title list | over_18 list | post_content stringlengths 0 9.37k ⌀ | C1 list | C2 list | C3 list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[
"Do we know if the gravitational attraction of dark matter is equal to that of baryonic matter?"
] | [
false
] | Let's assume WIMPs comprise dark matter. Would 1 kg of dark matter exert the same gravitational force as 1 kg of baryonic matter? | [
"Yes, because we know on theoretical grounds that gravity ",
" couple equally to all forms of energy-momentum.",
"The basis of this claim is a very powerful theorem appealing to the consistency of the quantum theory in the IR limit. ",
"In the classical theory (general relativity) it is a postulate, being par... | [
"Yes."
] | [
"For dark matter? No, it's not possible unless we measure another interaction of dark matter (i.e. \"find\" dark matter). We have extensive empirical verification for normal matter and ongoing experiments for antimatter."
] |
[
"Why do we measure liquids from the bottom of the meniscus?"
] | [
false
] | I would make sense to use the middle of the meniscus because if the liquid was not concave, it should even out to the middle? I learned this in school so is this a thing teacher tell High School students to not complicate thing and if so, what do methods professionals use? | [
"It's mostly arbitrary. Bottom of the miniscus is easier to read than finding the bottom and then finding the top and then guestimating where the middle is. Consistency is most important and any time you bring in a guestimation (even on that small scale), you introduce more human error to the equation."
] | [
"The bottom of the meniscus is easier to read, and not dependent on the viscosity of the liquid. The top (and therefore the midpoint) will vary with viscosity, and may be very hard to determine.",
"Also, the amount above the bottom of the meniscus is usually quite small - you'd have to pick something about 10% of... | [
"And the volumetric glass ware is already calibrated to that bottom point. Look at ",
"volumetric lab glass ware",
". There will be a TD or TC mark on it. The TC mean \"to contain\", TD means \"to deliver\". They correct for the meniscus in TC, and both the meniscus and the residual liquid in the glass ware aft... |
[
"Is there any science behind being a morning person or a night person?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes and no. There's solid science behind the individuality of the circadian rhythm, which is for most people around 24 hours, and there is solid science on the effects of it. ",
"If a person does not sleep in accord with his or her circadian rhythm - that is, if they do not go to sleep when they're sleepy, and d... | [
"I'm turning my layman speculation into a question by asking: Could the answer be a lot simpler that and be that people just like the peace and quiet of nighttime better, so they don't want to go to sleep and waste it all? "
] | [
"I can remember reading something about more intelligent people preferring to do things at night because it's easier because of crowding and whatnot\nJ\nI can't remember if it was a paper or pseudoscience news article unfortunately I'm posting from my phone but I'm hoping to mark this one. Hope I remember to try to... |
[
"Is there a proper anatomical label for the space where the buttock, inner thigh and labia intersect?"
] | [
false
] | Just wondering how else to identify this area other than rattling off, "where the buttock, inner thigh and labia intersect." | [
"Perineum."
] | [
"Isn't that the spot between the anus and the vagina. That's not exactly the spot I was thinking. "
] | [
"The entire area is referred to as the perineum. If you had to have work done there then they can narrow it down such as Perianal. "
] |
[
"How does cinnamon reduce blood sugar?"
] | [
false
] | I've assumed it was from the high fiber content of the cinnamon, or is it actually a chemical mechanism? | [
"There are a few biochemicals in cinnamon to keep track of: cinnamaldehyde and cinnamtannin B1 (neat names, aren't they?). Biochemistry is a hugely complex and overwhelming topic, so pinpointing any chemical's exact mechanism of action is tricky. I'll simplify a bit, as many potential pathways have been proposed.",... | [
"Absolutely! If your extracellular glucose levels remained high but you compensated it by increasing glucose sequestration by cells, thereby increasing intracellular glucose, bad things would happen. Metabolism is actually quite messy stuff, especially done on a large scale. So as your cells start chrning through t... | [
"Amazing. Perfectly answered my question and then some!",
"So it's established that hyperglycemia is dangerous. Now suppose you are consuming a lot of sugar, however insulin is working efficiently and there is no hyperglycemia. The sugar is efficiently being ushered into cells and not remaining in the blood. Can ... |
[
"Where do the electrons go when my phone battery drains really fast when it’s cold?"
] | [
false
] | I thought electrons couldn’t be destroyed. | [
"Electrons aren't being destroyed. Your phone battery (probably a Lithium-Ion battery) relies on chemical reactions to work, and lowering the temperature significantly can slow or even stop these chemical reactions. Because of that, the battery is unable to provide enough current to keep your phone properly functio... | [
"The ",
"internal resistance",
" of the battery increases as temperature drops. ",
"Energy isn't destroyed, but the colder the battery is, the more energy is being lost to the increased internal resistance."
] | [
"Makes sense. Basic chemistry dictates that heat increases rate of reaction and cold temperature decreases reaction rate…in general. So it stands to reason that in cold temps, there are less transfer of electrons thus reducing overall battery function."
] |
[
"I've been wanting to learn about the use of X-rays in medicine and how their use affects the body, but I've found there seems to be an anti-X-ray movement of some kind and I'm having trouble finding rational, factual information."
] | [
false
] | There are a lot of sites out there that seem to be about how various X-ray based procedures, particularly CT scans, are used too often and with disregard to safety. I have a lot of trouble finding numbers and facts to actually back that up. I have a few questions: Is the fear of overuse of these procedures rational? Is... | [
"Ionizing radiation deposits energy in tissue, and has a chance to cause unrepaired damage to the DNA. This mutation can lead to cancer. Our cells are able to repair most damage to the DNA, but no system is perfect.",
"Any diagnostic test comes at a cost. This can be due to the chance of some harm by the test ... | [
"Thank you, this is very interesting. The procedures I was most interested in were ones that would be considered 'routine'. For example, dental X-rays during a routine cleaning. Or a chest X-ray if infection is suspected. For those kinds of things, I assume an MRI would most likely be overkill and an ultrasound wou... | [
"An important point I would add is that X-ray dosage is cumulative over your lifetime. Many medical developments that involve radiation like X-rays center around reducing the amount of exposure while keeping the benefits (quality of the image)."
] |
[
"What is going on inside our brains when we try to recall a memory?"
] | [
false
] | I'm stumped trying to figure it out. If our current understanding of neuroscience says that consciousness is a byproduct of a feedback loop, then how would the act of trying to bring up a certain memory work? If that thought isn't in your head immediately, then why sometimes does it take anywhere between a few extra se... | [
"Usually the retrieval process is part of the LTM. We store information that is organised in the LTM through Semantic Networks. Activation of these networks spreads out along any link that is connected to an activated node; concepts that are activated are easily accessed from memory. One pretty cool thing about sem... | [
"Thank you for the detail there. I am still surprised it works as well as it does."
] | [
"Memory is the process by which we take something we have observed (encountered), and convert it into a form we can store, retrieve and use",
"Encoding --> Storage --> Retrieval --> Storage",
"The Atkinson & Shiffrin Modal Model of memory claims that we have 3 types of separate stores for memory; ",
". Each d... |
[
"Are most penises in the animal kingdom related, or did many of them evolve independently?"
] | [
false
] | The penis seems like a rather handy organ, but it seems many animals lack it. If I'm not mistaken, some birds have penises and others don't. Did the duck penis originate from the same penis as the human's? Have penises gone away and come back? | [
"Intromittent organs (penises) have convergently evolved (independently) in many groups including fish, mammals, birds, turtles and theres even a frog that has one. A colleague of mine, who literally goes by the nickname of the ",
"Penis Lady",
", has made a career of studying the biomechanics of these fascinat... | [
"Oh man, if you want some penis knowledge to blow your mind: ",
"check out these little bastards",
". Not only are they in that weird \"I'M A MAMMAL AND I FUCKING LAY EGGS\" category, but they \"sweat\" milk from all pours, have four-headed penises (dudes) and 2-tracked vaginas (ladies).",
"I firmly believe e... | [
"Probably wish you had four hands"
] |
[
"Are there any studies or evidence of current evolution of humans?"
] | [
false
] | I know species evolve over millions of years but is there any evidence that shows how humans evolved in the past couple thousand years? | [
"BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! Not only is sickle cell anaemia a wonderful example of recent evolution, it also demonstrates how evolution can easily get stuck on non-optimal solutions. You see the mutant haemoglobin that causes sickle cell anaemia (HbS) isn't the only genetic mutation that provides resistance to malaria... | [
"There are a few classic examples thrown around. First, realize that evolution is really just the change in alleles in a population over time. Ideas from population genetics are useful in describing evolutionary trends. Towards that end:",
"The prevalence of sickle cell anemia in areas with high incidence of mala... | [
"There is a book I have called ",
" that talks about how some major diseases that we are fighting against are actually evolutionary responses to change in the environment. Some examples:",
"There are 2-3 other major examples in the book, but I haven't finished reading it yet."
] |
[
"If a magnet attracts something, it uses up some of its energy, right? Can you completely \"de-power\" a magnet by attaching ton of things?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Magnetic fields are produced by circulating electric charges in the magnet's material. The power for these charges can be added from outside (as in an electromagnet), or can come directly from the atoms in the magnet themselves. The strength of the magnetic field is determined by the amount of alignment of the spi... | [
"I think your understanding of magnetism is a bit flawed.",
"First: It costs ",
" energy to maintain a magnetic field.",
"When you attach something, the magnet does ",
" get \"weakened\".\nIf you consider the magnetic field lines, they'd look something like ",
"this",
" before attaching the object. Afte... | [
"Magnetic fields are produced by circulating electric charges in the magnet's material.",
"First of all, this is not entirely correct, magnetic moments in magnetic materials usually come from electron spin, which is not caused by circulating charges at all. ",
"but the magnet does not lose energy, it loses the ... |
[
"How are we able to take a picture of a black hole if they dont emit or reflect any light?"
] | [
false
] | Is a picture of a black hole the correct terminology? | [
"We're basically looking at how the light from gas around the black hole is absorbed or distorted by the black hole. We're looking for a black circle, with gravitational lensing distorting the view of the gas around it."
