title list | over_18 list | post_content stringlengths 0 9.37k ⌀ | C1 list | C2 list | C3 list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[
"Why/how does exercise lower blood pressure?"
] | [
false
] | Sorry if this has been asked before. I searched but could not find it here. From what I've been able to gather, exercise increases cardiovascular efficiency, so the heart does not have to push as hard to move blood around, but I'm not sure HOW exercise does that. Is it related to the muscles in our blood vessels, or ma... | [
"Now first let me state that any amount of exercise will be beneficial to your cardiovascular health, there are many causes for hypertension (high BP) and the effects of exercise will vary based on that. For example, you can be very fit but still have hypertension that is caused by a hormonal thyroid problem.",
"... | [
"Your description of metabolic control of blood flow is correct. Increase in metabolic products (such as CO2) will cause vasodilation in those tissues, during the act of exercise.",
"Assuming that you are referring to OP's #2 of \"Higher partial pressures of Oxygen in blood causes vasodilation\", this is true mor... | [
"Question for you.. I was under the impression that it was a lower partial pressure of O2 in the blood resulted in vasodilation due to intrinsic control of blood flow. In general, metabolic products (CO2, lactic acid, lower O2 concentration) will result in vasodialtion since metabolically active tissue requires mor... |
[
"Why have I always been able to see Jupiter in the night sky?"
] | [
false
] | My intuition says it should be visible precisely half the time with a large enough sample. Has my sample size been to small or is my intuition incorrect? | [
"The synodic period of jupiter is 399 days. That means for 200 days at a time it will be above the horizon at midnight, then below the horizon at midnight for 200 days. If you choose the same time of day for all your observations then yes, it's visible precisely half the time.",
"Because it's so bright, its still... | [
"How often can we not see Jupiter at all? say from the equator?",
"See my other post. From a tropical location with no obstacles, you should be able to see Jupiter any time it is more than ten degrees away from the sun -- conservatively, and I mean ± 10 degrees. If that is the situation, then you should be able t... | [
"My intuition says it should be visible precisely half the time with a large enough sample.",
"If you mean half the days of the year, your intuition is wrong. If you spent time looking at the night sky, it would come to you that Jupiter is visible nearly all the time except a small window of time when it is behin... |
[
"Scientists - who has made the most significant contributions in your field in the past 10 years?"
] | [
false
] | I think there are many great scientists that laymen should know, but don't. Tell us about them. | [
"John R. Anderson",
", Carnegie-Mellon University; Atomic Components of Thought - Rational ",
"ACT-R",
"Allen Newell",
", Carnegie-Mellon University; Unified Theories of Cognition. Though the text came out in 1990 and he died in 1992, it is one of the books that every cognitive psychologist should read. "
] | [
"Jennifer Lerner, George Loewenstein, Dan Ariely, Gerd Gigerenzer and Ap Dijksterhuis all spring to my mind. "
] | [
"Wow I remember Anderson",
"The other branch of our research involves a much broader focus. We have taken on modeling the cognitive competences that are taught in the domains of mathematics, computer programming, and cognitive psychology. Much of the motivation for this research is to be able to tap into real sit... |
[
"Black holes slow down time of nearby clocks relative to an outside observer. What is the theoretical effect that a white hole would have on time?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The same. The metric for a black hole is the same as that of a white hole. The exterior part is the same, the black and white hole are different ",
" regions, the former in the future, the latter in the past. In fact, the normal Schwarzschild solution describes a spacetime with both a white and a black hole, sim... | [
"A white hole simply cannot exist. There's no way to produce it."
] | [
"Adding on to ",
"/u/rantonel",
"'s answer, here's a useful way to think of a white hole: it's what would happen if you took a black hole and ran time backwards.",
"This may seem weird - why should the laws of physics still work if time is going ",
"? - but as it turns out, most physical theories don't care... |
[
"Does your gut/gastrointestinal/digestive health affect how you feel mentally/psychologically?"
] | [
false
] | May just be coincidental and my mind crossing wires they shouldn't - but I've noticed whenever I'm bloated or my digestive system isn't working as it should, I experience periods of super low self confidence, depression, anxiety, feel less social, become more introverted, can't look people in the eye. But when my syste... | [
"Gluten sensitivity linked to symptoms of schizophrenia, autism, and depression",
"Gut microbiome plays a role in stress response, anxiety, and depression",
"In general, studies right now are still stating further research is needed, but the evidence so far does show a definite link between gut health and menta... | [
"We've come full circle. Humors of the body are indeed impacting Humors of the mind."
] | [
"I wrote my dissertation on how the gut microbiome can be involved with neurological disorders such as autism and Parkinson’s. The gut-brain axis is still a system that needs a lot of research but they have found that byproducts produced by gut bacteria can have an influence on the enteric nervous system that is ma... |
[
"How do we know how much of which vitamins and minerals we require?"
] | [
false
] | Multivitamins contain a lot of small amounts of things (for example, molybdenum) that I have never heard of anyone being deficient in. How did we initially figure out that we need these and how much of them we need? And who are the % Daily Values for? I'd imagine my needs for these things, as a tiny Asian female who wo... | [
"RDA is not only concerned with deficiencies but also excesses (eg; fat and sugar).",
"The Reference Daily Intake or Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) is the daily intake level of a nutrient that is considered to be sufficient to meet the requirements of 97–98% of healthy individuals in every demographic in the Unit... | [
"My guess would be that it simply adds one more thing to the list of vitamins in the product. Everything else being equal, I would say that people are more likely to buy the product with the longest list of vitamins (when purchasing products specifically marketed as being a health supplement)."
] | [
"I think maybe you shouldn't be so sensitive... ",
"I wasn't offended. I thought I made it clear that some however, might be?"
] |
[
"Do we know how long ago epicanthic folds evolved?"
] | [
false
] | I know we are not sure why this trait appeared in people living in certain locations, but we have estimates of when it appeared? | [
"I honestly would be speculative of anyone who could pin a good date range, it doesn't sound to me like a thing that could be shown on a skeleton. You might be able to use genetic evidence from folks who migrated from northern Asia to China about 40,000 years ago. At any rate its probably a fairly recent mutation l... | [
"It's possible, probably probable, that the Khoi San epicanthic folds are independent from the East Asian epicanthic folds. The same mutation--or a different mutation with the same effect--could easily arise more than once. For a parallel example, ",
"blond hair",
" evolved at least twice. ",
"Modern East Asi... | [
"The Khoi San also have epicanthic folds, and they are a quite divergent hunter gatherer population from Africa. So I wouldn't necessarily assume it is evolutionary recent."
] |
[
"What would happen if two black holes began pulling on each other?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"What details are you after here? The mathematics of black hole merging are complex, but the overall result is nothing other than the obvious...they move togeher and end up as one big black hole.",
"They certainly don't pull away from one another. How would an attractive force like gravity cause repulsion?"
] | [
"I would assume they would consume each other resulting in an even larger black hole. "
] | [
"so you think that they just merge together? how would they go about this?"
] |
[
"Is there any situation where a gas mask wouldn't be able to filter certain gases?"
] | [
false
] | I've already posed this question over at , but I thought maybe the professionals over here might have a better idea. Even with modern innovation, are there certain toxins a gas mask wouldn't be able to remove? What limitations are there? | [
"Filters are rated for certain substances. The ones the military uses will not filter out toxic industrial chemicals and toxic industrial materials (TIC's and TIM's). There are other things such as certain blood agents that will degrade the filter in a very short amount of time. If you do not identify what you a... | [
"Despite his self-deprecating disclaimer at the end, I can say as a former Army chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist that everything he said is completely accurate according to my experience and the training I received. "
] | [
"Most toxic gasses can be removed with the right kind of filter, but the biggest hazards can be from high levels of less toxic gasses, which are often much harder to remove from the air. I work at a plant that has very large stores of liquid CO2 and nitrogen on site. Since nitrogen already forms the majority of air... |
[
"Could tire wear be reduced during landing if the wheels were moving?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"This article",
" says 150 landings, not 10.",
"Same article reports efforts at trying the tyre spinning via wind catching flaps on the tyres (but apparently the research hasrn't really yielded anything good enough)."
] | [
"This would require motors to be installed at each tire to spin it and match the speed. This also needs to be more exact as a missmatched tire speed will cause problems upon landing and this will also create an unwanted gyroscopic event.",
"Commercial airplane tires get replaced after about 10 landings. Having th... | [
"Most likely, however it's not really practical to equip landing bogeys with a system capable of spinning up the wheels to their equivalent landing rate of rotation. Not only would it make the plane heavier (increasing fuel consumption), but it would also be another thing to spend money on to maintain... not to men... |
[
"Is it possible for humans to program their eyes to work independently from one another?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes, is you snip the corpus callosum, the link between the two hemispheres of your brain, part of the brain. This would divide the motor neurons and sensory neuron controlling vision into two, allowing you to move your eyes independently of each other."
] | [
"I have a lazy eye, this gives me independent movement of the lazy eye over my normal eye, as I have trained the muscles in my lazy eye to be stronger and pull my eye from looking out to back to normal. I can full control having my eye be lazy and also bringing just the one eye to being crossed. With this as my eye... | [
"No. you can sort of move your eyes somewhat independently (like when people cross one eye) but your optic nerves meet at the chiasma and your brain processes them towards stereovision.",
"So if you had the muscle control you'd be a dizzy mess trying to get the processing down. "
] |
[
"What sort of insect is this? Does it die after giving birth? Are those live young? How do all of those even fit?"
] | [
true
] | This picture was posted on . It is a picture of some kind of insect giving birth to what looks like live young. It is kind of gross, but its just a bug, I didn't find it all that bad. I have a bunch of questions! 1. What is that? 2. Are those live young? 3. Does it die after giving birth? 4. If it does not die, ... | [
"It's a ",
"hissing cockroach giving birth",
".",
"Warning, this may be vomit inducing."
