question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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why do objects kept in the pockets of trousers often make a white-ish outline in the material? | The hard object in your pocket creates raised areas in the fabric, and they do not give way when you brush up against an object. When you move around, you are constantly brushing up next to stationary objects, and your pants being soft, just move out of the way. But the hard items in your pockets can't move, causing th... | [
"In the simplest design, a square of fabric is cut with an opening in the middle for the waistband. When the skirt is put on, the four corners hang down as points. More panels of material can be used to increase the number of corners, or points, along the hem.\n",
"The old type, also known as the , is a one-piece... |
why should i switch from rgb to cmyk? | Computer screens use [red, green, and blue lights](_URL_1_) in varying combinations/intensities to display colors, whereas printers use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ("K"). By creating something in CMYK mode, you ensure your colors are more accurately represented when printed. If you never print anything, RGB mode i... | [
"There are no simple formulas for conversion between RGB or CMYK values and \"L*a*b*\", because the RGB and CMYK color models are device-dependent. The RGB or CMYK values first must be transformed to a specific absolute color space, such as sRGB or Adobe RGB. This adjustment will be device-dependent, but the result... |
how do ticket-less rallies like the women's march calculate attendance? | Although the task of determining how many people attend something as large as say, a political rally or a protest may seem like a daunting, almost impossible undertaking to do with any accuracy, with some basic information, it's actually not that difficult to get reasonably accurate results.
The most well-known method... | [
"March on The Polls is March On's election-year initiative to increase voter turnout and change the narrative around voting and civic participation. Women's March and other grassroots groups in cities across the country are planning events aimed at increasing progressive turnout. These event range from marches, org... |
Can you recommend a book on the history of western fashion (approximately 20th century)? | I could have sworn that I put in a fashion section, but maybe I just suggested someone else paste my own list in. Anyway, I do have a [booklist in my profile](_URL_0_), though it does not have much in the way of description.
Here is the problem, though - "scholarly and in-depth" generally don't go along with something... | [
"The history of Western fashion is the story of the changing fashions in clothing for men and women in Europe and other countries under influence of the Western world, from the 12th century to the present.\n",
"The Western Heritage is an American history textbook used for the study of Western civilization and Eur... |
Gaius Marius and the Roman Republic | I'll refer to "The Making of a Roman Army" by Lawrence Keppie on this :
"Of all the reforms attributed to Marius, the opening of the ranks to the capite censi (the head count; the slice of Roman society without much property) has
attracted most attention, and the unanimous disapproval of ancient writers. It has been
h... | [
"In order to survive in the complex and ever-shifting world of Roman politics, Gaius casts his lot in with his uncle Marius, who agrees to take both Gaius and Marcus under his wing. Marius is a Consul and one of the two most powerful men in Rome, the other being his great rival Sulla. After Marius secures a Triumph... |
why does a weird wavy patter appear if a small chequered pattern moves across a screen? | As always, there's [a relevant xkcd](_URL_0_) for that!
What you're seeing is a [moiré pattern](_URL_1_), which happens when a repeating pattern (lines, dots, a grid, etc) is more fine than the sensor/resolution of whatever is photographing or displaying it. Think of aliasing in videogames, where an angled line has t... | [
"Certain patterns, particularly those involving fine dots, can interact with the inversion and reveal visible cross-talk. If you try moving a small Window in front of the inversion pattern (above) which makes your screen flicker the most, you may well see cross-talk in the surrounding pattern.\n",
"Moiré patterns... |
how does thermal imaging work? | Heat sources emit electromagnetic radiation with a frequency respecting to their temperature. The visible spectrum of EM radiation ranges from red to violet. The sun's surface is about 5000 Kelvin hot and our eyes happen to see this light. Infrared means that the frequency of the EM radiation coming from an object is b... | [
"Thermal images, or thermograms, are actually visual displays of the amount of infrared energy emitted, transmitted, and reflected by an object. Because there are multiple sources of the infrared energy, it is difficult to get an accurate temperature of an object using this method. A thermal imaging camera is capab... |
We know that there's a superior speed limit in the universe, the speed of light. Is there an inferior speed limit? | Motion is relative. You can always construct a perfectly consistent picture of the Universe (called a reference frame) in which you're at rest, or a particular given atom is at rest, and so on. In other words, complete rest is whatever you define it to be; there's no way to distinguish motion with a constant velocity f... | [
"In special relativity, there is an unreachable speed, the speed of light. We can add speeds without end, but they will always be less than the speed of light. The sums of all speeds are limited by the speed of light. Additionally, the composition of two velocities is inferior to the sum of those two speeds.\n",
... |
In the history of mankind, is it likely that two people have had the same fingerprints? | There have been people who have shared 15+ minutiae on a single finger. Unfortunately we didn't find this out until following a terrorist attack in Spain, where an Algerian? man bombed a rail station?, and fingerprints found on a detonator matched an American lawyer. However, there are 100s of minutiae on each fingerpr... | [
"Although ancient peoples probably did not realize that fingerprints could uniquely identify individuals, references from the age of the Babylonian king Hammurabi (reigned 1792–1750 BCE) indicate that law officials would take the fingerprints of people who had been arrested. During China's Qin Dynasty, records have... |
If you throw the water out of a glass, in space, would the water move or remain in the glass? | If your throw was very weak, surface tension may be strong enough to keep the water in the glass, but a reasonable amount of acceleration would probably be enough to overcome surface tension and allow the water to freely flow from the glass. You would probably cause one or a few large globs of water to come out of the ... | [
"Water itself is not a hazard to stable glass, but in the case of a piece with existing “glass disease,” it can accelerate problems associated with it such as weeping, and crizzling as mentioned above. Here, glass should not be kept in places where the threat of water exposure could occur, such as low to the ground... |
how many people lived in the city of Carthage in 150BC(IE right before the last punic war)? | Followup question how many people were there in Rome at this time? | [
"Carthage was one of the largest cities of the Hellenistic period and was among the largest cities in preindustrial history. Whereas by AD 14, Rome had at least 750,000 inhabitants and in the following century may have reached 1 million, the cities of Alexandria and Antioch numbered only a few hundred thousand or l... |
why are burmese buddhists so violent? | They’re so violent because they’re human.
