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Why are the Turks and Kurds currently in conflict?
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The Kurds are an ethnic minority that live in Kurdistan . Turkey does not recognize this minority and does not grant them many rights. Also, there is a long history of massacres against the Kurds. The Kurds have formed separatist groups with the goal to become independent from Turkey. The main rebel group is the PKK which is recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey and the NATO . They mainly operate out of Iraq and launch attacks against Turkey.
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What is "Shepard's Tone"
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There are two notes on top of one another. They're both the same note, such as both being a C note, but one is one octave above the other and has a much higher pitch. If you play a scale using notes like these, CDEFGABC with a much higher pitched CDEFGABC playing at the same time, the highest C of the first scale is the same sound as the lowest C of the second scale. So if you play it twice in a row, the low notes will sound like they're just continuing and becoming the high notes. From there, your brain takes over. Your brain is really good at making guesses and filling in for information it doesn't have, and one of the ways it does that is by recognizing patterns and completing them. When it hears this scale, it makes the assumption that it keeps going up forever and tells your ears that's what they're hearing. It doesn't matter that the highest note isn't getting any higher, because your brain has a range of sound it really likes and is already focusing in on the lower notes again, assuming that those high notes are continuing in the pattern it predicted. Try this: listen to a Shepard's Tone , and halfway through, take out your headphones or mute your computer for a second. When you turn the sound back on, that tone will have seemingly "reset" and sound lower again. That's because your brain is starting over with the pattern it's interpreting, and it always wants to start with that specific middle range of sound it likes_URL_0_ Explains it better than I ever could.
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Why are dogs affraid of vacuums?
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Like people, all dogs personalities are not the same. I have three dogs of varying size . My bulldog is not scared of thunder or guns, but is afraid of the vacuum & fireworks. My mutt is afraid of absolutely everything . And my Pit/Whippet mix is not afraid of a damn thing on this earth; if anything she is just curious about it all. She won't bark at the vacuum, she'll follow it around and sniff it. When it's thundering outside, she likes to go out & play while looking at the sky. However, I think a major reason dogs tend not to like the vacuum is because it makes a terrible noise, makes motions that seem unfamiliar & does not smell like it is alive .Even veterinary sources seem pretty unsure as to why exactly dogs react this way. Based on conversations I 've had with Vets, I 've come up with the following guesses: Dogs smell and hear on levels that aren't conceivable to human beings. It's quite possible that some dogs get "upset" at the vacuum because it's emitting either a tone or a scent that they either particularly dislike or that just straight scares them. They're also "pre-programmed" to react in certain ways to certain smells/sounds either because it indicates the presence of nearby prey/food, or a nearby threat. So perhaps that comes into play as well.
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Why do we so often have music stuck in our heads?
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I don't know the actual science behind it but I know music is meant to get stuck in your head. It makes it more popular and catchy tunes and beats are often most popular. Plus, the human mind enjoys music it finds predictable and easy to listen to, which is exactly what gets stuck in your head.
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[NSFW maybe] how come when you tickle yourself you don't feel anything but when you masturbate its pleasurable?
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When you are tickled your body thinks it's being attacked, thats why you can't tickle yourself ", 'To shorten it: tickling is a trait passed down from hundreds of millions of years, tickling was used for sort of training young to fight since your ticklish spots are your most sensitive spots for wounds. For masturbation, its really simulated sex with your handI wonder if there are people who can have orgasms by being tickled.
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Why can public schools, funded by the government, limit the rights of its students?
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It's a legal concept called [in loco parentis]. The school is legally acting in place of your parent while you're a student, and as such are allowed to act in your best interest as they see fit. There are some legal restrictions on this in the interest of upholding civil rights with regard to discrimination, abuse, and things of that nature, but generally speaking the school can legally act exactly as a parent would to enforce the greater good and safety of its students and the educational environment.Rights are not inviolate. They can be restricted according to something called the "strict scrutiny" standard. This requires that the government have a "compelling interest" in the goal of the legislation [and education is certainly a compelling interest], that the law be "narrowly tailored" to achieve that interest [I'm not sure if educational restrictions have ever faced a court challenge on this point], and that there be no less restrictive way to achieve their goal. The school system would have no trouble proving a compelling interest, so the challenge would be on the narrowness of the standard. I suspect the courts would give pretty broad leeway to searches, considering their relative non-intrusiveness compared to the interest of student safety. They can't punish you for what you say outside the school, but generally restricting the *location* and *manner* of speech passes constitutional checks.
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How Memory Is Stored In the Brain And Subsequently Retrieved
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Not an answer: But someone once told me a memory is only a memory of the last time you remembered it. So it may be very different from the main event. That's why it "fades".
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What is happening inside my console when a game is loading?
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Loading from the hard drive to the RAM. In a computer , the processors, the GPU and CPU, need to have quick access to the data, and hard drives are far too slow to provide this, even new SSDs are still too slow. So what was the solution to this? RAM, or Random Access Memory. RAM is very very fast, providing the data needed, but they need the data loaded into them first, hence the loading process. Some other processes may occur in preparation, maybe some decompression, but mainly the hard drive is what slows it down. In the last few years though, SSDs, or Solid State Drives, have started to become relevant, and these are good because they are fast, allowing quick access of data. Loading times are basically non existent on them. Loaded data is then reworked by the CPU and GPU to display those characters on the screen, assigning each pixel a different color every time the frame changes.
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Is it possible for new types of sailor's knots to be "discovered"? Or have the common ones been around for hundreds of years?
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The common ones have been around for ages. They are the most efficient and easiest to tie. There're four main types of knots: Bend - ties two lines together; Hitch - ties a line to another object; Loop - creates a loop in the rope; and stopper knots, which basically just make the line thicker. The most efficient form of each of these knots has been known for a long long time . There's other, more complicated ones for more specialized tasks, but these four are easiest to tie, have been around longest, and are the most often used. Knots used outside of sailing, that have specialized tasks can be considered newer. For example the [Prusik knot] was "invented" in the 20^th century. TL:DR: New knots can and have been invented recently, but the most often used, best knots have been around forever.
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Whats the big deal about quantum computers. Whats the difference compared to normal computers?
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There are problems a full-fledged quantum computer could solve in a reasonable amount of time that we don't think a classical computer could solve in any reasonable amount of time. One such problem is integer factorization – the best known algorithms for classical computers would take absurd amounts of time to run for large numbers, whereas we have algorithms for quantum computers that could factor those integers quickly, if only we had a quantum computer to run them on. Theoretically, we can come up with arbitrarily powerful models of computation. What makes the "classical" set of models interesting is that they correspond to actual machines that we can build using our knowledge of science. We strongly suspect that, given our knowledge of quantum mechanics, it is also possible to build useful quantum computers. We just haven't managed to engineer a working model yet.
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What is happening when we are "emotionally exhausted"?
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Get married and you will find out. Jokes aside. Emotions are thoughts and feelings that require your body to provide energy to do. if you're having a lot of those, they drain energy and make a person tired. Example might be a wife with a sick husband, she has to look after the kids, go to hospital everyday, cook meals run the house and she is terrified her husband is going to die soon. The emotional stuff the wife is dealing with costs energy, when energy levels are low its because she is emotionally drained", 'Your brain releases different chemicals, depending on which emotion you are feeling. Say you had the best weekend of your life. Your brain produced and released a lot of serotonin. So after that weekend, your brain is depleted of that particular chemical, leaving feeling blah, or down in the dumps. It has to "recharge", if you will. This could be considered emotionally exhausted.
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How do presidents get up to speed on issues?