] | [
"this may be vomit inducing.",
"Come on. That was cool. "
] | [
"I literally couldn't watch it. I would have thrown up had I been forced to watch it. I feel sick right now thinking about the parts I did watch to make sure it was the proper video. "
] |
[
"Is there any need to create more hESC lines?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Human embryonic stem cell",
"ಠ_ಠ"
] | [
"I'm sorry, but you cannot generate human embryonic stem cell lines from already existing people. You can create induced pluripotent stem cells from adult humans.",
"The only way you can create human embryonic stem cells from an adult human is to take and oocyte (unfertilized egg) from any female (better if relat... | [
"I talked to coworkers, and this is what my PI (boss) said:",
"\"There are two main reasons to created more hESC lines. 1) To study a specific disease. If you create an hESC line with a genetic mutation for, say, muscular dystrophy, you can see what other genes are affected and such. 2) Eventually, all the hESC c... |
[
"The book Why the West Rules—for Now states that there are only 148 species of mammal on the weigh over 100lbs. Is that accurate?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Whew, got nerd sniped. Wikipedia is a crazy, wonderful thing.",
"The two species of gorillas are comfortably over the 100lbs limit on average, but humans, chimps (but not bonobos), and orangutans (three species) should also count if we're talking about average adult weight, remembering that males are generally ... | [
"90 species of whale, 2 elephants , 2 cows, 2 primates, 5 rhino, 2 hippos, 1 horse 48 deer but some are tiny. I don't know. Sounds reasonable. ",
"Also is this by average weight? Minimum adult healthy weight? Some dogs are 100 lbs."
] | [
"Also, over half of the species are aquatic or semiaquatic.",
"Yeah, I could see the original sentence being \"148 species of terrestrial mammals\", especially for a book generally focused on human history. Or \"terrestrial\" accidentally got lost in revisions and drafts and proofs etc."
] |
[
"Would it be possible to create a population of sexually-reproducing organisms whose offspring are of only one gender?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Yes they do it with fish in fish farms. Similar to chickens, the best eating fish are females as they grow bigger and taste better. You can treat young female fish with hormones to make them develop male sexual organs despite still have the genes of a female (aka having XX instead of XY). You can then use the milt... | [
"You don't need two sexes necessarily. The idea is you need two members of the same species in order to mix up the gene pool. Evolution just made it such that most species separates itself into two sexes who operate differently, but there is no reason you can't have a mono-sexed species that can have both \"male\" ... | [
"It wouldn't be difficult to do with artificial insemination and sperm selection, which I believe would probably be relatively easy to accommodate in factory farming chickens given my relatively limited knowledge of factory farming. They do it for other IVF (including in humans), no reason why it couldn't be some s... |
[
"Is carbonation of a beverage itself unhealthy?"
] | [
false
] | Dietary guidelines recommend avoiding soda because of the added sugar or even the artificial sweeteners. But when looking at seltzer versus plain (noncarbonated) water, is there any negative health effect associated with the carbonation? Or does a beverage only become unhealthy when adding additional ingredients after ... | [
"I can't find any papers pointing to negative health effects of carbonated water. The most carbonation would really do to water is change the pH to somewhat more acidic, though certainly less acidic than the stomach it'd be headed toward.",
"Best I could find was ",
"a paper",
" that showed that:",
"In pati... | [
"I would also take issue with the idea that artificial sweeteners necessarily are unhealthy. If you disregard all the totally evidence free kook sites out there that trumpet it loudly while babbling on about \"healing\", you find massive scale studies that show that they're safe for human consumption, and certainly... | [
"I don't think artificial sweeteners are unsafe, but I think that evidence suggests that they have downsides. ",
"This paper",
" (a review) and ",
"this paper",
" (an original research article) both discuss different mechanisms by which artificial sweeteners can be harmful to humans.",
"I think the way yo... |
[
"Why is the Portuguese man o'war considered a colony, not an organism?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Cnidarians (jellyfish) go through two stages in their life cycle: medusa and polyp. The medusa is the phase you normally associate with jellyfish. The polyp is normally sessile. A man o'war is composed of many individual polyps and so is a colonial organism. The functions they serve are broadly analogous to organ ... | [
"Portuguese Man o' Wars are of the genus Physalia, in the phylum Cnidaria. They still have cnidocytes (nematocysts, cnida, cnidocysts) in the dactylzooids that comprise their tentacles. Those stinging cells are a distinguishing feature of the phylum in the phenetic sense."
] | [
"It's made up of many small ",
" creatures called \"zooids.\" Thus it's more like an ant colony than an organism like you or I.",
"As to whether or not a man o'war experiences life the same way as a jellyfish does, or whether an ant colony experiences life that way, I do not think anyone can answer."
] |
[
"How is DNA digested in the gut?"
] | [
false
] | The reason I'm asking is that some idiot on my Facebook posted this vid about how GMO DNA affects organs because it doesn't get digested or gets incorporated into our own DNA or some other ludicrous bullshit. Clearly this is nonsense, but please help me explain why. | [
"you are correct, its nonsense. DNA is actually highly prone to degradation outside of the cell, because the enzymes that digest (or cut) DNA, called DNAases, are abundant in the environment (and are also in your gut, which is the answer to your question). same with RNA and RNAses, although even moreso. this is ... | [
"Solid science!"
] | [
"The DNA in genetically engineered crops is still just DNA. Your stomach acids and enzymes don't check the sequence of DNA before they degrade it, so I see no reason whatsoever to believe that DNA is going to behave differently because it is from a GE crop or anything else.",
"Here is the study the guy on the vi... |
[
"4 billion light year wide Large Quasar Group"
] | [
false
] | Why is this Group being called a structure? I don't understand how the quasars are linked together so that they would be called a structure. Would it be possible for this structure to collapse/fall apart and if so what would happen? I'm sorry if this questions doesn't make any sense...the whole subject is messing wi... | [
"Astronomers use \"structure\" to mean a collection of objects which is markedly different from an \"average\" patch of Universe, so to speak. In general, at large enough scales, astronomers expect things to be dotted around the Universe fairly evenly. For example, our galaxy represents a huge concentration of star... | [
"Normal space to astronomers is space where objects are fairly evenly spread on cosmic scales. To use a more human-scale analogy:",
"The houses along a given street in the suburbs of a city typically have fairly regular spacing. Jump in a helicopter and take a look from above and the streets will also be fairly r... | [
"Now that makes sense. The article I read about this LQG did not explain what was meant by structure at all. I feel a little bit smarter now thanks to your explanation. THANKS!"
] |
[
"Are there any direct, or indirect, relationship between heat and gravity?"
] | [
false
] | Gravity attracts matter; whether in the form of gas, solid or liquid. Pressure is formed through the presence of such matter. In the absence of gravity, pressure does not exist (0 Pa), since there is no matter that can induce pressure. Therefore, using the ideal gas law: PV=nRT -> 0 = nRT -> T = 0 I would really like y... | [
"Actually, you could imagine a box in deep space not near a gravitational source filled with a gas. As those molecules bounce off the walls of the box they'll certainly exert a pressure. ",
"What you're thinking of is the air pressure at the bottom of a \"column\" of atmosphere. In this case the \"walls\" of the ... | [
"In the absence of gravity, pressure does not exist (0 Pa), since there is no matter that can induce pressure.",
"No, that's not actually correct. It's easy to model pressure in the absence of gravity. For example, consider a box of photons dropped from a plane. Gravitational effects are ",
" negligible, but th... | [
"Somewhat unrelated to your actual question, but to answer the one in the title, there's been some really interesting work done showing that Einstein's equations of general relativity can be derived from considerations of thermodynamics (see the original paper ",
"here",
".) To some extent this is just taking s... |
[
"Do bird songs evolve at all?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes they do. Here is a ",
"video",
" explaining one such incident. The birds started singing a different song and it spread across the continent. I am not the best at explaining stuff but the video does a good job at explaining."
] | [
"Yes, but normally it is a slow evolution. However, White throated sparrows in Canada started changing their song suprisingly rapidly this last year. See: ",
"https://www.google.com/amp/s/api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/animals/2020/07/new-sparrow-birdsong-replaces-old-tune"
] | [
"To my knowledge bird songs do in-fact “evolve” over time with their appearance. Evolution is adapting to something’s surroundings to thrive, or to more easily put it, Charles Darwin’s most famous theory of survival of the fittest. This theory explained why animals were so different from one another and why they ch... |
[
"How do Hybridomas work? More specifcially, explaing fusing of plasma cell to myeloma cell?"
] | [
false
] | Because aren't plasma cells myeloma's? It sounds like it means it is just plasma cells being fused to plasma cells yielding hybridomas... But maybe it's that simple? | [
"The myeloma \"Fusion Partner\" is an immortalized cell line, yes a cancer, which has been selected for some specific properties: most notably the lack of ability to synthesize DNA in the presence of a selective reagent, usually HAT (hypoxanthine-aminopterin-thymidine). This is a negative selection reagent. There... | [
"Myeloma is a cancerous plasma cell, but not all plasma cells are myelomas. A hybridoma is formed when a normal plasma cell is fused with a cancerous plasma cell (Myeloma)"
] | [
"To expand on this, the reason this is done is to use the cancer cell's unfettered growth to force the normal plasma cell to produce specific antibodies. This is one way in which monoclonal antibodies (such as those used in research) are made. "
] |
[
"The imaginary unit \"i\" satisfies i^2 = -1, are there any other numbers invented to satisfy otherwise impossible criteria?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Sometimes, you start with a number system and see what you can do in that number system. Sometimes there are things that can't be done (they are impossible ",
"), and so you define a new extended number system for which that operation is possible.",
"Suppose you start with the whole numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... | [
"In a way, all numbers are like this.",
"In the case of the complex number system, extensions arise out of operations that have no inverse within the system. For example, the negatives come out of the inverse to addition (subtraction- what the heck do you get when you take away 10 from 4? Ok, let's invent negativ... | [
"The extended real numbers ",
" +∞ and −∞, but you lose some algebraic properties at the same time.",
"In particular, just because you've added ∞ doesn't mean you can suddenly \"do algebra with ∞\". For example, at this point, one might be tempted to define the rule",
"1/0 = ∞\n",
"but then what are the imp... |
[
"Why are Quebec and Ontario so full of little lakes?"
