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Were US troops in WWII required to have haircuts?	If you mean buzzcuts in the modern sense, no; at least not for the US Army. They absolutely, however, had grooming standards; its a basic tenet of military hygiene. Hair had to be short at the sides and back; away from the collars and not covering the ears. [Haircuts happened when they could](_URL_2_) and the frequency...	[ "Before World War One men generally had longer hair and beards. However, short hair on men was introduced in World War One for soldiers. Slaves and defeated armies were often required to shave their heads. The trench warfare in 1914 to 1918 exposed men to flea and lice infestations, which prompted the order to cut ...
Could polar bears and penguins be introduced to their respective opposite poles (south, north) and survive?	Its unlikely that they would survive. [Polar bears](_URL_5_) are adapted to eating seals, but its very hard to hunt them in the open water so they hunt on land. Two common ways of catching seals include: crashing through the ice using their paws and kill the seals in their dens or stalking air holes and kill seals as t...	[ "Although almost all penguin species are native to the Southern Hemisphere, they are not found only in cold climates, such as Antarctica. In fact, only a few species of penguin actually live so far south. Several species live in the temperate zone; one, the Galápagos penguin, lives as far north as the Galápagos Isl...
why do smaller animals seem to live shorter lives and larger animals longer? such as a fly compared to a whale	Typically organisms with shorter life spans have a survival strategy based on rapid and mass reproduction. A fly for example would be expected to grow many larvae to maturity, mate, and lay their own eggs within a month because flies die all the time to various things. If a fly needed to survive for 5 years before it c...	[ "In mammals, larger animals tend to have longer lifespans than smaller ones; the Brandt's bat is the most extreme outlier to this pattern, with lifespans exceeding 40 years in the wild while only weighing .\n", "The life expectancy is typically twenty to thirty years; as in many mammals, smaller species often hav...
modern vs. post-modern	Modernism was a cultural movement that began around 100 years ago. Modernist writers are the folks who rejected big, dramatic stories about glorious heroes defeating sinister villains, chosen people going on exciting adventures, comedies about elaborate social disasters, etc and instead focused on intimate and in-depth...	[ "Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era), as well as the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the \"Age of Reason\" of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century \"Enlightenment\...
When doing statistics, is too large of a sample size ever a bad thing?	The only way I can think of would be if your sample size is larger than your population of interest. For example, if you want to figure something out about a population of 10,000 people and you poll 20,000 people, you've clearly polled at least 10,000 people that are not part of your population of interest.	[ "Larger sample sizes generally lead to increased precision when estimating unknown parameters. For example, if we wish to know the proportion of a certain species of fish that is infected with a pathogen, we would generally have a more precise estimate of this proportion if we sampled and examined 200 rather than 1...
Some mammals have internal testes (Elephants, Rhinoceroses, Cetaceans), how do they get around the difficulties that body heat imposes on sperm production?	This has more to do with the sperm than the testes. Temperature tolerances of proteins can vary quite a bit with very small changes in the amino acid sequence used to make them. The bonds between amino acids not linked together by peptide bonds are typically pretty weak so the extra movement with temperature (the aver...	[ "The mammalian male reproductive system contains two main divisions, the penis and the testicles, the latter of which is where sperm are produced. In humans, both of these organs are outside the abdominal cavity, but they can be primarily housed within the abdomen in other animals. For instance, a dog's penis is co...
cryptology	People like to communicate. When we communicate, sometimes we tell each other secrets - things that nobody else should know. If you are sending a message containing a secret to somebody you might fear that this message will fall into the wrong hands and the wrong people will know your secret. So to outsmart the bad gu...	[ "Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties (called adversaries). More generally, it is about constructing and analyzing protocols that overcome the influence of adversaries and that are related to various aspects in information security such as da...
Why do people (usually children) associate transparency with the colour white?	For children coloring, white and clear mean the same thing, on a white piece of paper. If they want to show something as white, they don't fill it in, it'll be the white of the paper. If they want to show something as clear, they'll leave it blank, and it'll be transparent to them.	[ "\"White\" is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness. White is the lightest possible color.\...
- why does one get cravings? when one quits a drug/behavior, what's exactly happening when one senses a 'craving'?	When one does drugs or smoke or eat junk food, our brain responds by giving you a “feel good” feeling. This feeling is caused by chemicals aka neurotransmitters, in our body like dopamine and endorphins. Our brain remembers what caused us to feel this way and knows in the future what it needs to make yourself feel goo...	[ "\"Cue-induced wanting\" or \"cue-triggered wanting\", a form of craving that occurs in addiction, is responsible for most of the compulsive behavior that addicts exhibit. During the development of an addiction, the repeated association of otherwise neutral and even non-rewarding stimuli with drug consumption trigg...
why must clothes irons be hot in order to serve their purpose ?	It's kinda like how you straighten hair the carbon bonds are weak in hair heat allows the breaking of bonds and forms it straight under the flat surface	[ "A clothes iron is a device that, when heated, is used to press clothes to remove creases and help prevent the spread of infectious disease. Domestic irons generally range in operating temperature from between to . It is named for the metal (iron) of which the device was historically made, and the use of it is gene...
how do lottery ticket companies make sure their workers don't track down the winning tickets that they print?	A computer prints the numbers on the scratchoff tickets as they roll through the printing presses at a thousand tickets a minute and the machine also coats the tickets with the scratch off coating in the same process. So when they come out of the press all the employee sees is the completed tickets in a giant stack. ...	[ "Companies operating using a ticket reseller model purchase tickets for the official lottery draw on behalf of the player. The company then charges the player the price of the ticket, as well as an extra commission. In the event of a winning ticket, the company collects the winnings from the official lottery operat...
why is it so difficult to provide africa with clean drinking water desalination?	Solar stills might be more viable there than in other parts of the world, but the problem is that they still aren't very viable. The parts of Africa that have trouble accessing clean drinking water generally aren't coastal regions, those tend to be quite prosperous areas that have wells or other forms of water. The p...	[ "To adequately address the issue of water scarcity in Africa, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa emphasizes the need to invest in the development of Africa's potential water resources to reduce unnecessary suffering, ensure food security, and protect economic gains by effectively managing droughts, f...
Has there ever been any movements similar to Zionism?	Check out the [Back to Africa Movement](_URL_0_) from 19th century America. It lead to the foundation of Liberia (fun fact: the capital of Monrovia is named after James Monroe!) Sierra Leone has a similar history of resettlement in the foundation of the Province of Freedom, which was founded for the "resettlement" of...	[ "Zionism was formed in Europe as the national movement of the Jewish people. It sought to re-establish Jewish statehood in the ancient homeland. The first wave of Zionist immigration, dubbed the First Aliyah lasted between 1882 and 1903. Some 30,000 Jews mostly from the Russian Empire reached Ottoman Palestine. The...
