id stringlengths 5 6 | input stringlengths 3 301 | output list | meta null |
|---|---|---|---|
8kxme6 | What population density could t-rex realistically have had? | [
{
"answer": "[Here's a paper from a time this was previously asked](_URL_1_). \n\nShort answer seems to be that they don't know. \n\nThere 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... | null |
1hvbyk | why do some people cry during sex? is it biological or psychological? both? are there performance or dysfunction related to crying during intercourse? | [
{
"answer": "If people do actually cry during sex, this would be difficult to explain to a five year old.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "do you know about *consent*?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Sex is very emotional to some people, but you're five, you don't need to worry ... | null |
1nbyhw | who owns the united states federal reserve? if it is the government, explain why we need to pay interest on the created money? | [
{
"answer": "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. \n\nWhy do we do it this way? Well, the Federal Reserve sets what's known as monetary policy (roughly, the polic... | null |
sodii | why fight to have student loans forgiven? | [
{
"answer": "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... | null |
1u3rv9 | why does it feel good to sleep in the fetal position decade after being in the womb? | [
{
"answer": "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.\n\nSource: 1 intro class of Psych last semester.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
... | null |
2kj389 | [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? | [
{
"answer": "2 things going on here. \n\n1. Leverage. The longer the moment arm you use (tennis bat) the more force you can exert on the ball. Ball goes further.\n\n2. 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... | null |
6fvmcj | feeling weak while having a cold. what causes that? | [
{
"answer": "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 ... | null |
628jaa | what causes photos of screens to look so bad? | [
{
"answer": "It's called the moire effect.\n\nCameras 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 p... | null |
4686ex | how does the conservation of mass and energy, and the expansion of the universe correlate/allow for the other? | [
{
"answer": "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.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "23885859",
... | null |
1t4hsz | Are there any examples of a unit or part of an army effectively going rogue and that started doing their own thing? | [
{
"answer": "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_)?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "594297",
"... | null |
28s8q6 | Rangers in history | [
{
"answer": "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. \n\nOne of the earliest expressions of what this sort of a... | null |
ayrbkw | When an animal is born with two fully functioning heads, how do their brains deliberate and balance control over the body? | [
{
"answer": "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",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{... | null |
dyyww0 | cocaine | [
{
"answer": "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 co... | null |
2nsj3u | why is it that mac operating systems rarely need to be updated yet windows seemingly needs to be updated every few days? | [
{
"answer": "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 Win... | null |
cms57p | Why are batteries arrays made with cylindrical batteries rather than square prisms so they can pack even better? | [
{
"answer": "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... | null |
5raunu | Were more artillery shells fired in WWII or WWI per capita? | [
{
"answer": "per capita what? Per artilleryman? Per frontline infantryman? Per European population?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "425334",
"title": "Canon de 75 modèle 1897",
"section": "Section::::World War I service.\... | null |
5fr7ox | what causes naturally "good" or "bad" memory retention in a person and why is there a difference? | [
{
"answer": "Since you're talking about memory retention, I'm going to skip over short-term memory, which naturally decays.\n\nTo 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... | null |
2qvrf5 | Why do we have primary colours? | [
{
"answer": " > Why can it be split up into distinct colours in a prism?\n\nWhen 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.\n\n > What makes these frequencies special over any of t... | null |
3kni3n | 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? | [
{
"answer": "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. \n\nMagic was almost always related to a rel... | null |
1luxq8 | how do they decide, during sports broadcasts that vary in length, which ads to play? | [
{
"answer": "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. \n\n",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "First of all as stated by the other person ad pla... | null |
bk6z5l | Did medieval knights lift? | [
{
"answer": "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. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe TL;DR is \"sort of\". They trained but primarily in a more functional sense. Weapons practice, horsemanship, hunting, exercises in armo... | null |
3jyrmd | what mass an object should have so objects start orbiting it? | [
{
"answer": "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.\n\nYou 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 gravitati... | null |
54vs81 | why are all cells considered to be living structures? | [
{
"answer": "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.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "... | null |
1ubluu | what happens to people in colorado who were already convicted of marijuana - related offenses? | [
{