In Myanmar/Burma, the Buddhists are the entrenched conservatives. The Rohinga are the foreign interlopers to them that won’t let things be done the good and proper way. When social pressure and non-violent pressure didn’t get them to conform, those in power turned to violenc... | [
"Myanmar or Burma has been long torn by war and religious sectarianisms in the country. It is common to see violence of religious groups in the country, though varied between ethnics and rankings. Burmese Muslims, thus, are not out of range of violence despite of their indigenous Sufi faith.\n",
"Myanmar's govern... |
Why doesn't a course of antibiotics for a urinary tract infection kill off all the good bacteria in my digestive system? | There are several reasons. Firstly, different antibiotics target different bacterial systems (eg protein synthesis, cell wall formation etc) and differences in these systems between bacteria make some bacteria susceptible to treatment and some not. These bacteria would survive, continue to divide and perhaps develop an... | [
"Altering the numbers of gut bacteria, for example by taking broad-spectrum antibiotics, may affect the host's health and ability to digest food. Antibiotics can cause antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD) by irritating the bowel directly, changing the levels of gut flora, or allowing pathogenic bacteria to grow. An... |
Anyone out there an expert in opiate pharmacology and physiology? | I am. And I think I can answer your question, the other two guys have skimmed over one vital aspect of opioid pharmacology(not trying to be a jerk or anything, I'm guessing this came off as though I'm a dick), and there is a very good reason as to why methadone specifically seems to cause this more than other opiates. ... | [
"Dr. Brigitte Kieffer (born February 26, 1958) is a French molecular neurobiologist known for her research of opiate receptors. Her areas of expertise include: molecular psychiatry, addiction, mood disorders, pain, and developmental disorders. Dr. Kieffer has international reputation in the field of opiate receptor... |
when a large company is broken up via anti-trust litigation, how is it decided who owns the new, smaller companies? | The same people who owned the larger company get an equal percentage of each of the smaller companies. | [
"Solutions to the diseconomies of scale for large firms may involve splitting the company into smaller organisations. This can either happen by default when the company is in financial difficulties, sells off its profitable divisions and shuts down the rest; or can happen proactively, if the management is willing.\... |
if the countries debt is so massive ($17.075 trillion?) why don't the gov't just go all out and spend even more? the amount of debt doesn't seem to matter | It doesn't seem to matter but it does. Technically the U.S. has a great credit score when it comes to paying off its loans. Our total debt is massive, but in the past the US has always paid off what it owes. If the US were to spend without check, it is more and more probable that they would in fact NOT be able to pay b... | [
"A significant number of economists and analysts dismiss any and all concerns over foreign holdings of United States government debt denominated in U.S. Dollars, including China's holdings. Critics of the \"excessive\" amount of US debt held by China acknowledge that the \"biggest effect of a broad-scale dump of US... |
Can someone with a neuro-biology background tell me if this research is bunk or not? | The Carhart-Harris research paper looks perfectly legit.
The interspersed commentary by Stuart Hameroff (great Scott! is he still at it?) is pure speculative fantasy. | [
"The neurobiologists apply a \"bottom-up\" research strategy in their studies. This strategy seems to prove necessary and sufficient to understand a brain in its entirety after the impressive achievements in studying the entire nervous system of a simple model organism, such as \"Caenorhabditis elegans\". However i... |
if we managed to somehow go beyond the edge of the expanding universe in a space ship, what would we find? | it doesn't have edges; relativistic cosmology describes a universe that curves in on itself, it's just like asking what would happen if you drove your car far enough to go beyond the horizon. The best way to picture the "expansion" is like a balloon being blown up; draw two points on the surface of the balloon and they... | [
"The size of the Universe is somewhat difficult to define. According to the general theory of relativity, far regions of space may never interact with ours even in the lifetime of the Universe due to the finite speed of light and the ongoing expansion of space. For example, radio messages sent from Earth may never ... |
Does the heat produced by combustion engines have an effect on Earth's temperature? | Just made a quick calculation. [The world's yearly energy consumption is 104,426 TWh](_URL_0_). That's 375\*10^18 J.
Just 60 minutes of sunlight on Earth deliver 624*10^18 J (oversimplified Earth as a flat disc of 6371 km radius facing the Sun perpendicularly, solar power is 1360 W/m^(2)).
So, really, even if heat fr... | [
"Assuming perfect combustion conditions, such as complete combustion under adiabatic conditions (i.e., no heat loss or gain), the adiabatic combustion temperature can be determined. The formula that yields this temperature is based on the first law of thermodynamics and takes note of the fact that the heat of combu... |
How do up and down quark decays produce W bosons? | The *W* bosons created in this process are examples of *virtual particles*. They are able to exist for a brief period of time, despite what you would expect from energy/momentum/mass properties of the physical particles, thanks to the uncertainty principle, but for the same reason, they cannot emerge as part of a fina... | [
"In the so-called beta decay of a neutron (see picture, above), a down quark within the neutron emits a virtual boson and is thereby converted into an up quark, converting the neutron into a proton. Because of the energy involved in the process (i.e., the mass difference between the down quark and the up quark), th... |
There is a bird inside a large cargo plane. Does the plane weigh less if the bird flies inside the plane? | The original answer to this question is of course correct.
You are wrong to assume that the "downward pressure" (or better said downward momentum of air) *dissipates* before reaching the floor. In fact it *disperses*. That means the momentum transferred by the wings onto few air molecules is then spread by molecular c... | [
"The television series \"MythBusters\" investigated the question in a 2007 episode, testing it both with a box of pigeons and again with a model helicopter. They concluded that the contents being in flight made no difference to the weight, and theorised that the downdraft of air from the wings or rotors pressed dow... |
Before the system broke down, how effective was enforcement of the parole system in the American Civil War? | I'm still looking to find a complete answer, but I came across this fact that I didn't know before I started researching. Apparently there was a scale of which soldiers could be exchanged. For example, a General was worth more than one private in a one for one swap. I think of it like a deck of cards in that you are... | [
"At the start of the civil war a system of paroles operated. Captives agreed not to fight until they were officially exchanged. Meanwhile, they were held in camps run by their own army where they were paid but not allowed to perform any military duties. The system of exchanges collapsed in 1863 when the Confederacy... |
the need to pee and proximety to the toilet? | It has to do with "Pavlovs Dog", basically we're so used to or "conditioned" to associate the toilet with urinating. | [
"Urine diversion toilet designs generally require men to sit or squat while urinating in order to avoid unhygienic splashing of urine. In cultures where men prefer to stand for urination, urinals are a good complementary solution. Urinals – widely used by men at public toilets, restaurants, schools, etc. – work as ... |
how do political polling places find people to use for their data? | This is a very valid question. Obviously they didn't do a great job of this in 2016.
There are different methods, from talking to people in the street "randomly" (that would depend on what part of town you're in, and time of day, etc). letters to houses and hope people answer randomly. The best method is by calling ... | [
"A poll aggregator is an entity that tracks and aggregates, often but not exclusively by averaging, individual polls conducted by different organizations in order to gauge public sentiment on key civic issues such as the approval rating of a major political figure (e.g., president, prime minister, monarch, governor... |
what is a viral vector? | A vector, terms of biology, is an organism that transmits something from one place to another. In the case of a viral vector, a virus is being used to transmit genetic elements or the production of some biologically-relevant component between cells or organisms.
One example of a viral vector would be a non-harmful vir... | [
"Viral vectors are tools commonly used by molecular biologists to deliver genetic material into cells. This process can be performed inside a living organism (\"in vivo\") or in cell culture (\"in vitro\"). Viruses have evolved specialized molecular mechanisms to efficiently transport their genomes inside the cells... |
why is assaulting a cop more serious than assaulting anyone else? | Part of the reason is that police carry weapons. It may also have something to do with Police represent the law, and an assault on a police officer is therefore an assault on the law (older thinking?). That is just speculation though. | [
"The survey also shows that blacks are bigger victims of assault by police. The National Victimization Survey shows that in 2009, 6.5% of blacks who had suffered an aggression as aggressors police or private security guards (who are often working in the police off duty), compared with 3.7% of whites. \n",
"Violen... |
How did the first person with a contagious disease get infected with it? | infectious diseases evolve just like any other creature, and by doing so they also enable themselves to explore new places to live and be successful.