Are there visual anomalies that the human eye can see but wouldn't be seen on a picture taken?	I can think of a couple: - Extreme dynamic range. You've probably noticed most cameras can't take a picture containing some items in direct sunlight and others in shadow: either the sunlit areas are blown-out to white, or the shaded objects are solid black. This is because our eyes have a greater dynamic range than mo...	[ "Every normal mammal eye has a scotoma in its field of vision, usually termed its blind spot. This is a location with no photoreceptor cells, where the retinal ganglion cell axons that compose the optic nerve exit the retina. This location is called the optic disc. There is no direct conscious awareness of visual s...
the universe is expanding, but where is the center of the expansion? is that the point in which the big bang happened? and where are we relatively to it?	Every point is expanding away from every other point. There's no "center of the expansion". Imagine an infinitely large rubber sheet, with a 1" grid drawn on it. Now stretch out the rubber sheet so that the grid lines are 2" apart instead, everywhere. Is there a "center" to this stretching? Every point is moving a...	[ "Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding and that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us. Two years later, Georges Lemaître suggests that the expansion can be traced to an initial \"Big Bang\".\n", "Since Georges Lemaître first noted in 1927 that an expanding universe co...
if the universe is infinite but empty outside of the "edges", wouldnt gravity curve space so that if you go straight sooner or later you would end up "inside" of the edges again?	Reading through this thread I'm imagining this discussion taking place 500 years ago and we're all monkeys grunting and banging sticks to explain our individual understanding of this .	[ "If formula_7, the geometry of space is open, i.e., negatively curved like the surface of a saddle. The angles of a triangle sum to less than 180 degrees, and lines that do not meet are never equidistant; they have a point of least distance and otherwise grow apart. The geometry of such a universe is hyperbolic.\n"...
how were the victims of the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs "killed instantly"?	The bomb generated extreme heat, around 3000 degrees Celsius and given that humans are mostly water, they literally steam cooked and exploded at the same time	[ "The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are identified as the cause of Japanese whaling. The two Japanese cities were destroyed by atomic weapons during the final stages of World War II under orders by U.S. President Harry Truman, which killed about 220,000 people. In \"Whale Whores\", the Japanese are prese...
The rate of universal expansion is accelerating to the point that light from other galaxies will someday never reach us. Is it possible that this has already happened to an extent? Are there things forever out of our view? Do we have any way of really knowing the size of the universe?	Yes, there are galaxies from which we will never receive any light at all. (Any galaxy beyond a current distance of about 65 Gly.) There are also galaxies whose light we have already received in the past but which are currently too far away for any signal emitted from us now to reach them some time in the future. (An...	[ "However, because the expansion of the universe is accelerating, it is projected that most galaxies will eventually cross a type of cosmological event horizon where any light they emit past that point will never be able to reach us at any time in the infinite future, because the light never reaches a point where it...
encoders, decoders and transcoders	Encoder - changes data into a certain format or "code". Usually it's to conform to certain standards for displaying the information, such as ASCII being the standard for displaying letters and symbols on computers and other devices, or .mp3 being a common format for audio data. Decoder - changes the encoded data back ...	[ "An encoder is a device, circuit, transducer, software program, algorithm or person that converts information from one format or code to another, for the purpose of standardization, speed or compression.\n", "An autoencoder consisting of an encoder and a decoder is a paradigm for deep learning architectures. An e...
why is it not practical for more countries to send a space shuttle to the moon with all the advances in technology since 1969?	Two reasons. First, getting to the moon is incredibly difficult. It's not like "Yeah, it's hard to figure out but once you crack it it's easy." I mean it's incredibly difficult. The energy requirements are really enormous. You just wouldn't believe. The other, better reason is that the moon's a shithole. There's n...	[ "In the 2000s, the People's Republic of China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, and India have also planned future crewed space missions. China, Russia, Japan, and India have advocated crewed missions to the Moon during the 21st century, while the European Union has...
I'm the illegitamate kid of a English king in the Middle Ages, what's my life like?	I assume you're talking about an acknowledged illegitimate kid? If so, and you're a boy, you'll probably be made a duke or an earl and the king will pay for you're upbringing and you'll have a very comfortable life, including favouritism for a political career if you want one. If you're a girl, you'll probably be ma...	[ "BULLET::::- \"Making a Living in the Middle Ages: the People of Britain, 850–1520\" (London and New Haven, 2002 (Yale UP); London, 2003 (Penguin);), New Haven, 2003 (American paperback, Yale UP), 403 pp.\n", "For detailed information about the middle ages Scott drew on three works by the antiquarian Joseph Strut...
Why does a pistol's muzzle flip upwards when you shoot?	The hot gas does leave the muzzle equally. Handguns are held from the bottom and the recoil goes backwards through the barrel on top, so there's a torque force which wants to rotate it a little. Even if the recoil force translated directly through the hands a...	[ "The muzzle rises primarily because, for most firearms, the centerline of the barrel is above the center of contact between the shooter and the firearm's grip and stock. The reactive forces from the fired bullet and propellant gases exiting the muzzle act directly down the centerline of the barrel. If that line of ...
regarding the current event surrounding the missing malaysian airplane, if family members of its passengers claim that they can still call their missing relative's phone without getting redirected to voice mail, why doesn't the authority try to track down these phone signals?	Phones don't really work that way. When you dial a phone number it's sent to the telco. The telco could choose to send you a ring tone while it's attempting to locate the phone. Unable to find the phone it can just send you to voicemail which is located at the telco not on the phone. Just because you hear ringing i...	[ "Some had speculated that the passengers were still alive but could not answer their cellphones—sometimes known as the \"phantom cellphone theory\". This was based on early reports that family members of Flight 370 passengers heard ringing (as opposed to a busy/off signal) while calling the passengers' phones, thou...
why would a company sell stock and buy it straight back?	Sell when it's high, stockholders may start selling too which can bring down stock price, buy it all back again. Profit.	[ "Stock can be bought and sold privately or on stock exchanges, and such transactions are typically heavily regulated by governments to prevent fraud, protect investors, and benefit the larger economy. As new shares are issued by a company, the ownership and rights of existing shareholders are diluted in return for ...
How much beta/gamma radiation does the core of a star that has undergone supernova emit?	It depends slightly on the type of supernova, and what the core will be made of. However you need to remember a star is much bigger than a nuclear reactor! As such it will emit trillions of times more radiation. To go into a bit more detail, stars don't contain many radioactive materials (the radiation comes from f...	[ "Core collapse supernovae are on average visually fainter than Type Ia supernovae, but the total energy released is far higher. In these type of supernovae, the gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy that compresses and collapses the core, initially producing electron neutrinos from disinte...