"answer": "You serve the remainder of your sentence. The change in law does not make something retroactively legal.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Nothing. \n\nThey were convicted of a crime. That fact that it is legal now doesn't mean it was any more legal then. ",
"provenance": null
... | null |
9e1vxu | this siphon water experiment | [
{
"answer": "The force causing the movement of the water is pressure and gravity. \n\nwhen you suck on a straw, you are creating a low pressure area in your mouth, this causes whatever you are trying to drink to flow through that straw, because the air pressure on the surface of the liquid is pushing down on i... | null |
2h2tim | what is the definition of life? | [
{
"answer": "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, lik... | null |
pe9h9 | category theory. | [
{
"answer": "First, let's start with a couple of examples of what math subjects are like.\n\nIn 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 ... | null |
2lr27z | what is/are the difference/s between the arabic, turkish and persian people? | [
{
"answer": "All of them have a different language.\n\nArabic and Persians are very much oriental people, Turks are more \"western\".\n\nArabic and Persians ancestors always seems to be in the place they live now.Turkish people ancestors are from Middle Asia.\n\nYou can find more \"sub-races\" or basically race... | null |
3m8w7q | Would we really have made more scientific progress today if it where not for the decline of the roman empire and the dark ages? | [
{
"answer": "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... | null |
1iyf4t | why are black holes not infinitely bright? | [
{
"answer": "If the photon is permanently caught, it cannot make it to your eye.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I'll try to clarify what I think is the main point of confusion:\n\nPhotons are not bright in the sense that you can see one flying past you. The **only** way to see a photon is for... | null |
6xeuh3 | How much does drinking a cold drink really affect your body temperature? | [
{
"answer": "We can do a very(!) rough back of the envelope calculation.\n\nAssume a 100kg person (I like round numbers). Assume that they're all water, so we have 100 litres. Assume that they're at body temperature, so about 310 Kelvin.\n\nNow you drink 0.2 liters of ice cold water, 273 Kelvin.\n\nSince both a... | null |
h2lqn | Is it possible to develop astigmatism over time? | [
{
"answer": "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).\n\nThe cause of either disease has never been made clear to me, and I'd be interested to hear from ... | null |
mos2i | Can you recommend resources that can be used to teach the Enlightenment to high school students? | [
{
"answer": "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 w... | null |
4sgdae | 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? | [
{
"answer": "I think it just affects the punishment mostly, which in turn would affect the occurrences. \n\n 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-bin... | null |
1yddbe | 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? | [
{
"answer": "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 am... | null |
2vshz3 | 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? | [
{
"answer": "It's not something you need to focus on any more than you need to focus on walking. Your brain is good at internalizing things and deciding not to remember unimportant things, so you can usually split your focus while walking biking or driving because you've had so much experience doing it that you... | null |
6hnp9r | why isn't herbalife illegal company | [
{
"answer": "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.\n\nAlso, MLMs ... | null |
59fyyi | How does the temperature of colder planets core relate to warmer planets core closer to closer to the sun? | [
{
"answer": "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.\n\nSo I don't fully understand what you're trying to ask... | null |
3jqfjx | the difference between the german chancellor and the president of germany | [
{
"answer": "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 (... | null |
d7nap7 | why can't we live just off of sunlight energy? | [
{
"answer": "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.\n\nCold-blooded animals (like reptiles) move little and do get some energy from UV light. That's why you might se... | null |
4e1eow | What are the factors affecting pressure in a pipe? | [
{
"answer": "So is this like a high school (college) project? \n\nFlow 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).\n\nPressure, the two gauges will probably be fine... | null |
f2bhbh | 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? | [
{
"answer": "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 ... | null |
69emit | What impact does a tsunami have on ships at sea? | [
{
"answer": "they wouldnt even notice it (they'd notice it, but not as a threat). \n\na 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 circulat... | null |
ch7r9y | is there a radio frequency camera? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, a radiotelescope is such a device.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Yes, but the resolution is limited by the wavelength. Radio telescopes use multiple dishes and interferometry for increasing resolution, but they need to scan just like single dish telescopes. \n\n[Micro bolome... | null |
8tlxuy | Can microbes ever become UV Resistant? Why or why not? | [
{
"answer": "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... | null |
6sm2a8 | why college football schools needs that large stadiums (90k+ attendance)? | [
{
"answer": "Because each of those games brings in a ridiculous amount of money, and there aren't very many costs associated with the stadiums when they're not in use. They're mostly outdoors, so electricity usage is pretty low, and it's not like they have to pay the staff year-round.",
"provenance": null
... | null |
8e4cfj | why do sound deviations from “normal sounds” like those used in horror movies and games cause a fear response in us? | [
{