If the disease stays on one host, there is not really a patient zero, since evolution is a highly parallel and complex and many times rather continuous process. What we ... | [
"When the Black Death bubonic plague reached Al-Andalus in the 14th century, the Arab physicians Ibn Khatima (c. 1369) and Ibn al-Khatib (1313–1374) hypothesised that infectious diseases were caused by \"minute bodies\" and described how they can be transmitted through garments, vessels and earrings. Ideas of conta... |
Why was Sufi Islam particularly strong in Ottoman Empire when compared to other places? | What makes you think that it was? Sufism was incredibly popular long before the rise of the Ottomans. It was and is extensively practiced, for example, in the Indian subcontinent and in South East Asia. Sufism was embraced by the Ottomans but I'm not sure I would describe it as being quantifiably stronger than in other... | [
"Sufism was an important factor in the historical spread of Islam, and in the creation of regional Islamic cultures, especially in Africa and Asia. Recent academic work on these topics has focused on the role of Sufism in creating and propagating the culture of the Ottoman world, including a study of the various br... |
how do celebrities get social media handles with their names? do companies like twitter or instagram assist celebs in getting a marketable handle? | Pretty much. They just message who ever owns one of those handles and just offers them money. | [
"There are many examples of celebrities building a brand for themselves over some sort of social media platform. In fact, it is rare to see an athlete or celebrity without a social media page whether it is twitter or instagram. Celebrities use these outlets as ways of branding themselves, by showing people their li... |
So, I was dumping out an old bottle of generic dayquil, and found two clear crystals, can you explain what I found? | Could you give me a sense for how big they are? It'd also help to get a picture from another angle, possibly in some lighting with a little less glare.
The generic answer is: I don't know, and its difficult to tell without some analytical tests.
I can be more specific than that, though. Dayquil and its ilk, whether o... | [
"Examples of liquid crystals can be found both in the natural world and in technological applications. Most contemporary electronic displays use liquid crystals. Lyotropic liquid-crystalline phases are abundant in living systems but can also be found in the mineral world. For example, many proteins and cell membran... |
If I increase the Frequency of a sound wave will it travel further over a distance? | If I understand you correctly, you are asking whether the rate at which the intensity/loudness of a wound wave decays over a finite distance depends on its frequency? If so, the answer is yes. If so, the answer is yes. The simplest model for this attenuation (weakening) of the wave in a fluid such as air is called [Sto... | [
"The below discussion is from Landau and Lifshitz. If the amplitude and the direction of propagation varies slowly over the distances of wavelength, then an arbitrary sound wave can be approximated locally as a plane wave. In this case, the velocity potential can be written as\n",
"BULLET::::3. The interactions b... |
What's the difference between the Holocaust and the Shoah? | Shoah is a Hebrew word, which means "disaster." Holocaust is an English word derived from Greek, and as you pointed out, it means a sacrifice that's entirely consumed by fire (as opposed to other sacrifices, where only part is burned up and the rest is eaten), so it came to mean a total massacre. They refer to the same... | [
"Mizrahim is an umbrella term for the Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian speaking Jewish communities from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. Although Mizrahi Jews are not descended from the Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, they are also called Sephardi to contrast them to the Ashkenazi culture and... |
Did anyone from past eras produce writings solely for the purpose of future historians to study? | Many people do keep diaries for the purpose of reading them later and remembering/keeping a record of past events. They can be valuable for historians, especially if the diarist is unusual for their place/time in keeping a diary. Martha Ballard is kind of a canonical example of this -- she was an 18th-century midwife i... | [
"Another characteristic of the histories of the period is that they borrowed heavily from other writers, often directly copying entire works as their own. For example, Henry of Huntingdon's \"History of the English\" is only one quarter original, relying in many places on Bede's \"Historia Ecclesiastica\". This pro... |
We've seen pictures of Stellar Nurseries, huge nebulae created by the death of a star. How can the mass of a single star create a nebula that goes on to create many new stars and accompanying planets? | I think you might be confusing stellar nurseries, like the [Orion Nebula](_URL_1_), which is a huge cloud that had a mass thousands of times the mass of our Sun before any stars formed in it, with planetary nebulae, like the [Ring Nebula](_URL_0_) which are the expelled layers of old/dying stars. Planetary nebulae do n... | [
"Some of these collapsing stars can be particularly massive, and can emit large quantities of ionizing ultraviolet radiation. An example of this is seen with the Trapezium cluster. Over time the ultraviolet light from the massive stars at the center of the nebula will push away the surrounding gas and dust in a pro... |
why is zoe quinn being defended? | She is a person in a creative field open to commentary by the internet. There are thousands of people in the U.S. alone who work in various forms of media that deal with mean comments and threats against their person. The true professional looks at this feedback and compares it to the quality of their product. The make... | [
"Despite her earlier claims that she feared violence or death in her home country – an assertion that she had repeated in subsequent interviews – Al Khalifa returned to Bahrain in late 2001 to visit her family. She stated that she and her family were concerned about \"violence aimed at people of Middle Eastern desc... |
how is it that for two months california has had a methane leak and it won't be fixed until spring? | In order to fix the leak, workers have to drill 8500 feet down into the earth, find the underground well, and pump it full of concrete. This process will take months, and can't realistically be sped up.
EDIT: For a more detailed answer, see u/WalterLSU below.
EDIT 2: More info with pictures:
_URL_0_ | [
"A gas leak from the underground Aliso Canyon gas storage started in October 2015 releasing methane in an uncontrolled fashion. By December 2015, thousands of people from Porter Ranch had been temporarily relocated and the leak had added more than 150 million pounds of methane to the atmosphere. The NGO Environment... |
When and why did English orthography stop using Þ (thorn) and ð (eth)? | As far as thorn goes, early English printing presses used imported type that didn't include thorn. Printers would either use "th" or use a y as a thorn, which wasn't too much of a stretch (a handwritten thorn looked like a y). Sort of like how typewriters would use the same character for lowercase "L" and "1".
That's... | [
"The letter thorn was used for writing Old English very early on, as was ð; unlike ð, thorn remained in common use through most of the Middle English period. Both letters were used for the phoneme , sometimes by the same scribe. This sound was regularly realised in Old English as the voiced fricative between voiced... |
Why does beta plus (β+) decay happen in proton-proton chain reactions; why don't the two protons just form helium instead of deuterium? | Helium-2 is unbound, so it decays on extremely short timescales. The only way to combine two protons into a bound system is to rely on the weak force to change one of the protons into a neutron, producing a deuteron.