] | [
"Gravitational lensing of objects almost directly behind the black hole is one way to detect a black hole, but I'm not sure if that is what is meant by a picture of one. Black holes do actually give off light. There is a tiny amount of hawking radiation emitted, but too little for us to detect from earth. Instea... | [
"Much in the same way we can take a photo of (and see) any black object. ",
"What the EHT is really about is gathering data from the center of our galaxy ",
" to obtain more than one pixel's worth from the area were Sagittarius A* resides. ",
"Have a look at ",
"this video",
". Sgr A* is so compact, tha... |
[
"When I start consciously breathing, is a different part of my brain taking over than when I breathe without thinking?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"The cortical control comes from direct projections (eg. corticospinal) to the periphery for control of respiration during voluntary breathing. The link between voluntary and involuntary breathing mechanisms likely occur at the level of the medulla, specifically at the respiratory rhythm generators (eg. preBötz/RTN... | [
"The cortical control comes from direct projections (eg. corticospinal) to the periphery for control of respiration during voluntary breathing. The link between voluntary and involuntary breathing mechanisms likely occur at the level of the medulla, specifically at the respiratory rhythm generators (eg. preBötz/RTN... | [
"Unconscious breathing is mediated by several nuclei in the reticular formation of the brainstem (medulla, pons, etc). Conscious override can occur through the cerebral cortex. However, brainstem function can override cortical control during hypoxia and other deviations from the physiologic norm. "
] |
[
"Did the impact from the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs change the earth’s orbit?"
] | [
false
] | If so, how much of a change did it make? | [
"Technically every speck of dust does, but it's negligible in both cases. An impactor with 1/1000 the diameter of Earth has (very roughly) 1/1000",
" or one billionth of its mass. If it approaches Earth at e.g. 10 km/s then it will change its orbital velocity by around one billionth of that speed, 10 micrometer/s... | [
"To append another perspective to this: The entirety of Earth's biosphere makes up an extremely small part of the planet. Essentially, Earth is a massive ball of near-molten rock, with a very thin crust, that is covered in a microscopic layer of water and grime. We're part of that grime.",
"So when a small pebble... | [
"We don't know the precise impact speed and mass, but 10 km/s is a typical approach speed (leading to a 16 km/s impact due to Earth's gravity). It could be just 2 km/s, it could be 30 km/s, in extreme cases it could be up to 70 km/s. It can't be more for objects in our Solar System, only interstellar objects could ... |
[
"How close are we to end aging?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Ooh! Most of my PhD work was on aging and the genetics of same.",
"Short answer: Dunno. We understand very, very little about why/how the hell aging even happens. As a result, we cannot even begin to estimate \"how long it will be\", as we don't really know what the problem is, at a fundamental level. We have hi... | [
"We're a long way away.",
"The point we're at right now is that it is no longer really viable to continue increasing the ability of the body to continue living if we cannot get the mind to live past 80 or so. The mind is much more complicated than the body, and a part of the reason for our absurdly high healthca... | [
"Not really. We're working on brain-computer interfaces and whole brain simulation at the moment, but mind uploading isn't really a good anyone's seriously working towards that I know of. Like the guy above said, the mind is a an incredibly complex organism. We've really just begun to understand how it works, let a... |
[
"What's the main barrier to creating an HIV vaccine?"
] | [
false
] | Is it that the virus mutates too quickly? Is the virus too complex/have antigenic surfaces that wouldn't produce effective antibodies? Would it be a good candidate for mRNA vaccine technology/is there a highly conserved protein on it that would work? | [
"There are a few issues. The biggest one is that HIV mutates quickly, and there are many different strains of the virus circulating. Influenza vaccines are hard to get right due to viral variation, and HIV is even worse.",
"This paper",
" states:",
"Over the years, the greatest challenge in developing an effe... | [
"It is indeed a great candidate for mRNA. The massive funding into the technology has allowed Moderna to develop a HIV vaccine which is in stage one testing now. ",
"https://www.businessinsider.com/new-hiv-vaccine-could-be-moderna-mrna-success-story-2021-4"
] | [
"The first documented case in the US was in the 80 but it’s speculated it may be early as 1930s HIV was found. The wide belief is first documented case was actually in 1959 in Africa. It’s crazy to think how long HIV has been known but yet a vaccine remains elusive."
] |
[
"Could we eradicate the common cold if everyone who currently has the cold quarantined themselves and didn't give it to anyone?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"This has been adressed by Randall Munroe in his What If book. His answer is in theory yes, although it would be extremely difficult to pull off.",
"Also we might eventually acquire something similar again from animals. "
] | [
"Aren't there many viruses that give the same symptoms? So it's not like there is The Cold but rather multiple different colds.",
"Also the method that viruses spring from living organism DNA could happen again even if a strain were killed off.",
"And it might be worth the effort to rather keep the viruses arou... | [
"I actually came by to say this. Essentially, the logistics of quarantining everyone for even a short time like a week would be nearly impossible. Economies would shut down, there would be no electricity, and food would be extremely scarce.",
"Side note: At first, I thought this was an intentional repost by OP. T... |
[
"How does draino not react while it’s in the bottle?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Two of the important heat-generating reactions in crystal Drano require water to work. First, lye dissolving in water gets hot. Second, lye dissolves the oxide layer off of aluminum and then the aluminum reacts with water and gets hot. Neither of those reactions can happen to the dry powder in the bottle."
] | [
"It is the reaction between the drain cleaner and the fat and grime in the drain that mainly helps unclog it. The heat produced in the reaction is just a side effect.",
"It cannot react in the bottle, because there is nothing to react with. Main ingredient in most drain cleaners just a base, which can break down ... | [
"There isn't anything for it to react with. ",
"In any chemical reaction, the reactants on the left combine to produce the products on the right. Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) in the Drano reacts with many different things, and in particular degrades proteins, and produces heat as one of the products. Obviously, the... |
[
"If our body temp is an average of 98.6 why do we perceive that temperature to be hot?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Hi Jinotix thank you for submitting to ",
"/r/Askscience",
".",
" Please add flair to your post. ",
"Your post will be removed permanently if flair is not added within one hour. You can flair this post by replying to this message with your flair choice. It must be an exact match to one of the followi... | [
"Human body"
] | [
"Human Body"
] |
[
"Why does my iPod FM transmitter experience peaks in static when driving under an overpass?"
] | [
false
] | Specifically, while driving along the interstate on my way home, there was static consistently but it was quiet enough to be listenable, but when I'd pass under an overpass the music would be completely drowned out by static--interestingly, I only seemed to notice it when traveling east/west, as in when the overpass wa... | [
"I think you'd want to ask yourself why there was static to begin with. That indicates that the signal at the antenna/receiver was fairly weak compared to all of the sources of noise. One of the biggest sources of noise is going to be weak stations on or near the same frequency (although there are others, such as... | [
"This is basically what I figured, however the fact that only N-S oriented beams caused the interference perplexed me. "
] | [
"Well, if this theory is correct, it is going to be influenced by both the relation of the beams to the sources of noise, and the relation of the beams and your car. If, for example, most of the noise was coming from broadcast stations to the east or west, then horizontal beams running N-S would act as better ante... |
[
"When an object absorbs light, what is actually happening?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Hi Kaludaris thank you for submitting to ",
"/r/Askscience",
".",
" Please add flair to your post. ",
"Your post will be removed permanently if flair is not added within one hour. You can flair this post by replying to this message with your flair choice. It must be an exact match to one of the follo... | [
"‘Physics’"
] | [
"Physics"
] |
[
"How much do houseplants improve indoor air quality?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"One of my favorite TED talks: ",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmn7tjSNyAA"
] | [
"Three basic common green plants; Areca palm - removes CO2, four shoulder height plants per person. Wipe leaves once a day. Mother-in-law's tongue, converts CO2 into oxygen at night time. Good for bedrooms (requires eight per person). Money plant does something special - it removes pollutants and other air-borne ch... | [
"Since this is Reddit:",
"Areca Palm:",
"\nAreca Palm (Golden Butterfly Palm, Cane Palm, Golden Feather Palm, Yellow Palm) | Scientific Name: Dypsis lutescens | Family: Palmae",
"\n",
"Mother-in-law's tongue:",
"\nMother-in-Law’s Tongue (Snake Plant, Golden Bird's Nest, Good Luck Plant) | Scientific Name:... |
[
"How does positron emission not violate the Law of Conservation of Mass?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"A free proton can’t decay this way, only a nucleus with A > 1 can."
] | [
"Ok, but that doesn’t answer the question of where the extra mass is coming from."
] | [
"The nucleus as a whole is decaying to an isobar with a higher binding energy."
] |
[
"Is breast size determined more by genetic factors or environmental factors?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"http://152.98.160.29/contents/p/staff/Wade_TRHG_450-454_Nov2010.pdf",
"This was the only paper that turned up when I searched 'breast size heritability' on Google Scholar. And its abstract says they found the heritability of breast size is 56% i.e. 56% the variation in breast size is attributable to genes not ... | [
"I should note here that heritability is largely dependent on context. For instance, the heritability of height is different under different circumstances. In the USA, where nearly everyone is well fed and reaches their full potential height, height is more heritable, since most of the remaining variation is due ... | [
"Because it seems like more athletic girls tend to have smaller breasts.",
"Be careful with where this train of thought leads. Perhaps women with larger breasts tend to find sports cumbersome because of their breast size (I'm not a woman, but I've been told it isn't fun to run with DD's). Thus, women with smaller... |
[
"When animals shed fur in the wild, does it serve a purpose in the ecosystem?"
] | [
false
] | As I sat here with one of my two cats on my lap, and then looked at all the cat fur on my shirt, I couldn't help but think, "If there's this much fur around my apartment from just these two little cats...imagine all the cat fur that must be shed around the world every day!" So in nature (not in somebody's apartment) do... | [
"Yes.",
"There is a specialised guild of insects which feed off dead skin, leather and fur. These are usually used once the carrion beetles and the maggots are done with a carcass, but loose fur is fair game too. Anthrenus verbasci and other dermestid beetles come to mind.",
"Fur and hair is also often picked u... | [
"It forms a niche, so yes, kind of. Insects, bacteria, fungi, etc will use the shed fur as food. Circle of life and all that."
] | [
"So fur essentially is among the main sources of food for some groups of insects? Interesting."
] |
[
"How come some drugs have unknown mechanisms of action?"
] | [
false
] | How come some drugs have unknown mechanisms of action? And how are these drugs even developed? Do they just make random chemicals, give them to rats and see what happens and if something beneficial happens without killing too many rats, they sell it to people? | [
"Many drugs and treatments are developed serendipitously... i.e. we make a drug thinking it will treat X condition and we see a change in Y. This isn't always the case of course, but it's happened quite a lot. ",
"This may not be the best example, but this is how ECT was developed. People who experienced seizures... | [
"I can't answer your initial question, but I can tell you a couple of things.",
"And how are these drugs even developed? Do they just make random chemicals, give them to rats and see what happens and if something beneficial happens without killing too many rats, they sell it to people?",
"I know that there are ... | [
"These drugs are most often developed in chemical screens, which pretty much just take giant libraries of chemicals and apply them to cells to see if it affects certain things.",
"For example, a fellow grad student in my lab was interested in disrupting a particular protein-protein interaction relevant to what ou... |
[
"Where do viral outbreaks actually *start*?"