] | [
false
] | What events, processes, or conditions produced this geology? | [
"They are the remnants of the glacier that covered the area during the last ice age, along with the generally undulating terrain. The system is not in equilibrium - the water is very gradually escaping. For example the great lakes are constantly shrinking, and in approximately 150,000 years, they will be all but go... | [
"Essentially the result of glacial processes which resulted in a low level irregular topography with numerous shallow depressions (De Geer moraine, thermokarst, kettles, etc.) as well as poor drainage as a result poorly sorted glacial deposits (tills and glaciolacustrine clays). Also must factor in the hard crysta... | [
"I believe the main factor is the Canadian Shield rock due to this terrain is much less flat than sedimentary terrains because it just can't erode very easily. The hilliness causes lots of small lakes. "
] |
[
"[Biology] What would happen to plants if they were exposed to a vacuum?"
] | [
false
] | We know what happens to animals when exposed to a vacuum, like in space, but what about plants? Given they need air to survive, how long would they last? Also, would they suffer from any immediate physiological issues like animals do? For the example, let's use a potato, a bush, and a deciduous or pine tree as some var... | [
"There has been a little bit of research done on this topic. Radishes, lettuce, and wheat have been ",
"shown to survive with little to no ill-effects",
" following 30 minutes of rapid decompression to 1.5 kPa (ambient pressure at sea level is ~101 kPa). ",
"Wheat",
" and ",
"rockcress",
" have also b... | [
"Moisture directly exposed to the vacuum would evaporate. Water would diffuse from the inside to the drier exterior parts of the fruit/vegetable where the newly arrived moisture exposed to vacuum would evaporate.",
"Rather than explode, your fruit/vegetable would dry out over time. It would also lose temperatur... | [
"Moisture directly exposed to the vacuum would evaporate. Water would diffuse from the inside to the drier exterior parts of the fruit/vegetable where the newly arrived moisture exposed to vacuum would evaporate.",
"Rather than explode, your fruit/vegetable would dry out over time. It would also lose temperatur... |
[
"What are the consequences of significantly skewed gender ratio among human population? Are there any documented cases?"
] | [
false
] | The biggest argument for ban on pre-natal gender determination in India is that it will increase abortion of female foetuses and that will lead to societal unrest. Is there any scientific/statistical/historical evidence to warrent this fear of skewed gender ratio? | [
"Check out ",
"this article on missing women of Asia",
" and China's ",
"one-child policy",
", both of which outline actual cases of sex disparity and consequences of such."
] | [
"Thanks. ",
"Following through the sources on those Wiki entries took me to ",
"this",
" paper that takes on the question head on. ",
"The summary is that there are a lot of theories about what impact a skewed gender ratio might have. ",
"The impact on position of women in society is likely to be positive... | [
"As the number of women per thousand men decreases, it becomes harder and harder for men to find brides. Women on the other hand can now choose to \"marry up\" to men with higher economic and social standing. "
] |
[
"Is it theoretically possible to change the spin of a quantum particle?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"And if yes, is it believed that doing so would change the spin of its entangled partner?"
] | [
"Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):",
"It is hypothetical or speculative in nature. We do not allow hypothetical questions because questions that cannot be confidently answered with any available data often invite non-scientific speculation.... | [
"I don’t believe the question is hypothetical. I was asking if this is thought to be possible in existing theory. Theory relating to quantum physics. It’s not hypothetical. ",
"Thanks!"
] |
[
"How does rain affect airplane drag and lift?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"First there's the effect of the air itself. Increasing humidity decreases drag and lift by making air less dense. The atomic mass of H2O is 18, while that of N2 is 28 and O2 is 32, but all the molecules in a gas occupy equal amounts of space, so humid air is less dense than dry air. The relative humidity is genera... | [
"The boundary layer is the layer of air flowing right up against the surface. When it's flowing smoothly over an airfoil, you get less drag and greater lift. In straight and level flight you have a smooth boundary layer that starts at the leading edge of the wing where the air splits to go over the top and bottom, ... | [
"Humidity has no effect on density of air at temperatures that are relevant to this discussion.",
"https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/density-air-d_680.html",
"The idea that density of a solution is based on atomic number of its components is also flawed. Molecules can fit inside spaces between other molecules... |
[
"Why do mosquitos bite some individuals more than others even when people are sitting in a group?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"There are different reasons, one being blood type. Mosquitoes find type o blood the most delicious. The little suckers also have a thing for alcohol. Observe and ask. You will likely find your friend that is always bit the most is either type o blood, they are drinking at these gatherings, or both.",
"Also, for ... | [
"Yes, I donated last week in fact."
] | [
"Are you a registered blood donor?"
] |
[
"Are there any actual images of atoms? Is it possible to take photographs of matter where you can see individual atoms?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"There sure are: ",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0",
" ",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99B_8glC3ro",
"http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/2009/ibmpentacene.jpg",
" (from ",
"this paper",
")",
"http://www.azonano.com/images/Article_Images/ImageForArticle_2616(13).jpg",
" (g... | [
"But none of those listed methods would result in a real photograph of an atom - which isn't possible. See the Abbe diffraction limit for further detailes: ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system",
"\nAlso the this year's chemistry Nobel price was awarded for a further method to bypass this ... | [
" there's no ",
" way to do it like you've pointed out.",
"Edit: ",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2jeo73/are_there_any_actual_images_of_atoms_is_it/clb2upk"
] |
[
"How accurate is this map of radiation spread after Chernobyl"
] | [
false
] | Here is the Here is the link to the Did the radiation from the Chernobyl Accident really spread that far around East Europe? | [
"The fallout was transported by weather systems. This animation shows very nicely what a typical atmospheric gyre over Europe will do to an influx of material (this particular one being ash from the Eyjafjall eruption a couple of years ago).\n",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-4TB47N3_Y"
] | [
"The reason i bring this up is because i found that there are 3 nuclear plants within 180 miles of tampa. That seams really close if you compare it to Ukraine's distance from greece. "
] | [
"The reason i bring this up is because i found that there are 3 nuclear plants within 180 miles of tampa. That seams really close if you compare it to Ukraine's distance from greece. "
] |
[
"Why do pictures taken by the same camera with the same resolution often have very different sizes (bytes)"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Computers use compression to make files smaller than they necessarily need to be. Here's an example.",
"Here are two lines of text:",
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA",
"ABABABABABABABABABABABABABABAB",
"Each line is comprised of thirty characters, so each has the same amount of raw, uncompressed data. This... | [
"One picture might be an image of a white sheet. Such a picture would obviously be much less complex than a picture of a person's face."
] | [
"One picture might be an image of a white sheet. Such a picture would obviously be much less complex than a picture of a person's face."
] |
[
"Is it possible that one of the Voyager probes could hit a Kuiper Belt or an Oort Cloud object?"
] | [
false
] | I know that the objects in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud are quite spaced out, but is there a chance that the probes could hit one? And what would be the aftermath of this happening? | [
"The Voyager cameras were shut off almost 27 years ago, so, no pictures..."
] | [
"To quote Douglas Adams:",
"\nSpace is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.",
"The asteroid belt contains more than 200 asteroids larger than 60 miles wide. Scientists e... | [
"There's a chance, but the chance is so small that it might as well be zero. Not something that scientists even have to consider. ",
"what would be the aftermath",
"No more probe, but very excited scientists since they'll get some very close-up pictures of a Kuiper Belt object. "
] |
[
"The solar system is one of many in the Milky Way, which is one of 54 galaxies in our local group. That local group is part of an even bigger structure. Is there a limit to how large these structures can be, or will we keep discovering larger and larger ones?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"There is an upper limit!",
"You are right that there is structure within structure within structure, and that this continues up to very large scales - on the biggest scale, the universe has a filamentary spider-web structure, where there are lots of galaxy clusters in the filaments but very few in between.",
"... | [
"For any readers curious about what this mentioned filament looks like, ",
"here",
" is a link to the CLUES project's relatively detailed dark matter simulations on our local piece of universe.",
"Edit: And ",
"here",
" is a link to the Millennium Simulation Project which simulates a universe from billion... | [
"It also makes sense that there would be an upper limit when you consider expansion. There's going to be a certain size at which point expansion outpaces gravitational forces and you can no longer create larger bound structures."
] |
[
"How does the theory of wave/particle duality do away with the need to find a wave medium for light, i.e. ether?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The luminiferous aether was dealt a serious blow by the Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887. It's a neat setup, and it goes like this:",
"Say the aether existed. It's impossible for the aether to be at rest relative to the Earth at all times, because we're always changing direction of travel.",
"Michelson an... | [
"It's pretty well understood. Here's a good lay explanation:\n",
"http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/virtual-particles-what-are-they/"
] | [
"There is no need. It was false to assume there was one."
] |
[
"Do we say that some occurrences at the subatomic level are random because we have evidence of randomness, or simply because we cannot determine the cause? Is there a difference?"
] | [
false
] | Which is the more correct statement about randomness at the quantum level: "Quantum physicists have substantial evidence suggesting that some occurrences at the subatomic level are random," or "Quantum physicists have not found substantial evidence to suggest that some occurrences at the subatomic level are any less ra... | [
"In short, we have no way of telling whether an apparently random phenomenon such as radioactive decay is actually random, without any cause, or has been completely determined since the dawn of the universe. Whether true randomness exists is thus a question of philosophy."
] | [
"...are probably wrong. And if not wrong, are non-local."
] | [
"It's only a question of philosophy because science cannot currently answer the question. I love philosophy, but I must concede to science on every point, because science has evidence, while philosophy only has theory."
] |
[
"Why do city lights look like they're flickering when you're far away from them; when if youre standing right next to it, it looks constant."
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The term for it is Scintillation.",
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillation_(astronomy)",
"I can't get the damn link to work. "
] | [
"ahh, thats cuz its a 'mobile' page, try this one ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillation_(astronomy)",
"and thank you much. "
] | [
"There's a way to link it using the [bracket](link) format, while inserting a \\ behind the last bracket to prevent the link from breaking, but I wasn't able to do it for some reason. "
] |
[
"How does a drug like Accutane have permanent results?"
