leaders and ordinary citizens?	Followup and/or related question: how aware would the average soviet worker have been of the standard of living differences?	[ "According to communist ideologists, the Soviet political system was a true democracy, where workers' councils (\"soviets\") represented the will of the working class. In particular, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed direct universal suffrage with the secret ballot. Practice, however, departed from princip...
Why do deep sounds seem to travel further?	Low frequency waves are long. Quite long. Some take as much as 20-30 ft to fully develop. They go right through most walls, whereas high frequencies (very short wavelengths) get stuck in a pillow. It's the same reason why it takes so much more power to drive bass speakers than treble & midrange.	[ "At equator and temperate latitudes in the ocean, the surface temperature is high enough to reverse the pressure effect, such that a sound speed minimum occurs at depth of a few hundred metres. The presence of this minimum creates a special channel known as Deep Sound Channel, previously known as the SOFAR (sound f...
Why did all of the reptilian megafauna of the seas disappear?	Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was severe enough that highly specialized animals died out. Mammals survived because they were scavengers and could survive on a very broad died. Of course, other factors come into play. Large size always seems to be selected against during extinction events. Also, it is import...	[ "The deep-sea extinctions are difficult to explain, because many species of benthic foraminifera in the deep-sea are cosmopolitan, and can find refugia against local extinction. General hypotheses such as a temperature-related reduction in oxygen availability, or increased corrosion due to carbonate undersaturated ...
why when lying on my side, my brain prefers to watch parallel to the floor instead of parallel to my eyes?	Your brain knows that you are lying on your side. It expects things to look rotated for the eyes. If they are not something is wrong.	[ "The brain's ability to see three-dimensional objects depends on proper alignment of the eyes. When both eyes are properly aligned and aimed at the same target, the visual portion of the brain fuses the forms into a single image. When one eye turns inward, outward, upward, or downward, two different pictures are se...
How close could a person get to the sun, realistically?	I know the closest you can get to the sun on earth is mount chimborazo its not the tallest mountain in the world but it is the tallest one on the equator.	[ "BULLET::::- Jeremiah Horrocks: Astronomer who calculated that the distance between Earth and the sun was 59,000,000 miles – though well short of the actual distance of 93,000,000 miles, his estimate was more accurate than any other calculations of his time.\n", "Following Pappus and Ptolemy, Swerdlow suggested t...
how exactly do we move our limbs and why don't we mimic our movement in robots?	In order to move a muscle, we need to send a signal to a primary motor neuron. This specialized neuron controls groups of muscle fibers in one particular muscle, causing them to contract. When you want to consciously move a muscle you directly send a signal to the appropriate motor neuron which causes the action. We do...	[ "Legged robots, or walking machines, are designed for locomotion on rough terrain and require control of leg actuators to maintain balance, sensors to determine foot placement and planning algorithms to determine the direction and speed of movement. The periodic contact of the legs of the robot with the ground is c...
How do we determine when a common ancestor lived?	Using [molecular clock](_URL_4_) genetic dating methods, generally following [coalescent theory](_URL_5_). It basically works like this. If we take a chunk of DNA from a human and the same chunk of DNA from a chimp then the differences in these two strands of DNA is an approximation of the time depth of the ancestor of...	[ "Given any gene in the body of an organism, we can trace a single chain of \"ancestor organisms\" back in time, following the lineage of this one gene, as stated in the coalescent theory. Because a typical organism is built from tens of thousands of genes, there are numerous ways to trace the ancestry of organisms ...
Why do you think people use the term "Native American" instead of referring to tribes individually? Is this fair?	I've taken to using the terms indigenous peoples or indigenous tribes when I'm not referring to a particular tribe or nation. This choice came after the realization that "Native American" was just as much a Euro-centric term as "Indian." That being said, sometimes American Indian or Native American are simply the best ...	[ "Other objections to \"Native American\"—whether capitalized or not—include a concern that it is often understood to exclude American groups outside the continental US (e.g., Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico), and indigenous groups in South America, Mexico and Canada. The word \"American\" is sometimes questioned be...
astronomy question	Inverse square law- The inverse-square law, in physics, is any physical law stating that a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity. The fundamental cause for this can be understood as geometric dilution corresponding to ...	[ "Astronomy provides a spectacular demonstration of the effect of the Pauli principle, in the form of white dwarf and neutron stars. In both bodies, atomic structure is disrupted by extreme pressure, but the stars are held in hydrostatic equilibrium by \"degeneracy pressure\", also known as Fermi pressure. This exot...