] | [
false
] | I know viruses are almost exclusively spread from contact of some kind with already-infected individuals, but how does patient zero contract it in the first place? Is every distinct viral infection like some sort of pathogenic baton being passed around, with at least one individual infected at all times? Do we even kno... | [
"Is every distinct viral infection like some sort of pathogenic baton being passed around, with at least one individual infected at all times?",
"Yes, every virus today comes from an unbroken chain of precursor viruses trailing back hundreds of millions of years - just as all mammals today are the result of an un... | [
"Some viruses like colds and the seasonal flu are endemic in humans and do get passed around with at least one individual infected at any one time as you say. Most 'outbreaks' that you here about are viruses that cross over from animals to humans. For example bird flu is endemic in water fowl populations are gets p... | [
"Sometimes both are involved -- cross species transmission happens all the time, often without much effect, but sometimes you'll get a mutation or several of them in sequence and things \"take off\" from there."
] |
[
"Are household cleaners really more effective than bleach, vinegar and baking soda?"
] | [
false
] | Marketers would like us to believe that we need an array of products to control microbes and other cleaning issues. Old Wives and the like ( , I'm looking at you) say that almost all household cleaners can be replaced with the aforementioned items. In my personal experience, most cleaning of visible dirt can be achieve... | [
"Although bleach may be superior to some other methods(",
"for instance",
"), adding a hydrogen peroxide treatment ",
"might improve sterilization of a surface",
".",
".",
"As a fun aside (\"fun\" in the \"we're doomed ಠ_ಠ\" sense), it's possible to culture pseudomonas species from Betadine.",
"1",
... | [
"In my personal experience, most cleaning of visible dirt can be achieved with hot water and elbow grease.",
"Sure, but soap certainly does help. Maybe not the fancy-pants expensive stuff, but some regular ol' dish soap goes a long way towards cleaning up greasy messes. "
] | [
"In terms of microbes, nothing beats bleach for cleaning up. It kills literally every pathogen we know of."
] |
[
"what keeps our eyes \"aligned\" with each other? how come we can't move them independently?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The medial longitudinal fasciculus allows for synchronous eye movements in the lateral direction. Up/down synchronization is easier, since both eyes would be activating the same neurons. ",
"To give a bit of background, each eye has 6 muscles going to it, controlled by 3 nerves. The abducens nerve (CN6) abduc... | [
"Thanks, that was very interesting. But why can I adduct my eyes, but not abduct them? And how come I can't move them like chameleons do? Sorry if that was already covered in your excellent reply, I might have missed it."
] | [
"Alignment is learned/neural rather than being a hardwired/mechanical phenomenon. Interesting fact:",
"Before the age of six weeks, coordination of eye movements is poor, and the eyes in normal infants may be misaligned",
"more info"
] |
[
"What is it about grapefruit juice, specifically, that's problematic for many kinds of medications?"
] | [
false
] | Many drugs include a warning not to drink alcohol with them — and many, many things contain alcohol. But right behind alcohol, it seems, is grapefruit juice. This seems unusually specific. How specific are these kinds of problematic drug interactions to grapefruit juice? Or are there lots of other kinds of fruit or foo... | [
"An overly simplified explanation is that grapefruit just prevents many medicines from metabolizing properly due to its ability to block an enzyme from acting on the medication. This leaves more of the medicine behind than intended."
] | [
"The major substance responsible for grapefruit juice's effects is bergamottin:",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergamottin",
"It inhibits (reduces the activity of) an enzyme found in the body which is responsible for metabolizing (breaking down) many types of medication.",
"This means that medications taken... | [
"Thanks for identifying that the problematic part is bergamottin and that this is present in other fruits as well."
] |
[
"Hi all. I have seen it stated as fact by those who don't believe in man made climate change that more damage is done by the explosion of one volcano than by all the harmful chemicals released by China in an entire year. Is this myth?"
] | [
false
] | To me it seems impossible as it would totally undermine the idea that humans can significantly effect climate change, although I can find no actual data to back up what is, in my experience, a fairly common argument. | [
"Now that we have all (unfortunately) been introduced to the phrase 'alternative facts', I would classify this as a clear example of an alternative fact, meaning that it is easily falsifiable, or in layman's terms, it is complete and utter bull sh#t.",
"We can start with the numbers for how much CO2 is emitted by... | [
"Very good facts and figures (at least they seem plausible since I haven't checked them)...",
"... but slightly misses the point. The comparison is a red herring.\nAll the volcanic emissions are part of the natural 'equilibrium' state. These volcanoes have been doing their erupting thing and the earth has been ha... | [
"You're not wrong, but how do you expect to be able to communicate that idea to someone who already refutes very concrete facts? Address your audience at their level, which in this case is the ground floor."
] |
[
"Is quantum mechanics a set of laws?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Not really; it's more of a framework that you put laws into - that is, it leaves to be specified what the system you're using quantum theory to describe, and the \"Hamiltonian operator\" that governs evolution. Now there ",
" considerable constraints, in terms of the several postulates of quantum mechanics, whic... | [
"In quantum mechanics, classical logic still holds. You have to restrict the range of logical statements you can make, sure; in particular statements like \"this system has a definite value of A\" will no longer be universally true when they might have been in classical mechanics, as will \"A is measured to be ",
... | [
"Ah, I see, however what would the term be ? Quantum Mechanics is a set of principles ?"
] |
[
"If matter can neither be created nor destroyed, does this mean that every subatomic particle that comprises our bodies was around since the beginning of time? (Protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, etc)"
] | [
false
] | Furthermore, is it fair to say that these same subatomic particles could have been part of a previous human, animal, or environmental object (tree, dirt, etc.)? | [
"Where do you get the idea from that matter cannot be destroyed? This is not true. Total Energy is conserved, but that still allows me to change energy into particles and vice versa, creating new ones along the way. A few simple examples:",
"Annihilation: An electron and a positron annihilate to produce two gamma... | [
"Part of going through the educational system is learning that many things you were told in previous classes aren't always true or are only approximations."
] | [
"Lepton number is conserved, as is baryon number, but that does not mean they \"do not generally get created from scratch, even if they may be temporarily transformed at times.\"",
"A photon produces an electron/positron pair in the Coulomb field of a heavy nucleus. Lepton numbers are: photon 0, electron 1, posit... |
[
"Does wind chill freeze water?"
] | [
false
] | If on a given day its say 40°F but with wind chill its 30° or so would water still freeze? | [
"Nope, wind chill will enhance the cooling process of water or any other inanimate object, but the temperature of that object will not drop below the ambient air temperature. Wind chill is important in regards to an animal or human's body temperature as an increase in wind will draw away more heat from the skin an... | [
"To (attempt to) explain in very layman terms why the term wind chill even makes sense:",
"The speed at which something cools (or heats) is determined by difference in temperature. Your body is roughly 37",
"C, you will lose heat at a given rate. If the difference was higher, let's say it's 10*C outside, you wi... | [
"This is not correct:",
"but the temperature of that object will not drop below the ambient air temperature.",
"In the case of water, evaporative cooling will decrease the temperature below ambient. I explain one use of this phenomenon below in a top level comment."
] |
[
"In reference to a car's internal combustion engine, how are Petrol/Gasoline and Diesel different?"
] | [
false
] | So, my basic understanding of a car, is that it burns the fuel, and the pressure changes from the fuel burning/explosions is used to pump the pistons. But, why are cars specific to one type, and what is it that makes the two fuels so different that putting one into the other type car would ruin it? | [
"They both function very similarly, the difference between the two is the way the fuel is ignited in each cylinder.",
"In a gasoline engine, the fuel is mixed with air, compressed, ignited with a spark plug, gasses expand and push on the cylinder and then sent out the exhaust.",
"In a diesel engine, air is comp... | [
"Somewhat unrelated, yes, but rather fascinating, thank you for your reply."
] | [
"Somewhat unrelated, yes, but rather fascinating, thank you for your reply."
] |
[
"Dual one-sided mirrors"
] | [
false
] | I work at a daycare and we have observation rooms for students studying children to observe their behavior and the way we talk to them. Well our observation room also connects to the infant room and I found out that at the right angle I can see the the back side of the infant room mirror and it cancels the mirrored eff... | [
"So one-sided mirrors are not actually one-sided. In a normal mirror you take the glass and silver a side so that all of the light is reflected. In the so called \"one-sided\" mirrors, instead of completely silvering the glass so that all of the light is reflected, the glass is partially silvered so that about 50% ... | [
"It's not from my shadow though, as I am across the room. here's a poorly drawn picture ",
"http://imgur.com/2HsgquP.jpg",
"Edit: Now that I am thinking about it, there is a window in the infant room around that area and so I'm guessing the sunlight is causing the infant room to become brighter than my room wi... | [
"\"one-sided mirrors\" ",
"aren't really one way",
". They just reflect more light than they let through. In this way people in a brightly lit room connected to a dark observation room through one of these mirrors will see a reflection because there is much more light in the room, so the reflected portion domin... |
[
"Why does my internet and TV come into my house on the same coax cable, yet once it is there, I need to use other cables (hdmi, ethernet etc) to get to the device?"
] | [
false
] | In theory , since the signal came in on a coax cable, couldn`t the same cable be used to go from the dvr to the tv? or from the modem to the computer? | [
"In theory you could do away with the cable box and cable modem but your TV would then have to do the work of the cable box or cable modem. But there are so many different ways to deliver internet and audio/video it would quickly become cost prohibitive to include the electronics to decode all of these different s... | [
"Cables and connectors are often defined to go with a particular format (HDMI, etc.) ",
" they are interchangeable, but 'impedance' of source, connectors, receivers, and cables generally need to match. A unique connector is one way of increasing the chance that people will connect the right things. "
] | [
"Coax is very high bandwidth, and has excellent noise characteristics, but the electronics required to transmit and receive signals over it are comparatively expensive. The cable itself is also more expensive to manufacture than other kinds.",
"So it certainly ",
" be used, but the engineers who designed HDMI, ... |
[
"Why do peppers taste a lot more spicy if you let them rot for a week or two?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"I assume you mean ripen, not rot? No one eats rotten food. I'm not sure exactly, but I would imagine something in the pepper breaks down into what causes it to be spicy, couldn't say more specifically than that though."
] | [
"I actually mean rot. My grandpa used to do that. They get a bit mushy and off colored, then he'd smash it up into a juice. He'd save the juice then we'd put it on whatever it was that we were eating."