I just learned about foreign accent syndrome, when brain damage makes it sound like you have a foreign accent. Do those who suffer from it actually speak with an accent from one they know or is it just the new speech patterns that come with the syndrome making it sound similar to an existing accent?	I'll answer this with the caveat that this is a very rare condition [( < 20 cases worldwide to date)](_URL_0_) and with an etiology that is not perfectly understood. The basic idea is that after a stroke regions of the brain are damaged that result in a changed prosody. Most of the time, the change in speech patter...	[ "Its symptoms result from distorted articulatory planning and coordination processes and although popular news articles commonly attempt to identify the closest regional accent, speakers suffering from foreign accent syndrome acquire neither a specific foreign accent nor any additional fluency in a foreign language...
Is the Out of Africa hypothesis still widely accepted? Are all humans really "african?"	The good fellows over at /r/AskAnthropology gave me some [wonderful answers](_URL_0_)	[ "Alan Templeton (1997) asserted that the study did \"not support the hypothesis of a recent African origin for all of humanity following a split between Africans and non-Africans 100,000 years ago\" and also did \"not support the hypothesis of a recent global replacement of humans coming out of Africa.\"\n", "The...
How do stains work on the molecular level?	I can tell you how bleach works on some types of stains. So some Compounds have color because of the molecule is a conjugated system. Meaning that more than 8 groups of alternating double then single bonds in a row all share electrons. When light hits this conjugated system it absorbs then releases energy that we see ...	[ "Staining is a technique used to enhance contrast in samples, generally at the microscopic level. Stains and dyes are frequently used in histology (the study of tissue under the microscope) and in the medical fields of histopathology, hematology, and cytopathology that focus on the study and diagnoses disease at a ...
What were the extent of Anglo-Saxon and German Saxon Relations until the Carolingian Conquest of Saxony?	To answer briefly, there was a massive amount of contact between the two cultures. Trade continued between them in the early years, and after the Anglo-Saxon conversions were complete numerous missionaries were sent to different parts of Germany, the most famous being Boniface and Willibrord in the eighth century. I ...	[ "In the late 6th century there was another period of Saxon expansion, starting with the capture of Searoburh in 552 by the dynasty that later ruled Wessex, and including entry into the Cotswolds area after the Battle of Deorham (577), though the accuracy of the entries in the \"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle\" for this peri...
What did the British plan to do if the captured New Orleans during the war of 1812?	I've written [pretty extensively](_URL_0_) before on the causes of the war, on [British war aims](_URL_2_) and their [alliance with American Indians](_URL_3_), and how they contrasted with [American goals](_URL_1_). To make a long story short, the British were defending their colonies in Canada and the Caribbean from a...	[ "During the final campaign of the War of 1812, the British sent a force of 11,000 in an attempt to capture New Orleans. Despite great challenges, General Andrew Jackson, with support from the U.S. Navy, successfully cobbled together a force of militia from Louisiana and Mississippi, including free men of color, U.S...
What was the mentality/practice behind conducting electro-shock therapy on homosexuals as a "cure"?	I'm no expert on this, but I'm currently reading [Steve Silberman's Neurotribes](_URL_0_), which is a cultural history of autism. It's not specifically about homosexuality, but it does delve into the use of electro-shock therapy on autistic children, as what's known as aversion therapy. Basically, the psychiatrist give...	[ "In the early 1970s, Ford McBride did research in electroshock therapy while a student at Brigham Young University (BYU); he performed it on volunteer homosexual students to help cure them of ego-dystonic sexual orientation. This was a standard type of aversion therapy used to treat homosexuality, which was conside...
Why didn't the Greeks try to explore west?	Precisely because they were able to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Ancient Greek ships weren't able to handle the open ocean, and it was thought all the way up until Columbus' time that there was nothing but open ocean between Europe and Asia. Sailors and explorers at the time would have wisely figured that ...	[ "The Greeks had to fight off Scythian and Sarmatian (Alan) raiders who prevented them from progressing inland but retained the shores which became the wheat basket of the ancient Greek world. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest the provinces maintained active trading relations with...
who decided the #2 pencil was the one to rule them all?	The #2 is a measure of the "hardness" of the pencil lead (which is actually graphite, but that's a different thread). #1 pencils are very "soft", meaning they wear fast, smudge often, and it's difficult to keep the writing point sharp. Numbers #3 and higher stay nice and sharp, but make lighter markings, which is wh...	[ "Similar to the role of the writers, few pencillers stuck around for more than one or two issues, with exception being Sal Velluto, who, alongside David Michelinie created the book, and pencilled 22 issues of the title. The only other regular artist was Ramon Bernado, who pencilled nine issues in total and pencille...
why can't we just like take a giant telescope and look at the planets that nasa discovered? similar to how our satellites can zoom in on earth.	Satellites take pictures of things from about 100 miles away. A planet that's 40 light years away is 235,100,000,000,000 miles away. So, you'd need a camera that is about one trillion times more powerful than what's on a satellite.	[ "It has been estimated that a telescope with a diameter of 80 meters would be able to spectroscopically analyse Earth-size planets around the forty nearest sun-like stars. As such, this telescope could help in the exploration of exoplanets and extraterrestrial life (because the spectrum from the planets could revea...
why is it that most of us won't think twice about spending £3.00 on a beer but will hesitate and think far too long about buying something that'll actually be useful and last for a long time?	Where the fuck are you getting a beer for £3.00?	[ "The Act has caused some controversy. On one side of the argument is the frustration some British drinkers and many tourists have with the traditional closing time of 23:00, as opposed to the more liberal drinking regulations of continental Europe and further afield. They believe that a liberalisation of the drinki...
why do they market toys and collectibles before their respective movies come out?	It's better to have them released beforehand, so when people see the movie and get excited they can immediately find them on the shelves in stores, than risk a delay and them not getting into stores when demand is highest. Back when Star Wars (the original movie) came out in theatres, the toys weren't ready yet. For C...	[ "Many successful films, television programs, books and sport teams have official merchandise, which often includes related toys. Some notable examples are \"Star Wars\" (a space fantasy franchise) and Arsenal, an English football club.\n", "Toys are big business: the global toy market is estimated at over 80 bill...
Did the USSR have any kind of youth counterculture movement like the USA during the late 1960s?	[Punk in the Soviet Union](_URL_0_) edit: not in the 60's, but might be interesting.	[ "Several factors distinguished the counterculture of the 1960s from the anti-authoritarian movements of previous eras. The post-World War II \"baby boom\" generated an unprecedented number of potentially disaffected young people as prospective participants in a rethinking of the direction of the United States and o...
if the 4th dimension exist does that mean im already dead somewhere/when in time?	The way I like to think about all these dimensions, is that the one before it is a just a slice. So like a point is just a slice of a line, a line is just a slice of a square and a square is just a slice of a cube. Now we're in the 4th dimension, meaning we can fully experience the first three, which we interpret as l...	[ "In the \"Brothers Karamazov\", Dostoevsky's last work completed in 1880, the fourth dimension is used to signify that which is ungraspable to someone with earthly (or three-dimensional) concerns. In the book, Ivan Karamazov laments to his younger brother:\n", "In the first volume of \"In Search of Lost Time\" (o...