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The President has not just a staff of secretaries but they have appoint a group called the "Cabinet" whose job it is to be an expert on various things. If he wanted more information about small business he could go to Penny Pritzker and ask her to compile a report.
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Why FTL implies backward time travel
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it is a sci-fi show cliche for one thing in theory, the faster you go, the slower time goes for you and it approaches zero as you get closer to the speed of light. So, based on that logic, if you go faster than the speed of light, you go into negative time. Supposedly, matter can't go faster than the speed of light and the energy required to even get close is huge.
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If underage sex is illegal and murder is illegal then why is viewing underage sex illegal but viewing murder is not?
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People don't murder other people in order to create videos and profit from people watching them. But some adults do sexual things to children in order to create videos and make money. So when someone watches that underage sex video, they're creating an industry that hurts underage people, who by definition can't consent to sex.
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why aren't faucet pipes straight?
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Well, for THAT pipe I would imagine the bend helps slow the waterfall so it doesn't splash too much. But for the ones with the S-bend, like in the USA and other places, it traps water so smells and gas doesn't come back up the pipes.
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Newton's Second Law?
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Slap a ball and it'll move in the direction you slapped it. Slap it harder and it'll move faster.
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How can fluids be incompressible?
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Fluids aren't completely incompressible; they're generally more compressible than solids, for sure. It's just that, under the kind of conditions normally studied in fluid dynamics, they will only compress a little tiny bit. So we can simplify a *lot* of things if we just say "okay, pretend they can't be compressed".
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When a casino brings in a cooler, what exactly is the cooler doing?
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Nothing because it's superstitious nonsense. If someone is counting cards at a blackjack table and the casino doesn't want to/can't kick them out for some reason, a new dealer will burn a card before they start, which makes it closer to time to shuffle and adds an additional unknown card which makes the count less accurate/useful. But this doesn't happen in practice.> In old school gambling parlance, a casino "cooler" is an unlucky individual, usually a casino employee, whose mere presence at the gambling tables usually results in a streak of bad luck for the other players. Source : _URL_0_', "Coolers are people who has such bad luck that it naturally affects everyone around him. It's a myth.
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Why is it so difficult for Iran to build nuclear weapons today, if the US could build them in the 40's?
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[The Manhattan Project] was a tremendous project. It [ grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion . Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and producing the fissile materials, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.] Sanctions have been put in place by other countries to prevent Iran from building atomic bombs. [Enriched uranium] is needed. Iran has been producing this but not enough yet. Iran has just agreed to [reduce its current stockpile] of enriched uranium.The theory of nuclear weapons is relatively simple. The difficulty is getting the refined uranium. It takes major industrial plant, machined to exacting tolerances. It's not stuff you can buy at a hardware store. So, if you have a nuclear program, all the plant that goes along with it is a. Expensive, b. Difficult to hide, c. Vulnerable to air strikes.
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What exactly is happening when we taste food?
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Its your taste buds that pick up certain chemicals in your food. Your taste buds then send electric pulses to your brain and tells it this is what this thing tastes like, and this is the sensation you should release. That's why the natural human reaction is to pull away from spicy food.Smell also greatly influences how something tastes to a person. The tounge moslty picks up sensations like sweet, sour, bitter or spciy. Our nose contributes to every other signal sent to our brain when tasting food. If you can, try letting chocolate melt in your mouth and before swallowing, take a deep breath through your nose and let it out.
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Would "station spinning" (the "rotating wheel") really create a sensation of gravity in a space station?
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It works, and the best part is that you don't have to rotate the station to see the effect. If you move around a stationary circular station the result is pretty similar; NASA played around with this during Skylab: _URL_0_", 'The effect would not stop the moment you jumped into the air, because if you did this you would also promptly fly into the wall/floor and be back on the floor again. At the moment of your jump you would give yourself momentum upward in the Y direction But you still have a lot of momentum in lets call it the X direction, or what would be roughly "forward" to you. Since you are moving pretty quickly in whatever direction the station is spinning you would momentarily be airborne, but also move in the direction the station is spinning until you hit the outside of the station again, and now you are back on the floor.
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If everything in the universe disappeared except Earth, our moon, and the Sun, would it be self-sufficient?
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In the short term, probably. The loss of the other planets would have a small but non-negligible effect on the orbits of the three remaining bodies, so eventually something would likely start to go wrong there. That aside, the Earth-Moon system is pretty much self-sufficient. There isn't really anything that the Earth receives from celestial bodies that aren't the Moon or Sun that have any significant impact on day to day life.
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Humans have a limited audio and visual range. Do we also have a limited range of taste?
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Taste is basically the ability to detect the chemical makeup of a substance. So yeah, pretty much any chemical we can't taste counts.
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Why do so many countries simply have 3 vertical or horizontal stripes as a flag?
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For most of history, flags were considerably more complex. Back then, a noble house would make a flag that symbolized their wealth and power, so they would go all out, spending on it like a modern wealthy family spends on cars or gardens. The tricolor comes from the needs of the French Revolution. Before that, nobles had banners, and they could afford to spend considerable money on each. But a peasant revolution needs it's flags on the cheap. Once your nation needs to make a flag for every household, having an ornate crown, some lions, a coat of arms, and a hundred fleur de lis on your flag becomes financially impossible.In any event, they are simpler to make and easy to recognize even when hung. I think a lot are copies of others, and after the French Revolution, vertical tricolor stripes became a symbol of republican governmentsflags are made to be distinguishable at sea and in battle. simple and high contrast are importantFlags must be quickly recognizable from a long distance away, so simplicity is important. Also, for centuries they were made by hand, so again, simplicity is important. Also, straight stitches hold up to stress better than curves and angles, so they are more durable, out there in the wind.Wouldn't it make more sense for them to be asking why ours is so complex?Edit: American flag. not 'ours'. My mistake.
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If all dogs are the same species, how can there be so many different and diverse breeds?
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We 've spent thousands of years breeding dogs for specific purposes, leading to a wide diversity of shapes suited to those purposes. Then in the last hundred years or so we 've started "ultra typing" these dogs, picking those traits that we think define a breed and selecting them to the extreme. They are all the same species because they are all still very similar physically and genetically, despite some major external differences. Most importantly they can all still interbreed.
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Near Sighted and Far sighted
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Take a set of binoculars and look at something far away and focus them properly. Now put a book in front of the binoculars and try to read it. You can't because it's blurry. Similarly, if you are far-sighted, the lens in your eye does not focus properly on things that are close to it.
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Why is it that most people write in blue, but we print all books etc. in black?
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As a lawyer, I always want my clients to sign documents in blue. It is a carry over from photocopying - photocopy is black & white, so a blue signature is "original". Of course this doesn't really apply as much now that everyone has color copiers but we still maintain the practice. But, because of this practice, all of my writing in done in blue - I don't even have a black pen in my officeMost people write in blue? I dont think this is true. Ive always written in black. Most people around me use black pens for taking notes etcI have not heard this before. I write in black, and the entire office I work in writes in black. Maybe you are just seeing an odd slice of light in your social/professional circles.This is an unintentionally loaded question so it's been removed. It's not obviously true that most people write in blue.
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What happens in the body when you get swollen and how does the swelling go away?
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Swelling is interstital fluid entering the area. It's different than bruising which is blood underneath the area of injury. The lymphatic system regulates the swelling and pulls that fluid out of the area eventually. However, in some cases it doesn't happen in certain spots as well which is why you see people with ankles that are permanently swollen
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How do trains stay on their tracks?