This is not a beta decay, it's a nuclear reaction which involves the weak force. That's why the probab... | [
"Beta decay is characterized by the emission of a neutrino and a negatron which is equivalent to an electron. This process occurs when a nucleus has an excess of neutrons with respect to protons, as compared to the stable isobar. This type of transition converts a neutron into a proton; similarly, a positron is rel... |
Has anyone ever become a Saint in their lifetime? | I don't believe that has ever happened. An integral part of being declared a saint (canonized) in the Catholic Church is that the person is declared to be in Heaven, so that precludes still being alive on Earth. The Dominican priest (and professor) who inspired my username asserted that the Church waits for the subje... | [
"Other young people have been canonized as saints. Fourteen-year-old Saint Pancras was beheaded in 304 A.D. after he became a Christian, and Saint Ponticus was fifteen when he was thrown to the lions in 177 A.D. The youngest saint canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in modern times is Maria Goretti, who died in ... |
when a body decays, where do those white maggots(?) suddenly come from? | Flies are really good at detecting rotting meat, land on the meat to eat and breed and lay eggs, then the eggs hatch into maggots. Flies are tiny and quick so you won't really see them on a timelapse video. | [
"Active decay is characterized by the period of greatest mass loss. This loss occurs as a result of both the voracious feeding of maggots and the purging of decomposition fluids into the surrounding environment. The purged fluids accumulate around the body and create a cadaver decomposition island (CDI). Liquefacti... |
why is the world not on a universal time? in other words why is it not "13:00 pm" all around the world - some would come to see it as daytime afternoon, others late afternoon, and yet others early morning. | The military uses this for large scale operations, in their use of "Zulu Time".
"Zulu" time is that which you might know as "GMT" (Greenwich Mean Time). Our natural concept of time is linked to the rotation of the earth and we define the length of the day as the 24 hours it takes the earth to spin once on its axis.
A... | [
"Because of the division of the globe into time zones, the new year moves progressively around the globe as the start of the day ushers in the New Year. The first time zone to usher in the New Year, just west of the International Date Line, is located in the Line Islands, a part of the nation of Kiribati, and has a... |
Is there actual evidence that the ancient Irish sucked their kings' nipples to display fealty? | Thank you for posting this as it's a really good question. I'm by no means an expert on Irish (especially early-Irish) history so I would wait until somebody else gives you a definitive answer on this. As the article you link to suggests, it does appear that sucking nipples was a means to pledge loyalty in pre-Christia... | [
"No further mention is made of Dionotus by Geoffrey of Monmouth, but a small group of these women defied kings Wanius and Melga of the Picts and the Huns, who attempted to have intercourse with them. The women were slaughtered for their defiance and the kings invaded Britain from Albany. Britain, due to the war led... |
Resources to learn about US colonization/imperialism in Latin America | [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
How to Hide an Empire is a pretty good source for American influences in Latin America, there is some focus on the Pacific islands and the Philippines but that is also pretty closely tied to Latin America in terms of Spanish influence | [
"BULLET::::- The Summit of the Americas in the Context of US Imperialism (April 2015). \"Scholar and activist Gerald Horne traces modern-day US foreign policy in Latin America to its colonial roots.\" \"The Real News\"\n",
"Murdo J. MacLeod is a Scottish historian of Latin America, publishing extensively on the h... |
Why doesn't carbon monoxide turn into carbon dioxide when additional oxygen becomes present? | Imagine you're skateboarding down a road that goes downhill into a valley, uphill a bit, then downhill into a second deeper valley. Ordinarily you'd go all the way to the bottom, but if for some reason you got stopped in the first valley, you'd be stuck there: you'd need a push to get over that second hill and get to ... | [
"Carbon monoxide has a higher diffusion coefficient compared to oxygen, and the only enzyme in the human body that produces carbon monoxide is heme oxygenase, which is located in all cells and breaks down heme. Under normal conditions, carbon monoxide levels in the plasma are approximately 0 mmHg because it has a h... |
Why does cellular regeneration degrade as an organism ages? | This was recently discussed in the comments section on a post about an anti-aging substance found on Easter Island. I'll do my best to repeat what I learned.
DNA has empty sections reserved for errors when replicating. Each time DNA is replicated these lengths, called telomeres, get shorter. For most cells, replicati... | [
"\"Regeneration\" in a living system refers to the general compensation for losses and degradation in the various components and processes in the system. This covers the thermodynamic loss in chemical reactions, the wear and tear of larger parts, and the larger decline of components of the system in ageing. Living ... |
the whole jeffrey epstein situation | So he was charged with sexual trafficking of minors and was awaiting trial in jail. Two weeks ago he was found in his cell unconscious with neck injuries, he was placed on suicide watch and released a few days later. Today he was found dead, reported hanging himself. Those are the facts.
What's odd is he was taken o... | [
"Epstein's lawyers urged the court to allow Epstein to post bail, offering to post up to a $600million bond (including $100million from his brother, Mark) so he could leave jail and submit to house arrest in his New York mansion. Judge Richard M. Berman denied the request on July 18, saying that Epstein posed a dan... |
[meta] what if i told you that you could get the most out of [eli5] if you brought an already correct answer to a question that interests you, but you just need someone to *explain* it to you. | Another suggestion, stop down voting correct answers that are hard for you to understand, even hard for anyone to understand. Save your down votes for "bad explanations" of correct answers or "incorrect answers".
This subreddit should be about up voting great explanations of correct answers, and downvoting correct an... | [
"BULLET::::5. If you try to encourage more openness, and at first others are unresponsive or hesitant to participate, consider asking someone you trust after the meeting if there is something that you might have missed or could have done differently to achieve the desired result\".\n",
"Ward is credited with the ... |
Did the United States government ever consider allying with the Axis powers in WWII? | No chance as long as Roosevelt was president. No real chance even without him, for that matter. There were some "pro-Axis" men in congress, but their numbers were small. The pro-Axis faction was more focused on keeping America out than on getting them in on Germany's side. They tended to focus on the "warmongering"... | [
"In December 1941, the United States of America declared war on the Axis powers after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In January 1942, the Third Consulting Meeting of Chancellors of the American Republics met in Río de Janeiro as the U.S. wished other American nations to break relations with the Axis powers. Argentina,... |
why does david cameron want mandatory porn filters for uk internet users? | Information control. Australia's government tried to same thing a couple of years ago but it failed. Turned out that porn was just going to be the first step and then after that it was going to be everything the government didn't like. Whoever controls the information has the power. The idea is to get their foot in... | [
"In 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron introduced plans to filter internet pornography by default in the UK. By the end of 2014, access to internet pornography was blocked unless subscribers specifically chose to 'opt out' by contacting their ISP. This was done in an effort to reduce the number of children having a... |
Is there any evidence of trench warfare in the Civil War before Petersburg? | I would caution against the anachronistic use of the term 'trench warfare' in the American Civil War. The term is typically used to describe the Western Front of WWI, where the numbers, firepower, and dispositions of the combatants allowed the continuous front lines to extend from the Alps to the English channel. Thi... | [
"Although mainly a siege, it was not unusual to find an extensive trench system inside and outside the city of Sarajevo during the siege of 1992–1996. It was used mainly for transportation to the frontline or to avoid snipers inside the city. Any pre-existing structures were used as trenches; the best known example... |
Does adding more heat to a pot of boiling water make it cook things faster? | This is the thing about latent heat. No matter how much heat you give to a pot of water, until all of the water has turned to steam, temperature of that vessel will not cross 100 degrees Celsius (212 F). More heat will boil the water quickly, for the same quantity of water | [
"Sometimes a supply of an unknown amount of instant hot water is required, for example when cooking risotto boiling water must be added instantly as needed. This can only be achieved with a kettle by boiling the maximum amount that can be needed; in cases of this nature the instant water heater, which heats and dis... |
Why were the Gracchus Brothers allowed to be People's Tribunes? Weren't they patricians? | No, the Gracchi were members of the *gens Sempronia*, an old plebeian *nobilis* family. The senatorial class had included plebeians for centuries by the time of the Gracchi, since the resolution of the Conflict of the Orders, and by Caesar's time the patrician order had essentially ceased to exist. The vast majority of... | [
"During the early years of the republic, the Plebeians were not allowed to hold magisterial office. Neither Tribunes nor Aediles were technically magistrates, since they were both elected solely by the Plebeians, rather than by both the Plebeians and the Patricians. While the Plebeian Tribunes regularly attempted t... |
what it is to default on a debt. what are the consequences? | Let's forget about bonds for a minute, and think about a personal loan which you might take out from the bank (which is essentially the same thing on a smaller scale).