How far into North America did the diplomatic/economic sphere of the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican empires extend? For instance, would a Native American living on the Chesapeake have heard of massive, city-building empires to the south?	Connections between what is now the American Southwest and Mesoamerican are so well established that it is almost inappropriate to think of them are entirely separate areas. These links were primarily trade based, not political or military, with products like [tropical birds/feathers](_URL_1_) and [cacao](_URL_4_), as ...	[ "The Aztec Empire arose in the early 15th century and appeared to be on a path to asserting dominance over the Valley of Mexico region not seen since Teotihuacan. Spain was the first European power to contact Mesoamerica, however, and its conquistadores and a large number of native allies conquered the Aztecs.\n", ...
What does "punk" mean in this context?	"Punk" was used to mean listless or generally poor. So this could be taken to mean that he was going to a party that was bland and he wasn't having a good time. Would that make sense in the context? Context is everything. References to this use of the term in North American slang appears in the Oxford English Dictionar...	[ "\"Punk\" explores \"the music, the fashion, the art and the DIY attitude of a subculture of self-described misfits and outcasts.\". Each episode focuses on an individual era of punk, beginning with protopunk in the 1960s up until the present day. \n", "Art punk or avant punk refers to punk rock and post-punk mus...
if i sat in a bathtub of liquor would i get drunk?	Not a doctor. Do know several though that work ER. Since "butt-chugging" of alcohol is a thing I would be more concerned about the alcohol getting in there. Or just burning like hell on your bits. But if it did make it in, the effect is much stronger than if you drink it, which is why these idiots end up in the ER. ...	[ "BULLET::::- Sauna or steam-bath: Medical opinion holds this may be dangerous, as the combination of alcohol and hyperthermia increases the likelihood of dangerous cardiac arrhythmia}abnormal heart rhythms.\n", "Unfortunately, there are the quite a number of cases of unruly drunk patrons who vomit or urinate on t...
difference between enlisted and officers in army and how different are their selection process.	Almost anyone can enlist, and it's basically the entry level to the military. Officers are required to have at least a bachelors degree, and are placed into leadership positions. The [rank](_URL_0_) system is completely different, and they are also sent to different boot camps to be trained in their respective position...	[ "With regard to rank, a U.S. Army officer candidate exists in a gray area. AR 600-20, Army Command Policy, places their rank as outranking all enlisted members of the service and rank directly below all officers. They are not yet officers. They are enlisted soldiers who lose all rank status when reporting to the co...
why is it that links are repeated on different pages in reddit?	Going to the next page asks reddit to give you the 25 links following the link that's at the bottom of your current page. But the rankings of links are constantly changing - if that link has moved up the reddit rankings since you loaded your old page, it can jump over links you've already seen, and you'll get them agai...	[ "This phenomenon also occurs in the Internet. Counting the number of links to a page can give us a general estimate of its prominence on the Web, but a page with very few incoming links may also be prominent, if two of these links come from the home pages of sites like Yahoo!, Google, or MSN. Because these sites ar...
if spider webs are one of the most stiky things we know, why do spiders dont get stuck if they get tangled in them? and what aobout nest like spider webs?	Spider webs are not completely sticky. Some of the "silk" (sorry, don't know the name in English), is sticky, but spider can produce some that are not. So, when a bug come in contact with the web, it get glued on it, but the spider, who know where it put the sticky or non sticky silk, can move around and stay on the ...	[ "As these spiders live in constant proximity to humans, they are not usually aggressive and will even let a human hand approach their web. Like any other spider, however, they are afraid of bigger foes, and, in most cases, will retreat behind an obstacle (such as a dried leaf or prey remains) upon perceiving more t...
Can someone explain to me what ricci flatness is?	A manifold is Ricci-flat if the Ricci curvature tensor is zero. This roughly means that small cubes whose edges are geodesics have the same volume as cubes in the corresponding Euclidean space of the same dimension. But the geodesic cube itself may be twisted or curled into a different shape. (Think of distorting a sph...	[ "In mathematics, Ricci-flat manifolds are Riemannian manifolds whose Ricci curvature vanishes. Ricci-flat manifolds are special cases of Einstein manifolds, where the cosmological constant need not vanish.\n", "Richard Strier additionally notes the complexity of the word \"flatter\" not only within Sonnet 87 but ...
What will replace integrated circuits once they reach the smallest size possible?	[Three-dimensional integrated circuit](_URL_0_)	[ "IEDM papers from Intel in 2002, 2004, and 2005 illustrate the industry trend that the transistor sizes can no longer scale along with the rest of the feature dimensions (gate width only changed from 220 nm to 210 nm going from 90 nm to 65 nm technologies). However, the interconnects (metal and poly pitch) continue...
Did any significant amount of early-ish American settlers return to Europe?	In the seventeenth century it was pretty common for people to settle in the New World for a few years to fish, trap, or log before returning to Europe. Merchants in particular would often only stay in the New World long enough to set up agents or to collect enough goods to fuel their European operations. Newfoundland i...	[ "The first permanent European settlers arrived in the early 19th century. People came from the Bahamas to South Florida and the Keys to hunt for treasure from the ships that ran aground on the treacherous Great Florida Reef. Some accepted Spanish land offers along the Miami River. At about the same time, the Semino...
Why do frozen foods thaw faster on granite countertops?	Granite has a very high thermal mass. This means that it takes a lot of heat to change its temperature - much more than a laminate counter top. So, you put some cold food on the granite. The heat transfers from the granite to the food, but since it has so much thermal capacity, its temperature does not decrease as q...	[ "Due to its properties of rapid cooling/melting, the small size of granular ice is used widely by the process industries, particularly food manufacture for cooling products made in mixers or bowl choppers such as dough or sausage meat, here it is mostly known as \"fine ice\" or \"micro ice\". It is also used in lab...
- what does it mean when a file is encrypted?	Encryption is mixing up the message, such that it can only be made readable again with a key. To explain what hackers do, It might be easier to use an example: Let's say you want to send a book to a friend on the other side of the country, but you don't want anyone else to see it. You could stick the book in a box, an...	[ "File level encryption encrypts only the file contents. This leaves important information such as file name, size and timestamps unencrypted. Parts of the content of the file can be reconstructed from other locations, such as temporary files, swap file and deleted, unencrypted copies.\n", "The process of encrypti...
When NSDAP wanted to replace Roman law with German law, what did they meant?	A little while ago, there we had [a thread](_URL_0_) concerning this rather obscure topic. Perhaps you want to take a look at it.	[ "The statute drew legal influence from previous measures, including those undertaken by the Holy Roman Empire and Prussian states. It was amended several times. The Nazis broadened the law in 1935; in the prosecutions that followed, thousands died in concentration camps as a widespread social persecution of homosex...