] | [
"It sounds like your grandpa was letting the peppers ferment - this is what hot sauce makers do. Capsaicin is more concentrated around the seeds of a chili pepper (probably to prevent animals from eating them). Fermentation breaks down the chili, releasing the most concentrated portion of capsaicin.",
"(Fun fac... |
[
"What would happen to a dead body floating in space? Would it decompose at all?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"If the body was not in a space suit and assuming it wasn't near a heat source it would likely freeze in short order preventing any decomposition. In addition any water would boil off in the low pressure leaving the body a dry frozen husk. Quiet possibly it would then last indefinitely as none of typical biological... | [
"So a Space Mummy, huh? I hope that becomes the tradition for disposing of corpses in a future space-faring society. I like the idea of space mummies."
] | [
"Massive decrease in external air pressure (aka vacuum) will have intrapulmonary air leaving the lungs. It will move from an area of higher pressure to an area of lower. It would be an extreme version of how your diaphragm causes pressure changes that allow the lungs to expand and contract during inhalation/exhalat... |
[
"I put a 1 liter bottle of water and two 0.5 liter bottles of water in the freezer. Will the two 0.5 liter bottles freeze faster as the 1 liter bottle and why (not)?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"All other things being equal, yes. The biggest effect of splitting up the water in two containers is to increase the surface area where the warmer container is in contact with the cold surrounding air. You can get a bit of intuition for why this area of contact is important from ",
"this video",
", which shows... | [
"This is the correct answer. In addition, each bottle is independent of the others. Would you expect a single 0.5 bottle to freeze faster than a 1 liter bottle? Of course. The fact that there would be a second identical bottle has no bearing on how fast either bottle freezes."
] | [
"Take your question to the limit and use your intuition: why stop at 2 containers? What's magic about 2?Why not divide it into 4 equal containers? Or 8, or 16... Let's say we divide it into thousands of tiny little containers,equally sized and very small. Isn't it reasonable to assume a teeny, tiny little spec will... |
[
"How fast do common bacteria move in water?"
] | [
false
] | Let's say I have a dirty glass and a clean reservoir of water with a tap. I want to rinse my glass with it. What is the minimum flow rate to make sure no bacteria can make it back into the clean supply? | [
"Typical pathogenic bacteria have motility velocity in the 10-50μM/sec range. So any flowing tap would be far too fast for bacteria to ever swim up the stream.",
"The main concern would be contaminating the faucet and having biofilm growth and having water with no residual free chlorine.",
"ELI5: much, much mor... | [
"50μM/sec",
"This is about 18 cm/h, or 7 in/h"
] | [
"Which is assuming the bacterium \"swims\" in the same direction for an hour. Some attractants may make this happen, but in reality most motion would be closer to random. \nFor non propelling bacteria it's even slower and called brownian motion. This basically goes with the flow of water, in still water it's with t... |
[
"Where exactly is the US Treasury borrowing $ 2.99 Trillion from?"
] | [
false
] | There was . Was curious as I was reading recently that . Edit: Added link to today's news source | [
"I mean you are technically correct but for the stimulus debt the fed will effectively be buying 100% of it. ",
"For the stimulus the treasury has had to issue about an extra 2 trillion in bonds. The fed has purchased 2 trillion in bonds. While the fed has not bought the exact bonds issued by the treasury they ha... | [
"The only top-level response here isn't accurate, so I'll leave a new one rather than replying there.",
"At a technical level, Treasury holds ",
"auctions",
" with primary dealers to issue debt at the best possible price. ",
"Primary dealers",
" are essentially just big banks that have a special trading r... | [
"When the government needs to \"borrow\" money, they basically sell bonds. Bonds are really just promises to pay back the borrowed amount, plus interest, over some time period. There's a whole complicated process of the exact path these bonds take from their initial buyers to who owns them at maturity, but the idea... |
[
"Anti-matter \"stars\""
] | [
false
] | I was reading about some astrophysics when I had an idea, researched a little and found a few key-points discussed, but not in any detail. Thus, I come to you, my friends. Here's what I know: * Black Holes "evaporate" causing Hawking Radiation, which as I understand it is a release of particles. * Particles and Antipa... | [
"You must be careful here. You list 8 things you say you \"know,\" but 5 of them are either outright hypotheses with no experimental/observational support, or are just not correct.",
"Black Holes \"evaporate\" causing Hawking Radiation, which as I understand it is a release of particles.",
"Be careful assuming... | [
"so could we actually \"see\" an antimatter star or just observe it's effect on matter as you stated here..",
"We could actually see it, and it would look basically identical. Antimatter has the same interactions with the electromagnetic field as regular matter, so an antimatter star with the same composition as... | [
"Very comprehensive :-) and I agree with pretty much all of your response here."
] |
[
"Could Ceres eventually clean up the asteroid belt?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"No.",
"Currently impacts between members of the Asteroid Belt do not result in the masses of the two bodies combining (called the \"accretional regime\"), but rather result in fragmentation of the bodies (called the \"collisional regime\"). By fragmentation I don't mean total disruption, but rather that fragment... | [
"Either collisional grinding or accretion can be very slow. Note that the current number density (= number/volume) is really really low. Indeed, the Asteroid Belt may have lost 90-95% of its original members (O’Brien, D. P., Morbidelli, A. & Bottke, W. F. The primordial excitation and clearing of the asteroid belt—... | [
"Small asteroids and dust have their orbits perturbed by non-gravitational forces, all of which arise from the fact that light carries energy and angular momentum. See: ",
"Poynting-Robertson effect",
", ",
"Yarkovsky effect",
", ",
"YORP",
", ",
"Radiation pressure",
". These perturbations cause th... |
[
"Why are the bottom of clouds flat? Or at least appear to be flat?"
] | [
false
] | Sitting in the back of a car staring out the window at the sky just got me wondering. | [
"The air in the atmosphere is a fluid. Like other fluids, there can be pretty clearly defined boundaries between different densities. The boundaries can be relatively uniform, so you might get nice flat cloud forming at the boundary where warm moist air overlays relatively colder, dryer air.",
"Temperature and pr... | [
"And even when the bottoms are ragged, they appear mostly flat because the cloud is often several miles away from you, so you won't be able to distinguish the roughness to it"
] | [
"Earth Sciences"
] |
[
"Why doesn't glow-in-the-dark material (Phosphorescence) work with laser pointers?"
] | [
false
] | I know the basic principle behind the mechanism. From wiki: "In simple terms, phosphorescence is a process in which energy absorbed by a substance is released relatively slowly in the form of light. This is in some cases the mechanism used for "glow-in-the-dark" materials which are "charged" by exposure to light." So I... | [
"It does have to do with the wavelength of light. Generally speaking, the excitation light needs to be higher energy (shorter wave length) than the phosphorescent color. Most glow in the dark stuff uses strontium aluminate which needs 200 to 450 nm light to charge (UV to blue). A green laser will not likely wor... | [
"This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy. ",
"If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension ",
"GreaseMonkey",
" to Firefox and add ",
"this open source script",
". ",
"Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab,... | [
"This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy. ",
"If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension ",
"GreaseMonkey",
" to Firefox and add ",
"this open source script",
". ",
"Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab,... |
[
"What immunologically is going on to make people asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It's not really accurate to say people are \"carriers\" of COVID, implying some kind of long term equilibrium state. The human immune system will always fight covid and the battle will be won or lost.",
"The spectrum of symptoms will be determined by a lot of factors. Some may have had previous exposure to a s... | [
"I think in this case the “asymptomatic” part might need to be defined as well. A recent Swedish study found that more or less everyone had symptoms either at the time of a positive COVID test or develop symptoms soon afterwards (though note that “displaying symptoms” and “feeling sick” isn’t always the same thing)... | [
"Some may have had previous exposure to a similar virus",
"I wonder if recent exposure to other coronaviruses (common cold?) might confer some protection? I mean that the immune system basically has to determine for itself how to fight a new infection, and whatever adaptation it comes up with (in some subset of ... |
[
"Would Koko, the sign-language speaking gorilla, have been able to translate what a different, non-signing gorilla was saying?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Define 'saying'. Koko may be able to sign that another gorilla is angry, but gorilla interpersonal communication consists mainly of body language, and getting a ",
" to interpret that for a ",
" is probably a hundred times more difficult than to just ask a human to interpret it."
] | [
"There's a lot of controversy in the psychology community about whether Koko can actually communicate at all. ",
"Because she is rewarded for the signs, there's a strong argument to be made that it's a combination of Skinnerian reinforcement (she just learned to do what's expected to get a reward) and humans gen... | [
"Just as a reference, remember that 2 year old humans have better language skills than any other great ape. So asking a 1.5 year old who knows a few words what a 10 month old is \"saying\" is kind of a difficult thing to do."
] |
[
"Do we permanently blind deep sea creatures when we point spotlights at them in their natural habitat?"
] | [
false
] | Basically as above. Got me thinking whilst watching Blue Planet. Some creatures appear not to have 'eyes' (at least in the classical sense), so perhaps they use other senses for survival, navigation, etc, and therefore aren't affected. On the other hand, surely shining a light from an ROV or manned submersible, even of... | [
"The opsins (light sensitive proteins) in the rods and cones of the eye are continuously used and refreshed by the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), so all animals have this renewal mechanism in place. When the retina gets a big burst of light, the opsins' retinal will get isomerized en masse and have to be regener... | [
"In addition to the \"homeostatic\" turnover that ",
"/u/samadam",
" mentioned, many fish are able to repair and even regenerate photoreceptors that were damaged or killed by intense light [1].",
"Additionally, in very dark environments organisms usually rely on other senses, e.g. fish have the lateral line s... | [
"It's a problem of the volume of energy. ",
"Shinning a bright light in the eyes of someone is akin to splash water in the eyes. It's temporarily blinding, but there's no lasting damages. ",
"Looking at the Sun is pretty much like putting a powerwasher against your eyeballs and pressing the trigger. There will ... |
[
"Why are radio frequencies split into radio waves and microwaves?"
] | [
false
] | I'm doing a project for school on radio frequency and how it is used for communication. However, it has been extremely hard to find any information on why it is split into radio waves and microwaves. | [
"Both radio waves and microwaves are examples of electromagnetic radiation. The split into various categories is somewhat arbitrary. In reality, there's a continuous spectrum of EM radiation and there are no real \"hard breaks\" between different parts of the spectrum. We group parts of the spectrum together with a... | [
"But want I want to know is why is there an umbrella term for radio waves and microwaves, why not just draw and arbitrary line there? Why create an arbitrary split with RF and then split that into radio waves and microwaves? Is it like that \"the way it has always been\" like with direction of currents and electron... | [
"The split is mostly historical. In olden times, you needed some exotic equipment like klystron or magnetron tubes to produce microwaves, but you could produce \"ordinary\" rf with more ordinary tubes and later with transistors.",
"Nowadays, transistors are able to generate signals well into the microwave range (... |
[
"Is it more effective to stir my coffee in a circular motion (making the little whirlpool) or just use chaotic motion?"