] | [
false
] | Regarding acne treatment, once finished with the long cycle the acne almost never returns. How is this happening? | [
"But how can it keep having an effect after treatment is stopped. It isn't changing the genetic makeup of every cell in your body.."
] | [
"But how can it keep having an effect after treatment is stopped. It isn't changing the genetic makeup of every cell in your body.."
] | [
"It looks like it induces death of cells in the sebaceous glands. If these glands are destroyed or reduced (in size or function), then the effect will likely be permanent, unless they can be regenerated (I don't know if they can, but since the effects are permanent, I'd guess not).",
"Source 1",
" ",
"Source ... |
[
"If a food animal had a malignant tumor in its muscle, that was not really where a butcher could see, and that tumor got put into ground meat, would it be harmful to eat?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"No - the cells that make up the tumor would be very much dead before you put them in your mouth and digestion would eliminate any possibility that they could start growing. Even if you injected yourself with cancerous cells from an animal, you would probably be fine, as your body would recognize the tumor cells as... | [
"Isn't ",
"HPV",
" a virus like that?"
] | [
"Can HPV even infect typical livestock, and if so, can it still cause tumorigenic growth?"
] |
[
"Why do matter and anti-matter annihilate each other when coming into contact?"
] | [
false
] | I was thinking about how a neutron can decay into a proton and electron (plus something else, I think?) - two particles of opposite charge. So how come an electron and an anti-electron (positron?) wouldn't somehow combine into some neutral particle rather than self annihilate and convert their energy to photons? | [
"So how come an electron and an anti-electron (positron?) wouldn't somehow combine into some neutral particle rather than self annihilate and convert their energy to photons?",
"An electron and a positron ",
" form a neutral particle called ",
"positronium",
", but it's unstable."
] | [
"They do combine into neutral particles. That's what the photons from the annihilation are."
] | [
"You mean an electron and a positron. An electron and a proton turn into hydrogen."
] |
[
"Do the galaxies seen in the Hubble deep/ultra deep fields still exist today?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Those galaxies still exist. Some of the stars that were emitting that light will have died, either going supernova or (much more commonly) expiring as red giants and leaving white dwarfs behind. Most of the stars will still be around however, as the most common stars are the lowest mass ones, which live a very ver... | [
"Are you sure many of them wouldnt have merged with each other? They are incredibly old after all. ",
"In that case, the constituent stars that are long-lived would still probably be around, but the galaxies themselves would not be identifiable because of their changed shapes and masses due to mergers?"
] | [
"Oh, none of them would be visually identifiable, they'd all have undergone numerous interactions and likely some mergers. If you had some really good data on them (i.e., including detailed spectra rather than just the Hubble images) it might in principle be possible, once you're teleported close to them, to take d... |
[
"How does the female body determine what birth defects should or should not warrant a miscarriage?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"There really isn't a conscious or unconscious \"determination\" made by the female body that a miscarriage should occur. Rather, it is a result of a biological mechanism failure. It could be something as simple as failure to process a protein or more complex like inadequate brain development. On a basic level, fet... | [
"Not so much a checklist, more that the fetus dies due to its defects.",
"\nThe mother's body will know pretty quick that the fetus has died, and things will progress from there. I'm not sure that there is a miscarriage switch that gets flipped. "
] | [
"There are so many genetic defects, chromosomal imbalances ect that go on to be a viable embryo or live birth. I think it comes down to the cellular level, if in any given situation the cell structure is incompatible with life, the cells die and the body empties the uterine contents. There are so many reasons a mis... |
[
"Does an aphasia patient actually forget words or is it a different issue?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It's a different issue, which also depends on which kind of aphasia they have.",
"The issue can range from word-finding issues, to inability to efficiently encode thoughts into words and to form complex syntactic structure, to an inability to decode language, to an inability to transfer decoded language informat... | [
"Okay, so let's say we're talking about expressive aphasia, which is classically caused by damage to the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus of the patient's dominant (almost always left) hemisphere.",
"In this kind of aphasia, patients have very effortful speech, with short utterance-length, lack of con... | [
"From a completely hypothetical standpoint, if someone were experiencing that, it could have a number of causes. Without knowing more history it's hard to tell, but they could range from a partial seizure to a complex migraine to ischemic etiologies like a transient ischemic attack. ",
"If someone were to have th... |
[
"How exactly is euphoria caused by stimulants?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"A really good place to ask this would be ",
"askdrugs",
" or ",
"drugnerds",
". ",
"Neither adderall nor vyvanse are opiates, and I have never come across anything about either acting on opioid receptors in the brain. \nAny drug can have negative side effects if you abuse it, but schizophrenia isn't some... | [
"Thanks for sending me into the correct direction!"
] | [
"Actually you're mistaken. Vyvance is composed of 100% dextro (S) amphetamine bound to a lysine residue (hence ",
"dexamfetamine), where as Adderall is a mixture of dextro and levo (R and S) amphetamine. Both lead to increased levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. They are also reuptake inhibitors. Both of th... |
[
"Why does having heartburn cause the human body to produce more saliva?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"At that point you're looking at regurgitation, and yeah it's pretty common. ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastroesophageal_reflux_disease#Signs_and_symptoms",
"As far as how much damage, I'm not sure on that. I know that GERD can lead to cellular changes in the esophagus ",
"Barret's esophagus",
", and ... | [
"Self-protective reflex. If the reflux gets all the way to your mouth that extra saliva helps protect the teeth and oral mucosa from damage from the hydrochloric acid coming from your stomach. ",
"You'll also see this same reflex when you're really nauseated."
] | [
"Are there may cases where the reflux does make it up to our mouthes? What sort of damage would that cause. I imagine a mouth full of stomach acid wouldn't be very enjoyable.."
] |
[
"Can dark matter collapse in to a black hole?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It's kinetic energy. It's the same effect that stops us falling into the sun. In order to condense something, you need to get rid of its kinetic energy. When a star collapses, you can do this by radiating out lots of light and stuff. Dark matter doesn't lose energy easily, so it can't collapse to a sufficient dens... | [
"We could be swimming in a sea of dark matter right now!",
"Yep. IIRC there are ongoing attempts to detect it here on earth."
] | [
"Dark matter doesn't clump as densely as normal (baryonic) matter does, so it's effectively impossible for it to form a black hole on its own. However, most black holes probably were formed with some quantity of dark matter within them."
] |
[
"Recurring comets. How do they work?"
] | [
false
] | How are we able to see recurring comets every few and/or many years and know that specific comet is the same one, for example, Haley's comet? Do they orbit in space until they reappear? | [
"That's exactly what happens",
"\nRecurring comets, like the Earth, are orbiting the sun. Because we've seen these comets at several points in time, we can figure out the size and speed of their orbit. Based on this, we can predict when they'll be coming back."
] | [
"Yes, comets orbit the sun, and become visible when they move close enough (as part of their orbit) that the sun begins to boil away the material of the comet, producing a thin atmosphere (the coma) and tails as light reflects off the dust and gases being ejected, which are pointed roughly away from the sun (due to... | [
"Wow thanks for that! "
] |
[
"Does an acid dissolving something deplete the acid?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"This depends on what material you are talking about, and what you mean by \"dissolve.\"",
"Many things react with acids to form something soluble. Organic amines (which typically are not soluble in water) react with acids to form ammonium salts which are soluble in water: ",
"R-NH2(s) + H",
"(aq) + B",
"... | [
"Short answer: yes.",
"Acids \"eat\" solid materials by the H+ ions in solution reacting with something in the solid, to create something that's water soluble. The H+ ion is used up so the remaining acid becomes weaker.",
"Someone else gave a much more detailed answer with chemistry formulae as examples."
] | [
"Great answer, thanks"
] |
[
"Do dogs see other breeds as dogs like them or as a whole different species?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Unlikely, but it would be near impossible to really prove one way or the other. Important to note, though, that for dogs to see other dogs as the same species, they would have to have a concept of species, which they do not. ",
"They do have a sense of self though, and likely notice similarities with similar lo... | [
"Most likely they can, in some way or another. It's not like animals go around just trying to mate with everything until they get lucky and hump a compatible species. Animals certainly pick up on scents, behaviors, and other cues that say \"this is the same kind of thing as me\".",
"Obviously we'll never really k... | [
"It's not like animals go around just trying to mate with everything until they get lucky",
"Idk... I've seen some dogs that appear to be trying this exact strategy"
] |
[
"Is there such a thing as Cosmic Ray panel research?"
] | [
false
] | The sun is (for us human) an infinite source of energy. However this source is only available during day time, depends on meteorological and atmospherical conditions, moves during the day, and solar panel depends on the break-down of a complicated particle (photon) of which the theoretical efficiency output is 35% or m... | [
"Most of the research goes into how to detect cosmic rays, either directly or through Cerenkov radiation, to learn more about them.",
"The actual flux of cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere is roughly a microwatt per square meter. This is less than one-billionth the radiative flux from the sun. That is why they a... | [
"I can't seem to find a reference but in the early days of cosmic ray research people speculated about using cosmics as an energy source. I believe that the flux of muons at the surface is roughly ~1 GeV/cm",
" /s = 1.6x10",
" Watts/cm",
" which is extremely tiny! "
] | [
"Thanks"
] |
[
"What's the difference between energy level and orbitals? Or what happens with the hydrogen electron when it gets excited,where does it go?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The electron in a hydrogen atom is described by a probability density (determined by the wave function) in space, and the spatial variation of this probability density is what determines the orbital (1s, 2s, 2px, 2py, 2pz, 3s, etc. all have different 'shapes'). Electrons in different orbitals ",
" have different... | [
"so,when an electron gets excited it jumps to a higher energy level.clear on that,but I always thought of orbitals and energy levels as synonyms. well not really as synonyms since I know that the orbital represents the probability of where an electron might be and an energy level is well,an energy level. so in a hy... | [
"It goes to another orbital. You might be familiar with the fomula E=-13.6eV/n",
" , where n = 1, 2, ... is an energy level. That is the number in 1s (n=1), 2s (n=2), 2p (n=2), etc. So, to change the energy we'll have to change the value of n, meaning the electron will be in another orbital."