Were left leaning student beatnik types any less hostile towards the Soviet Union in 1960s than most "normal" Americans at the time?	[Students for a Democratic Society](_URL_0_) was one of the most popular and powerful of the "New Left" student groups. SDS was founded in 1960, and permitted Communist party members within their ranks (this was a change from previous leftist student groups). SDS campaigned against the Cold War and militarism. They bec...	[ "As for the PPR on American side, some examples are also present. Between 1946 to 1956, there was a censorship campaign against schools and libraries in an effort to remove literature, described as 'radical'. The political move was explained through the danger that such literature was posing to the American democra...
How come the Abwehr were so inefficient and seemingly completely useless in gathering intelligence?	Look up what they did in the Netherlands. They were very effective in gathering intelligence before the invasion, trained, supplied and provided information for the Brandenburgers who took vital bridges during the Invasion of May 1940, and managed to capture almost all Allied spies active in the Netherlands between 194...	[ "\"Abwehr II\" was a section of German Intelligence which amongst its other duties was tasked with seeking out the disaffected and anti-authoritarian in opposing nations to give arms, assistance, or whatever means to increase disharmony. Following the successful 1940 campaign to defeat France, and the capture of Br...
by what method does google translate detect the language of input texts?	Matching words with words it knows from various languages. Also what characters you input. Like, if you were to input the Kanji lettering for the term "Horse stuffer", it'd detect that it was Kanji first, then what words it is, then makes the connection. Or for other roman lettering, it just knows what words belong to...	[ "Google Translate can translate multiple forms of text and media, including text, speech, images, sites, or real-time video, from one language to another. It supports over 100 languages at various levels and , serves over 500 million people daily. For some languages, Google Translate can pronounce translated text, ...
What population density could t-rex realistically have had?	[Here's a paper from a time this was previously asked](_URL_1_). Short answer seems to be that they don't know. There are a number of factors (prey density, metabolism, hunting strategy) that are all pretty speculative, making it difficult to get something approaching a real answer. There's even [some evidence](_UR...	[ "Remains of tortoises at this site and a dig at Die Kelders, have been used to assess a correlation between tortoise size and human population, with a decrease in tortoise sizes as the human population grows.\n", "An estimate of 36.5 million by Burton was based on extrapolating up from a density of 2.5 animals/ha...
why do some people cry during sex? is it biological or psychological? both? are there performance or dysfunction related to crying during intercourse?	I can only speak for myself, but if I cry during sex, it's because the sex is so overwhelming, both physically and emotionally, that I need a quick, accessible outlet for it. You'd think that an orgasm would be a good outlet, given the circumstance, but that just makes it more overwhelming, and more tearful. For me, I ...	[ "In nearly all cultures, crying is associated with tears trickling down the cheeks and accompanied by characteristic sobbing sounds. Emotional triggers are most often sadness and grief but crying can also be triggered by anger, happiness, fear, laughter or humor, frustration, remorse, or other strong, intense emoti...
who owns the united states federal reserve? if it is the government, explain why we need to pay interest on the created money?	The Federal Reserve doesn't really have an owner. The leadership is appointed by the government, but the government doesn't claim any ownership rights over the organization or its stuff. Why do we do it this way? Well, the Federal Reserve sets what's known as monetary policy (roughly, the policies regarding how many ...	[ "According to the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, \"It is not 'owned' by anyone and is 'not a private, profit-making institution'. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.\" The U.S. Government does not own shares in the Federal Reserve ...
why fight to have student loans forgiven?	For what it's worth, I agree with you, but I'll try to explain the mentality behind it - today's 20-somethings were brought up their whole lives believing that college was the ticket to a bright future. You did decently in high school, went to a respectable college, and got a suitable white collar job that put you squ...	[ "BULLET::::- The federal government should enact partial or total loan forgiveness for students who have taken out student loans. One advocate for college loan forgiveness has argued that \"Since forgiveness does not require the printing of new dollars (i.e., \"too much money chasing too few goods\"), it is not inf...
why does it feel good to sleep in the fetal position decade after being in the womb?	It's a psychological thing; regression. The fetal position inside your mothers womb is a safe, warm time in your life so subconsciously you go back (regress) to that time of safety and so on. Source: 1 intro class of Psych last semester.	[ "It has been argued that co-sleeping evolved over five million years, that it alters the infant's sleep experience and the number of maternal inspections of the infant, and that it provides a beginning point for considering possibly unconventional ways of helping reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SID...
[Physics] Why can I hit a tennis ball pretty far with minimal effort, but I have to work a lot harder to throw it the same?	2 things going on here. 1. Leverage. The longer the moment arm you use (tennis bat) the more force you can exert on the ball. Ball goes further. 2. Tension. Tension of the strings in the bat make for a small ammount of elasticity which work for you, in terms of transfering forces to the ball more directly. Ball goes...	[ "A difficult shot in tennis is the return of an attempted lob over the backhand side of a player. When the contact point is higher than the reach of a two-handed backhand, most players will try to execute a high slice (under the ball or sideways). Fewer players attempt the backhand sky-hook or smash. Rarely, a play...
feeling weak while having a cold. what causes that?	Your body is spending so much energy on fighting the cold that it doesn't spare energy for much else. A proper immune response requires a bit of energy, and fighting infection becomes job 1 (aside from breathing, heart function, etc.). Your immune system is activating chemical and cellular systems that are normally dor...	[ "One explanation for the effect is a cold-induced malfunction of the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates body temperature. Another explanation is that the muscles contracting peripheral blood vessels become exhausted (known as a loss of vasomotor tone) and relax, leading to a sudden surge of blood (a...
what causes photos of screens to look so bad?	It's called the moire effect. Cameras have pixels, and those pixels are arranged in symmetric rectangular grids. Displays have pixels, also arranged in symmetric grids. When those grids perfectly align, the image is fine. However, if the grid is off a little then camera pixel A sees display pixel A and a little bit...	[ "The image may seem garbled, poorly saturated, of poor contrast, blurry or too faint outside the stated viewing angle range, the exact mode of \"failure\" depends on the display type in question. For example, some projection screens reflect more light perpendicular to the screen and less light to the sides, making ...
how does the conservation of mass and energy, and the expansion of the universe correlate/allow for the other?	You can have nothing. That's what a vacuum is, the absence of something. While space is not a perfect vacuum, it's pretty close. So as space expands, you get a bigger vacuum.	[ "The critical density of the universe is dependent upon the rate at which the universe is still expanding. The universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, but was originally thought to be slowing down. Furthermore, the rate at which this is changing gives the overall mass density of the universe which is denoted ...