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Basically because the wheels aren't perfectly cylindrical, they are cone shaped, the outer side is a smaller diameter than the inner side. This means that the weight of the train and the difference in rotation speeds between matched wheels forces continuous position adjustments that keep the train centered between the rails. Also, when a train is coming to a corner the speed is carefully controlled to prevent excessive lateral g-forces that would cause the train to tip and the rails are very carefully banked in curves, just like you see on highway ramps.
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why my computer speakers go spastic every time i get a call on my phone
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Your mobile phone communicates with the phone network using electromagnetic radio waves. One feature of electromagnetic waves is that when they pass through a wire, they create an electric current in the wire. This is what's happening. The phone is generating electromagnetic waves so it can communicate with the phone network. These waves are creating electric currents in the wires that go to your speakers - only small currents, but they are there. Your speakers amplify these currents and convert them into sounds.Speakers work by having a diaphragm which moves back and forth at the frequency of the soundwave being played back, which creates the noise we hear. the way the speaker moves back and forth is by an electromagnet which moves forward when charged and back when not. when you get a text or phonecall, your phone is communicating using "electromagnetic waves", these are similar to radio frequencies, but work using magnetism. when these electromagnetic waves come in, the strong magnets contained within speaker diaphragms react to it - creating the odd sound you hear when you get a phonecall near your speakers.
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Two people with no knowledge of each others language learning each others languages.
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So I read a book that had something like this involved. It was about an American family going into their cabin, the son and father go first to make sure everything is ok. Then, the mom, daughter and baby get sick so the father goes bak home to help them, anyway, the boy met a Native American "tribe" or "family" I don't quite remember. They would communicate by first doing sign language then pick up items and objects and say their names. Basically teaching each other from scratch. That's how I believe they would TL;DR: using objects, hand gestures and emotions to learn their language. Hope I could helpBy getting attacked by an invisible monster. source: Star Trek TNG: Darmok.
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where does the expression "you only use 10% of your brain" come from?
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I learned just yesterday that this myth comes from a misunderstanding of a William James quote. Here's a pretty interesting [TedTalk] that explains!", 'I was always under the impression that it was because only ~10% of the brain is actually neurons and the rest was glial cells and other support cells that, while not doing and signalling themselves, are still essential to the proper functioning of the brain, and that some people had misinterpretted that for movie and TV plots. Of course that may be wrong tooIt's complete bullshit. The only way to twist it to be almost reasonable is to say "you only use 10% of your brain at a time", since the brain is a series of circuits and only so many need to fire at any given moment. When 100% of the neurons in the brain fire at the same time, we call it a seizure.Not all parts of the brain work at all times for all actions. Some people have misconstrued this to mean that not all parts of the brain are used. It's like saying I'm in the bathroom right now, so I only use 10% of my house.
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Zero-Determinant Strategies vs. Tit-for-Tat in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma
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There are multiple levels you can strategize on. You can strategize just based on the current round. The optimal strategy is then to always defect. This might make my opponent defect more in future rounds, but I don't care. You can strategize based on the outcome of the previous round. Then the optimal strategy is tit-for-tat; if I demonstrate that I intend to go tit-for-tat, I force my opponent to cooperate more often. What these guys did is go one step further. They're not strategizing to make their opponent give a certain result; they're strategizing to make their opponent *use a certain strategy*. The original paper claims that this strategy is better. The article author disagrees with that claim, because if you play the new strategy against tit-for-tat it can only win by dragging down the total number of points. The new strategy does win against some suboptimal strategies, while tit-for-tat still only goes even, but the article author doesn't think that's too important, because the *amount* of points tit-for-tat gets is still often larger.
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Why haven't animals learnt to stay the fuck away from humans considering how often we kill them?
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Those animal populations that are actively hunted do. You can tell this easily by observing deer. Deer who live in an area long enough learn when hunting season is and are much more skittish during that season. Deer also seem know when they are on land that is safe. I have often seen deer run like maniac to get away from hunters, jump a fence into non-hunting land, look back at the hunters and then calmly walk away. Animals are also hunted by other predators all the time. To them humans are just one more predatorSome of them do already, but for others it is more advantageous to stay near us because the reward of food/shelter is greater than the risk of dying. Rats and cockroaches for exampleThey do. You seen a bear running around the city very often? Keep in mind that these animals used to inhabit THE ENTIRE WORLD, and now, much of it is populated by humans and they're forced out. We spread and spread and spread some more, and the amount of forest space where it's "OK" for bears to hang out is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So obviously some spill out into the parts that we 've most recently taken over right on the edge of their turf, and about 99% of them die.
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How do matches work?
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The tip of a match is dipped in phosphorus. Phosphorus burns when it is really hot. You swipe a match on a rough strip, which creates friction. Friction becomes heat. The heat causes the phosphorus to burn. The fire then uses the wooden matchstick as fuel, so it doesn’t stop burning.
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How does LTE/4G/3G data signals go through walls to a phone? Why is coverage "stronger" in different parts of a house?
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You know how you can see through glass? That's because light waves in the visible range can pass through glass. You know how you have some glass that looks green? That's because it lets green light through but not red, orange, yellow, blue, or violet. Radio waves are light waves too. They just happen to be a different frequency- one you can't see. Walls block the frequencies of light that we can see, but they let radio waves through. Think of it sort of light the green glass- they block some colors but not all of them. Of course, we don't exactly choose building materials based on how well they let radio waves through. So some materials block some of the signal . If you have enough of materials like that between you and the cell tower, the signal gets so week that the cell phone can't distinguish it from the noise in the air. Imagine someone is trying to communicate with morse code by shining a flashlight at you. Now imagine there's some foggy glass between you and them, and it's a sunny day out- now you can't tell the difference between their light flashes and the sunlight. That's why some areas get good signal and some get worse.
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How can the DEA make the decision to ban Kratom in 30 days with no legislation passed by the US government?
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> With no legislation passed by the US government But there was - **in 1970** when Nixon declared his "War on Drugs" and Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act _URL_0_ 3 years later the DEA was established with an amazing amount of unregulated power to decide what people are and are not legally allowed to put in their bodies. And they continue to have such wide ranging powers because in the almost 50 years since the war on drugs was officially started the US has failed to elect a Congress with the courage to end the "war"There is legislation. Both federal and state legislatures, voted into office by you and me, have passed laws which criminalize all substances determined by the DEA and FDA to be categorized as Schedule I drugs. The DEA and FDA are authorized by the Controlled Substances Act, which is a piece of legislation, to make such determinations. So, the DEA can declare that a plant is illegal because people who hold elected office voted to give them that authority.
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If a movie does well in the box office, who gets all of the money/profit?
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The company that produced it . The people involved with making the film are generally paid by this company, and the company gets the profit from the actual output . I'm sure some actors and such have contracts that state that they'll get part of the profits from the film though.
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why do Muslims take issue with depictions of Prophet Muhammad, but seem okay with movies such as the Passion of the Christ which depict other major prophets of Islam?
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We are not okay with movies such as the passion of Christ. As Muslims, we shouldn't depict any prophets, but we shouldn't get violent over it.Images of Jesus and Moses are also prohibited. The people who "seem okay with" it are just relatively tolerant Muslims. _URL_0_I think the point is that Muhammad did not want people to worship him. He wanted people to worship God. Similar to the false idol Commandment. America in particular worships Jesus more than God. . From the outside it appears the message got lost on the way thoughPictures of Mohammad have caused serious public outcry, but I didn't even know that pictures of any prophets are offensive to Muslims. Maybe the original question should be "Why has displaying pictures of Mohammad caused riots in America, when pictures of Jesus have not?"