What rules of the english language came into play when determining that some words had no plural form- e.g fish, deer, etc?	Any "rules" of the English language are artificial constraints created a posteriori. English is the way it is because some people spoke that way and it became a custom (rather than a rule). This becomes clearer when implementing [speech recognition and machine translation](_URL_0_). Rule based systems are brittl...	[ "The tradition of using \"terms of venery\" or \"nouns of assembly\", collective nouns that are specific to certain kinds of animals, stems from an English hunting tradition of the Late Middle Ages. The fashion of a consciously developed hunting language came to England from France. It was marked by an extensive pr...
In The Communist Manifesto, it's fairly accepted that Marx imagined the workers revolution to start in heavily industrialized nations. Yet the majority of former Communist States when their Revolutions happened were in primarily agricultural societies, why did this happen?	I answered a [similar question](_URL_0_) a few months ago which talks about Marxism's application in the Russian Empire. The short answer is that the October Revolution was almost entirely orchestrated in the nation's industrial capital, Saint-Petersburg (then called Petrograd) so Marx was right to a certain extent. D...	[ "Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto in February 1848, with little attention. However, a few days later the French Revolution of 1848 broke out, which replaced the monarchy of Louis Philippe with the Second French Republic. In June 1848, Paris workers, disenchanted with the new government, built barricades ...
how alcoholic must your breath be to catch fire, and why does it even work?	80 proof and above is generally flammable. Although I really don't see how this could happen, this would require actually inhaling some embers, which doesn't really happen when you smoke. Further more, its going down different "tubes" the alcohol is going down through your stomach. Smoke goes through the respirator...	[ "Fire breathing is typically performed with a high flash point fuel, such as lamp oil (liquid paraffin), while fire eating is performed with low flash point fuels, such as white gas or naphtha. Highly purified fuels are preferred by fire performers due to their minimized toxicity, but other, more dangerous fuels ma...
why can't we capture light?	"why can't we take a perfectly round ball with mirrored insides and "capture" light." This was posted before in some science subreddit, and you could probably find it with a bit of searching. Even if you put light into a perfectly spherical mirror, it wouldn't be 'captured'. Some of the light energy would inevitably b...	[ "Since light is deflected in a gravitational field, it is possible for the light of a distant object to reach an observer along two or more paths. For instance, light of a very distant object such as a quasar can pass along one side of a massive galaxy and be deflected slightly so as to reach an observer on Earth, ...
What is the benefit to making new elements in labs?	> Is it simply for the furthering of knowledge or is there another reason? Is that not enough? We learn about nuclear structure, nuclear reactions, etc. If we can study them chemically, we can learn about atomic structure as well. These extremely heavy elements could have very interesting chemical properties.	[ "Finding rare earth elements is only the first and some argue the easiest step. Other steps towards manufacturing such as refining is controlled by China and Japan with the previously dominant United States having lost all of its producers and much of its fundamental technological ability with the number of scienti...
active reading and why it's important to a reader	"Active Reading" is simply reading, but with an emphasis on paying attention to content and critically analyzing the text as you read, instead of just reading the words and moving on. It's important as it gets a person to focus on the content of the text, it lets them identify unknown words or grammatical concepts to...	[ "Birkerts, in his book \"The Gutenberg Elegies\", stated \"Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book.\" Birkerts' emphasis on the importance ...
socialism vs. capitalism (and right-wing vs. left-wing)	Socialism is when the 'means of production' (factories, land, raw materials) are owned cooperatively. Either by groups involved in the production, or by the state on behalf of the people. either the products or the profits from their sale are distributed according to the group's plan. Capitalism is when the 'means of ...	[ "The term right-wing socialism is a term used by some free-market right-libertarian movements and politicians to describe paternalistic conservatism as they see it supporting paternalism and social solidarity as opposed to individualism, commercialism and \"laissez-faire\" economics. They argue that paternalist con...
How does acidosis ( lactic, metabolitic etc) cause some one to go in to a coma?	I've looked into this for you, and the conclusion is this is poorly understood. With that said, there are a quite a few apparent effects of acidosis that would likely contribute to neurological impairment, which I'll detail for you. The first (and in my opinion most important in this case) effect of acidosis is on t...	[ "Lactic acidosis is typically the result of an underlying acute or chronic medical condition, medication, or poisoning. The symptoms are generally attributable to these underlying causes, but may include nausea, vomiting, Kussmaul breathing (laboured and deep), and generalised weakness.\n", "Lactic acidosis resul...