] |
[
"What happens to electric cars if they drive through deep water?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Less than what happens to gasoline cars. Unlike them, electric cars don't have to take in air to mix with gasoline. And it is perfectly possible (and generally preferable) to seal up all the electronics so they don't get water in them. After all, there have been a lot of submarines that run off electric engines... | [
"I searched for that online and found this summary of the incident:",
"After a thorough inspection witnessed by NHTSA representatives, Fisker engineers determined that the damage to the Karmas was the result of the cars being submerged under five to eight feet of seawater for several hours that left corrosive sal... | [
"That's so typical. One car caught fire, which spread to other cars. But all people hear is \"A bunch of electric cars caught fire.\" Just think of how it would have spread, if they were full of gasoline."
] |
[
"Do mosquitoes communicate amongst themselves?"
] | [
false
] | Edit : i would like to know if small groups are able to communicate danger or distress amongst themselves and effectively avoid the danger. I started doubting the conviction of these blood suckers when i was in my home swatting them but they always seem to know to avoid the swings of the electric swatter whenever its b... | [
"Yes there have been several experiments that show mosquitoes can and do respond to other peers by altering their own wingbeat frequencies. This is mostly with regards to mating but there are other cases as well. ",
"Reference: Gibson, G., Warren, B., & Russel, I., J (2010). Humming in tune: sex and species recog... | [
"As adults (thus flying) not that I know of. \nWhen they’re immature yes. Adding a tiny bit to my previous post with regards to communication. Some immature mosquitoes do something known as “hatching inhibition”; they’ll interact with intra & interspecific eggs to stop them from hatching. This is believed to be a r... | [
"Can they communicate danger or distress to other flying mosquitoes? Do they have any form of hierarchy?"
] |
[
"What stops denatured (cooked) chicken egg white from renaturing?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"I wouldn't say 'normally' - some proteins will refold but certainly not all; most food proteins denature irreversibly. When denatured, albumin molecules will entangle with themselves and irreversibly gel."
] | [
"Imagine water in a trough, This is the properly folded state, however if a little energy is added, you knock over the trough, and the water is on the ground, this is the denatured, mis-folded state.",
"Even though you needed to input energy to change its state, you would now need to input ",
" energy to change... | [
"It's all based on whether there exists an energetically favourable pathway from the denatured to the folded state. Sometimes the protein will be stuck in a local minimum without being able to continue further on refolding - that why there are ",
"chaperones",
" to help protein folding inside a cell."
] |
[
"Do evolutionary changes happen faster in species' with shorter lifespans?"
] | [
false
] | For example, would a species of housefly with an average lifespan of 20 days evolve faster than other species' like dogs and humans? My thinking is that with more generations in a shorter amount of time, genetic changes would happen much faster. Am i right? | [
"Absolutely, yes. The best example of this is bacteria. Because they have a lifespan of about 20 minutes they can rapidly evolve resistance to antibiotics, for instance."
] | [
"Nitpicking, but: not lifespan, generation time. Once you reproduce, you can live as long as you want, evolution don't care no more."
] | [
"Evolution is ",
" in short lifespans but that isn't always an advantage. If you have evolved to live in a particular environment rapid evolution might not be as helpful and you could spend your time and energy becoming very large so other things don't eat you."
] |
[
"What are the current barriers to pushing out a Sars-cov-2 vaccine in less than 18 months?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"This vaccine is likely to be given to around two hundred million ",
" people in the US alone. ",
"What kind of risk are you prepared to take with it? Will you accept a one in ten thousand chance of a side effect? That’s 20,000 healthy people you’ve harmed. ",
"How many people have to be in a clinical trial... | [
"Peter Attia interviewed Michael Osterholm (professor of infectious disease and epidemiology at U Minnesota) a week or two back.",
"https://peterattiamd.com/michaelosterholm/",
" ",
"His main fear with development of a vaccine is that the SARS/MERS vaccine efforts mostly failed due to vaccine induced enhaceme... | [
"What OP said is the reason it takes so long. Safety testing. ",
"You have to test vaccines on people. Normally, you do years of testing because you have to know whether a vaccine will also do things like cause cancer. ",
"This is going to take 18 months to rule out other side effects. Remember, in the US 16,00... |
[
"Does the altitude of an airport affect the liftoff speed of an airplane?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Sort of - when flying an airplane, we use indicated airspeed, which is based on the difference between ram and static air pressure. The indicated airspeed remains the same at all normal operating altitudes. However, the groundspeed of the aircraft will be higher for a given indicated airspeed at a high density alt... | [
"Yes, airport altitude as well as air temperature would have a big impact on an aircraft's performance. They both affect the density of the air. High altitude and high temperature mean low air density. For a given groundspeed the less dense air would produce less lift. Another effect is that the engines may produce... | [
"The effects of changes in pressure(part of which is altitude) and temperature are great enough so that it is possible to fly into an airport in the morning and not be able to leave in the afternoon because the plane can no longer perform a takeoff. "
] |
[
"3 Pilots travelling through the galaxy"
] | [
false
] | A riddle which I'm trying to figure out. Maybe someone can help shed some light on this. We send one pilot travelling near the speed of light to the other side of the galaxy. Send another one 5 days later and then send another one 5 days later again. The first pilot starts his voyage back to earth when the second pilot... | [
"2.5 days after 2nd pilot arrives @ the turnaround point"
] | [
"I don't [think] this is correct since they are travelling near the speed of light which would dilate time. The third pilot would probably be centuries or more behind the time of the other pilots.",
"Edit: [think]"
] | [
"from the perspective of earth that would be when they would meet",
"from the perspective of the pilots i have no clue"
] |
[
"Is excess drinking of water harmful to us humans in any way?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Or, long before that, you can get ",
"hyponatemia",
" which is a life threatening condition and can be induced by psychogenic polydipsia (i.e. drinking too much water). ",
"Even correcting the condition, if done wrong can cause permanent and severe brain damage, known as ",
"central pontine myelinosis",
... | [
"also some disease states make it even more danergous, like a congestive cardiac failure, or in anybody on dialysis. These people are unable to cope with increase in intravascular volume that occurs with small amounts of fluid ( severe CCF patients are often limited to 1-1.5 litres a day, as well as taking diuretic... | [
"This is ",
". Water intoxication can and does occur at much smaller volumes than that. ",
"One well-known case is of a woman who suffered fatal hyponatremia after a radio contest, \"Hold Your Wee For A Wii.\" She consumed about ",
"six liters of water in three hours",
", went home, complained of a headache... |
[
"If you were hypothetically between galaxies, what could you see with the naked eye?"
] | [
false
] | So, we all know that the night sky in space, even in LEO, is full of stars and galaxies you can see with the naked eye. If you were on the bridge of an interstellar ship, you'd be able to see a variety of stars with the naked eye assuming you are within the galaxy. Now, if you were hypothetically in a ship that was d... | [
"It would depend where you were...there are vast voids in intergalactic space where you would see nothing.",
"From earth, there are 2 galaxies (not counting the MCs) that are \"normal\" naked eye objects, plus maybe 4 or 5 more that can be glimpsed under optimal conditions if you know just where to look.",
"So ... | [
"How would they look? Like bright spots? Is there a point in space where I can fly my intergalactic star ship and observe a galaxy in all its glory? "
] | [
"For the most part, they would be hazy spots, not much different that clouds. If you live far enough south, you may have seen the ",
"Magellanic Clouds",
", which are two small, nearby dwarf galaxies. They are about 200,000 ly away, and are prominent in the sky. If you were the same distance from a Milky Way... |
[
"Is spinal/neck misalignment (subluxation) a valid medical issue or just pseudoscience?"
] | [
false
] | From what I have read, pretty much everything to due with what chiropractors seem to call subluxation is quackery, at least in terms of anything beyond muscle/joint issues. But what I can't seem to get a firm answer on is if not having those natural curves to your spine/neck is actually a problem that has proven diagno... | [
"subluxation",
"In neurology, cervical spine subluxation is a legitimate medical concern. serious enough that you get put into a cervical collar until the docs figure out what to do. ",
"in orthopedic, neurology and neurosurgery it is treated as a serious issue",
"In choropractary (spelling?) it is basically... | [
"can you please explain why you think that a chiropractic mis alignment in the cervical spine is quackery"
] | [
"The chiropractic meaning of \"subluxation\" is denigrated because, for starters:"
] |
[
"A rather crude question about the effects of eating spicy food... Why does it result in having a fiery poo?"
] | [
false
] | I kinda thought that it was the receptors on our tongues that told us that food was spicy/bitter etc to help us distinguish what foods we should/shouldn't eat. If that is the case, why does my ass feel like it's on fire when i'm taking a dump after a spicy curry or something? Also, why don't I have bitter poos or sweet... | [
"Capsaicin",
" is the \"hot\" element in chilli. It is an irritant to skin eyes and mucous membranes hence its use in pepper sprays and heating gels like ralgex. This effect is quite separate from the tasting functions of your tongue; a sufficiently hot chilli will redden and burn your skin on contact, but your s... | [
"Nope. Capsaicin comes in, capsaicin goes out. you can't explain that! wait...I think I just did. ",
"seriously though, it's not digestible. so normally the same burning feeling you get on your tongue is the one you get on your bum"
] | [
"My limited knowledge and memory tells me that its not; some even suggest that this was a mechanism plants used to ",
" mammals from eating the fruits and just let the birds eat the stuff, which apparently don't get any burning sensation from this thing."
] |
[
"In layman term, what is entropy? Does it have multiple meanings?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"To my knowledge, it has two distinct uses within physics:",
"1)In thermodynamics, it refers to how many similar ways there are to arrange the system you are looking at, which is why we usually talk about it in terms of \"disorder.\" There are far more ways for your room to be messy than there are ways for it to... | [
"Entropy in computer security refers to the amount of information an attacker must guess to defeat a given system. Quite specifically, entropy is independent of transformations. Lets say you need to guess the correct pattern of 1024 bits, but there are only 16,384 possible patterns in a particular implementation.... | [
"The entropy of a system refers to the number of other systems that are indistinguishable. A way of thinking about this is how messy your room is. If you're room is pretexting organized you'll notice one thing out of place. But of your room is a complete mess and I move one thing you won't notice at all. This is th... |
[
"Why doesn't iron have a magnetic susceptibility?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The problem is that the value isn’t constant, it depends on ",
"."