"answer": "Do you notice how they’re always minor?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I think i read an evolutional theory about this a long time ago. Something about sounds outside of normal background noise, especially high pitched ones, indicating a nearby predator. Sound from the predator it... | null |
6shlmz | the psychological reason people can still not believe an argument when presented with evidence. | [
{
"answer": "It's because one person's irrefutable evidence, is total bullshit to someone else. Evidence is subjective. When you say something is a fact, how often is it that you do not really know that for a fact. You are relying on \"studies\", \"statistics\", lots of things you don't really know to be true y... | null |
7op85x | why is seafood much more fragrant/smelly than land based animals? | [
{
"answer": "Trimethylamine oxide. It's odorless, but after you kill the fish bacteria break it down into ammonia. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "41758901",
"title": "Odorigui",
"section": "",
"start_paragraph_i... | null |
3gc1u6 | why does faraway smoke look like it's staying still? | [
{
"answer": "The same reason airplanes look very slow. A plane flying 400 mph looks like its crawling along because its so far away. Smoke rising a mile away is only going, I dunno, ten miles per hour, so it looks completely still because of the same principle.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I... | null |
1s2e95 | What are the earliest accounts of 'roleplaying'? I assume children always played pretend but what did adults have any kind of pseudo-D & D in the past? When did these hobbies start to become 'a thing', basically? | [
{
"answer": "Having asked my colleagues at #Twitterstorians, they suggested the following piece, which should answer your question.\n\n_URL_0_",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "War reenactment was an early sort of 'roleplaying', where people dress in the uniforms of armies and reenact battles\n\n... | null |
6ode2m | how do it departments handle frequent cyber attacks? | [
{
"answer": "Almost any publically accessible IP address is constantly bombarded by various attacks and scans. At home your router most likely protects you from a direct assault on your home computers by forbidding direct connections unless you've explicitly set up your router to allow it. \n\nSame is true in t... | null |
3aj7el | Does special relativity apply to circular velocity? | [
{
"answer": "I misread your question, there is not a time dilation effect between the Earth's pole and equator. While pure circular motion should induce such dilation, the special relativistic and general relativistic contributions cancel out because the Earth buldges from centrifugal effects. Here's a more det... | null |
7x15fv | shouldnt we burn a lot of calories when eating ice cream because our body works to raise the temperature of the ice cream? | [
{
"answer": "We do burn calories when eating cold food - it takes energy to keep the body warm, and to counteract the effects of cold food - but it doesn't take that to heat up a few scoops of ice cream, especially compared to the calories you take in by eating it.\n\nFor one thing, ice cream really isn't that ... | null |
1rlfaw | the moral and ethical implications of genetically modifying people | [
{
"answer": "Glad there are some people out there who care. In my undergraduate degree in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology there was no bioethics course taught. We spent only one lecture in my course on Proteins touching on this subject. The reality is that we are not far from a day where we will be able to s... | null |
392cds | why are untruthful political ads still protected under the first amendment while ads that lie about consumer products are not? | [
{
"answer": "Most political ads are misleading, not fraudulent. They are careful not to say things which are demonstratively and objectively untrue. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Well, both are protected by the First Amendment, just to varying degrees, and both only until they do--or rather,... | null |
2je13o | in the wolf of wall street, what did they do involving the steve madden stock that was illegal and how did it make them so much money? | [
{
"answer": "It was a \"pump and dump\" scheme. Buy up a company that is doing terribly, talk it up like it is doing wonderfully along with faking your income reports, then sell off some shares while everyone thinks it is hot stuff. Then vanish with your gains before people discover it was all smoke and mirrors... | null |
1su3td | why are some colour combinations painful to look at when placed alongside each other (eg. red and green?) | [
{
"answer": "_URL_0_\n\nThis kicks me right in the eye-nuts.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "40338786",
"title": "Matching colors",
"section": "",
"start_paragraph_id": 1,
"start_character": 0,
"en... | null |
31ixlh | how does a knife work on a molecular level? | [
{
"answer": "It doesn't. Knives work on the micrometer level, either tearing out tiny chunks of the material, like a saw, or forcing themselves into, and then forcing open, gaps in it, like a wedge.\n\nThose chunks that are torn out, or those gaps that are opened, are the size of hundreds of millions of molecul... | null |
1uc1xc | How did "...berg" and "...stein" become Jewish last name suffixes? It seems like they should be universal names for Eastern Europeans. | [
{
"answer": "Jewish names can be patronymic, matronymic , occupation or place names, or even chosen for their cadence! for example:\n\n**Patronymic**\nson or sohn, eg *Mendelssohn* - son (yiddish)\nwich or witz, eg *Stanowitz* -Son (slavic origin)\n**Matronymic and Craft**\nMan, eg *Goldman* - Gold from Golde,... | null |
2y51o6 | traditionally, why do conservatives support israel while liberals do not support israel? | [
{
"answer": "Both parties in the US support israel. At this moment, however, we've got political gamesmanship. The GOP invited a foreign leader to speak to Congress in an unprecedented move, because they want to undermine the POTUS and Sec. of State's negotiating power so that they have an election item to sqw... | null |