How much Western pop culture (movies, music, etc.) was allowed in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries?	I remember a thread about music in the USSR - _URL_0_	[ "Russian-language market of popular music began to grow with the increase of Soviet influence in the world arena. In addition to the nearly 300 million Soviet citizens living in the 13% of the world landmass in 1990, Soviet pop music has become popular in the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, especially in the S...
why do hdr videos require more processing?	HDR is more information between the darkest and brightest points. The greater information per-frame means it takes longer to load, and better hardware to process.	[ "Non-HD videos are re-encoded at a maximum of 30 frames per second, but suffer in image quality, which is inline with the low bit rate for videos in the 640×360 size. Usually, the video content is re-encoded to bit rate below 0.5 Mbit/s. This is not enough to reproduce the fine details that can be captured from a c...
Does California's sinkhole problem magnify its precarious position on the fault lines as well as being in the subduction zone in speeding up its descent into the ocean?	I'm not sure I understand the question... what subduction zone do you mean? And where in the article is any reference to fault lines? California is not descending into the ocean. The drought might impact the San Andreas fault slightly as water can work as a lubricant in [strike-slip faults](_URL_2_) so there are more...	[ "Unlike most of the other faults in California, slip on the Garlock Fault is left-lateral; that is, the land on the other side of the fault moves to the left from the perspective of someone facing the fault. Thus, the terrain north of the fault is moving westward and that on the south is moving eastward.\n", "The...
how does hydraulic fracturing work? and what are the pros and cons of the process.	You drill a hole into a rock formation containing tiny pockets of trapped natural gas. Then you pump a mixture or water, solvents, and tiny bits of sand into the hole. You pressurize the liquid at high pressure, fracturing the rock and wedging the little bits of sand into the cracks. When you let the pressure off, t...	[ "Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is a process used to extract oil and natural gas. The process to extract oil and natural gas begins with thousands of gallons of water, mixed with a slurry of chemicals, some of which are undisclosed. This liquid mixture is then forced into well casings under high pres...
If I replace multiple light bulbs at the same time why do they burn out at different times?	Light bulbs are made to last within a certain tolerance. Example: 100 light bulbs are manufactured to last 1000 hours. But in reality most of those light bulbs won't last 1000 hours. Some will last more, some will last less. So you might get 90 of those light bulbs that last between 950 to 1050 hours. The other...	[ "While it might seem astonishing that so many longest-lasting light bulbs have been so infrequently turned off, this is the precise reason for their longevity. Most of the wear and tear that leads to burnouts in incandescent light bulbs is caused by turning them on and off, not by burning them. Each time the bulb i...
are all physical traits “inherited”, or are some of them random?	Some of them are random - that’s actually how evolution works. The way your body grows is defined in a set of rules stored in each cell, which is your DNA. When your body makes new cells (as you’re growing, or when you need to heal a wound), that DNA has to be copied to the new cell. Sometimes errors occur during this...	[ "Inherited characteristics, by definition, are characteristics that are gained or predisposed to by an organism as a result of genetic transmission from its parents and will be passed to the organism's offspring. Therefore, every condition an organism does not gain or develop because of inheritance of its parents' ...
would an airplane be affected if it flew over land that was experiencing a massive earthquake (i.e. over 9.0)?	Speaking as a pilot, and I am, the simple answer is NO. As soon as the plane is off the ground, the ground can shake all it wants. The air will be not be affected by the ground enough to cause any issue with the plane. So far the answers have been over thinking the basic question.	[ "In March 2011, Dr. Christie and his wife were traveling via airplane from Los Angeles to Bangkok. Midway during the flight, he suffered a stroke. When pilots attempted to divert the flight to the nearest airport, which was Tokyo, Japan, they were told they could not land due to the earthquake that was happening at...
Does the discovery of the Higgs help create a better defenition of mass	Not really, for a couple of reasons: The Higgs field provides a mechanism for fundamental particles to have mass, but it says nothing about why diffenent particles have the masses they do. That has to be added by hand. Also, the Higgs field is not the only source of mass, and most of the mass of everyday things comes f...	[ "The possibility of discovering a Higgs-like boson played a crucial role in the conceptual design of CMS, and served as a benchmark to test the performance of the experiment. In 1990 Virdee and a colleague, Christopher Seez, carried out the first detailed simulation studies of the most plausible way to detect the S...