] | [
false
] | And I'm specifically referring to getting the sugar and cream evenly distributed throughout my coffee. EDIT: When I first thought of the question, I had in mind a standard 12 ounce cup from Starbucks and the little wooden stirring stick. It didn't occur to me at the time that it would be completely different when stirr... | [
"Japanese scientists showed that lateral motions are more efficient than circular swirling.",
"http://lifehacker.com/168567/video-demonstration-stir-cocoa-so-it-dissolves-well"
] | [
"In general, the more turbulent flow you produce inside the liquid, the better mixing you will get. You want to avoid the \"whirlpool cone\" shape while stirring as that will get you more toward a laminar flow regime.",
"I can't get into the details of the local Reynolds number around a spoon or stick, but tradi... | [
"The video was removed from Youtube. I'll search around and see if I can find another.",
"EDIT: After a semi-exhaustive search, I wasn't able to find it."
] |
[
"Why do the bubbles on the surface of a drink (coffee, for example) seem to attract one another?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"This is called the ",
"Cheerios Effect",
". I find this amusing.",
"Basically, when something is floating in a liquid, a ",
"meniscus",
" forms around it. (In the case of the bubbles, it's a concave meniscus.) Since the bubbles float, they want to be at the highest point achievable on the surface of the... | [
"So how would bubbles on top of mercury behave?"
] | [
"Supposing bubbles of mercury form on the surface of the liquid (as in water), I believe they would bubble-bubble interactions would be the same, but the bubbles wouldn't be attracted to the sides of a glass container because mercury forms a convex meniscus against glass.",
"I could not find clear evidence that m... |
[
"Are the orbits of the solar system coplanar to the Sun's orbit around the milky way?"
] | [
false
] | If so, is this true for the majority of other stellar systems that have orbital bodies? And how do stars tend to orbit or move gravitationally in globular or irregular galaxies that do not have an apparent direction of rotation? Would we expect planetary orbits to be coplanar to galactic orbits in irregular galaxies? | [
"No. The solar system's rotation depends on the angular momentum of the dust cloud that originally formed the sun/planets. The solar system is oriented at an angle of 63 degrees relative to the plane of the milky way. And you can see that in ",
"this picture.",
" The bright yellow band is obviously the milky w... | [
"And actually, there probably isnt a constant center of mass, it would move around a bit over years.",
"I think most of what you said is right, but I'm pretty sure the center of mass is constant as long as there is no external interference (such as from another galaxy). You can't change the center of mass in a sy... | [
"I'm not sure if this is what was referred to, but we will \"collide\" with the Andromeda Galaxy. Often times, when galaxies collide, they cease to be spiral galaxies, and become irregularly shaped. As such, it will no longer be possible to divide our galaxy into quadrants, and charting it will become a lot harder ... |
[
"What is the average percentage of shared DNA between two complete strangers?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Depends on what definition you are using.",
"There are different ways of calculating the percentage of shared DNA between two people. One way is to look at the number of shared base pairs, without any regard to long shared stretches of DNA like those seen in close relatives. Think of two random blue-eyed people ... | [
"It depends what exactly you mean when you ask this question. The simple way of answering it is to say that \"average pairwise diversity\" in humans is about 0.1%, meaning that two randomly chosen people will differ at roughly one out of every thousand base pairs. I guess this make the direct answer to your questi... | [
"This stuff gets really neat if you if you have a big enough dataset: ",
"http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.3815v2.pdf"
] |
[
"How can the size of a jigsaw puzzle be estimated when pulling pieces one at a time out of a bag at random, and on average how many pieces will need to be pulled before the exact size of the puzzle can be determined?"
] | [
false
] | If the pieces from a rectangular jigsaw puzzle of an unknown piece count are emptied into a bag and then pulled out one at a time at random, with an estimate on the total number of pieces in the puzzle being made after each piece is revealed, how should that estimate be calculated using the following information? Wheth... | [
"A great problem, and probably something you can write a master thesis on.",
"Some assumptions:",
"Some initial thoughts:",
"You can make estimates based on the relative number of center (M) and edge (E) pieces, but different length to height ratios will lead to different E to M ratios. All you get that way i... | [
"... the probability that two random pieces are next to each other is approximately 4/N. ...",
"That involves an assumption that the pieces are roughly on a square grid. (I'm not sure you can get far without making assumptions like that.)",
"Count the number of connections you found.",
"There's probably some... | [
"4/N also doesn't take into account that edge and corner pieces only have 2 and 3 neighbors respectively (assuming square grid). You could adjust this pretty easily if you have a count of how many edge pieces. And of course there are 4 corners if its rectangular. Unless of course the puzzle is significantly large t... |
[
"What makes us build up a tolerance to substances like alcohol, and what makes lowers it when we stop consuming?"
] | [
false
] | Title says it all really. | [
"I would recommend this read: ",
"Alcohol and Tolerance - Alcohol Alert 28-1995",
".",
"Strictly physiologically speaking, there are two elements of tolerance - Functional and Metabolic tolerance.",
"In the brain, alcohol functions as a positive allosteric modulator on the GABA_A receptors resulting in incr... | [
"Is it the same for other substances, but with other enzymes and receptors?"
] | [
"Yes. ",
"A lot of drugs used in medicine or as substance abuse do have ability to induce drug tolerance. The mechanism behind the tolerance can either of those ways I have mentioned (or a combination of both!) ",
" can be achieved by either reducing the amount of receptors present or making each receptor respo... |
[
"What effect would a violation in CPT symmetry have on our current understanding of physics?"
] | [
false
] | I only have a "practical" understanding of quantum physics from taking physical chemistry, and so the "finer points" of modern particle physics are lost on me. I recently read about how there are no individual symmetries for charge, parity, or time and instead there appears to be a single symmetry of all of these toget... | [
"You can derive CPT symmetry from Lorentz invariance (the laws of physics are the same in every reference frame + there is a speed limit) and quantum field theory, which is based on Lorentz invariance.",
"A violation of CPT would mean quantum field theory cannot be right. We know it is at least an excellent appro... | [
"CPT violation would be a revolutionary discovery. More important than everything we have discovered in particle physics in the last 50 years."
] | [
"Surely it wouldn't just be QFT that would be a dead end if Lorentz invariance is broken. The whole of GR would have to be rethought with a different symmetry group."
] |
[
"What would happen to a person if they stood inside the LHC while it was in use?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The LHC generally operates at ",
"ultrahigh vacuum",
", so right of the bat, there would be some practical issues. But let's put these aside for the moment, and consider what would happen if you were hit by one or multiple bunches (yes, this is the technical term) of high energy protons. Let's use the older va... | [
"Afaik Bugorski did not lament much symptoms (except for seizures) from having a tube in his brain burnt from side to side, and in fact continued and finished his doctorate work as expected.",
"Might be legend though, there's very few sources."
] | [
"Your asterisks have, instead of denoting multiplication, italicized some poor innocent numbers instead."
] |
[
"Black hole radiation?"
] | [
false
] | If a black hole emits radiation (Hawking radiation - corerect me if I am wrong) but photons can't escape its gravitational field, then doesn't that radiation move faster than light? | [
"No. Black holes do emit radiation, but photons can escape the gravitational pull of the black hole depending on where they are. The boundary around the black hole where past this point the light cannot escape is called the Swarzschild radius, any photons further away than this point can escape.",
"Edit - forgot ... | [
"The boundary around the black hole where past this point the light cannot escape is called the Swarzschild radius",
"The boundary is called the event horizon; assuming this is a Schwarzschild (i.e., non-rotating uncharged) black hole, it has a surface area given by 4πr",
", where r",
" is the Schwarzschild r... | [
"Hawking radiation isn't photons escaping from ",
" the black hole. It's quantum fluctuations ",
" the black hole that behave in such a way that the end product can include a photon moving outward and the black hole losing a small amount of energy. The photon was never within the black hole, instead being just ... |
[
"How does 3-D printing work?"
] | [
false
] | From what I have gathered, it uses a bunch of specific particles and then glues or fuses them together using heat or some adhesive substance, but I'm not quite sure how it goes about doing this and with what material. I understand that a 3-D CAD-like model is necessary, much like most engineering manufacturing process... | [
"How does the machine physically work?",
"Consumer printers like reprap and makerbot work by pushing a plastic filament through a nozzle which melts and deposits the plastic in place. The plastic comes in coils of wire-like filament. Either the nozzle or platform can movein X and Y, depending on the printer. As t... | [
"I will assume you are referring to FDM (fused-deposition modeling), as there are other \"3D printing\" methods of rapid prototyping (RP).",
"How does the machine physically work?",
"These machines work by melting a spool of plastic (usually ABS or PLA), in a print head that moves left/right, forward/backwards,... | [
"Sorry if I was unclear: RP includes FDM, as well as other methods, like SLA, SLS, and LOM, to name some of the more common types.",
"I don't know of any process where you can remove the binder from the parent material as you are describing, but that's not to say someone hasn't developed that type of process, eit... |
[
"How come we can't tickle ourselves but we can masturbate?"
] | [
false
] | I heard that we can't tickle ourselves because our brains realize we are doing it, something like that. So how come we can masturbate, if our brain realizes it's us doing it? | [
"Scientists have discovered that the feeling experienced when we are tickled causes us to panic and is a natural defense to little creepy crawlers like spiders and bugs.",
"The Cerebellum, a primitive part of the brain, dampens the tickle sensation when we do it to ourselves because it is in essence acknowledging... | [
"Generally speaking, people who react more to external stimulus are more ticklish. ",
"People who do not like to be touched are more ticklish than others. ",
"Increased unpredictability leads to increased ticklish-ness. For instance if you blind fold someone they will feel an increased ticklish sensation than ... | [
"Who said we cannot tickle ourselves? if you run your fingers lightly over certain parts of your lower abdomen or tickle the sides, you will get the same reaction.",
"I'm surprised most people are rushing headlong to provide speculative answers for a question that has a false premise to begin with.",
"Basically... |
[
"Question regarding simple immobilisation of sucrase experiment"
] | [
false
] | What is the exact purpose of mixing the dried yeast (sucrase) with sodium alginate? | [
"You need to provide some context here. "
] | [
"It's an experiment to immobilise the enzyme sucrase..(to attach it to an inert material. The first part of the experiment involves mixing sodium alginate with the yeast (which contains sucrase). This mixture is then dropped into a beaker containing calcium chloride. My question is: what is the exact purpose of mix... | [
"I have some ideas, but would need to know more about the procedure and what you're measuring/investigating. I'm assuming this is for school. Is there any literature for the assignment to which you can link me? "
] |
[
"What is the difference between Global Warming and Climate Change?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"While they do tend to get used interchangeably (and are certainly related), they do mean different things. ",
"This page",
" from skeptical science gives a nice run down (along with some bonus discussion of how the existence of both terms has been used as a point of contention by 'skeptics'). In short, the two... | [
"Climate Change is the \"little picture\" term, and was chosen specifically to downplay the actual threat by those with political agendas counter to addressing said threat. It has an inherently passivity to it, and thus allows the subject to be sidelined and downplayed more easily. A more accurate term would be \"C... | [
"I find that off, Climate change has been used to describe the changing weather patterns due to warming, you're looking at more frequent and violent storms that's Climate Change, the record heat in Europe is global warming"
] |
[
"What are some things about contemporary or recently extinct animals that we wouldn't have known if we only had fossils of them to study?"