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Are the garbled words/spelling when viewing CC (Closed Caption) TV and online videos fixable?
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If you're talking about closed captioning of live TV, no, it can't be fixed. They can barely keep up with typing everything the first time; no way could they go back. Anything that's recorded for later playback *could* be fixed, but the time and expense is rarely considered worth it, assuming you're just asking about fixing mistakes on a live show for people watching it on demand the next day or something along those lines. CC for prerecorded dramas, sitcoms, etc are usually done right the first time since they have plenty of time to do it.
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How do modern pop bands/pop stars start their careers? for instance lady Gaga, Katey Perry, or Imagine Dragons
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I'm going to be interested in what other people here have to say, since this is a question I've been thinking about recently too.Some things I do recall: Katy Perry supposedly started out playing shitty acoustic shows in LA, and Lady Gaga did a variety of things to start out - burlesque shows, shows in small NYC clubs, musical theatre, etc. She also fronted a rock band for a while and on her earliest demos and even some tracks on The Fame you can still hear the rock influence - that record has a ton of guitar riffs and funky basslines , more than anything else she's done since.I imagine both of these artists got managers as they got bigger. Lady Gaga probably had some connections and knew like-minded individuals since she went to NYU. And both took more time than you'd think to really develop a marketable image. I don't know anything about Imagine Dragons though.
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Why is 0% brightness on smartphones still so bright?
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I think the real reason is so that you can't turn the brightness down so low that you can't see the screen to turn it back up."0%" on a smartphone isn't actually 0%, it's likely something like 2 or 3 percent of your backlight's power ', "The backlight on your smartphone is either driven by LEDs, or if it's older a very small fluorescent tube. In the case of LEDs, you can only dim them so far before they start to flicker, or look like they're flickering to some people. The backlight becomes useless. For the tube light, you need a certain amount of voltage to light it up. The minimum brightness is that voltage, but it still probably looks pretty bright.Although maximum brightness depends on how powerful the backlight is but minimum is the choice of OEM. They pick a value which would make it usable enough in pitch darkI use a dimmer app that lets it go lower than stock. Can also add a color filter to make it easier to read at night.
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Are sweatshop workers better off if their factories close down?
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If you're in a third world country, your other options might include: * Farm work: You vs. the elements, back breaking work* Mining: Sometimes in dangerous, unregulated, illegal conditions* Waste management: Possibly dealing with dangerous waste from first-world nations such as electronics which can contain highly toxic substances* Prostitution: STDs, possible abuse, elevated chance of being targeted for severe crime such as murder* Crime: Well, it's illegal Sweatshops are terrible but that's coming from a first world perspective. Many in third world countries wouldn't be able to get by that well without them. You'd rather work in a sweatshop than in the other dangerous, even worse work conditions you could be in.
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Why do most people's faces swell up after crying for a long time or crying hard?
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Your body is flooding your system with histamines causing inflamation, congestion, etc. in response to stress.
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How do trees know how long a year is?
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Every plant has a time of year when they do the most growing. It's unimaginatively known as the "growing season". We can measure time using tree rings because for each species of tree there's a time of year when they start growing, and their growth is very fast, compared to a time of year when their growth is very slow or halts altogether . The change in growth speed between seasons results in differences in the colour of the wood, so each "layer" of wood represents a year's growthA tree has no concept of our modern calender, only seasons where it grows more rapidly than the others.
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Why is it that in animated series, objects that can move around are drawn differently than static objects?
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Drawn differently? Like the classic Wile E Coyote where you can tell that THAT rock right there is going to squish him because it's a different color? That's because when those were done animation was still printed on cels and those cels were [layered on top of each other]. So you'd have a background static layer that doesn't animate, you'd have a props layer, and you'd have a layer per character. The same color on different layers showed up slightly differently just because that's how it works. In some cartoons you can even see when the object is switched from one layer to another. This effect is substantially reduced in modern fully computer animation. However, props are still often drawn at a different level of detail, because they may have to be redrawn over and over again instead of the really fancy background you only have to draw once.
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Why do people stop and look when there is a traffic accident ?
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When we do the same mundane task over and over and over, our brain basically shuts off. We just continue doing the mundane task as a brain "sub routine" and we drift out. Car accidents are exciting and different, it wakes your brain up. Something is happening so now you're active in your involvement in driving. So you look at it. Plus we are social animals and pay attention to humans in extreme situations. Just regular humanity stuff.
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How does swarm intelligence work? How are ants or bees smarter as a group than an individual?
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Each individual has a very short list of rules. For an ant, it might read something like, “When outside, look for food. When you have food, release scent. If you have no food, follow the scent.” For any individual, these instinctive behaviors don’t appear very intelligent. The average ant wanders around at random until he finds food and begins laying a scent trail. But when you have a thousand of them, those individual behaviors add up so that you have a network of ants running back and forth along scent trails. At the micro level it is chaos, but at the macro level it looks almost planned. There is no single individual responsible for making plans or coordinating the activity. They have just learned or inherited a set of behaviors that resemble “If/Then/Else” statements. They are like tiny robots, and each one only makes a very simple decision. Each individual probably has no idea what the overall goal is. They just repeat their programmed behavior and the next generation inherits it. If the behavior was ineffective, they die and that failed strategy does not get passed to the next generationImagine that you have a number of , each of which has 1% accurate, useful information and 99% random noise. Individually, the noise drowns out the information. However, if you add together all of your in the right way, the information accumulates while the noise simply cancels out. The result is a collective body of data where the information content is very prominent while the noise content is no greater than it was for a single . The classic experiment to demonstrate this principle is the jar-of-pennies experiment. You put a jar of pennies on the desk and ask a class of students to guess how many pennies are in the jar. Presuming your class is of sufficient size, the average of their guesses will almost inevitably be closer to the true count than any individual guess.
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What do people in big corporate legal departments do all day?
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It totally depends on the corporation and the lawyer, but activities might include: * Writing or reviewing contracts between one corporation and another* Responding to subpoenas or information requests from the government or law enforcement - for example if the FBI is tracking a criminal, they may ask Google and Facebook for information about the person's communication, FedEx for their shipping history, United Airlines for the flights they searched for, and so on - and the legal department of the corporation may review those* Reviewing new inventions from the corporation and filing patents on them* Responding to cases of trademark infringement to protect the corporation's brand - i.e. by threatening another company with a lawsuit* Defending the company in court when it's been sued
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Is it true that America does not negotiate with terrorists? Why not?
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If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk. If you negotiate with terrorists, it feeds the cycle that people can manipulate you by being terrorists. Hence you get more terrorists.Technically this is completely and utterly false, the US negotiates all the time. However for the question you are asking truetofiction gives you the answer of why that is the policy, even though it is loosely followed.If children get what they want after throwing a temper tantrum once, they know they can get away with it again. If parents lets them know that shit won't fly they won't do it as much.
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Why do all SUVs have a rear windshield wiper while almost every sedan doesn't?
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I think it has to do with the rear window of SUV's/minivans being more vertical compared to a car which usually has a more angled back window. Passing air wont blow the water off the suv back window the same way it would in a car.
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Why are aboriginal boobies not blurred on TV when other boobs in the USA are blurred?
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In the United States, the government isn't normally allowed to restrict speech, including what people put on television. There are a number of ways to get around this, but the biggest one is that free speech doesn't cover "obscenity." What this means, though, is that the ability to block someone from, say, putting boobs on TV, is based on an argument that it is obscene. The regulators in charge of this have basically said that showing naked people in certain contexts, like a nature special, isn't the kind of nudity that is rightly considered obscene. It's not done just to thrill the viewers sexual appetites, and it has educational value. It's a case by case thing, though, which is why you don't see networks trying to push the envelope, because the fines can be big.