] | [
"What is H?"
] | [
"It’s the H-field. The permeability μ is defined by ",
" = μ",
".",
"And μ can be related to the susceptibility.",
"For most materials, μ and χ are constant as a function of ",
", but in a ferromagnet, they’re not. So you get an equation that looks like ",
" = μ(",
")",
".",
"Now the permeability ... |
[
"Is there a theoretical maximum density for matter?"
] | [
false
] | I understand that at some point, it becomes a black hole, but can you continue to make it more dense? I doubt it would, but would increasing the density of a black hole change the properties or is that not even a valid question from a physics standpoint? | [
"Black holes have a \"no hair theorem,\" meaning they are very simple objects. To an external observer, a black hole is characterized only by it's mass, angular momentum, and charge. All other information about how matter and energy is situated past the event horizon is lost.",
"Furthermore, black holes have a si... | [
"Does it make it to the singularity in a finite time from the perspective of someone outside the hole? Or is the time to reach the singularity only finite from the perspective of someone inside the event horizon?"
] | [
"There is no causal connection from the inside of the black hole to the outside, so there is no such thing as an outside observer to what is going on inside. "
] |
[
"What exists between particles in a gas?"
] | [
false
] | In a gas, the particles move around. So if they are moving then surely there is space from where the particles had moved from. So what exists in that space? Just a vacuum? Edit: What i'm trying to say is that if all the particles were close together and had no space between them, then they'd be a solid, right? so for t... | [
"I feel like you are thinking about it wrong. When you are sitting in a room, you are sitting in a single very large vacuum - that happens to be filled with billions of gas molecules (and hence is no longer a vacuum)."
] | [
"Yes, there is a vacuum between the particles in a gas. "
] | [
"Here's a nice video",
" showing roughly what happens to the molecules in gasses, liquids and solids.",
"A few quick points:"
] |
[
"What is the most valuable element. As in, if I were to pick an element off of the periodic table, which would be the most expensive to purchase?"
] | [
false
] | I was watching Americas Funniest Home Videos tonight, and the host made a joke along the lines of "Which is the most valuable element? You may say Gold or Uranium, but really, it is the element of " . That just made me curious. Which element the most valuable? I would assume it would also have to be the rarest, is this... | [
"Here's a good ",
"link to a chemist explaining it on the NPR Planet Money Blog.",
"It really depends on how you define \"valuable.\" Must it be tradable? Rare but not toooo rare? Easy to manipulate? ",
"The link actually considers the reasons behind Gold being the standard for measure of money... it assumes ... | [
"Californium used for cancer research, a source of neutrons for other techniques and start up fuel for nuclear reactors goes for like $60 / ug in 1999. So it would be 60 billion dollars for 1 kg. ",
"Source: NRC"
] | [
"I'm going to assume you mean a relatively pure example of the element itself. Otherwise carbon wins because the Mona Lisa is made almost entirely of carbon. As is the original Magna Carta, etc.",
"The most expensive element is probably Element 118 (Ununoctium). It takes thousands of man-hours and millions of dol... |
[
"Instrument Identification: Science Class Stuff"
] | [
false
] | There was an instrument the would rotate due to "radiant heat" There were 2 Squares set on the Diagonal facing "East/West". One side of each of the squares was black, the other white. The heat would "Push" the Black side and spin this thing around in a Hollow Light Bulb looking Glass Globe. Demo I saw at Home Depot: ... | [
"It's called a Crookes Radiometer.",
"Information: ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer",
"For purchase: ",
"http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=crookes+radiometer"
] | [
"U are a Rockstar. That post was up for 42.0 seconds",
"Thanks again ",
"Peace"
] | [
"No problem. I didn't know what it was called, but I have seem them before, so I knew what you were talking about. Google gave me the answer pretty quickly. I might actually buy one now, though, they look pretty cool."
] |
[
"Will a planets orbit eventually slow or eventually go closer/further from a star?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"On time scales above ~200 million years the dynamics of our own solar system is chaotic and there are a few different scenarios that could significantly change the system before the sun dies"
] | [
"At the birth of a stellar system, simulations show that planets migrate du to the gravitational interactions between themselves and with the star(s), and can sometimes even kick a planet out of the system. The scientific litterature is well-furnished on the subject, but you can simply check the wikipedia page whic... | [
"All planets should experience a migration away from their host star as their star loses mass. This is an effect that may push Earth outside of the red giant envelope.",
" ",
"In terms of late orbital migrations the timescales depend on the dynamics of the system. It would be expected that later on systems are ... |
[
"Is there a modern, awesome-for-everyone science series that compares to Bill Nye?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"NOVA ScienceNOW",
" is awesome. It's hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is nerdy/goofy/really smart just like Bill Nye. There is also a lot of cheesy humor to go along with the knowledge. They cover lots of topics, and I would definitely recommend it."
] | [
"Look Around You",
", just ",
"Look Around You",
".",
"Only joking on that one. Another vote from me on ",
"naked science",
", which is fairly solid. Also, and I know many aren't going to like this, Mythbusters. While children shouldn't be encouraged to emulate the Mythbuster's approach to science (or, ... | [
"There's a weekly podcast called ",
"Naked Science",
" that is similar. General science, lots of areas covered. It's done by the BBC."
] |
[
"What are the effects of trisomy 2 genetic mutation?"
] | [
false
] | How might someone be born healthy and live a full life with trisomy 2 mosaicism? (An extra number 2 chromosome) would/can this genetic mutation affect the person? Any information helps! | [
"It's important to note that: the larger the number, the smaller the chromosome. Chromosome 2 is the second largest chromosome.",
"The reason that Trisomy 21 is so prevalent is that it is a smaller chromosome that happens to have genes that are not as important to development and cell function as other chromosome... | [
"Most T 21 pregnancies also end in miscarriage but just less so than other trisomies. Otherwise I agree with your reply.One study in 80’s prospectively followed T21 pregnancies and even between 12 and 20 weeks 50% were lost. I"
] | [
"Most T 21 pregnancies also end in miscarriage but just less so than other trisomies. Otherwise I agree with your reply.One study in 80’s prospectively followed T21 pregnancies and even between 12 and 20 weeks 50% were lost. I"
] |
[
"Why are football helmets hard?"
] | [
false
] | It seems like if they were softer they would be safer. | [
"Actually, there are more than one type of football helmet authorized for players to wear. The standard one you see every Sunday is referred to a soft/hard helmet, with a hard outside and a padded inside.",
"Another type is a Soft/hard/soft helmet which basically has cushioned padding on the outside. This has bee... | [
"They are either padded with a flexible rubber-like material or they are cushioned with air and can be inflated for a more custom fit. If the outer shell was soft it would not be able to disperse the impact as effectively across the more shock absorbent inner cushioning."
] | [
"Not all football codes wear hard helmets.",
"American football seems to be caught in an arms race."
] |
[
"What is the analogue to the addition of powers for multiplying powers?"
] | [
false
] | Sorry if the title wasn't clear but what I'm asking is this: if you have a * a you will get a so the powers have been added. What do you need to multiply a by or do to it to result in a ? (so the power has been multiplied) | [
"(a",
" )",
" = a",
"So (a",
" )",
" = a"
] | [
"a",
"a",
" * a",
" = a",
" = a",
"There isn't any nice property I'm aware of to make that cleaner if you want strict multiplication. ",
"/u/Astrokiwi",
"'s response is correct if you allow for exponentiation."
] | [
"Ah I see. This is more what I was after though, thanks!"
] |
[
"Does anything happen on a physical level when we get \"sick of eating the same thing day after day\" or is it purely mental?"
] | [
false
] | Does actually eating something every single day physically affect our bodies/taste buds? Or somehow affect how our brain interprets eating that same thing again and again? | [
"In the relatively new book \"Ecoimmunology,\" there is growing evidence that your body can interpret need or limiting nutrients. Other papers have shown this, too.",
"Iron limitation, for example, may cause cravings for iron rich foods if the foods you're currently eating are deficient. This is interesting, as... | [
"Sensory specific satiety, which is a sensory phenomenon marked by declining satisfaction generated by foods that you eat over and over again. Also, there is a point between the feeling of hunger and the feeling of fullness where people feel most comfortable. When you find yourself at that point, what tempts you to... | [
"I don't have an answer for your question directly, but I do have two things that I think will help you out. First off, as far as we know everything your mind does is due to a physical phenomenon. For example, more dopamine doesn't ",
" you focus, more dopamine ",
" more focus. (In the right place, that is.)",
... |
[
"How does the developing embryo know how many (how to count) somites and their locations that turn into vertebrae?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"This is a relatively complex question that has a ton of factors, enzymes expression, and enzyme gradients. You pretty much asked \"explain embryology to me\".",
"http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/images/f/fe/Chicken_antero-posterior_endoderm_patterning_01.jpg"
] | [
"I agree. There are several proposed mechanisms for generating somites and for the number of somites. The clock/wavefront model for location seems to be most polar at the moment, while opposing morphogen gradients or morphogen/receptor gradients may be the mechanism behind the number."
] | [
"I'm not being dismissive I'm just saying its a complex answer",
"My TL:DR was that it has to do with enzymes and gradients. ",
"IF you want a long answer... oh boy there are 15week college courses that barely touch on the complexity of embryology ",
"http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v6/n12/full/nrn1805.html... |
[
"Why can't we have a Mars/Moon Live Feed ?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Hi SaltiestSalt 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 fo... | [
"Planetary Sci."
] | [
"Planetary Sci."
] |
[
"Do we know the climate of Pangaea?"