How hard would you have to press your fingertips together to kill the bacteria between them through sheer pressure?	If you had a perfectly smooth surface, I don't see any reason why you couldn't crush them. However, what looks smooth to us is probably not smooth on the size scale of bacteria — most of them would probably be slid out of the way into crevices in the surface — think trying to crush M & Ms with a slotted spoon.	[ "As an example of varying pressures, a finger can be pressed against a wall without making any lasting impression; however, the same finger pushing a thumbtack can easily damage the wall. Although the force applied to the surface is the same, the thumbtack applies more pressure because the point concentrates that f...
What are the largest animal populations on Earth?	Many insects have numbers in the trillions, and biomasses far surpassing ours. We have much greater numbers than any other large mammal. A few birds also outnumber us.	[ "In sheer numbers, they are reputed to be one of the most abundant of all macroscopic animals, with estimates of 100,000 individuals per square meter of ground, essentially everywhere on Earth where soil and related habitats (moss cushions, fallen wood, grass tufts, ant and termite nests) occur. Only nematodes, cru...
what is going on inside my phone that causes it to freeze?	There are a lot of different things, but basically it's the same reason computers occasionally freeze - lack of system resources or a critical error in core code. Because we keep pushing technology forward towards more features and more power, we never have time to optimize code and operating systems to remove ALL of ...	[ "The Windows Phone 8.1 update introduced an issue for some Lumia 1020 and 925 users where their phones would freeze randomly on a regular basis. Microsoft has been working on the issue since September 2014.\n", "Fitz found the Cold Phone in his icebox, ringing with a rattle. When Fitz questioned Rhoda about it, i...
There's an episode of ST:TNG where Picard tells Wesley that before Marco Polo most people in Europe didn't know whether or not China really existed. That's not true ....right?	Codswallop. Marco Polo's father and uncle had been to China before him; Venetian and other Italian traders had dealt in Chinese goods for centuries. Marco Polo was the just the first to write about it, exposing his travels to a wider audience. However, the popularity of his book also has to do with the fact that he mad...	[ "The book was written in Old French by romance writer Rustichello da Pisa, who worked from accounts which he had heard from Marco Polo when they were imprisoned together in Genoa. From the beginning, there has been incredulity over Polo's sometimes fabulous stories, as well as a scholarly debate in recent times. So...
What is the biggest earthquake the Earth is capable of producing?	The largest earthquake every recorded was about a magnitude 9.5. Magnitude is largely controlled by the maximum stress rock can sustain. Higher magnitude quakes aren't really possible because the rocks will break before the stresses can build high enough to make a larger quake. This topic was covered in detail in [thi...	[ "On March 11, 2011, an earthquake categorized as 9.0 M on the moment magnitude scale occurred at 14:46 Japan Standard Time (JST) off the northeast coast of Japan, one of the most powerful earthquakes in history. Units 4, 5 and 6 had been \"shut down\" prior to the earthquake for planned maintenance. The remaining r...
what happens in my brain when i get inspired?	i don't know for sure, but it would make sense to me (again no idea on the science), but synapses fire that trigger parts of the brain that release endorphins which make you feel good and happy about it. the more inspired, the more synapses fire the more endorphins released	[ "Inspiration (from the Latin \"inspirare\", meaning \"to breathe into\") is an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or other artistic endeavour. The concept has origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism. The Greeks believed that inspiration or \"enthusiasm\" came from the muses, as well as the gods ...
why do domestic trailers have less material than international ones? why not just use the international trailer for foreign and domestic audiences, especially when youtube exists?	Trailers are often made to appeal to a specific audience. For the most part, trailers for western countries will all be the same, but you may see some difference in trailers for Japan and China, as those audience have different tastes for films and content then western audiences, and if the film contains asian actors,...	[ "In the United Kingdom, \"trailers\" are commonly known as static caravans, and are generally used for one of two purposes: firstly as holiday homes, designed for short-term living; and secondly as retirement homes for the elderly, designed for long-term occupancy. Both types of trailers usually enjoy good amenitie...