No one can force you to repay that loan. If you fail to pay it, though, then your credit rating will suffer. You will have to pay more to borrow in fut... | [
"Default occurs when the debtor has not met its legal obligations according to the debt contract, e.g.- it has not made a scheduled payment, or has violated a covenant in the debt contract. Default may occur if the debtor is either unwilling or unable to pay its debt. This can occur with all debt obligations includ... |
how is the sat scored? | It has been a while since I have taken the SAT and it might have changed more since I have taken it. First there is a raw score. For this score in the multiple choice section, you get a point for each question you get right, zero points for questions that you did not answer and lose 1/4 of a point for every wrong answe... | [
"Research suggests that the SAT, widely used in college admissions, is primarily a measure of \"g\". A correlation of .82 has been found between \"g\" scores computed from an IQ test battery and SAT scores. In a study of 165,000 students at 41 U.S. colleges, SAT scores were found to be correlated at .47 with first-... |
How were Americans treated/viewed in Japan (Tokyo specifically) during the Taishō era? (1912-1926) | > Were US students allowed to attend the University of Tokyo?
I don't know if they were allowed earlier, but the first non-Japanese American to graduate from the University of Tokyo was Don Cyril Gorham, who graduated in March 1941. So if there were any American students in the Taisho period, they didn't graduate at... | [
"The Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II is a National Park Service site to commemorate the experience of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and their parents who patriotically supported the United States despite unjust treatment during World War II.\n",
"The phrase appears as an impo... |
Why did the German Army invade Netherlands in World War II, when in World War I, Dutch armed neutrality deterred the Germans? | Hello! As a Dutchman this post stood out to me, while I am not an expert on WW2 history, I will explain the history behind the German invasion of the Netherlands as I understand it.
**World War 1**
The Netherlands maintained an armed neutrality throughout WW1 and declared itself to be neutral at the outbreak of the w... | [
"The Netherlands were able to remain neutral during World War I, in part because the import of goods through the Netherlands proved essential to German survival, until the blockade by the British Royal Navy in 1916. That changed in World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940. The Rotterda... |
describe the process of gaining weight. from ingestion to digestion and so on. | When you eat food, your body breaks down the larger nutritious molecules into simple glucose molecules. Glucose is the fuel that your body uses. The body takes a few steps to do this starting with physically grinding up the food with your teeth, then chemical breakdown with your saliva, then further chemical breakdown... | [
"Santorio Santorio was a Venetian doctor who, in attempt to quantify human digestion, carefully measured his food/water intake and excretion weight over many years. To establish a mathematical relationship between food/water intake and excretion, Santorius designed a special chair that had a balance that weighed a ... |
What determines the frame of reference for us to feel acceleration? | You would feel the same force on you independent of the earth. If you were flying and accelerating you would feel the same force. It is only created through your inertia that "presses against the acceleration". Your inertia will keep you in place for whatever direction and speed you were moving when no force applied to... | [
"For a more complex example involving observers in relative motion, consider Alfred, who is standing on the side of a road watching a car drive past him from left to right. In his frame of reference, Alfred defines the spot where he is standing as the origin, the road as the -axis and the direction in front of him ... |
What weapons were popular with Vikings during raids? Did they ever use siege engines? What kind of armor was commonly worn? | > Did they ever use siege engines? What kind of armour was worn?
I wrote an answer about the phases of Viking raiding activity [here](_URL_0_), but whether for opportunistic profit or as part of a diversion strategy, Viking raiding parties aimed to be as highly mobile as possible. Despite what pop-culture neo-Pagans... | [
"What is known is that they were used to provide covering fire while the attacking army was assaulting a fortification, filling in a ditch, and bringing other siege engines up to walls. Jim Bradbury goes so far as to claim torsion engines were only useful against personnel, primarily because medieval torsion device... |
Why can't surgeons always implant an artificial heart instead of giving a heart transplant? | The short answer is that the technology just isn't there yet.
The heart is often called a pump, but its not just a pump. It is two intelligent pumps.
It adjusts its stroke volume, its cardiac output, its heart rate, all automatically. If you need more blood, your nervous system can stimulate it to increase the forcef... | [
"Cardiovascular-related artificial organs are implanted in cases where the heart, its valves, or another part of the circulatory system is in disorder. The artificial heart is typically used to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in case heart transplantation is impossible.... |
How do glow sticks work? | The glow stick has two main components: a mixture of diphenyl oxalate and various dyes, and a small glass tube filled with hydrogen peroxide. By bending the stick, you break the glass, releasing the hydrogen peroxide. The H2O2 decomposes the diphenyl oxalate, producing 2 phenyl groups and a molecule of peroxyacid est... | [
"A glow stick is a self-contained, short-term light-source. It consists of a translucent plastic tube containing isolated substances that, when combined, make light through chemiluminescence, so it does not require an external energy source. The light cannot be turned off and can only be used once. Glow sticks are ... |
what is being woke and what does it mean to be woke? | Being "woke" is slang these days for being "awakened to the truth" so to speak. In lamens terms, being aware of global issues that are usually ignored by the ignorant.
Veganism, global crises, conservation, the meat trade, government conspiracies etc are all things that "woke" people stereotypically are concerned about... | [
"\"The Waking\" is a poem written by Theodore Roethke in 1953 in the form of a villanelle. It is a self-reflexive poem that describes waking up from sleep. It comments on the unknowable with a contemplative tone. It also has been interpreted as comparing life to waking and death to sleeping.\n",
"Early morning aw... |
Why is the Earth's freshwater supply diminishing? | > it goes to the sewage cleaning facility, and then back to our water taps.