] | [
false
] | I was wondering if we know the climate of the supercontinent Pangaea, and if we do know then how do we? I tried looking this up but all I got was weather for my town (probably because they both start with p) and the typical description of "Pangaea or Pangea was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic a... | [
"There are lots of papers (and information in general) out there on the paleoclimate of Pangea, either broadly (e.g. ",
"Parrish, 1993",
") or those focused on more specific time intervals or geographic locations (e.g. ",
"Kessler et al, 2001",
"). A great deal of the literature focuses on the so-called ",
... | [
"I was able to find lots of information when googling for 'paleozoic climate' and 'mesozoic climate'. I can't type it out at the moment, due to a lack of time, however if you don't get a qualified answer anytime soon, at least you got some of the information right there at your fingertips."
] | [
"Not easy to be real specific about an entity (Pangaea) that had such a large range of coverage in both space and time when talking about something like climate that is, by its very nature, quite variable in both space and time. There was a late Paleozoic glaciation event, so a cold period in the time leading to t... |
[
"Why is brain damage permanent?"
] | [
false
] | More specifically, why can't the central nervous system regenerate from injury? What evolutionary advantage do proteins that inhibit regeneration provide? How is plasticity possible then? | [
"Although the brain cannot place newly generated neurons in lesioned areas, there are still compensatory measures that allow the brain to recover from seemingly disastrous injury. Specifically, it's been found that brain areas can \"take up the slack\" of neighboring areas that have been innjured in some way. Early... | [
"To elaborate a bit on the neuronal injury part:",
"Regenerating neurons is an information problem. Neurons are like transistors in a circuit: they only contribute if they are connected in meaningful ways. So if a neuron dies, you can't just put a new one where the old one was. The dead neuron likely had hundr... | [
"forgive my ignorance, but why wouldn't the brain just create new neurons that could be used to connect to other neurons? Sure, it can't create one that was exactly like the old one, but it could create a new one that could be used in some other way, thus saving the brain from having a net loss of neurons. "
] |
[
"Can someone explain to me Black Body Radiation as if I was a little kid, I really don't understand the concept of it."
] | [
false
] | Also, do black body radiation curves show the same body but at different temperature or are they different bodies at different temperatures? Astrophysics is really messing with my head :( | [
"This could double as an ELI5 post....",
"Okay, II54, let's pretend for a moment that you're some object in space, like the moon, or an asteroid. If the sun isn't shining on these objects, we usually can't see them, because they're too cold. But it turns out that they do glow with a certain color of light- it's... | [
"Correct so at any given temperature a black body is emitting ",
" of every wavelength (neglecting discrete effects of QM) in the EM spectrum. It just happens that most of the time its an absolutely minuscule amount so we can't see it. When something gets hot enough (like an electric stove) the amount of visibl... | [
"Thank you so much, this has really cleared it up for me, i really do appreciate the help!"
] |
[
"Climbing a stationary escalator can induce a sense of vertigo. How does the brain know this escalator is different from stairs?"
] | [
false
] | This happened to me in the mall yesterday and has happened before. An escalator out of service but still available to climb (i.e. ). Stepping onto the escalator I feel a sense of unbalance, presumably because my body expects a moving escalator, which isn't the case. My question is: how does my brain know what an escala... | [
"Most likely, it is a combination of the expected response, which would be movement, as well as the subtle movement of the escalator as it responds to your movement. Subtle motion tends to have an effect on perceived motion, as some of your senses may fail to notice the motion."
] | [
"The individual steps on most escalators are taller than those on normal staircases, also deeper. So you are climbing something your mind thinks is familiar, but your body doesn't."
] | [
"The broken escalator phenomenon. Aftereffect of walking onto a moving platform."
] |
[
"What are these weird optical illusions I saw on a flight?"
] | [
false
] | I was on a flight a while ago and saw two weird optical illusions. Could anyone explain how a shadow of the plane shows up as small and well defined on a nearby cloud, and two, what is the second thing that appears by the engine? | [
"glory."
] | [
"Could 2 be the shadow of the plane being projected through the cloud? Compare to ",
"this picture",
" and imagine standing in the plume looking out."
] | [
"I'm assuming your confusion about the well-defined shadow in the first image is due to the clouds being partially transparent. In this case the transparency doesn't matter much because the clouds are fairly dense and far away. The thickness of the layer of cloud that you can actually see is small compared to how... |
[
"Inspired by the ridiculous plot of \"Terra Nova\", I ask.. How much energy would it take to completely vapourize a human, via laser, microwave, electron beam or similar?"
] | [
false
] | After watching "Terra-Nova" tonight (it's a ridiculous show), I had to consider the incredible "leap of faith" the time-travellers were making to walk into the "time rift" and expect to appear unharmed at the other end 85my in the past.. What if the "time rift" was actually a giant pulsed laser that vapourized the exce... | [
"Well, the heat of vaporization depends on the composition.",
"We could start with the water that is the heaviest component by mass of the human body. It evaporates at 373K. Calculate the mass of the water and multiply it by the 4.2J/gK to find the energy needed to bring the water from body temperature to the boi... | [
"There are people whose shadows were burned into the walls of Hiroshima instantaneously by an atomic bomb and were completely vaporized. That's the only example of 'vaporized' I can think of from memory.",
"Microwave weapons aren't designed to melt, by the way. The active denial system is designed as a pain / bur... | [
"Let's say a 50kg mass of 100% pure water, and power could be applied perfectly, and the goal is to raise the average temperature from 98.6F (37C) to 212F (100C).",
"1 g of water is raised 1C by about 1 calorie (there is some variation depending on initial temperature).",
"50000 x (100-37) = 3150 kC = 3.66 kWh"... |
[
"When did they first discover or speculate space? That we're suspended in an endless void?"
] | [
false
] | It seems to me to be a pretty big jump from the physical reality a human is presented with on earth to come up with the idea that you're actually on a sphere suspended in a black endless void. Who was the first to do this? What did they think? Did they think space was blue? Did they think stars were small? | [
"This is actually an incredibly complicated question, which likely doesn't have a satisfactory answer. The reason being that it depends entirely on what ideas you deem to be \"space\".",
"Its been known for thousands of years that the Earth was round. The concept that the Earth is \"floating\" in space (i.e., n... | [
"Anti-matter is just like \"regular\" particles, but with opposite physical charges. You might be referring to virtual particles, but that starts to get outside of my area of expertise. My understanding there is that quantum fields have a ",
"zero-point energy",
" which is the lowest possible energy level of ... | [
"/u/ChrisGnam",
" has given a great answer as to how we came across the ",
" of space, however they have not given an answer as to ",
". ",
"Many people throughout history have assumed that space is just another type of fluid. This makes sense from a human point of view, we have water which behaves like liq... |
[
"How does cancer kill?"
] | [
false
] | I understand what cancer is and how it works. What i'm wondering is how do cancers that are not in organs, like prostate cancer, kill you without spreading to any other body parts? | [
"Most of the time it kills you by spreading (metastasizing) to vital areas. Sometimes a tumor can kill you just from taking up space / squishing stuff. It also steals nutrients and can basically kill surrounding cells. "
] | [
"Cancer cells multiply by faulty genetic mechanism by getting stuck to specific stage in cell cycles. They can't function properly and they continue to divide.",
"These faulty cells infiltrate other organs through lymphatic channels (sewerage system of human body). ",
"So one thing they are doing is taking up s... | [
"Cancer is not a direct cause of death, it kills by damaging one of the three vital systems: heart (circulatory), lungs (respiratory) and brain (just brain). The idea is that clinical death is defined as the permanent cessation of the function of any of these vital systems that eventually leads to the cessation of ... |
[
"Does the existence of fermions in a black hole violate the pauli exclusion principle?"
] | [
false
] | If you had a large number of fermions enter a black hole and all merge at the singularity, it would seem that you would necessarily have multiple fermions occupying a single state, but this would violate the pauli exclusion principle. My knowledge of black holes is very limited so I would appreciate if someone could ex... | [
"The flaw is that you assume both general relativity, and quantum mechanics (through Fermi statistic) to be correct. Near the classical singularity, what actually happens is still completely unknown, and you would need a proper theory of quantum gravity to figure it out."
] | [
"What I meant is that physics is about measurable quantities, and if there is a theory that tells you that all measurable quantities are incalculable in a certain region of space, then you simply don't have a theory. ",
"Saying that a singularity is predicted by GR is just like saying that a singularity is predic... | [
"\"Singularity\" is not a physical concept, it's just a buzzword that tells you that general relativity breaks down near that point. "
] |
[
"Do pets feel emotion toward owners?"
] | [
false
] | Just wondering if dogs, cats and other pets really feel some emotional attachment to their owners or do they just stick around for food and shelter? Is there even any way to prove a viewpoint on this? | [
"really feel some emotional attachment to their owners or do they just stick around for food and shelter ",
"Interesting question, but I think it is a false dichotomy. Arguably the reason that individual-specific attachment evolved (e.g. a duckling following the first animal or robot that it meets upon hatch... | [
"One day, we will eventually understand that human are animals as well. There is no reason to assume a qualitative difference. \"Feelings\" is chemistry in our head, and I don't doubt that animals have this as well.",
"It's kind of \"racist\" to think human are qualitatively superior."
] | [
"Very well put. As for rodents, like dogs, they can show time periods where they show anxiety like behavior (~scared emotion), heightened hedonic behavior (~happy emotionality), violence (~angry), etc. There was also a nice recent experiment reviewed by NPR in which they showed rats when given a choice to work on o... |
[
"If I was in space how far would I need to be from the Sun to need a another source of light to read?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"300 lux? Maybe for comfortable reading, but that's not the lower limit for reading.",
"I can read quite easily in the light of the full moon alone, and that's only 0.2 lux.",
"Using your formula, that would be 806 AU, or 4.5 light ",
". In comparison, Voyager 1 is 17 light ",
" away."
] | [
"300 lux? Maybe for comfortable reading, but that's not the lower limit for reading.",
"I can read quite easily in the light of the full moon alone, and that's only 0.2 lux.",
"Using your formula, that would be 806 AU, or 4.5 light ",
". In comparison, Voyager 1 is 17 light ",
" away."
] | [
"I have. You can not read. The clear night sky is about 0.0002 lux."