What would happen if you frayed the ends of hundreds of small wires connected to two ends of a battery, and brushed them together?	You'd be creating a short circuit, with consequences possibly including a damaged battery, melting insulation / vaporized or molten wire / fire, and a chemical hazard, depending on the battery chemistry and the exact nature of your setup. To start with, let's say that there's only one wire attached to each end of t...	[ "It is possible to insert wiring without the proper tool, but this requires great care to avoid damaging the connectors. For example, pushing a screwdriver down the middle of the block is a bad practice as it forces the two blades of the terminal post apart, leading to bad contacts. It is also possible to punch-dow...
the new memo release and what it means	> Is this release as bad as they say? Who is "They"? > What does it mean? It means we know nothing we didn't already know. The FBI used in part, a democratic-funded dossier as evidence to obtain warrants to conduct surveillance against Carter Page. Related information much later was found to be false Republicans c...	[ "The memos were released to the Post and Courier in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, filed eight years previously, for information about changes to the role of the prison triggered by al Qaeda's attacks on September 11, 2001. They wrote that when the DoD's response was finally received, \"\"A Penta...
If there are magnetic field lines are there gravitational field lines also?	Yes. Similar to how magnetic field lines give some indication of which way a dipole will orient at that location and how strongly, and electric field lines indicate the direction of force a positive charge would experience, gravitational field lines indicate the strength of gravitational force a mass would experience a...	[ "Magnetic field lines have a very similar representation to electric field lines. There is an analogous notion of magnetic flux. Magnetic field lines begin at north poles and end at south poles, and cannot cross. Magnetic fields arise due to the motion of charges, and also due to the alignment of the domains of mag...
Why did some Jews get out of Germany before the WWII and others stayed behind?	Many, many reasons. Unlike what the Nazis were claiming the "Jewish" people of Germany considered themselves to be just as German as non Jewish people considered themselves to be. It was their home. They had a stake in it. I say "Jewish" because there were laws which determined if one was Jewish or not and you didn'...	[ "Soon after the end of the Second World War, Jews began to exit Poland thanks to the repatriation agreement with the USSR. Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish aliyah to Mandate Palestine. The exodus took place in stages. After the war, the vast majority of survivors left for several reason...
How did gold atoms coalesce into relatively homogenous nuggets rather than mixing with other elements as the solar system formed?	_URL_0_ Those nuggets form later	[ "Gold is thought to have been produced in supernova nucleosynthesis, and from the collision of neutron stars, and to have been present in the dust from which the Solar System formed. Because the Earth was molten when it was formed, almost all of the gold present in the early Earth probably sank into the planetary c...
why dixon ticonderoga pencils can erase better than other pencils.	You kids should stop playing with rubbers. Serious answer, it has to do with the composition of the rubber. I've noticed that the rubber on those erasers rolls off it into little cylinders. This is important because it increases the surface area of the rubber. Imagine wiping up a desk with a Clorox wipe. You use one s...	[ "Most pencil cores are made of graphite powder mixed with a clay binder. Graphite pencils (traditionally known as 'lead pencils') produce grey or black marks that are easily erased, but otherwise resistant to moisture, most chemicals, ultraviolet radiation and natural aging. Other types of pencil cores, such as tho...
if humans are really that bad a multitasking, how can people sing and play an instrument at the same time?	They're good at multitasking if the two tasks can be done with different parts of the brain. This is why you can drive a car and carry on a conversation with ease, but you can't tap two different rhythms with your hands.	[ "Overall, Multiboxing can be considered a play style choice. Many people find the additional strategy of multiboxing to be very challenging and, with those additional efforts, very rewarding. Rather than require the collaboration and cooperation of multiple human players, people who multibox instead rely upon thems...
What all did Einstein's theory of special relativity predict?	Einstein's special theory of relativity, which he published in 1905, said nothing about gravity, black holes, etc. That all came from the general theory of relativity, which was published a decade later. Special relativity includes such effects as time dilation, Lorentz contraction, the relativistic velocity addition...	[ "BULLET::::- Hamming argues that Albert Einstein's pioneering work on special relativity was largely \"scholastic\" in its approach. He knew from the outset what the theory should look like (although he only knew this because of the Michelson–Morley experiment), and explored candidate theories with mathematical too...
why does gps need almanac data?	It could, but that would mean a lot more processing. Almanac data is almost always available, so it is much more efficient to use that instead of listening to everything and then figuring things out from there.	[ "The GPS almanac, as part of the data transmitted by each GPS satellite, contains coarse orbit and status information for all satellites in the constellation, an ionospheric model, and information to relate GPS derived time to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Hence the GPS almanac provide a similar goal as the anc...