This isn't quite right, most of our treated sewage does not get sent back to the water supply as it's not fit for drinking and we either drain it into the ocean or use it for irrigation and other non-drinking uses. Most of our drinking wate... | [
"Another popular opinion is that the amount of available freshwater is decreasing because of climate change. Climate change has caused receding glaciers, reduced stream and river flow, and shrinking lakes and ponds. Many aquifers have been over-pumped and are not recharging quickly. Although the total fresh water s... |
whats the difference between honey and syrup? | Honey is made by bees. Syrup is (at heart) made by plants -- though cooks process the heck out of it before we put it on pancakes. | [
"Honey syrup is a syrup made by combining honey and water and heating until the sugar dissolves. In the case of honey simple syrup, a 1:1 ratio is used. This is similar to the process for making simple syrup with sugar, and the honey syrup can be used in place of simple syrup in many cocktails, such as the Bee's Kn... |
How do PET scans work? Confused between gamma emitters vs positron emitters. | Emitting a positron and emitting a gamma ray are two totally different kinds of nuclear decays.
As the P in PET implies, it’s very important that a positron emitter is used, and not just any gamma emitter.
That’s because the emitted positron comes to rest somewhere near the place where the decay occurred, and then an... | [
"Positron emission tomography (PET) scanning deals with positrons instead of gamma rays detected by gamma cameras. The positrons annihilate to produce two opposite traveling gamma rays to be detected coincidentally, thus improving resolution. In PET scanning, a radioactive, biologically active substance, most often... |
What are historically the most peaceful countries? | Mostly countries who have a lack of natural resources that other countries desire. This includes countries like iceland or as you said new zealand. But there is also the factor that these countries(like the ones listed above) were protected by powerful empires.
There is also the factor that these countries may be in a... | [
"The Washington Times: \"U.S. Ranked the 114th Most Peaceful Nation on Earth says Annual Global Ranking:\" “The index is produced by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace, which figures that the impact of strife worldwide is $14.3 trillion. News is not all bad, though. In a nutshell, the index found... |
how does the finance industry benefit society? | Depends which part you are talking about. You can get a financial advisor which will help you manage your assets and set you up so you can retire. You can deal with people that forecast costs a business will have to spend so you can plan for it. You can buy stocks and bonds which help 1 party get money for a large proj... | [
"Today, there are four parts of the economy: Business, Household, Public, and Non-profit. Typically, we only think that the business sector creates any wealth, and that the other three serve the business sector and alongside it. The truth is that all four parts of the economy generate wealth, and that wealth flows ... |
how does a company go about separating, like with activision blizzard? | I can’t say In activisions case. But my old company simply bought themselves a majority share. This means the company took all of their profits and bought back their own stock. In my old companies case it took around 10 years to complete but with enough capital a company could do it overnight. | [
"Kotick proposed the merger to Activision's board, which agreed to it in December 2007. The new company was to be named Activision Blizzard, and would retain its central headquarters in California. Bobby Kotick of Activision was announced as the new president and CEO, while René Penisson of Vivendi was appointed ch... |
If the Earth was a smooth, frictionless object (still spinning and revolving around the sun) and if I were to set an equally smooth ball rolling, would it circle the Earth forever? | If it were truly frictionless, you wouldn't even need to roll it. Gravity would keep it on the surface, but it would't spin along with the Earth. It would move forever at whatever speed you initially gave it relative to the surface. If you set it down without giving it a push, it would just stay at that point and the s... | [
"Riccioli also argued that the rotation of the Earth should reveal itself in the flight of artillery projectiles, because on a rotating Earth the ground moves at different speeds at different latitudes. He wrote that If a ball is fired along a Meridian toward the pole (rather than toward the East or West), diurnal ... |
why would a company spend money making offices in a leased spaced. doesn't the landlord "own" and benefit from all of the enhancements? | There are two basic issues here. First, the benefits and drawbacks of owning vs leasing and second the issue of "improvements" as you put it.
The pros and cons of buying vs renting/leasing are well understood and have to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Generally leasing is better for cash flow because you can pay ... | [
"Companies offering serviced offices are generally able to offer more flexible rental terms, as opposed to a conventional leased office which may require furnishing, equipment, and more restrictive leases. Space is normally flexible, allowing for additional space to be allocated at short notice, should the size of ... |
why do conspiracy theorists care if drones patrol our cities? | Do you care if the police install cameras in your house, your bedroom, your toilet, or your shower? Why? Unless you're committing a crime who cares?
The idea is that people like having privacy even if it isn't to commit a crime. I don't think you're a conspiracy theorist if you'd like to have some degree of privacy... | [
"In February 2013, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department explained that these drones would initially be deployed in large public gatherings, including major protests. Over time, tiny drones would be used to fly inside buildings to track down suspects and assist in investigations. According to \"The Los ... |
why does every text to speech synthetic voice pretty much suck? | We've been trying to get computers to understand natural languages for 50 years. We still haven't succeeded at that. And until we get that, we're not going to be able to get the cadence right. There's a ton of research in this area- companies like Google and Microsoft are throwing tons of money at it in addition to non... | [
"A study in the journal \"Speech Communication\" by Amy Drahota and colleagues at the University of Portsmouth, UK, reported that listeners to voice recordings could determine, at better than chance levels, whether or not the speaker was smiling. It was suggested that identification of the vocal features that signa... |
For other planets, how do scientist determine which pole is the North one? | _URL_0_
Relevant quotes:
Planets:
> The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defines the geographic north pole of a planet or any of its satellites in the solar system as the planetary pole that is in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's North pole.
Minor b... | [
"The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defines the geographic north pole of a planet or any of its satellites in the Solar System as the planetary pole that is in the same celestial hemisphere, relative to the invariable plane of the Solar System, as Earth's north pole. This definition is independent of the ob... |
How large would the universe be if there was no empty space between protons, neutrons, and electrons? | In the primordial, young, small, hot universe, there weren't protons and neutrons at all. Nucleosysnthesis didn't occur until there was enough space to have them around. So the question is sort of ill posed. Expect varying answers. | [
"Carl Sagan pointed out that the total number of elementary particles in the universe is around 10 (the Eddington number) and that if the whole universe were packed with neutrons so that there would be no empty space anywhere, there would be around 10. He also noted the similarity of the second calculation to that ... |
Is it true that baths and personal hygiene were considered dangerous for your health during the 16th/17th century in Europe? | In the mid-1480s, Nuremberg printer Hans Folz published a guide to the various public hot springs and baths he had encountered in his travels, stretching from Germany to the border of Spain. In rhyming verse, so people would remember. In 1638, on the other hand, Francis Bacon advised that it was better for one's health... | [
"In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe began the Enlightenment. Philosophers developed new ideas about nature and doctors noticed the connection between lack of hygiene and disease, and the correlation of health with a good personal hygiene. Large public baths were revived in the nineteenth century.... |
why does thinking about our subconscious actions make them manual? | It doesn't. Your breathing isn't manual. You're just aware of it. Being aware of your breathing does not put you in imminent danger of asphyxiation.