] | [
false
] | Are there any remarkable features or behaviors of modern animals that we know wouldn't be evident from a fossil record equivalent to what we have for the animals that have been extinct for millions of years? | [
"How some species are related. \nA lot of what we know about how species are related and how close/far they are is based on genetic research, which would not be done if left only to the fossil record. ",
"The intelligence of some species might also be over looked. \nFor example, we would have no idea that chimpan... | [
"their colours. we have no idea what dinosaurs were coloured like, or any animal that we only know about from fossils."
] | [
"That's true. Nobody would've ever known about zebra stripes."
] |
[
"Can you build up a tolerance to aspirin/acetaminophen?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"From a phramacological perspective, the answer to both questions is yes. Drugs all work in essentially the same way: they change the body's chemistry. This chemistry is collectively known as your ",
". One of the basic principles of physiology is that this metabolism is always trying to maintain various para... | [
"Acetaminophen is my nickname!"
] | [
"If there were no other conditions/disease states that affected you/your homeostasis, no, you would not need to increase your dosage over time. However, this is not the case most of the time. ",
"The cardioprotective effects stem mainly from aspirin's antiplatelet effect. Assuming no other changes, there is a ... |
[
"How much air would have to be injected through a syringe to kill a person?"
] | [
false
] | In movies there are often scenes of people inject a needle with air into a IV drip. The person ends up dying as a result of it. Is there any truth to this hollywood depiction? If so, how much air must by inject to actually kill a person? | [
"We don't know. But a few bubbles don't kill (most) people. What matters is not only the amount, but also the speed at which the air is injected/entrained.",
"Small amounts of air injected into the peripheral venous system eventually end up in the capillaries of the lung, from where they are usually absorbed. Eve... | [
"Physician here. ",
"The short answer is ",
"\"The fatal amount of air in human is reported to be either 200 and 300 ml bolus or 3-5 ml/kg\"",
".",
"The long answer is that small amounts of air are routinely injected as mentioned in other comments. In fact, anesthesiologists can use a sonographic device t... | [
"Wow, I was also intrigued so read into it. The part from his link that is relevant:",
"Orogenital sex during pregnancy and puerperium, as there will be pelvic venous congestion and larger capacity of vagina during pregnancy, there is great risk for VAE.",
"And, here",
" is the article referenced, case study ... |
[
"How long does it take for our solar system to orbit the centre of the galaxy? How many times has it done so?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"To understand why that question can't be answered, ask yourself: when's the approximate next time that the Earth will do a Solar year?",
"If you answer \"January 1, 2014\" - well, why that day instead of January 31, 2014, the tradional Chinese New Year? Or September 24, 2013, the next Rosh Hashanah? In other wor... | [
"I liked this question, I had to google it and find out myself.",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_year",
"\"According to NASA, even at this incredible speed, it still takes the solar system 230 million years to orbit the center of the Milky Way Galaxy one time.\""
] | [
"The spiral arms aren't really formed as if they were streamers attached to a merry-go-round. In other words, the arms themselves aren't \"things\" that are being spun around the galactic center. Instead, the arms appear to be ",
" composed of stars. There is ",
"an animation on this page",
" that shows how, ... |
[
"Do predator and prey take similar times to reach sexual maturity, to facilitate co-evolution? If not, why doesn't one species evolve quicker?"
] | [
false
] | Do predator and prey take similar times to reach sexual maturity, to facilitate co-evolution? If not, why doesn't one species evolve quicker? | [
"Consider rabbits and mice, born to be eaten, grow up fast and well, breed like rabbits. If a fox eats a rabbit and a dozen field mice a week the food had to grow up and breed faster or there would be neither. "
] | [
"Oh yeah, I'd forgotten that the predator eats multiple prey rather than just one, that makes a lot of sense! Thanks! "
] | [
"Prey species evolve faster than predator species because the prey species is under stronger selective pressure. This is called the \"life-or-dinner\" principle. If a Lynx fails to catch a rabbit, it misses a meal. If the rabbit fails to escape the Lynx, it dies. Thus traits that help the rabbit escape will spread ... |
[
"Conventionally, the opinion on study seems to be to study for 45 minutes, take a break for 15 minutes, and repeat. Is there any proof to back this division up, compared to say, several hours of study in a row? Has anyone ever done a critical analysis?"
] | [
false
] | Also compared to even shorter breaks (like 20, 10, 20, 10). I always feel that once I studying, I've got the ball rolling. Every time I stop, I find it harder to get back into it, and I'm wondering if I'm stopping for breaks that I don't "need". | [
"Yes. There are numerous studies in the psychology literature (typically memory) about spaced or interleaved study vs. massed study. I linked to some references in this post:\n",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rtixc/does_studying_in_the_morning_sleeping_in_the/",
"Furthermore, there are interestin... | [
"Please do dig them, I am very interested."
] | [
"Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but here are a few papers on judgment of learning (JOL). ",
"1",
", ",
"2",
", ",
"3",
". These are the ones that I found that are free to access. There are lots of others though.",
"You can find a lot more by searching for metacognition, metamemory of jud... |
[
"Why do we get knocked out by heavy hits to the head?"
] | [
false
] | And when you eventually wake up, what happened in the brain to invoke that response? | [
"Essentially it works like an externally induced seizure. The force of the blow causes the brain to bump against the bony skull and this triggers a sudden wave of electrical impulses that spreads through the entirety of the brain tissue and renders you unconscious, like generalized seizures. Here is a quote from th... | [
"Yes basically it's once the cortex comes online again that you become conscious. This brain reaction reaction spreads very quickly (hence the instantaneous knockout), and once its everywhere, your brain is basically firing like a fibrillating heart i.e. ",
". When that stops and the different areas of the brain ... | [
"Thank you. This makes sense! When waking up from this state, is this just once the chain reaction in the brain comes to an end?"
] |
[
"Is there such a thing as a \"fractional\" derivative?"
] | [
false
] | There can be a first derivative, a second derivative, a third derivative and so on. Can there be such a thing as a first-and-a-half derivative? A two-third derivative? Just to be clear, I don't mean partial derivatives! <3 | [
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_calculus"
] | [
"That's really awesome. We never did the WKB approximation in our quantum classes so I wasn't aware either that such a thing existed, or whether it was useful physically. "
] | [
"Thanks! I'm not sure why I didn't think of looking that up before (bad form, I know).\nHonestly, though, the only thing I understood from that article is that yes, they exist. And the pretty graph."
] |
[
"Query about moon craters"
] | [
false
] | Hi all, I was looking at this at and was struck by the craters - they seem fairly circular and some even appear to have remains of the meteorite that hit it in the center, but I couldn't find make crater impacts that seemed to indicate an oblique angle impact - I would expect to see some of the craters to be round, so... | [
"This is a great question. There are a few factors at play here.",
"Some may argue here that gravity attracts impactors and tends to pull them towards the center of Mass of the body, thus reducing the tangential component of velocity and making the impact more vertical. This is true, but only to a very small ex... | [
"This is a really great answer, thanks. It makes sense that the blast would drive the crater outward equally versus an angled blast and the paper was a great read. ",
"Like all science, it only raises more questions, like, \"Since we have been videotaping pretty much everything since the mid-1990's, has anyone e... | [
"A large one no, but we see impacts ",
"all the time",
". The ",
"largest one ever",
" just last week.",
"Edit: better link."
] |
[
"Why is the boiling point of a mixture in between that of the two constituents?"
] | [
false
] | In other words, why doesn’t the more volatile constituent boil off first, leaving the less volatile constituent in liquid form. I’d like to understand what is happening at a molecular level. | [
"The boiling point of a liquid is determined by the interactions between molecules, to escape the liquid phase a molecule needs to overcome the attractive forces to its neighbors. When you have two liquids (A and B) mixed together uniformly, you don’t just have A interacting with itself and B interacting with itsel... | [
"In addition to what the other poster said, it is worth noting that the boiling point doesn't have to be in between the boiling points of the constituents, which happens if there is an ",
"azeotrope",
", or a point where the vapor fractions of the boiling liquid mixture match the liquid fractions (usually the m... | [
"In principle it could be anything, B-B could be 1 as well, in which case both species would prefer to be in the mixture."
] |
[
"In a Power supply how do rails work?"
] | [
false
] | Looking for a new power supply so i can power 2 gpus. Apparently amps running on the 12v rail is very important. Could you explain how the rail works? Also 1 rail vs say 4 rails? If it means anything i was looking at: CORSAIR CX series CX750 or EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750 | [
"Rails in a power supply are like the individual circuit breakers in your breaker box, they are just current limiters on a cluster of wires.",
"In a modern PSU AC comes in from the wall, gets converted to DC, and that DC gets converted down to 12V, from there some is converted down to 5V and 3.3V, but there is on... | [
"Just to add a little more detail - there's a limit to how much current you can safely draw through a wire of a particular size. A single rail is limited to a safe amount - by standard, a 12 VDC line shouldn't be drawing more than 20 A.* So if you have a bunch of power-hungry components, then you may need multipl... | [
"The 20A@12V restriction got lifted with ATX 2.3 back in 2007 so that no longer applies, which allows massive single rail PSUs like the Corsair AX1200 with 100A on a single rail to technically be ATX compliant, the best kind of compliance!"
] |
[
"If Antihistamines block the immune systems' response, how does it not hinder the body from dealing with attacks?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Hi Goreflox thank you for submitting to ",
"/r/Askscience",
".",
" Please add flair to your post. ",
"Your post will be removed permanently if flair is not added within one hour. You can flair this post by replying to this message with your flair choice. It must be an exact match to one of the follow... | [
"Hahahhaha get it super original commenting???!?!?!??!11//!?"