Are there any examples of a unit or part of an army effectively going rogue and that started doing their own thing?	There are many, many examples of this in Roman civilisation alone. Not to put too fine a point on it, but are you aware of Julius Caesar and [crossing the Rubicon](_URL_0_)?	[ "In a multi-part story titled \"The Marauders\", Rogue encounters a group of deserters from both Nort and Southern sides, who operate as scavengers from a hidden base and attack both Nort and Southers in order to obtain food, ammunition and supplies. Unknown to Rogue, the commander of The Marauders is the Traitor G...
Rangers in history	Well, the archetypal form of those sorts of characters certainly existed. Tolkein, as a professor of English, was very aware of his influences and what he was drawing on. The later horde of fantasy authors ripping him off? Probably less so. One of the earliest expressions of what this sort of archetype was the Yeoman...	[ "Under Church served the father and grandfather of two famous rangers of the eighteenth century: John Lovewell and John Gorham, respectively. Rogers' Rangers was established in 1751 by Major Robert Rogers, who organized nine Ranger companies in the American colonies. These early American light infantry units organi...
When an animal is born with two fully functioning heads, how do their brains deliberate and balance control over the body?	Tried a quick google for some research but couldn’t find any. I assume it’s different from person to person. It would all depend on how their brains were connected to each other and the rest of the body I would assume	[ "The function of the brain is to provide coherent control over the actions of an animal. A centralized brain allows groups of muscles to be co-activated in complex patterns; it also allows stimuli impinging on one part of the body to evoke responses in other parts, and it can prevent different parts of the body fro...
cocaine	Cocaine basically causes loads of a chemical called dopamine to be produced and this chemical is normal produced in small amounts that then produces a signal that is turned into an action the amount of dopamine affects how big the signal is. This over production of dopamine means BIG signals are constantly being made a...	[ "Cocaine is an SNDRI. Cocaine is made from the leaves of the coca shrub, which grows in the mountain regions of South American countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. In Europe, North America, and some parts of Asia, the most common form of cocaine is a white crystalline powder. Cocaine is a stimulant but is...
why is it that mac operating systems rarely need to be updated yet windows seemingly needs to be updated every few days?	OS X does need to be updated~~graded~~ fairly often. The thing is, Apple makes it a fairly seamless process. Rarely does an update require a restart, for instance, while Windows updates tend to be very intrusive. If you select autoupdate for both systems, you rarely notice an OS X update, while Windows will kick you in...	[ "Windows 10 contains major changes to Windows Update Agent operations; it no longer allows the manual, selective installation of updates. All updates, regardless of type (this includes hardware drivers), are downloaded and installed automatically, and users are only given the option to choose whether their system w...
Why are batteries arrays made with cylindrical batteries rather than square prisms so they can pack even better?	First of all, some packs are made with prismatic cells. The pros and cons of cylindrical vs prismatic cells themselves are more important than packing efficiency. Notably, cylindrical manufacturing is more mature, and cylindrical cells tend to be better (in energy density and cost per kWh) at lower capacities, which mo...	[ "Correctly made rectangular or square lens hoods are generally more efficient than cylindrical or conical ones because those shapes closely resemble the shape of the photograph. However, rectangular or square lens hoods should not be used with zoom lenses whose front elements rotate as the focal length is changed, ...
Were more artillery shells fired in WWII or WWI per capita?	per capita what? Per artilleryman? Per frontline infantryman? Per European population?	[ "The total production of 75 mm shells during World War I exceeded 200 million rounds, mostly by private industry. In order to increase shell production from 20,000 rounds per day to 100,000 in 1915, the government turned to civilian contractors, and, as a result, shell quality deteriorated. This led to an epidemic ...
what causes naturally "good" or "bad" memory retention in a person and why is there a difference?	Since you're talking about memory retention, I'm going to skip over short-term memory, which naturally decays. To start, the idea of having a perfect memory is a bit of a lie. It's totally normal to not remember every little detail. Memory itself is also a bit of a lie: your brain fills in the gaps if it needs to, d...	[ "The lack of remembered detail especially affects positive memories; generally people remember positive events with more detail than negative events, but the reverse is seen in those with depression. Negative memories will seem more complex and the time of occurrence will be more easily remembered than positive and...
Why do we have primary colours?	> Why can it be split up into distinct colours in a prism? When light crosses a material boundary it is deflected (refracted) by a certain angle depending on its frequency. So different frequencies will be refracted in different angles. > What makes these frequencies special over any of the other ones? There's n...	[ "First, \"color\" refers to the human brain's subjective interpretation of combinations of a narrow band of wavelengths of light. For this reason, the definition of \"color\" is not based on a strict set of physical phenomena. Therefore, even basic concepts like \"primary colors\" are not clearly defined. For examp...
Back in the days when people believed witchcraft was a real thing and prosecuted people for being witches, how could they on one hand believe in malevolent magic and yet believe they could arrest, imprison and execute a "witch" and the witch would not escape/take revenge with their magic?	The answer lies in our conception of magic. To most people in the modern world the first image that comes to mind is Harry Potter making things fly around the room, shooting big, violent spells everywhere. Historically, this is not how witches were seen. Magic was almost always related to a relationship with the Devi...	[ "Most scholars agree that the witch trials were the result of isolated incidents of hysteria in remote peasant communities. While many of the accused confessed to various acts of magic and Satanism, all did so under threat of torture, and historians agree that there is no evidence any of the victims of the trials w...
how do they decide, during sports broadcasts that vary in length, which ads to play?	They buy ads based on when they show in the game, not for a specific time. So I may set up a deal with them for an ad at the end of the first and third quarters, plus a commercial for halftime.	[ "A number of segments appear before the game or in between innings. In addition to entertaining the audience, these exist because UK broadcasting standards effectively prevent Five from running commercials every time the US broadcasters do so.\n", "The numbers can show who is listening to a particular station, th...