People who buy into this myth are expecting their breathing to become manual, so they hold their breath and then choose to stop holding their breath...et voila. | [
"Behaviorism notwithstanding, the unconscious mind has maintained its importance in psychology. Cognitive psychologists have used a \"filter\" model of attention, according to which much information processing takes place below the threshold of consciousness, and only certain processes, limited by nature and by sim... |
how come my dog can sleep in crazy positions and not hurt her neck but if i sleep just slightly off my pillow or at an odd position my neck hurts all day. | Partially because we evolved to walk upright, that changed the way our spine works in relation to quadrupeds, and means we have a lot less flexibility in our neck than they do. The movement of our head is severely restricted, for this reason our neck muscles are a lot less powerful and developed than those of dogs. The... | [
"A dog may form a strong attachment to the crate eventually, feeling comfort and safety, after the initial feeling of distress and vulnerability. This behavioral effect has been compared to Stockholm syndrome. Dogs that are trained to sleep in a crate, when allowed to sleep in a bedroom, can show signs consistent w... |
Have there ever been any conflicts between the Republic of Congo and DRC over who gets the name "Congo? | Supplementary question - what was the origin of the name "Zaire" and why was it dropped in favour of the current (confusing) DRC? | [
"The Republic of the Congo () was a sovereign state in Central Africa that was created with the independence of the Belgian Congo in 1960. From 1960 to 1966, the country was often known as \"Congo-Léopoldville\" (after its capital) in order to distinguish it from its north-western neighbour, also called the Republi... |
why do "million" and "millennia" sound the same, but one refers to millions and the other refers to thousands? | Both derive from the word 'mille', thousand. But million refers to thousand thousands, whereas millennia refers to thousand years, or 'mille anni'. | [
"The million is sometimes used in the English language as a metaphor for a very large number, as in \"Not in a million years\" and \"You're one in a million\", or a hyperbole, as in \"I've walked a million miles\" and \"You've asked the million-dollar question\".\n",
"1000 or one thousand is the natural number fo... |
The spread of Confucianism to Japan and Korea | The last Korean Dynasty, Joseon, was found upon the idea of Neo-Confucianism which was born during Southern Song Dynasty China.
The previous Korean Dynasty, Goryo, adopted primarily Buddhism as its main belief system. However, Near the end of Goryo dynasty, Buddhism has become corrupt. Monks controlled huge amount of ... | [
"Buddhism and Confucianism were later introduced to Korea through cultural exchanges with Chinese dynasties. Buddhism was the official religion of the Goryeo dynasty, and many privileges were given to Buddhist monks during this period. However, the Joseon period saw the suppression of Buddhism, where Buddhist monks... |
why can't we put a metallic grille on plane reactors to keep birds from getting to the engine? | We can’t do this because if a bird we’re to hit the grille and damage it, it could cause more damage as the grille will become entangled in the engine.
Most engines only take ~20% of air through the core of the engine, everything else is bypassed and creates thrust | [
"The use of transformer coupled stubs also provides improved protection for 1553 terminals against lightning strikes. Isolation is even more critical in new composite aircraft where the skin of the aircraft no longer provides an inherent Faraday shield as was the case with aluminum skinned aircraft.\n",
"The NTSB... |
Do we know exactly how strong the Olympians of ancient Greece were compared to the Olympians of today? | Keep in mind that the Olympics was a ritual rather than a purely athletic event. Ancient Greeks did not generally record the distances, weights, or times of the races and competitors. All that mattered was beating everyone else - lifting more than all the previous people, finishing this race first. Doing better than pe... | [
"In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the twelve Olympians are the major deities of the Greek pantheon, commonly considered to be Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus. They were called \"Olympians\" because, according to tradi... |
Was the M4 Sherman a good or bad tank? | So as /u/XenophonTheAthenian said, judging a tank simply on how readily it might burn when knocked out is a pretty narrow metric with which to measure the effectiveness of a tank, and by that metric the Sherman doesn't actually do that poorly. Xenophon already mentioned the problem wasn't unique to the Sherman at all b... | [
"The M4 Sherman, officially Medium Tank, M4, was the most widely used medium tank by the United States and Western Allies in World War II. The M4 Sherman proved to be reliable, relatively cheap to produce, and available in great numbers. Thousands were distributed through the Lend-Lease program to the British Commo... |
why are the trees still standing with green when the homes are charred? _url_0_ | The level of moisture in living trees is much greater than that of lumber and other building materials. | [
"The leaves are yellowish green, and during extensively dry and hot periods the tree will shed them. It has the characteristic of performing photosynthesis in its bark (hence the green color), and this is what allows it to survive leafless in hotter periods.\n",
"Because the eastern white pine tree is somewhat re... |
if cameras can take videos with fps equaling single shutter speeds, why do photographers take dedicated still shots instead of video recording everything and later just isolating single frames for “photographs?” | In some cases you can, but when you take a single frame you have more control over the light. When you take a photo you can balance the depth of field, aperture size and iso- getting the right ratio of the three can give you much needed control in certain scenarios. When you record video- most of those settings becom... | [
"Cameras capable of high continuous shooting rates are much desired when the subjects are in motion, as in sports photography, or where the opportunities are brief. Rather than anticipate the action precisely, photographers can simply start shooting from right before they believe the action will occur, giving a hig... |
Which bacteria did mitochondria come from? | you're close. [cyanobacteria are thought to have given rise to chloroplasts,](_URL_2_) not mitochondria.
But your professor is probably also wrong. It's still controversial, but [mitochondria are thought to have come from something like Rickettsia](_URL_0_), maybe (s)he meant [alphaproteobacteria?](_URL_1_) | [
"Biologists had long suspected that mitochondria originated from bacteria that had been incorporated as endosymbionts (\"living together inside\") of larger eukaryotic cells. It was Lynn Margulis who from 1967 on championed this theory, which has since become widely accepted. The most convincing evidence for this t... |
Why does buoyancy equal the density of the fluid multiplied by the submerged volume times the gravitational acceleration, g and not the density of the object submerged? | > why does buoyancy have to do with the weight of displaced fluid rather than the weight of the object submerged?
The weight of the object is the irrelevant to the buoyant force. The water doesn't "know" what the weight of the object is, it just exerts a pressure on it. The total force (which is a sum of all the pres... | [
"The weight of the displaced fluid is directly proportional to the volume of the displaced fluid (if the surrounding fluid is of uniform density). In simple terms, the principle states that the buoyancy force on an object is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object, or the density of the fluid multi... |
how do large companies send bulk letters? | I worked at a company where I spent one whole week with just printing letters (I had data from excel worksheet), putting them into envelopes and then bringing them to post office. I had to take one colegue with me, because every day, it was like 60 kilograms of envelopes.