] | [
"Hello YoUaReSoHiLaRiOuS! Making fun of people because they use common phrases is a bad reason to exist. Seriously. Stop it with trying to ruin internet memes. You might not enjoy them, but some people do and that's what is important.",
"To the creator: It is pathetic to create a bot that has the sole purpose of ... |
[
"Is it true that all elements/chemicals/things metallize at high pressures?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"I believe so. Things become metals because the valence band of electrons overlaps the conduction band. This happens when you squeeze things.",
"Here are a few examples",
"Water",
"Nitrogen",
"Oxygen",
"Helium",
"Hydrogen",
"Sulfur"
] | [
"I doubt you can truly 'prove' it theoretically without numerical calculations, as I think any theoretical model simple enough to be analytically solvable would be an approximation. ",
"However it makes intuitive sense in a fairly straightforward manner. Valence and conduction bands represent ",
" (HOMO and LUM... | [
"Well it's the exchange energy that's really making the difference, AKA in these contexts as 'degeneracy pressure'. And these metallic states are electron-",
"degenerate matter",
". In a neutron star it's the neutrons which are in a degenerate state, not the electrons. But the physical models used to predict th... |
[
"Would I be able to communicate with a neanderthal?"
] | [
false
] | Would our body language be similar to the extent to be able to communicate as we would with another human today? | [
"Body language might be a bit of a blind alley; it's not nearly as universal as you might think. Take pointing, for example. Directing someone's attention with an outstretched finger is as natural as it gets, right? Wrong. Some cultures point with their entire hand, or their elbow, or a stuck-out bottom lip. The pr... | [
"You probably couldn't communicate with a homo sapience that didn't share a language with you.",
"But then again if we set that as the level of communication you can communcate with your dog so why would a neanderthal be that much harder?"
] | [
"We can communicate with other humans from other countries through body language, like pointing, smiling, etc. "
] |
[
"How do we communicate wih people who are blind and deaf?"
] | [
false
] | Serious question...How are we able to teach people to attain some autonomy if they cant hear or see us? | [
"First of all, it is very uncommon to be born both deaf and blind: mostly people are born deaf and gradually become blind or vice versa. Therefore, they start with learning special sign language and/or braille at a young age. Communication with deaf-blind people usually goes through special interpreters (deaf-blind... | [
"What about those who do have congenital deafblindness? How do they first learn to communicate? How do they understand abstract notions?"
] | [
"There are many methods by which deaf-blind individuals can communicate.",
"See here for a list."
] |
[
"What is stopping us from building gamma microscopes?"
] | [
false
] | They would have higher resolution than electron microscopes, which may give further gains in science. I was also wondering if they would be able to see atoms. | [
"Gamma rays are extremely high energy. This means 2 things: they require a lot (like a metric asston) of energy to produce. In addition, the high energy means they can penetrate basically anything, which makes them incredibly dangerous. ",
"TL;DR: It’d take too much energy and be too dangerous."
] | [
"To add to this, you would also need a way to focus the gamma rays, which is difficult enough as to be impractical. ",
"https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/observatories/technology/gammaray_telescopes1.html"
] | [
"Don't know what people are telling you here but we do build gamma microscopes, specifically high energy photon beams. There are a only few facilities in the world, for instance Jefferson Lab in VA is currently operating several experimental halls, Hall D has a continuous photon beam polarized at 12 GeV whose purpo... |
[
"How much do we actually know about gravity? Where are some holes in our knowledge?"
] | [
false
] | An article posted in said we know more about evolution than gravity, what does that mean? “There is more evidence for evolution than there is for the theory of gravity, than the idea that things are made up of atoms, or Einstein’s theory of relativity. It is the finest scientific theory ever devised.” | [
"Well first off, evolution and gravitation are both observations. Evolution the observation of changes in a population over time, and gravitation is the force of attraction objects with mass have. ",
"The theories are explanations for the observations. \"Theory of evolution\" is probably a shortened form of Darwi... | [
"Hm. Interesting.",
"What would you say are some holes? Do we know what comprises gravity?"
] | [
"Hm. Interesting.",
"What would you say are some holes? Do we know what comprises gravity?"
] |
[
"Is there any scientific basis behind the concept of \"detoxing\"?"
] | [
false
] | My friend has become a huge proponent of detoxing. You've probably met someone like this. She puts all these additives in her drinks, claiming that she's experienced a whole host of beneficial effects, from her skin clearing up to gaining more energy, etc. I guess I could believe that some chemicals from processed food... | [
"No.",
"The human body is quite capable of removing most toxins itself and none of these products have been shown to have any real effect in removing \"toxins.\""
] | [
"In addition to what klawy wrote, the things that ",
" stick around (bioaccumulate) do so precisely because they're chemically tightly-bound to stuff like your fatty tissues or bone. There are no known substances that'll just wander into these tissues and somehow pick up the metal, and then somehow make it out of... | [
"In my experience this won't help. Someone who's mind is set on buying these products and \"treatments\" won't be easily swayed. But good luck."
] |
[
"The USGS earthquake map is currently showing an 'explosion' that happened in B.C. yesterday, what could cause this?"
] | [
false
] | shows an explosion with a magnitude of 2.5+ 11km S of Agassiz, B.C. What could have enough explosive power to register on a quake scale other than some kind of a weapons test? | [
"Can\"t find any info, either at the USGS or at the CGC. ",
"Could be mining. Some types of mining operations (Open pits, long hole, etc) use substantial amounts of explosives at a time. "
] | [
"Here's the USGS page on it",
" but it's very sparse since it's such a small event. It did happen at 0.8 km deep, so mining seems like the most reasonable answer.",
"Another thing to consider is a M2.5 earthquake releases 350 megajoules of energy which is equivalent to about 100 kg of ANFO, which depending on ... | [
"Seems to be a fair degree of ",
"mining",
" in that area."
] |
[
"can snakes slither backwards or do they just prefer not to?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"I think they prefer not to. The ability of snakes to control locomotion is legendary. They can move in so many different ways it's truly astonishing. The level of coordination and motor control of the thousands of complex muscles that cross anywhere from one to 30+ vertebral segments is baffling. We are really at ... | [
"Yup, this meal was about 125% of the predators body length! That study was trying to figure out how snakes could eat things longer than themselves. (spoiler: accordianing the prey snake, folding it in half in the gut and stretching out the stomach all the way back to the cloaca). I think the stomach wasn't pliable... | [
"Next question: Why did that video happen? Why would it spit that back up? Was it too big to digest? "
] |
[
"How do we measure the stimulant effect of caffeine and others compounds?"
] | [
false
] | I'm a chemical engeneering student and i need to know how the stimulant effect is measured in ones body. For exemple is there a universal scale of 1 to 5 or is it measured in mg of the API? I can't seem to find this information anywhere that's why i'm asking. | [
"Interesting. I've never seen anything outside of experimental measures and dosage levels for individual drugs. I'm of the mind that there isn't much classification beyond \"powerful, moderate, and mild\", at least in humans. In animals you can measure the differences in activity across experimental groups, but in ... | [
"in humans there's no overarching measure of \"how stimulated\" you'll be, just different dosage levels.",
"Why is this the case?"
] | [
"Well, there's no real empirical way to measure stimulation. You can rate on a scale of 1-10 how motivated, awake, alert, jittery, one is, but it's fundamentally subjective and likely to change with each subject. Plus each experiment would experience variation resulting from the preexisting emotional state and leve... |
[
"Before unmanned submarines and high tech gear, how did scientists collect samples of deep-sea animals?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"For a long time they didn't, and speculations were made by things that got washed up on shores, but had never been observed at sea. ",
"More direct observations started to be made in the mid 1800s via deep sea dredging. Edward Forbes (1815 - 1854), the Darwin of the seas if you like, was one of the first people ... | [
"A lot of the time they looked at by-catch from deep-sea commercial fishing trawlers. Special research vessels also used the same technique (dragging nets across the ocean floor) to collect samples. Of course, the drawback was that this didn't allow scientists to make any observations of deep-sea life ",
"."
] | [
"I believe that they use(d) fishing equipment such as dredges and bottom trawls. ",
"Here's a page describing some of these techniques.",
" Bottom trawling and dredging on a commercial scale are generally recognised as quite destructive to habitats on the sea floor."
] |
[
"Max Orbital Speed Around Neutron Star?"
] | [
false
] | What would be the maximum orbital speed around a neutron star ~ 2 solar masses, assuming it has no atmosphere? I think it would be relativistic but don't have the physics/math chops to work it out. Google didn't help me much this time. This is a homework question, I'm just inquisitive. Thanks. | [
"A 2 solar mass neutron star will be something like 12 kilometers in radius (I don't have the exact value on hand but this is close). The equation for orbital velocity is v = sqrt (G x M / r). Plugging this into ",
"Wolfram Alpha",
" gives about 1.5 x 10",
" m/s, or about half the speed of light. So you are i... | [
"I'm guessing, a white hot ball with no discernible features, but if you could eclipse out the disc of the star, you'd see the gravitational lensing of the stars behind it. The orbital speed, plugging in 100km instead of my 12km into the W.Alpha equation, is about 51 million m/s, about 17% of the speed of light... ... | [
"There actually would be ",
" strong tidal forces. Orbiting just above the surface of a 12 km radius non-rotating 2 solar mass neutron star is, at least in terms of gravitation, identical to orbiting 12 km away from the center of a 2 solar mass black hole. No object could stay together under those kind of tidal f... |
[
"Why aren't more people cured of HIV with bone marrow transplants?"
] | [
false
] | It's been 13 yrs since the first person was cured while attempting to treat their cancer and several others have been as well. Why isn't this used as a treatment? Is it just because it's so hard to find a match? If so, why isn't there a HUGE push for sites like Be The Match? Every time it happens every article just say... | [
"Because its incredibly dangerous. The treatment itself nearly killed the guy. The only reason they did it, is because he would've been dead in a few months anyway. He had both HIV and Cancer, the cancar treatment was a bone marrow transplant. ",
"They just used a very specific donor marrow and curing his HIV wa... | [
"One pill per day has been standard for over a decade now and there are several multi-drug, single pill options. These meds also cause far fewer side effects than HIV meds in the late 90s and early 00s. The meds also block transmission to others. I've been working in HIV for 30 years, and it's amazing how much clos... | [
"Modern medicine has turned HIV into hypertension or diabetes. A manageable chronic disease instead of a death sentence. It is pretty rad."
] |
[
"Why do gas prices jump 25 cents a gallon in less than a day?"