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How can companies not have nutritional information on their food?
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There are a few exceptions to the rules about labeling. If you're buying it from the company that makes it, then it probably falls under the "Delicatessen-type food, bakery products and confections that are sold directly to consumers from the location where prepared" exclusion. There are a few other exclusions, including items that are given away rather than being sold, and items marked "Not labeled for individual sale." [More info here.]
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Why has Iran so quickly reversed its footing on its nuclear program?
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The latest sanctions on the Iranians have effectively crippled the countries economy to a point that is essentially unsustainable and will only get worse if they continue on their current course. The Iranians have come to the table and accepted very large concessions about their nuclear program in order to ease these sanctions temporarily. There also is a growing shift in Iran away from actually creating the bomb and instead just becoming nuclear-latent which means just getting to a point where they could quickly create one if they ever would need to.
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Aren't Christian faith healers and self-proclaimed "prophets" blaspheming? Is it not against Christianity to claim to be able to personally provide access to God and salvation?
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Well, blasphemy means either insulting a god, or claiming to have the powers of a god. Those wouldn't necessarily apply: the Christian Bible has many stories of people with powers of prophecy and healing. But from a religious point of view, the obvious question is: Do they actually have the gifts of healing and prophecy? The answer is: Pretty much definitely not, and in any case many of these people have been exposed as frauds. They deliberately lie, in other words: they use simple conjuring tricks to make it appear as if they are performing miracles, and they know full well that they don't really have the gifts they claim to have. This makes them not blasphemers, but false prophets. And the Bible has nasty things to say about false prophets: Deuteronomy 13:1-5 says such people must be put to death . The New Testament also contains warnings about false prophets, who will try to deceive the faithful. The best-known passage is Matthew 7:15-23 which calls them "wolves in sheep's clothing" , and suggests that you look at their deeds: "Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?" Basically, if a self-proclaimed prophet turns out to be a philandering tax dodger, he's probably a false prophet You could say that an invididual example of a purported prophet is bogus and I might agree with you. But saying there are no and will never be any more actual prophets is an unsupported leap and an unwarranted assertion.
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Our body fight diseases by increasing the temperature, why betraying it by cooling ourselves down?
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Your body is a house, pathogens are a thousand and thousand of cockroaches ramping on the floor.Fever is basically the house habitant being like "Oh fuck it, let's burn the fucking house down". It's super effective but it can be very damaging, when a fever isn't really high, doctors usually advice to let it go and wait for it to decrease, when it raises to 103°F and keeps increasing, it's time to stop the fever because it's going to do more harm than good .Raising body temperature is our body's reaction in fighting disease. Unfortunately, the reaction isn't right all the time and can do more harm than good. Heat kills bacteria and healthy cells indiscriminately. Some disease is caused by virus. Or spores, or prions, or other non-bacteria source which raising temperature is useless against. One's body cannot tell apart them. Plus, modern medicine does a bette job, so it's better to take some medicine and cool off ", 'Thanks for bringing this up. I just got over a 3-day fever and thought about this a lot recently. Especially the bird thing.
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How does too much salt increase blood pressure?
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[It's not entirely clear that it does.] High levels of sodium consumption have traditionally been associated with hypertension . But recent research indicates that the relationship between sodium intake and hypertension is not nearly so straightforward as once believed.
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Why do people in movies automatically bleed through the mouth when they are injured in the belly area? It's something that happens in real life?
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It's possible but not too common. If someone is stabbed or shot in the stomach, most of the blood would drain down, not be coughed up. However, if someone is stabbed in the lungs, it's definitely more possible. There's a lot of blood vessels in your lungs and you could definitely see people coughing up blood in that case", 'This is a very good question. I worked in a hospital for a brief period . I regularly saw people cough up blood through the mouth after sustaining physical injuries, though, oddly enough, it would happen much more commonly with injuries to the limbs than to the torsoThey could vomit up the blood if they were shot/stabbed in the stomach. But it would be less common. It would be more common with a lung wound. If they are stabbed/shot in the lung they will cough up the blood very easily and it would be in their mouthImagine the human body as a donut, theres a hole in the middle, and a ring that is for all intents and purposes sealed up from the outside. Imagine molding that donut into the shape of a person, the hole of the donut would be your intestinal tract, which runs from your mouth to your anus, and the rest of the donut is a sealed system separated from that. If that donut hole gets ruptured, the contents of each side of the divide mix, meaning blood in your intestinal system/lungs, and septic infection from the bacteria in your gut getting into the part that is not meant for thatAs to why it frequently happens in movies, I would feel as if a simple, edible concoction can be made with relatively little cost and be used as a very clear visual tool with little resistance to an audience's interpretation of "realistic". Even compared to simple bleeding from the mid-section due to injury, which often requires more artistic development, clothing, or visual effects in order to present a viable visual to the end audience.
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When and why did humans begin to wear clothing?
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When is tricky. Clothing is unlikely to survive as long as other tools, so we can't say with certainty that the earliest tool-users didn't wear furs or other clothing. As to why? That's also tricky. There's no historical or archaeological record of early clothing, so your guess is as good as anyone's. Common guesses include for warmth, for religious ceremonies, or to display dominance by wearing furs as trophies.
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Why is it rude to ask people how old they are?
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Society seems to have an ideal age to look like , and everyone is always trying to look as close to that age as possible. Asking someone their age destroys any and all effort they've put into that attempt to appear closer to that ideal age.
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why to we have a divot beneath our noses and above our mouths.
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It is a seam left over from when you were formed in your mothers womb A poetic explanation I 've heard is that your guardian angel comes down from heaven at the instant of your birth and puts its finger across your mouth, "shushing" you so you forget all your past lives and live this latest reincarnation to the fullest.Your face forms in the uterus by growing together from either side. That's the furrow where the two halves meet. If they don't quite get there, then you end up with a cleft palate, a common birth defect.
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ELI5: What are the best explanations of how to visualize an atom?
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How about:- A small fuzzy ball that you can't quite see surrounded by a larger fuzzy cloud of stuff that you also can't quite get a fix on.The best model is a small, dense nucleus made of neutrons and protons, surrounded by an electron cloud. It's impossible to know whether an electron will be in a particular location at a given time, but it is more likely to be found in certain areas, or "orbitals". Orbitals of an atom be different sizes or take different shapes depending on the number of electrons in the cloud, whether the atom is bonded to any other atoms, and what kind of bonds they areYou 'd have to define "best." There are different representations and visualization of atoms that are better or worse for different purposes.
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- Why do my teeth get a funny feeling when I have to pee really badly?
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I definately have experienced this and ive talked to many other people who have as well. Ive even heard it refferred to in a book, i cant remember the book at all unfortunately. I remember character used the phrase "i have to pee so bad my teeth are floating" or something to that effect. Ur def not alone dudeI can say with certainty that I have no idea what it is you are talking about, I am sorry. I have never heard of this before.
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If the United States got invaded today, what would happen?
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By who, aliens? There is no country in the world that has the projective military power of the US. With their air and missile defenses, it is unlikely any country besides Mexico or Canada could get military forces anywhere near the mainland. Without being more specific, it is not a question that can be answeredConsidering America is the only super-power they would most likely repel the attack. Also there is this thing called nukes, that kind of prevent this as the aggressor would be annihilatedThe attempted invasion force would be obliterated, and the invader home country would soon glow with the warmth of a green sun.