Would it be possible to put a human into a permanent hypothermic state instead of cryogenically frozen in order to slow down ageing for hundreds of years?	this link maybe of intrest to you: _URL_0_ This is the next step in the "cooling the body for surgery" idea. This could also be a next step towards some sort of hibernation like we see in Sc-Fi film/games. Any state of 'stasis' that the human body is put in could have long term negative medical effects on the body, ...	[ "Cryonics, the practice of preserving organisms (either intact specimens or only their brains) for possible future revival by storing them at cryogenic temperatures where metabolism and decay are almost completely stopped, can be used to 'pause' for those who believe that life extension technologies will not develo...
Physiologically speaking, how different am I from someone who lived 200 years ago? 500 years ago?	Please note that the differences mentioned here result from dietary and other health differences, not genetic differences.	[ "BULLET::::- 10,000–5,000 years ago (8,000–3,000 BC) Identical ancestors point: sometime in this period lived the latest subgroup of human population consisting of those that were all common ancestors of all present day humans, the rest having no present day descendants.\n", "BULLET::::- Humans are a race of bein...
[Psychology] What's the science of obsession? Questions below	I'm really surprised that no one has attempted to answer this yet. 1. Obsession is defined in the DSM-5 as the following: * Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images that are experienced, at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive and unwanted, and that in most individuals cause marked anxiety or dis...	[ "\"Obsession\" is the thirteenth episode of the of the American science fiction television series \"\". Written by Art Wallace and directed by Ralph Senensky, it was originally broadcast on December 15, 1967.\n", "An obsession is an \"undesired, unpleasant, intrusive thought that cannot be suppressed through the ...
What is the difference between a scientific theory and law?	Someone asked a very similar question a few months ago, [and this is a fairly frequently asked question,](_URL_0_) so I'll copy paste what I wrote there, since that user specifically asked about 'Newton's Laws' vs 'Einstein's theory' as well. ----------------------------------------------------- A lot of people make ...	[ "The term \"scientific law\" is traditionally associated with the natural sciences, though the social sciences also contain laws. For example, Zipf's law is a law in the social sciences which is based on mathematical statistics. In these cases, laws may describe general trends or expected behaviors rather than bein...
why do screens use red/blue/green pixels but printers use red/blue/yellow ink?	Inks subtract color, screens add. Basic ink colors are cyan, yellow and magenta. So cyan is white minus red, but on a screen it's constructed as blue plus green. It works like this because white light goes through ink, so the color comes from what is subtracted. On a CRT or LED screen, a pixel is a tiny lamp of red, gr...	[ "Comparisons between RGB displays and CMYK prints can be difficult, since the color reproduction technologies and properties are very different. A computer monitor mixes shades of red, green, and blue light to create color pictures. A CMYK printer instead uses light-absorbing cyan, magenta, and yellow inks, whose c...
why don’t we have fat and muscle surrounding our brains as an added protective layer over our skulls?	Heat retention. The brain uses a large portion of our energy and the temperature range from normal to heat stroke is all of 3 degrees C. Also because of all of the blood vessels in the brain, a lot of the body's heat is pumped through your head. Just being hot makes you think slower and make more mistakes.	[ "Moreover, a human skull with its large eye sockets displays a degree of neoteny, which humans often find visually appealing—yet a skull is also obviously dead, and to some can even seem to look sad due to the downward facing slope on the ends of the eye sockets. As such, human skulls often have a greater visual ap...
how did fentanyl become part of the illegal drug trade and is it here to stay?	Parmacist. Every opioid has become apart of the illegal drug trade because they all cause euphoria when abused. Causing big issues. It's as unavoidable as gravity. But they're also irreplaceable in pain treatment. Fentanyl in particular has several forms, like mucosal sticks and long-duration patches. No other d...	[ "Illicit use of pharmaceutical fentanyl and its analogues first appeared in the mid-1970s in the medical community and continues in the present. More than 12 different analogues of fentanyl, all unapproved and clandestinely produced, have been identified in the U.S. drug traffic. In February 2018, the U.S. Drug Enf...