] |
[
"If there were no lightning strikes to ionize the air, would various noxious gasses build up to make our atmosphere unbreatheable?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Why do you imagine that ionizing the air has anything to do with removing noxious gases? In fact, lightning strikes produce ozone and nitrogen dioxide, which would be toxic if they built up to high concentrations. Fortunately, there's not enough lightning to produce them in large amounts, and they don't tend to st... | [
"The \"garbage can\" of the atmosphere is free radical particles created by ionizing radiation from the sun. These react with everything and anything in the air until they are oxidized to something very stable, like carbon dioxide or water. "
] | [
"What noxious gases might be removed this way? I would speculate that most noxious gases are removed through chemical reactions such as oxidation."
] |
[
"Why can dogs smell substances in a vacuum-packed bag?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"2 main reasons.",
"a) The bag is thin enough to be slightly permiable. Some of the milicules can leak though it. A dog's nose is sensative enough to pick up even this minute amount.",
"b) The outside of the bag is not 'clean'. When you pack drugs etc, the bag has to be open (obviously). Some of the drugs smell... | [
"Thanks :) I think \"reason b\" makes more sense in my ears although \"a\" is possibly true as well :D"
] | [
"a) tends to apply more to thin cheap cellophane wrapping.",
"b) to more industrial style packing. "
] |
[
"If accelerating/decelerating at 1G, how long would it take, subjectively, to reach the nearest galaxy?"
] | [
false
] | If you accelerate at 1G half the way there, turn the ship around and decelerate the rest of the way you could effectively simulate gravity during space travel. What I'm wondering is; how much subjective time(POV space ship) would it take to travel like this to another galaxy considering general relativity? | [
"I love how the last line of that link casually mentions \"After only a few years of 1g acceleration even the cosmic background radiation is Doppler shifted into a lethal heat bath hot enough to melt all known materials.\""
] | [
"28 years to reach Andromeda.",
"See: ",
"http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rocket.html"
] | [
"...while two million years will have passed on Earth. Wow. "
] |
[
"Can anyone explain this strange microscope-like effect on light reflections off of things I see sometimes?"
] | [
false
] | I'm sorry if this isn't as clear as it could be but I'll try and explain it as well as I can. Sometimes I can see a reflection or refraction or just some effect off of something, often it is through like a water drop on a window with a bright light behind it, or sometimes off it single loose hairs on the couch. If I fo... | [
"I have no idea what they are, but I just want to say, I see them too sometimes. It looks like I'm looking into a microscope, but only in a tiny part of my vision. Very strange, I hope somebody can give us some insight on this. "
] | [
"There is a phenomenon in which bright light inbound on your optic disc causes you to be able to momentarily visualize your retinal vessels.",
"This happens to me every time someone uses an ophthalmoscope to visualize my optic disc.",
"I don't know what it's called though, or even precisely what's happening."
] | [
"That's bits of dirt/dust in the fluid",
"Are you referring to ",
"Scheerer's phenomenon",
"? ",
"Your description sounds just like it, but that ain't dust. Those are white blood cells circulating through your cornea. Which is WAY cooler than dust."
] |
[
"When people gain weight, why do certain body parts not enlarge (ears, nose, lips, penis)?"
] | [
false
] | My niece asked this question and I felt quite lost. | [
"You actually do lay down new adipose tissue. It's more true in reverse. Your fat cells empty out but don't go away when you lose weight."
] | [
"When you gain weight, you don't add fat cells. The fat cells you have just become bigger. This is why liposuction works.",
"Parts of the body like the ears and nose that have little or no surrounding fat don't get bigger because there are no fat cells to enlarge."
] | [
"Also if I may add the Penis actually gets smaller as you get fatter, this is due to the fat cells at the base of the Penis enlarging and actually hiding part of base of the Penis actually making it shorter in length. This is why when a guy loses weight his Penis actually gets longer. "
] |
[
"Why is the Cardia (oesophagus-stomach opening) named so?"
] | [
false
] | I'm curious about the linguistics (?) and the reasoning behind whoever named that region, considering that everything heart-related is "cardiac," but just recently I learned that anything related to the Cardia is also "cardiac". They both seem to be from the Greek word "kardia" (heart) according to Merriam Webster, so ... | [
"Seems this is an ambiguity even in the Greek root. See these pages for a bit more info: ",
"EtymOnline",
"Wiktionary",
"The Greek root can be translated as both stomach and heart, possibly having something to do with their proximity."
] | [
"Oh good catch! So it really might be just something getting lost in translation. Less likely, but maybe also a lack of anatomical knowledge for the ancient languages?"
] | [
"I don't get the sense from the linked pages that it's a translation error, rather that the ancient Greek words for heart and stomach were homophones. I could be wrong though. ",
"I can't access this article but it seems someone has written on this exact topic: ",
"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-... |
[
"Is there any benefit of drinking Vitamin Water?"
] | [
false
] | I've heard many people say that the vitamins don't get absorbed. Is there any evidence of this? | [
"It's like taking a vitamin supplement. If you're deficient, yes there will be a benefit. If you're not deficient, it's unlikely to give you any extra benefit, but then again it won't hurt. This is why it's sometimes recommended to take a multivitamin daily in addition to eating a healthy diet, just to be on the sa... | [
"Just take a daily multivitamin. "
] | [
"So it's better than kool aid?"
] |
[
"What colour is the sun outside of our atmosphere?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"One could call it white, but it is actually a certain mix of a wide range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. The actual composition depends on the sun's surface temperature (6700K). See \n",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation"
] | [
"The wavelength of light that the sun emits the most is green light, so the sun is green. But it also emits a lot of other light as well so it appears white.",
"If you pay attention at sunset, if you watch closely the last color you can still see is green."
] | [
"Almost the same color as it is when seen inside our atmosphere. The atmosphere scatters a bit of blue light, making sunlight seem a little redder than it would be from space. But unless you're viewing the Sun through a ",
" of atmosphere (i.e. at sunrise or sunset), the color shift isn't very noticeable.",
"... |
[
"Is this a mild seizure or something else?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):",
"medical advice",
"/r/AskScience",
"guidelines.",
"If you disagree with this decision, please send a ",
"message to the moderators."
] | [
"What is a gdoo solace to post this then?",
"Good place*"
] | [
"Reddit in general is not the right place to ask for medical advice. If you have concerns about your health, you need to speak to a medical professional."
] |
[
"Is it possible to create diamond like crystals from other elements?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Many useful materials adopt the zinc blende structure (which is identical to diamond's crystal structure except they are made of two elements). It is therefore possible to make \"diamond\" shaped crystals from these materials because you can cut the crystal in the same ways.",
"Cadmium telluride is an interestin... | [
"Yes. Diamond has a structure called ",
"FCC(face centered cubic)",
" with two atoms in the base. That means for each \"spot\" in an fcc, there are two atoms - one on the spot and one shifted along the diagonal of the unit cell (1/4, 1/4, 1/4).",
"To answer your question: Yes. ",
"To quote wikipedia:",
"W... | [
"OK! Since you don't believe me, let's get some litterature up in this bitch. ",
"The space lattice of diamond is face-centered cubic. The primitive basis of the diamond structure has two identical atoms at coordinates 000 and 1/4 1/4 1/4 associated with each point of the ffc lattice, as shown in Fig. 22.",
"Ch... |
[
"What is the point of the Axon Hillock in a neuron?"
] | [
false
] | My understanding of how a neuron works is that the body and the dendrites (receptors) listen for the signal (-55mV), and when the signal is "heard" by the neuron, it starts firing. I thought it doesn't matter where in the neuron the signal is heard, dendrites or body, but once it's heard the cascade of firing (flood of... | [
"Excellent question, I can understand where you would be confused. \nTo answer your tl;dr question bluntly - Yes, more or less. Now to explain:",
"Typically, all your APs that fire will originate at the Axon Hillock because that is where the summation of input occurs. Note that the action potential itself is ONLY... | [
"I was under the impression that now, the actual trigger zone was just distal to the axon hillock even though the texts say, or used to say, that depolarisation occurred at the axon hillock."
] | [
"This isn't something I had thought much about.",
"I guess the key thing to understand is the events leading up to depolarisation of a neuron. The cell body of the neuron may synapses with one or several presynaptic neurons. When those presynaptic neurons depolarise they release neurotransmitter into the synaptic... |
[
"How can a colonial organism function as a single entity?"
] | [
false
] | Specifically, the Portuguese man-o-war just blows my mind. It's like a very complex combiner Transformer™. Do the various single species involved have their own lives outside of this colonial existence? Can they be found in any other colonial organisms, or as parasites or symbionts to other more homogeneous (classified... | [
"Portugese man-o-war are often misunderstood. They aren't made of multiple species. Instead, all the different parts are descended from buds off of one original unit. The buds grow into different looking polyps that do a variety of different things, but they all remain as a connected whole. ",
"Here's a prett... | [
"Imagine identical twins, joined at the stomach. They started off as a single organism...a single fertilized egg. At some point (probably as a blastocyst) they split into two organisms...but not ",
". As they grow, they develop their own internal systems...each twin has its own heart, its own eyes, its own brain ... | [
"So basically, the man o' war grows its various organs as conjoined parts.",
"I understand symbiosis in distinct species (even where one or both species would be unable to survive without the other), but I didn't understand the zooid mechanism. That video helped a lot; thanks!"
] |
[
"Can we consciously control unconscious behavior?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"I highly doubt he stopped a heart attack by meditating. It has been suggested meditation can slow your Hearts BPM, but a heart attack (myocardial infarction) is caused by a blockage of blood flow to part of the heart. This is why anticoagulants or nitroglycerin are administered to the patient to help remove/break ... | [
"I can stand in front of a mirror and dilate/constrict my pupils multiple times in a row...I am pretty sure this could be learned even better with some practice...the key is that it is also a reflection of arousal/alertness, and that has some conscious input."
] | [
"Like others have said some you can control. But things such as the pupils no.",
"You can train yourself to not get nervous and stay relaxed and prevent some of the things a lie detector trys and measures.",
"But things like pupils dilation/constriction is a reflex to light and doesn't vary when telling a lie, ... |
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