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What does "Depraved Heart Murder" mean?
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You may be interested in the following thread. There are some bad answers in there, but a few comprehensive ones and discussion following. _URL_0_
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The difference between private healthcare and public healthcare
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I'm not 100% on the Australian system, but this should basically explain it: Public healthcare is a hospital. Lots of different patients, many doctors and nurses. Partially paid for by the government. Private healthcare is a called a practice. It's a lot smaller, and often targets one specific type of patient, e.g. those who need a knee replacement. # ## Warning: complicated stuff below that explains the underlying 'problem' with private practice.# To understand why private practitioners make so much money, it's important to understand the following. Hospitals can do two types of treatment: treatment that makes them money and that costs them money. Insurance companies are not willing to pay the huge costs for cancer treatment for a patient directly. It'd mess up their statistics or something. So if that treatment costs 10X money, they get 2X from the insurance and have to pay the rest themselves. To be able to pay that treatment they need money, so they 'overcharge' the insurance companies for the 'cheap' treatments . So instead of charging X , they charge 2X. So they make 1X profit per treatment to cover for the expenses of cancer treatment. A private practice offers only specific types of treatment- and you guessed it- those who make money. Since they don't need the excess amount to cover for radiation therapy, they can charge less than 2X and still more than 1X. Result: they make more money, whilst being cheaper for the insurance companies. That results in more patients being sent there, and less 'cheap' patients to the hospital. Eventually the hospitals will no longer be able to pay for the expensive treatment if this continues. That's why doctors often dislike private practitioners- they're money wolves and mes sup the system at the same time.
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what is going on in your body when you get paranoid/anxiety attacks/vomitting when you smoke too much weed?
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If you were 21 instead of 5, and happened to be visiting a state like mine with legal recreational cannabis, I might recommend you try an indica instead of a sativaI'll try my best but probably not the best explanation. Getting anxious and vomiting and all of the symptoms of a whitey is your body saying "something is not right" and triggers a fight or flight response. By vomiting its trying to get rid of anything in your stomach that may be causing the damage. I think the anxiety and paranoia is really all in your head. I went through a time where whenever I smoked I would get paranoid and anxious, and it was because I went into the experience thinking "oh no what if I have a bad time what if I pull a whitey". It's all too much for your body to handle so it does whatever it can to try and get you out of the situation I think.
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Academic Probation, and University transferring help
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Just pointing out that questions like these are *exactly* why your school has assigned you an advisor. They are very helpful and can usually answer questions about specific universities in your area and offer advise on how to tailor your studies towards transferring to the program you want at the school you're looking into.
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Why do children instinctively like cartoons ?
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I think it's less that kids 'instinctively' like cartoons, but rather that producers understand what kids will like and cater to that. Cartoons are a big part of that, obviously, but also live action shows like teletubbies, yo gabba gabba, and sesame street, for example.I imagine it is due to the possibilities of animation. Colours, shapes, characters and themes can all be presented differently through this medium, a lot more flexibility with what can be done creatively. this makes easy, simple and fun cartoon accessible to young childrenI think the bold colors and constant noise and constant changes in imagery coupled with straightforward storytelling captures their short attention span a bit easier.
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what exactly is vibrational and chassis tuning when automakers are testing vehicles and concepts?
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Everything has a resonant frequency, the pitch where the whole structure will vibrate and generally cause problems for people in or near the thing. Bridges sometimes collapse because the wind or the people walking across it match the resonant frequency and amplify it until the structure fails. In cars, there are certain predictable speeds and engine settings and yadda yadda yadda corresponding to city, highway, neighborhood driving conditions. If those conditions produce vibration in the chassis, it will be heard by the people in the car, and in truly bad cases, it could cause bolts or other pieces to shake loose, creating a hazard on the road.
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How does someone end up owing thousands in back taxes?
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Easy. Your W-2 was't filled out right and didn't automatically withdraw enough taxes. Then come tax time you owe thousands of dollars because you didnt pay enough during the year. However you didnt realize this was happening and don't have the money to pay right away. Boom back taxes.
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why is there a calm before the storm?
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There isn't always, but when there is it is because when the warm, dry, stable air rolls in it 'calms down' the rest of the air. Source:[how stuff works]
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How does our brain create a mind?
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This is a question no one knows the answer to, there are plenty of theories about what it could be though.I have a degree in Cognitive Science, and I can assure you that nobody knows. Not even close. It's often debated whether it is even possible for us to know.
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How are random product/reward codes generated?
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Lets assume for a moment the key is comprised of just uppercase letters. This allows for 26 options for each character of the key, giving a total of 26^25 possible combinations. 26^25 is about 2.3 *10^ total, or about 3.2 *10^ possible combinations *for every living person on Earth*. So no, we probably won't run out of codes soon. Sometimes the keys follow a certain pattern, that allow the program to validate them . For example, the last 5 characters in the key might be created using a function of the first 20, so it's easy to check whether the key is valid by applying this function and comparing the result. This reduces the possible number of combinations, but there's still a lot of them instead of 26^). The code is produced by a pseudorandom number generator. As to how these work, well that's another question altogether, [which has been asked here many times].
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Can you get a computer virus if you go to a site but don't click anything? Or stream a video but don't download it?
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Yes. A site could have javascript that downloads or installs things, or if it uses flash, you could have an out of date version that's susceptible to an exploit in what you're watching. To stream something, you have to download it. Think of a download like going and buying a book to take home, and a stream as getting pages in the mail, reading them, and throwing them out as soon as they're read. You're still getting the content. If it's a reputable site, you're usually pretty safe, though.
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How is it someone can do 100 squats but can't run but a few miles?
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ELI5: bulldozers can lift tons of weight but can't go fast. They are built for one thing and they do other things not as well. Race cars can go fast but can't lift tons.
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Why is there no tri-core processor (3x)?
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/u/shawnaroo almost had it right. Integrated Circuits , due to the way they are manufactured, are *rectangular* in shape. And when you put multiple copies of something as big as a core on a chip, you essentially do a "cut and paste" . You also don't want to make a chip a lot longer than it is wide, or vice versa. So it is easy to see that you are usually going to try to make *even* numbers, since they are going to be arranged in rows and columns. Although sometimes you might put some of the overhead circuitry in place of one of the cores, so your total number of cores would be an even number minus 1. As someone else mentioned, you might do various numbers when you try to make an even number of cores but one or more have manufacturing defects and are disabled. There's another trend going on right now for multi-core parts for mobile applications. Some chips use one "wimpy" core and multiple "strong" cores. That way, when the phone isn't doing much it can just use the wimpy core and conserved battery power, but when it needs more "ooph" it can utilize some of the higher performance cores. There are chips available right now for things like network processing that have a lot of cores. For example, Tilera has a 72-core processor.
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What laws prevent the majority stockholder of a corporation from just giving away the corporation's assets?
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They're not her property. You can't give away property belonging to someone else. Even if that person is a legal fiction you have majority control over. The majority stockholder *could* push the board to give away assets, but that would likely be a breach of the board's [fiduciary duty] to the minority stockholders. The board should overrule the majority stockholder on those grounds. To do it legally, the majority stockholder should vote to disband/liquidate the corporation. Assuming the motion passes the net assets will be distributed among the stockholders, and now that some of them are her property the majority owner can give those away at will.
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where does that style of writing that graffiti artists always use come from, and why do so many of them use it?
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Grab a can of spray paint and start trying to write. With very thick lines created by the wide spray you are limited in the legibility if you don't write like that.
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What is the difference between cheap 35-49p energy drinks and red bull?