] | [
false
] | edit: i should have said, "why do gas prices regularly jump 25 cents a gallon in less than a day?" or "why are gas prices so volatile?" | [
"There may have been a supply shock. Imagine you're a gas station and you know you can't refuel for a week. You may increase the price so your supplies will last."
] | [
"This is a somewhat general question, but here's one explanation:",
"Suppose there is some impending reduction in the supply of gas- a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast (where there are lots of refineries), a pipeline breaks somewhere, there's a revolution in Venezuela or Lybia or Saudi Arabia, etc. Once the effects... | [
"So it boils down to greed and screwing over the consumer?",
"No, this is elementary ",
"supply and demand",
"."
] |
[
"Is the fossil history of plants as detailed as it is for animals? What are some of the cool plants that have gone extinct?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Azolla is still around, but the ecosystem that provoked the ",
"azolla event",
" is no longer here. It would really have been something though...",
"So 50 million years ago in the Eocene it was a hothouse world. Temperatures were up to 15 C on average even around the poles, which were covered in forests (a... | [
"I'm not any sort of expert, but:",
"Before trees dominated the landscape, there were 26-foot-tall mushrooms with trunks 3 feet around: ",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites",
" (OK, so not technically a plant. But nobody knew they were mushrooms until 2001)",
" is a genus of seed ferns that was co... | [
"We don't even know for certain that it is extinct because we aren't absolutely sure what it was."
] |
[
"Is Magnesium forgeable?"
] | [
false
] | Would one be able to forge ,for instance, a sword out of magnesium? If so, what attributes would it have? thanks. | [
"It can be forged. Many of its physical properties are similar to aluminum so I don't think it would be make a good sword. It is one of the softer metals so the edge would dull and dent easily. The surface quickly oxidizes so maintaining a polished appearance would be difficult. "
] | [
"Last I checked (it's been a while), ",
"sulfur hexafluoride",
" was used to protect magnesium melts. Of course, SF6 is a horrible greenhouse gas with this tremendous lifetime global warming potential of something like 22,800 times that of carbon dioxide.",
"3M's Novec 612 has been bandied about as a ",
"re... | [
"It can be forged. ",
"Are you sure of that? At the very least, it'd seem to me that you'd need a neutral atmosphere (argon or perhaps nitrogen) to avoid it from oxidizing (or even outright burning) rapidly and leaving you with a pile of hot MgO powder. "
] |
[
"Some basic questions about Earth's moon:"
] | [
false
] | Thanks for your time ! | [
"The illusion of size change is a cool thing. The moon appears larger next to mountains, buildings, and trees simply because of it being compared to those objects. When it's in the sky, there's nothing to compare it too but the vast sky so it appears very small. But it's always the same size in the sky in reality."... | [
"Eccentricity of the orbit means that the moon is physically closer to the earth during perigee and farther during apogee. Please see ",
"this",
"."
] | [
"So the moon orbits around the earth over the course of a month (month is similar to the word moon). This orbit is independent of how the earth rotates on its axis (a day). So when we see a full moon at night time, it's when the moon is on the opposite side of earth from the suns light. As the moon goes through its... |
[
"What are the limitations on quantum entanglement? What is the outlook on it being applied to faster than light communication?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The largest distance for which two-particle entanglement has been obtained is, to my knowledge, ",
"143 km",
". There is no in principle limit, but the particles in the system have to not be influenced by the environment, as that would mess up the entanglement, so the larger the distance, the more technically... | [
"Right now the technical limitations have to do with how well quantum information can be stored before it decoheres. The fundamental limits on what can or cannot be observed in quantum entanglement come from Bell's inequalities. It cannot be used for faster than light communication; both parties just observe random... | [
"Quantum entanglement does not enable faster-than-light communication. ",
"To start: Entanglement means, for example, that although neither particle of a shared pair has a definite value of some measured quantity, the results of measurements will be correlated. (Perhaps they are always equal). The issue is, can ... |
[
"Is it possible to tattoo someone with electricity (inspired by the design caused by a lightning strike on skin)."
] | [
false
] | So as some of you may have seen the images of the scarring caused by getting hit by lightning. This led me to question if it is possible to reproduce this as a tattoo. What I'm thinking is coming up with a stencil made from a conductive material and pressing it into the skin then running a current through that. Is it p... | [
"Sort of. Branding really.",
"“Laser” branding is a marketing term coined by Steve Haworth, who pioneered its use in body modification. The technical term is “electrosurgical branding”. Though it is technically possible to use a medical laser for scarification, this term refers not an actual laser, but rather a... | [
"Thank you. I had seen this when doing searches but it is not what I meant. This is a form of scarification and while beautiful in its own right it does not make the same image on the skin.",
"The lightning strike looks almost like veins beneath the skin, like a pattern of discoloration. The scarification is just... | [
"With that photograph as a template, a skilled tattoo artist could just give you something like that.",
"The voltage/current that produced that wound on the pictured arm is ",
" something you'd want to mess with just for a cosmetic. "
] |
[
"Question about pregnancy-prevention pills."
] | [
false
] | I have a question for all kind of pills that prevents pregnancy. Pills like the p-pill (Danish name, not sure if international), contains Ethinyl estradiol and Progestogen, which prevents the pregnancy. Though, some other pills only contains Ethinyl estradiol, why is that? | [
"Just so you know, these are referred to as \"birth control pills\" in English, not \"pregnancy prevention pills,\" although I know what you meant.",
"That being said, I think you have it backwards. Some pills contain ethinyl estradiol (estrogen) and progesterone/progestin, while some only have progestin. There a... | [
"Also, progestin-only pills are given to women in the postpartum period when they are nursing to avoid hyperestrogenic effects on a male infant. "
] | [
"Yep, my bad. Thanks for pointing that out!",
"And thanks for the answer, helped alot! :)"
] |
[
"What changes would you like to see in the way science is taught in the U.S. through all levels of education?"
] | [
false
] | I've posted on here before about science education before. I am a student studying biochemistry and getting certification as a teacher in Kansas (yes, Kansas does have rational thinkers). What, as a possible future teacher, would be my key responsibility to improve science literacy and education? | [
"Everyone likes stories, and science is filled with them. Unfortunately, what we tend to do in elementary and high school is pump students full of facts. I always try, especially in introductory classes, to give the students a story about a concept's discovery, or a neat way in which the concept has been used. I... | [
"Be interested in what you're teaching, and cultivate interest in your students whenever you see it sparking. ",
"It doesn't matter that my chemistry and physics teachers taught me well on paper because ten years later, despite any high grades, I have completely forgotten all of it. My biology teachers on the oth... | [
"I'm with you 100%. And when the parents show up with the pitchforks and torches, I will fight alongside you.",
"\"Billy asked me WHY he shouldn't be allowed to play outside! He told me that 'because I said so' is an 'argument from authority' and invalid! What are you teaching these kids this subversive stuff ... |
[
"Is there any scientific validity to the phrase \"It's like riding a bicycle\", meaning that knowledge is forever ingrained in your brain?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes. The way your brain works is the connects are never fully lost, that particular response is just replaced with stronger, alternative response. This idea is the underpinnings of ",
"Hebbian learning",
".",
"Here's an article with good graphs: ",
"https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228017043_Associ... | [
"Except in cases of brain damage, like from a stroke. This happened to me. I did all the physiotherapy to get my balance back for walking. Riding a bicycle uses a different way of balancing, which I discovered the first time I tried to ride a bike. ",
"Walking uses the fluid in your inner ear to detect if you are... | [
"Knowing how to ride a bike falls under the category of ",
"procedural memory",
". Procedural memory is needed to form most learned motor skills, and while the memory is implicit (i.e. you would struggle to explain every step of what you're brain is doing to perform the action) the neural pathways is very well ... |
[
"How does an electric eel not electrocute itself?"
] | [
false
] | I don't think the electricity it generates would avoid it's own nervous system. | [
"From what I understand, they do shock themselves. Since it's distributed over their whole body and only very briefly, they dont get hurt. The shock is just enough to stun small prey or startle a predator. If they do have some mechanism to protect themselves from it, I dont think we know what it is."
] | [
"Electric eels do receive \"feedback\" from their discharges. Without it they would actually have great difficulty surviving. ",
"Electric eels are part of a group of electric fishes known as gymnotids, otherwise known as South American electric fishes. These animals have specialized musculature for the storage a... | [
"They do shock themselves. But they can't feel it because of the duration. For example, when we try to shock ourselves, it hurts less because 1) we are prepared 2) we unconsciously make the duration shorter. Same goes for the electric eel, when it generates an electric current to its surrounding, the current is ... |
[
"Mushroom clouds: in the moments after a nuclear explosion why is the vertical area so completely disproportionate to it's lateral area or \"width\"?"
] | [
false
] | As in, the ratio of the width (or lateral surface area of the cloud) to the height, seems to be in the neighborhood of X::40X. Please forgive my entirely unscientific approximation or complete lack of understanding of the subject matter. I'm sure I am missing something :) (note: I'm assuming a detonation at sea level a... | [
"Because the ground reflects a large portion of the energy released by the bomb back upward. In addition, the heated air caused by the explosion rises, producing a convective heating affect with acts to push the explosion and post-explosion gasses upward, much like a warm air column that you may be familiar with in... | [
"In tests (and tactical deployments...) that aim to maximize destructive yield, atomic bombs ",
" detonated mid air. So, the answer to your question is: it would look like a mushroom cloud*. The \"trunk\" of the mushroom cloud is the laminar-type flow of heated air from near the ground upwards and the large ball ... | [
"\"...high-altitude and space explosions tend to manifest a spherical 'cloud,' reminiscent of other space-based explosions...\""
] |
[
"What is the difference between fasting and anorexia?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"I don't understand your question then. Perhaps you can try to rephrase."
] | [
"I don't understand your question then. Perhaps you can try to rephrase."
] | [
"One is a disorder."
] |
[
"How would superconductor work at all?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The simple answer is that Ohm's Law doesn't apply to superconductors (or many diodes, or many other instances). It's not a law in the sense of, \"Mass-energy can be neither created or destroyed,\" it's a law in the sense of, \"the strongest of the species is more likely to survive.\"",
"I really like the hydrau... | [
"To add to what has been said in the other comments, there are some further issues with your analysis.",
"Even if the superconductor has zero resistance, the battery does not. That means all of the EMF will be applied across the internal resistance of the battery, and none across the superconductor, so V=0.",
"... | [
"There are two common ways of starting a current in a superconducting loop. Both rely on the fact that superconducting materials are only superconducting below a certain temperature, which I will refer to as Tc. ",
"The first method is to place a normal coil within the superconducting coil, while the superconduct... |
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