Can you determine the secondary/tertiary structure of a protein based solely on the amino acid sequence?	If you know what patterns and properties to look for in the primary sequence you can make fairly accurate predictions about some features of secondary structure. Principally alpha helices. You can predict beta sheets as well, but since beta sheets, particularly parallel beta sheets, can form between amino acids that ar...	[ "Primary structure refers to the amino acid backbone sequence. Secondary structure focuses on minor conformations that develop as a result of the hydrogen bonding between the amino acid chain. If most of the protein contains intermolecular hydrogen bonds it is said to be fibrillar, and the majority of its secondary...
Resources on pre-modern/medieval warfare/armies in East Asia that are not in the recommended reading list? Specifically regarding Korea.	Specifically for Korea, the major event that has attracted most attention is Hideyoshi's invasion, 1592-1598. The resources resulting from that attention amount to 3 major books, and various journal articles and other books. Two of these books are in the reading list (but in the Imperial China section of the list): * ...	[ "Samguk Sagi(“The History of the Three Kingdoms of Korea”) is the oldest extant work of Korean history and often the only written source of information about the Three kingdoms and Unified Silla periods\n", "The Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles (, abbr. \"PSRL\") is a series of published volumes aimed at...
why microwaves don't explode with the pressure of accumulated steam from food.	It has air vents. Microwave energy is prevented from leaving the microwave due to a metal mesh that surrounds it. [This mesh is not airtight, and doesn't need to be](_URL_0_) to function properly.	[ "Closed containers, such as eggs, can explode when heated in a microwave oven due to the increased pressure from steam. Intact fresh egg yolks outside the shell will also explode, as a result of superheating. Insulating plastic foams of all types generally contain closed air pockets, and are generally not recommend...
weed smokers of reddit: what is the advantage of smoking marijuana instead of making pot brownies?	Some of us actually appreciate the bud. We smell it. We inspect it. We look at it with magnifying glasses. We taste it delicately. We compare it to others. We seek out specific strains and specific features. We celebrate specific growers. We take notes. Ok, some of us do. For all the reasons that some peopl...	[ "According to Hanuš, alcohol and tobacco should be \"black listed\" rather than cannabis, as there is a possibility of both physical and psychological addiction to the first two, while there is no possibility of physical and only limited possibility of psychological addiction to marijuana. Moreover, people under in...
- what is preventing the us government from making voting day a national holiday?	The US has no legal holidays where all businesses are required to give all workers the day off, it's a capitalist country. There are about 260 working days per year. Adding another federal holiday thus costs about 0.4% of productivity. While it's a small number, 0.4% of the US GDP is a really big amount of money. S...	[ "Most voters have work on Tuesdays. This has led activists to promote alternatives to improve voter turnout. Alternatives include making Election Day a Federal holiday or merging it with Veterans Day, allowing voting over multiple days, mandating paid time off to vote, encouraging voters to vote early or vote by ma...
how are paintings restored?	First they study the picture to see how the painting constructed. They use X-rays and ultra violet lights to see what paints and varnishes were used.and if any repairs have been done before. Also knowledge of the artists usual technique and of the time period are important. Once they have this info they might put a ne...	[ "At times restoration of a piece is so extensive that the original is essentially replaced when new materials are used to supplement older ones. An art restorer may also add or remove details on a painting, in an attempt to make the painting more saleable on the contemporary art market. This, however, is not a mode...
How do they convert electric signal to type that our brain can read?	Nervous systems already communicate with electrical signals. In fact, that's what your mechanoreceptors do: the hair cells in your ears, for instance, convert pressure changes into electrical signals which downstream neurons can then receive (the chemical synapse does utilize ligand/receptor kinetics, but all to the e...	[ "Brain-reading or thought identification uses the responses of multiple voxels in the brain evoked by stimulus then detected by fMRI in order to decode the original stimulus. Advances in research have made this possible by using human neuroimaging to decode a person's conscious experience based on non-invasive meas...
how do game anti cheats, like battleye or gameguard work?	There are different flags that can be detected to assume someone is trying to tamper the game, such as debugging another process (the game in this case), accessing the memory mapped to that game, running the game in a virtualized environment, tampering the binary or assets and many more. Anti-cheat try to detect those...	[ "Examples of cheats in first-person shooter games include the aimbot, which assists the player in aiming at the target, giving the user an unfair advantage, the wallhack, which allows a player to see through solid or opaque objects or manipulate or remove textures, and ESP, with which the information of other playe...

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