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That brand costs a lot of money. They advertise the fuck out of their sugar water and sponsor crazy shit left and right. In addition to that, RB charges more to keep the impression that the brand is better than others. There's really no reason it should cost any more than Coca Cola.
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How can dogs smell cancer?
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The current theory is that cancer cells produce characteristic organic compounds which get into the bloodstream and are then also present in the patient's breath - only in tiny amounts, but enough to be detected by a dog's amazingly keen sense of smell. Which compounds those are exactly is still being researched, in the hope of using the knowledge to produce test kits.Now, they cannot smell *every* cancer but they can smell a wide range of them such as skin cancer, bladder cancer and lung cancer. The reason ***why*** the can smell the cancer is this: Dogs have 25 times more smell receptors than humans, boosting their smelling ability by 100,000 times. The brain of a human is dominated by the visual cortex, but the brain of a dog is controlled by the smell or olfactory cortex, which is approximately 40 times larger than that of a human. Furthermore, the olfactory bulb in a dog has a large number of smell-sensitive receptors, which range between 125 to 220 million, and it is a hundred thousand to a million times more reactive than that of humans. ***How*** do they detect cancer? This ability is based on the fact that cancerous cells release different metabolic waste products than healthy cells in the human body. The difference of smell is so significant in dogs and humans that dogs are able to detect it even in the early stages of cancer. Dogs are able to identify the chemical traces in the range of parts per trillion. Some studies have confirmed the ability of trained dogs to detect the skin cancer melanoma by just sniffing the skin lesions. Furthermore, some researchers have proven that dogs can detect prostate cancer by simply smelling patients’ urine. Dogs may also be able to sniff out the presence of cancerous cells through a human’s breath.
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What does "force start" while using a torrent client actually accomplish?
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In μTorrent at least, it means "Ignore download queue settings and start right now". For instance, if you have it set so no more than X torrents will be downloading at one time, the normal Start will respect that and put lower-priority torrents on hold. Force Start lets you override that setting temporarily for a particular torrent. It doesn't have any particular meaning in the Bittorrent protocol or anything, so it might mean different things from client to client.
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Why can Putin openly introduce ridiculous legislation against LGBT groups, (teaching kids that gays dont exist) yet still retain global political integrity?
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I don't think he has retained global integrity. But he is the leader of his own sovereign nation, so besides going to war or using diplomatic channels to persuade him, there is nothing we can do to actually stop him.
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How can an area see very little rainfall but also see quite a bit of snowfall.
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Several things to consider here. One is that an inch of rain can be a foot of snow. So if you get a couple of 10ths inch of rain, this could translate into several inches of snow. Another thing is that some places get rain seasonally. It may never rain in July and August, but maybe May gets most of the rain. The reason for this is different for different areas. Arizona rain, for instance, doesn't usually fall Jan to May, and May and early June typically have some of the highest temps. June and July bring the monsoon rains, which means cloudy days reduce the chance for those 115F days. If this rain fell in central AZ during the winter, it could easily come down as snow.Snow is made from precipitation mixed with cold temperatures. Rain turns to snow when it gets cold enough and needs lower temperatures to be rain. So the cold temperatures in your location are probably turning any rainfall into snow.
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Why some frequently occuring diseases like psoriasis are still incurable?
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In order to cure a disease, you need to be able to : * Know what causes it and how that process or processes get started and progress * Be able to design some kind of agent that will reliably stop that process * Have that agent not cause worse effects than the original disease * Have there be a big enough motivation to spend either public or private funds on achieving the above steps. You can see how in all of these there can be problems. For example, we know what causes the common cold . However, we haven't invented a reliable way to stop this viral infection that wouldn't put patients at risk more than the actual disease will. In the case of psoriasis, it's most likely what is known as an auto-immune disease, meaning it's caused when something triggers our immune system to start attacking our own body tissues. There are a bunch of different autoimmune diseases Type 1 Diabetes involves the immune system attacking the cells of the pancreas; MS involves the immune system attacking neurons in the brain, etc. The problem is we don't know exactly why the immune cells go haywire in the first place, and figuring out a way to reprogram the entire system back to normal is really, really difficult. Most of the therapies we have are basically designed to suppress the whole immune system, so that it attacks our own tissues with less force. The problem then is obviously that it makes it hard for the immune system to do what it's supposed to do, which is attack infections. People are working on research to only kill the specific immune cells that have gone "bad", but it's slow going and it takes a long time to figure these things out, especially since our understanding of these fields is pretty new.
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How are serving sizes on nutritional labels determined, and why are they often so much lower than a realistic amount that most people would consume?
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They are arbitrary. They are just used so you have a reference for the nutrition label. The smaller the serving, the healthier you food looks to unobservant consumers.Whatever portion of the food has a reasonable amount of salt, fat, carbs or sugar is usually what they call a serving. But let's serious. A bag of chips can claim 5 servings but who the hell is gonna stop at one small handful?
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Goosebumps, what the heck are they?
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Goosebumps is a series of children's horror fiction novellas by American author R. L. Stine, published by Scholastic Publishing. The stories follow child characters, who find themselves in scary situations; usually involving monsters and other supernatural elements. From 1992 to 1997, 62 books were published under the Goosebumps umbrella title. Various spin-off series were written by Stine: Goosebumps Series 2000, Give Yourself Goosebumps, Tales to Give You Goosebumps, Goosebumps Triple Header, Goosebumps HorrorLand, and Goosebumps Most Wanted. Another series, Goosebumps Gold, was never released. Goosebumps has spawned a television series and merchandise, as well as a feature film, starring Jack Black.Tiny muscles attached to the root of your hairs Contracting, causing the hair to stand upright. They serve two primary purposes. By raising up the hair when we had more body hair, the hair would serve as better insulation when we got cold. When we had more hair, it would also allow us to look larger, much as a cat raises its hair when threatened. Since we have lost most of our body hair, it is of limited usefulness now, but it still remains as something of an atavistic trait.
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Is there a reason why various social networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linked In, etc.) use blue as their theme color?
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You may want to take this answer with a pinch of salt because I'm not 100% sure, But I would imagine the reason why is because certain colours can physiologically change your view on things.The colour blue is known to give a more calming, trust worthy view. I recommend reading up on [this] it goes deeper into the effects of colours on our brains. its a very i interesting read!", 'I'm not sure on the exact answer, but I can comfortably say that there is *no way* it's just a coincidence. Waaaaay too much thought goes into even regular corporate websites for that kind of thing to be decided on arbitrarily. Given that the website is basically 100% of these companies\' business, decisions about site design even more critical. Source: Had the "pleasure" of working on website usability testing for a non-internet centered firmQuoting from an "Applied Colour Psychology Specialist": Colour Psychology Blue is the colour of the intellect, the mind, making it the colour of communication and when you think about social media, it’s all about communicating. Blue also has the perception as being trustworthy, dependable, safe and reliable. These are the perceived positive qualities of a business who chooses blue. World’s Favourite Colour Research has also shown blue to be the world’s most popular colour. read more at the link _URL_1_', "Facebook: Zuckerberg is colourblind and blue is the floor he can best see. Others: it's psychology: calmness, trust, you want to be secure, you don't want to be stressed in your social place.
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Would there be any way to "improve" the internet if we could start it all over?