Did medieval knights lift?	I highly recommend [this thread](_URL_1_) by /u/knight117 and [this one](_URL_0_) by /u/kardlonoc which both deal with the question you ask. & #x200B; The TL;DR is "sort of". They trained but primarily in a more functional sense. Weapons practice, horsemanship, hunting, exercises in armor etc are all demanding act...	[ "In contrast to modern cranes, medieval cranes and hoists – much like their counterparts in Greece and Rome – were primarily capable of a vertical lift, and not used to move loads for a considerable distance horizontally as well. Accordingly, lifting work was organized at the workplace in a different way than today...
what mass an object should have so objects start orbiting it?	Any object that has mass has a gravitational field. You have a gravitational field. A feather has a gravitational field. Those fields are, however, extremely weak. You could in theory, have an object orbiting around you, but in order to do this you'd have to be very far from any larger gravitational fields (such as th...	[ "While the \"weight\" of an object varies in proportion to the strength of the gravitational field, its \"mass\" is constant, as long as no energy or matter is added to the object. For example, although a satellite in orbit (essentially a free-fall) is \"weightless\", it still retains its mass and inertia. Accordin...
why are all cells considered to be living structures?	The cells have all the traits we associate with living things. They eat food, they procreate etc. The cells in the human body isn't all that different from the cells of single cell organisms.	[ "Cellular components are the complex biomolecules and structures of which cells, and thus living organisms, are composed. Cells are the structural and functional units of life. The smallest organisms are single cells, while the largest organisms are assemblages of trillions of cells. DNA is found in nearly all livi...
what happens to people in colorado who were already convicted of marijuana - related offenses?	You serve the remainder of your sentence. The change in law does not make something retroactively legal.	[ "In April 2019, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot announced that individuals caught possessing misdemeanor amounts of cannabis would no longer be prosecuted for first-time offenses. Individuals who commit subsequent offenses would be offered diversionary courses to avoid a criminal conviction.\n", "In ...
this siphon water experiment	So you understand that it's a siphon. You could siphon between the two glasses if there was just a single tube. The bottle doesn't actually change anything - it could just as easily be a rubber hose connecting the two straws. When the water drops out of the bottle, it creates a vacuum, sucking water into the bottle ...	[ "BULLET::::- David James, a 28-year old graduate student in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, demonstrated his discovery of a solution made by combining one part polyethylene oxide to 199 parts of water that could cause water to flow upward, in what he described as a \"tubel...
what is the definition of life?	All known life has a few things in common, organisms (things that are alive) have these in common: they're composed of a cell or cells, undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, grow, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. There are a few things that seem to do a few but not all of these processes, like viruses, which is w...	[ "Although there is no universal agreement on the definition of life, scientists generally accept that the biological manifestation of life is characterized by organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli and reproduction. Life may also be said to be simply the characteristic state of organisms....
category theory.	First, let's start with a couple of examples of what math subjects are like. In Real Analysis, we start with some set of Real numbers and first we learn some stuff about them. After we know some of their properties, we then look at functions from real numbers to other real numbers, and we begin to ask questions about ...	[ "\"Category theory\" is a branch of mathematics that seeks to generalize all of mathematics in terms of categories, independent of what their objects and arrows represent. Virtually every branch of modern mathematics can be described in terms of categories, and doing so often reveals deep insights and similarities ...
what is/are the difference/s between the arabic, turkish and persian people?	Turks came from the Central Asian steppe as nomadic horsemen in late 1st/early 2nd millennium, taking over what had been the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman, Empire completely by the 15th century. The first Turks were Seljuk Turks; later came the Ottomans who created an empire that ruled much of the Middle East until WW1. ...	[ "Most of the original Persian words are still widely used in modern Turkish. In fact, there are over 1,500 Persian words in Turkish. However, for many of the Persian words (unlike Arabic words), there is no TDK-prescribed equivalent. TDK did not put as much effort into replacing Persian words as it did for Arabic w...
Would we really have made more scientific progress today if it where not for the decline of the roman empire and the dark ages?	For one, the Roman Empire was actually not a very innovative entity. There are a few pieces of advanced technology like concrete which would not be re-discovered until after the renaissance but for the most part the Empire was simply good at achieving the economy of scale through mass deployment of capital to accomplis...	[ "In summary, Rome contributed numerous advances in technology to the Ancient World. However, it is also viewed that \"the ancient world under the domination of Rome [in fact] reached a kind of climax in the technological field [as] many technologies had advanced as far as possible with the equipment then available\...
why are black holes not infinitely bright?	If the photon is permanently caught, it cannot make it to your eye.	[ "Black holes are difficult to find because they do not let out any light. They can be found when black holes suck in other stars. When black holes suck in other stars, the black hole lets out X-rays, which can be seen by telescopes.\n", "A black star with a radius slightly greater than the predicted event horizon...
How much does drinking a cold drink really affect your body temperature?	I'm an anesthesiologist. We monitor body temperature during surgery because anesthesia inhibits your ability to autoregulate temperature. Essentially you are turned into a poikilotherm like a snake, and lose heat to the cold operating room. An inability to contract your muscles prevents you from generating heat. We hav...	[ "Temperature is increased after eating or drinking anything with calories. Caloric restriction, as for a weight-loss diet, decreases overall body temperature. Drinking alcohol decreases the amount of daily change, slightly lowering daytime temperatures and noticeably raising nighttime temperatures.\n", "For peopl...
Is it possible to develop astigmatism over time?	My optometrist has informed me that in more serious cases of myopia, astigmatism usually develops. I myself are about -10 and -11 for myopia, and has astigmatism (although I forgot the axes figures). The cause of either disease has never been made clear to me, and I'd be interested to hear from a professional the reas...	[ "Herschel correctly considered astigmatism to be due to irregularity of the cornea and theorised that vision could be improved by the application of some animal jelly contained in a capsule of glass against the cornea. His views were published in an article entitled Light in 1828 and the \"Encyclopædia Metropolitan...
Can you recommend resources that can be used to teach the Enlightenment to high school students?	It depends on how far you wish to go with the ideas. The ideas of Francis Bacon certainly weren't new to Europe, and he really didn't have any breakthrough with science. He didn't make calculus or describe the motions of the stars. Roger Bacon said everything he did many years before; and even he was influenced by Midd...	[ "In \"Radical Enlightenment\", Jonathan Israel presents a history of the European Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries considering philosophical, political, and geographical complexity. The large-scale thesis of the work concerns the scope of the Enlightenment. The most traditional way of looki...
When hate crime laws are passed do they actually reduce the occurrence of that type of crime, or have virtually zero effect on the suspect's motivation to commit the crime?	I think it just affects the punishment mostly, which in turn would affect the occurrences. It's not only to deter hate crimes, but that a hate crime is punished differently and perceived differently. They've found that hate crimes, or biased crimes, affect the community a lot more that non-binary crimes because they...	[ "Hate crime laws (also known as \"bias crimes laws\") protect against crimes motivated by feelings of enmity against a protected class. Until 2009, a 1969 federal law defined hate crimes committed on the basis of a person's race, color, religion, or nation origin when engaging in a federally protected activity. In ...