So it’s mostly repetitive boring work someone... | [
"Bulk mail is mail that is prepared for bulk mailing, often by presorting, and processing at reduced rates. It is often used in direct marketing and other advertising mail, although it has other uses as well. The senders of these messages sometimes purchase lists of addresses (which are sometimes targeted towards c... |
how does the sit in that is going on in the house of representatives work? | The House is in recess right now (could be wrong though) so the representatives there are basically sitting in protest and to draw attention to their cause. The House can go ahead and try to put a bill to vote or they could convene in another location if the Speak of the House decides to. That is in the procedural rule... | [
"Like the Senate, the House of Representatives meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. At one end of the chamber of the House is a rostrum from which the speaker, Speaker pro tempore, or (when in the Committee of the Whole) the chair presides. The lower tier of the rostrum is used by clerks and other... |
how do polygraphs work. | They detect abnormal changes in heartbeat, blood pressure, etc. They prime these machines by asking you simple questions (like, "what is your name?") to see how you react when telling the truth. Theoretically there should be physical results when you lie that you have no control over. Problem is that some people may ju... | [
"In mathematics, and particularly in category theory, a polygraph is a generalisation of a directed graph. It is also known as a computad. They were introduced as \"polygraphs\" by Albert Burroni and as \"computads\" by Ross Street.\n",
"In document duplication (as opposed to law enforcement and such), a Polygrap... |
Did the Romans have any racial prejudices that they held, particularly when they conquered other lands with people of darker skin tones? Did this factor into who was or wasn't sold into slavery? | Hi, hopefully someone can drop by with an answer particularly wrt slavery, but meanwhile, you may be interested in a few earlier discussions
* FAQ section [Pre-History of "Race" and Racism](_URL_5_), particularly the following
* [Racism in the ancient world?](_URL_0_) featuring /u/einhverfr
* [How would I be treat... | [
"Roman slavery was not based on ideas of race. Slaves were drawn from all over Europe and the Mediterranean, including Gaul, Hispania, North Africa, Syria, Germany, Britannia, the Balkans, Greece, etc. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated in... |
what are eyeballs doing when looking at autostereograms (magic eyes) and why can some people not see the hidden image? | Typically, your vision is diverging, although some stereograms are designed with a cross-eyed view.
You are basically tricking your brain into thinking you are looking at something three-dimensional.
When you diverge your eyes, you are focusing them at a point *behind* the paper. Normally, this results in whatever pi... | [
"Magic Eye is a series of books published by N.E. Thing Enterprises (renamed in 1996 to Magic Eye Inc.). The books feature autostereograms, which allow some people to see 3D images by focusing on 2D patterns. The viewer must diverge their eyes in order to see a hidden three-dimensional image within the pattern. A \... |
How was the Republic of China able to fight off the Japanese between 1937-1945, while also fighting against the Communist Party 1927-1950, and being split between warlords? | Both the Communists and Warlords were a significant distraction for the Nationalists during the war against the Japanese, however the Nationalists did not fight all three at the same time.
The Nationalists actively avoided engaging with the Japanese until 1937 (the invasion of Manchuria occurred in 1931), with the int... | [
"In the course of the Second World War (1939–45), the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the nationalist Kuomintang party (KMT) set aside their civil war in order to fight, defeat, and expel Imperial Japan from China. To that end, the leader of the USSR, Joseph Stalin, ordered Mao Zedong, leader of the CPC, to co-o... |
What's the status of the conclusions of the Miller-Urey experiment today? | The standing is (and I am an astrobiologist who talks about this often) that although a great experiment it was flawed from the beginning. IE the early Earth atmosphere we now know was nothing like what Urey thought. This makes the results not matter. On the other hand as mentioned by shavera it is an experiment in sho... | [
"In July, Miller went to Washington to brief the SDI Office (SDIO) on their progress. While the instrumentation concerns had been publicly reported on multiple occasions by this point, he failed to mention these issues. Several sources noted this, and one stated they \"were furious because Miller used the old view ... |
At what point did self replicating molecules become what today is known as life? | I'm not sure I'm understand the question, since I would consider "self-replicating molecules" be a definition of "life", which would then make your question "At what point did life become life?". | [
"There are several theories about the origin of small molecules that led to life on the early Earth. They may have been carried to Earth on meteorites (see Murchison meteorite), created at deep-sea vents, or synthesized by lightning in a reducing atmosphere (see Miller–Urey experiment). There is little experimental... |
Why can't the Navier Stokes equations be solved in 3-D? | Simple explanation: this Nonlinear PDE does't have a closed form solution. We approximate in a way that is analogous to Riemann sums in integral calculus which is what is known as CFD.
The millennium prize has a good write up on why this hasn't been solved.
Trivia: A famous physicist once said that when he died he ... | [
"The Stokes equations represent a considerable simplification of the full Navier–Stokes equations, especially in the incompressible Newtonian case. They are the leading-order simplification of the full Navier–Stokes equations, valid in the distinguished limit formula_10\n",
"The incompressible Navier–Stokes equat... |
I am 23 years old, does my body still have the atoms in it that made up the sperm and egg cell that made me? | I'm just an undergraduate chemistry student, but I would venture to say that it is very likely that you still have atoms in your body that made up the egg and sperm that you grew from. Here's why:
*Actually how many atoms were in your predecessor cells to begin with?*
There are an astounding number of atoms in your bo... | [
"During conception, the father's sperm cell and the mother's egg cell, each containing half the amount of DNA found in other body cells, meet and fuse to form a fertilized egg, called a zygote. The zygote contains a complete set of DNA molecules, a unique combination of DNA from both parents. This zygote divides an... |
Is developing near or far sightedness something unique to humans, or could other animals conceivably develop poor vision? | Lots of animals have bad distance vision..they tend to use other senses for sensing far away, or spend most of their time in enclosed spaces. Rhinos are notorious examples, but lots of mammals are this way.
Worth noting that human nearsightedness appears to be largely environment induced, and is uncommon in premodern... | [
"Near-sightedness is the most common eye problem and is estimated to affect 1.5 billion people (22% of the population). Rates vary significantly in different areas of the world. Rates among adults are between 15 and 49%. Rates are similar in females and males. Among children, it affects 1% of rural Nepalese, 4% of ... |
the sounds a computer makes when downloading | Downloading data is silent. What you're likely hearing is the sound of the hard drive writing the data to disc. For old HDDs (not newer SSDs), the data is stored on magnetic platters and read/written by a read/write head at the end of an articulated arm. The movement of the arm along with the spinning of the platter... | [
"Rather than a dedicated sound-synthesis chip, the Apple II has a toggle circuit that can only emit a click through a built-in speaker or a line out jack; all other sounds (including two-, three- and, eventually, four-voice music and playback of audio samples and speech synthesis) are generated entirely by software... |
why is there such racial tension between australian aboriginals and australians? | Australian here, the short answer is that it's complicated.
Many Aboriginal people are in lower socioeconomic groups, especially those living in regional Australia. To combat this the government offers many programs and benefits to Aboriginal Australians, which causes a degree of resentment from other Australians, how... | [
"Australia's large scale, Post-World War Two, multi-ethnic immigration program has seen Australia develop into one of the most ethnically diverse nations, with relatively little racial violence, and in which incitement to racial violence is a crime. Nevertheless, incidents and examples of violence between the vario... |
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