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Tons of stuff we could improve on. For starters, the early days of the internet were like a small, rural community where nobody locks their cars or homes. Many of the protocols rely on a fundamentally high level of trust. We could build encryption into everything. We could build out the email system in such a way that servers *don't* implicitly trust the sender to tell the truth about where the mail is coming from. We could improve DNS to include public keys. We could build some sort of trusted identity service into the protocols. We could scrap the web and start from scratch with a system that's cleanly designed to do what we actually want with it. The browser was originally designed to handle static pages with a few pictures & it's become a graphical, dynamic platform for thin-client applications. HTTP is a horribly inefficient protocol that we could replace with SPDY or something similar. We could build a sane HTML/CSS replacement. We could standardized on something more well thought out than Javascript for client-side scripting. We'd be able to give browsers & servers WebSocket-like functionality that's not just a hacked-on afterthought. We could probably make some big improvements to TCP/IP as well. Starting with IPv6 addressing & probably building the system around jumbo frames that make sense on today's high speed networks. If you wanted to be *really* forward looking, you'd probably design a protocol for communicating with other planets that didn't require a full handshake & frequent acknowledgement of received packets. If you're transmitting data over interstellar distances, a 30-minute round-trip time really gets in the way of things.Checksums at the end of the packet. Ethernet got it right. 25 years later, IPv6 gets it wrong again.We also can't forget our languages would be much different. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript were designed way before the dynamic SPAs on the web today. I'd have to imagine browsers would have built in support for LESS-like styling languages and JavaScript would hopefully be given some more thought as well.
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why does ice stick to an empty cup when you're trying to get it in your mouth?
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When the ice cube melts, some water will stay surrounding the cube, "connecting" it to the cup, sorta like a vaccum.Two wonderful properties of water are at work here, cohesion and adhesion. Adhesion means a substance sticks to other substances, and has the same root as adhesive. Cohesion means a substance sticks to itself. As soon as some of the ice melts, it sticks to the ice . Then some of the water layer touches the cup, and sticks to the cup through adhesion. Now you've got a chain of ice, which sticks to the water, and water that sticks to the cup. The whole chain is held together by the cohesion of the water touching the ice to the water touching the cup.The little amount of water left around the ice cube has surface tension that doesn't allow air to get between the ice cube and the cup, which makes it "stick" to the cup.
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Why do DVD menus loop so poorly?
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In the DVD menus the DVD players have to move back to the starting point to re-read the video, and so there is a gap where it is moving the disk. sorry about my last comment i didn't quite understand what you were asking.
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How does Cable-Modem "Turboboost" work?
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In typical Internet use, most things that are transmitted down the wire to your computer are very small. Like this web page, for example. It contains a few bytes of text, and several image files that are themselves just a few bytes. A common service offering from Internet providers is to give you *considerably* more bandwidth — in terms of bits delivered to your computer per second — for the first however-many bytes of any given data transfer, then throttle that transfer back for all the subsequent bytes to be delivered. This is good for most people, because most of the things transferred to your computer are sufficiently small that they come entirely at that higher initial rate of data transfer. It's only when you try to get a big collection of bytes all in one go — like a movie trailer, say — that you notice the throttling. It sounds like in your case it's based on time rather than on bytes, but the principle remains the same.
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What would the US have to do to revert back to a no political party system?
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There is no way. Political parties are not part of the government. They are a group of like-minded people who decided the best way to get what they want is to unite behind a single nominee. Political parties are a natural result of our freedom to assemble. Dissolving them would be a violation of the First Amendment. Even if we did dissolve them, people would just make parties again, unless we somehow made it illegal to meet with others, discuss politics, and agree on stuff. If we did that, it's not really the US anymore so no, there's no way.
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Why does alcohol on an open wound hurt extremely bad the first time, but no pain if poured on seconds later?
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The same reason you aren't constantly aware of the smell of a room or the feeling of clothes on your body: sensory adaptation. The first time you feel it, it's fresh, but past that, it stops being a new sensation and so your nerves stop sending out signals about it.
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how life was created, how seemingly inert atoms formed what we are today, these weird organic creatures with sentience
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Those atoms aren't inert. They react with other atoms, attaching and detaching from each other, requiring energy, releasing energy, etc. All life depends on chemical actions to function. Life is a natural extension of a chemically reactive environment.An MIT physicist recently launched a new theory of the origin of life that, if it's correct, answers your questions. It's called "dissipation-driven adaptive organization". So it's sounds a bit obscure. But it's pretty simple to understand. When you place a cup of tea in a cool room, it will eventually become the same temperature as the room. Energy will dissipate in the form of heat until it's spread evenly. This simple phenomenon is an example of the process that created life, according to England . It's a simple idea: structures that are able to capture energy and dissipate it as heat, and thus preventing itself from falling apart, are statistically inevitable in a system with the necessary requirements . Over time, more complex structures, capable of dissipating increasingly more energy, will evolve. The law behind this, the second law of thermodynamics, is considered to be one of the most basic laws we 've discovered. If a scientist makes a discovery that goes against gravity, that's interesting. If he makes a discovery that goes against the second law of thermodynamics, he's wrong. Period. It's a law of laws. And it seems this law explains how life arose.
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In this 2012 satellite photo of Berlin, you can distinguish West and East Berlin by the tone of the street lights. Why?
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The East and West used different types of lights, and there's no reason to tear down perfectly good lights that are only a few decades old.
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Why are e-cigarettes bans becoming widespread BEFORE any conclusive studies have been done on their safety? How can you ban something that is not well understood?
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It's an idea called the "precautionary principle." It says that the burden to prove safety---once there's some reason to doubt whether something is safe---is on the group that wants to introduce something, rather than on the population. The fear is that allowing widespread use of potentially dangerous things creates incentives to downplay risks and hoodwink people into underestimating dangers until the new things becomes too ingrained to easily ban/limit. Obviously, there are significant costs to this approach in terms of missed opportunity and limited choices. But it's an idea that has many supporters, particularly in areas where there is a possibility of addiction.
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is an animal being turned on its back the equivalent to a human being held upside down?
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Not really. The main problem with turning human beings upside down is one of gravity and circulation. The human body is designed to be vertical or horizontal. Valves in the veins are designed to assist blood return from the lower body back to the heart. Between heartbeats, as gravity pulls blood downward, the valves close and blood stays there until another heartbeat pushes it higher. There is no need for such valves in the veins above the heart. So when a human body is held upside down blood goes to the head and gravity continues to pull it downward away from the heart. There are no valves in the veins to resist gravity so when the heart is at rest, you get retrograde flow of blood back toward the head. This causes a buildup of blood and pressure in the upper body, which eventually will start to impair brain function or a clot is more likely to form and obstruct bloodflow even further. Most animals are longer laterally than they are tall. So simply flipping a dog, cat or turtle upside down does not change its hemodynamic status very much. Just as there is not much difference in bloodflow in a human if he lays on his back or his stomach.
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What is the science behind TNT Pop-Its (Snap Bags)? What makes them explode when you throw them at something?
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Inside the tiny bag is ~99.99% gravel or sand, the other 0.01% is a chemical called silver fulminate. It's a highly unstable chemical that ignites under any sort of friction . When the chemical ignites it creates a shockwave that travels faster than the speed of sound and that's where the "snap" sound comes from . This shockwave is extremely weak and that's why you can pop one in your hand and it wont hurtThey contain a chemical called silver fulminate which is an unstable explosive. The impact, or the friction from rubbing against the sand in the popit, is enough to detonate it.Hey, I was a truck driver for TNT for a few years! Any other fireworks questions? I'm obviously an expert.BTW, these are a hoot to put under toilet seats in the ladies room.
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The weird noise your eyes make sometimes when you blink, what is it?
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It’s the tensor tympani muscle in your middle ear contracting. It’s sort of like the muscle pressing against the hearing bones in your ear creating a whooshing or rumbling sound
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