I'm a young Macedonian man in the Hellenic period. Why would I follow Alexander the Great to the edge of the known world knowing that death was certain? What was life like for me during Alexander's conquests?	This is a great question and a fascinating one. It's always difficult to tell what the average person's life was like in antiquity. If you ever study Alexander's life in depth, you'll run into many unanswered questions and conflicting accounts. If a figure as famous as Alexander remains mired in ambiguity, imagine how ...	[ "On June 10, 323 BCE Alexander the Great died leaving behind a huge empire streching from Greece and Macedon in Europe to the Indus valley in India. His death left the Macedonians in a very difficult position. The ruthlessness of Philip and Alexander toward possible rivals had left the Empire without a clear and co...
how is my brain able to go into this zoned-out "auto-pilot" state while i'm driving, yet i get to my destination safety with no real recollection of the trip?	Psychologist here. This happens for essentially the same reason that you Can "zone out" while you're walking around, not stumbling or colliding with things. These tasks are called "steriotypic repetitious movements" and they are actually controlled by a different part of the brain after you've fully learned the skill! ...	[ "Self-driving cars are already exploring the difficulties of determining the intentions of pedestrians, bicyclists, and animals, and models of behavior must be programmed into driving algorithms. Human road users also have the challenge of determining the intentions of autonomous vehicles, where there is no driver ...
why isn't herbalife illegal company	Because it actually offers real products for sale whereas, pyramid schemes do not according to the US FTC (Federal Trade Commission). Therefore, it is categorized in the MLM (multi-level marketing) organizational category, which is a legal business and not a pyramid which is illegal. Also, MLMs make money by enrolling...	[ "The lawsuit alleged that Herbalife deceived consumers into believing they could earn substantial income from the business opportunity or big money from the retail sale of the company's products. In addition, the complaint charged that one of the fundamental principles of Herbalife's business model—incentivizing di...
How does the temperature of colder planets core relate to warmer planets core closer to closer to the sun?	The temperature of the core of a planet will depend on several factors: leftover heat from formation of the planet, heat generated through mechanisms like friction and radioactive decay, mass of the planet, ratio of mass to surface area, etc. So I don't fully understand what you're trying to ask, but mercury is small ...	[ "Even when taking surface heating from the star into account, many transiting hot Jupiters have a larger radius than expected. This could be caused by the interaction between atmospheric winds and the planet's magnetosphere creating an electric current through the planet that heats it up, causing it to expand. The ...
the difference between the german chancellor and the president of germany	The President is the head of state; the chancellor is the head of the government. The head of state refers to a largely ceremonial role -- that's the person who meets other countries' diplomats and royalty, attends non-policy-related diplomatic events, and ceremonially enacts laws by signing them (without the power to ...	[ "The Chancellor of Germany or ' (official German title which means \"Federal Chancellor\") is the title for the head of government in Germany. ' is the exclusively feminine form. In German politics, the ' position is equivalent to that of a prime minister and is elected by the ' (\"Federal Diet\", the directly elec...
why can't we live just off of sunlight energy?	Biologically? Even plants can't live off sunlight alone, and they sit around all day. They still need essential nutrients and water from the soil, despite the fact that they don't move. Cold-blooded animals (like reptiles) move little and do get some energy from UV light. That's why you might see lizards sitting under...	[ "The sun is the primary source of energy for living organisms. Some living organisms like plants need sunlight directly while other organisms like humans can acquire energy from the sun indirectly. There is however evidence that some bacteria can thrive in harsh environments like Antarctica as evidence by the blue-...
What are the factors affecting pressure in a pipe?	So is this like a high school (college) project? Flow rate you can easily measure using a bucket and a stop watch; just wait a certain amount of time (60 seconds or whatever), then weigh the water that you've collected (or determine its volume). Pressure, the two gauges will probably be fine. Maybe you could put the...	[ "In the pressure system, the air in the tube and the pneumatic are normally at atmospheric pressure. Depressing a key increases the pressure in the tube, inflating the pneumatic, which opens the pipe's valve.\n", "On the characteristic curve at the flow rates below ṁS provides lower pressure as seen in the fig. a...
the way i understand aging, is that cells make a slightly less perfect copy of its predecessor each time until its eventually “no good” and we just fall apart and die, if we could find a way to make cells reproduce or clone perfectly, would we be able to live forever?	That's just part of it. Aging is a complicated process with several factors at play. The ends of each chromsome, called telomeres, gets degraded progressively each time the cell divides. Eventually the degradation gets to the actual sequence you care about and the cell is no longer viable. This is a very basic biologic...	[ "Permanent cells are cells that are incapable of regeneration. These cells are considered to be terminally differentiated and non proliferative in postnatal life. This includes brain cells, neurons, heart cells, skeletal muscle cells, and red blood cells. Although these cells are considered permanent in that they n...
What impact does a tsunami have on ships at sea?	they wouldnt even notice it (they'd notice it, but not as a threat). a tsunami does not really "present" itself as a wave until the water depth is about < 1.3x the height of the wave itself. the drag on the bottom of the ocean slows the flow and the top moves ahead and creates the circulation we see. When you loo...	[ "A tsunami is an unusual form of wave caused by an infrequent powerful event such as an underwater earthquake or landslide, a meteorite impact, a volcanic eruption or a collapse of land into the sea. These events can temporarily lift or lower the surface of the sea in the affected area, usually by a few feet. The p...
is there a radio frequency camera?	Yes, a radiotelescope is such a device.	[ "A number of passive millimeter-wave cameras for concealed weapons detection operate at 94 GHz. A frequency around 77 GHz is used for automotive cruise control radar. The atmospheric radio window at 94 GHz is used for imaging millimeter-wave radar applications in astronomy, defense, and security applications. \n", ...
Can microbes ever become UV Resistant? Why or why not?	It’s very possible over time the microbes in question will evolve to be more UV-resilient by upregulating enzymes associated with repairing UV-induced damage (for example, base excision repair). But there’s a limit to even the most efficient repair mechanisms. UV intensity will eventually overwhelm the defenses. So, at...	[ "There is evidence that some bacterial lifeforms are able to overcome perchlorates and even live off them. However, the added effect of the high levels of UV reaching the surface of Mars breaks the molecular bonds, creating even more dangerous chemicals which in lab tests on Earth were shown to be more lethal to ba...
why college football schools needs that large stadiums (90k+ attendance)?	The supply (90,000+ capacity stadia) exists because the demand exists. Some universities lose money on their football programs, but the big name ones--Alabama, Florida, Southern Cal, Ohio State, Michigan, LSU, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma--make tons of money. Tickets sell out years in advance, for $100 per ticket in some c...	[ "Although the college game has a much larger margin for talent than its pro counterpart, the sheer number of fans following major colleges provides a financial equalizer for the game, with Division I programs — the highest level — playing in huge stadiums, six of which have seating capacity exceeding 100,000 people...
why do sound deviations from “normal sounds” like those used in horror movies and games cause a fear response in us?	Another factor not mentioned in the comments is that some music is different and dissonant on purpose, not fitting into the rhythm or the harmony of the normal music, making you feel a sense of unease. They feel different and wrong, like it doesn't belong there. This appears in classical music as well, but it's usually...	[ "Anempathetic sound in a film is the opposite of empathetic sound: it consists of music or sound effects that exhibit an indifference to the current tone, emotion, or plot-point of the film. This type of sound can thereby enhance a sense of tragic apathy and insignificance, as when a radio continues to play a happy...

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