2bpzr8 | flat personal tax/consumption tax. | [
{
"answer": "A flat tax is inherently regressive, and puts more of a burden on the people who can least afford it.\n\nA consumption tax is even worse, because the people who can most afford to be taxed also spend the lowest percentage of their income on essentials.\n\nA progressive income tax solves these probl... | null |
5ekwie | why is audio/voice quality so bad between crucial communication lines (soldiers/police/pilots etc.) | [
{
"answer": "Oftentimes the audio quality is fine, but when they record it, they use a very low bitrate, which makes it sound junky. They do that to save space, obviously. And for 99.99999% of the time, that recording is archived and never heard again, so it makes sense to save as much room as possible.",
... | null |
24dgze | what is a high functioning alcoholic and what is the problem with that? | [
{
"answer": "(1) They are doing a lot of damage to their liver and physical health in general - which is entirely their choice and right.\n(2) They may have underlying psychological issues which they are very good at masking, but may turn out to be a problem in the long-term (e.g. PTSD)\n(3) They may not be a H... | null |
49q2ua | what causes that feeling a split second before your realize you're about to have a very big accident? | [
{
"answer": "Its your fight or flight response.\n\nWhen you sense that you are in danger, your body releases a bunch of chemicals that prepare you to either fight the threat or run away from it. Your get more alert, stronger, faster and more coordinated to facilitate either action.",
"provenance": null
}... | null |
22axk7 | why is air less dense at higher altitudes? | [
{
"answer": "Imagine you stacked 100 cardboard boxes on top of each other. The one on the bottom would be crushed due to the weight of the other boxes on top of it. It being compressed would cause it to become denser than the other boxes above it. \n\nReplace the cardboard boxes with air and magnify the effect.... | null |
5xq62n | Why does North Korea have such few allies? | [
{
"answer": "North and South Korea both claim to be the one true Korea with the other one being an illegitimate government. Historically, both sides have legitimate claims with Pyongyang and Kaeseong both being major capital cities of former dynasties during Korea's 5000 year history.\n\nAfter the Korean War, b... | null |
2mbrvd | Can there be an object of sufficient mass that light would orbit the object due to gravitional lensing? | [
{
"answer": "Yes. If an object with mass M has a radius less than 3GM/c^(2), [light can circle entirely around the object](_URL_0_). The density required for this is pretty extreme; it's limited mostly to black holes.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wik... | null |
5nas3e | Why do European monarchs almost always have adjectives applied to their names? (i.e. Louis "the Pious" of France) | [
{
"answer": "For both Louis the Pious and his son Charles the Bald, these were both names by which they were known during their lifetimes. As for Charles' opinions on his nickname, we've no record of how he felt about it, but he might well have like it and found it funny, since it's possible that it was ironic,... | null |
5ggx16 | why does american culture put so much emphasis on "moving out of the house" and being independent from one's family, when other cultures (e.g. asian and spanish) live with their extended family under the same roof throughout their lifetimes? | [
{
"answer": "In this culture, It is viewed as \"the bird leaving the nest\". In a sense it reflects on the parents and how well they did preparing their children for the world. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Being self sufficient is a major part of they American Mythos and cultural identity. ... | null |
3ce0ew | how comic distribution works? | [
{
"answer": "Most American comics are produced on a monthly basis, about 22 pages per month. These comics are published by a publisher (DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Etc.) and then distributed by a company called Diamond, who pretty much have a monopoly on comic distribution. These individual issues are pretty much o... | null |
at3p9k | what causes the urge to move around after hurting yourself? | [
{
"answer": "You gotta run the pain off. For real, in the wild, if you get hurt, there's probably someone or something that hurt you and your body wants to get away from them asap so you don't sustain any more injuries. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
... | null |
8gw1g2 | When the mars rover went to mars were they able to remove all bacteria and small life from it? If not could any of the bacteria be able to live in the harsh conditions of mars? And how do they obtain soil samples looking for bacteria if it could possibly be from the rover itself? | [
{
"answer": "Anything that is sent to Mars is thoroughly inspected, cleaned, and sanitized {[_URL_1_](https://_URL_1_/msl/mission/technology/insituexploration/planetaryprotection/)}. There are some microorganisms that can still survive a trip to Mars, such as a well-known [Tardigrade (Wiki)](_URL_0_). That's th... | null |
2lirdu | how is it the island of java can support it's 140+ million people in area the size of north carolina? | [
{
"answer": "by depending on trade for food and other resources, and coping up with less personal space. there's still some farms and forests, but yeah its hard to get away from other people.\n\nthe total north carolina population is about 10 million? heck, Jakarta (the largest city in Java) alone has 20 millio... | null |
5gl112 | Treatment of French colonies | [
{
"answer": "Hey there, AskHistorians allows homework questions, but other people can't do the work for you - for the way HW questions are treated on here see [the rules](_URL_0_) and [this roundtable discussion](_URL_1_). To boil it down, you have to show that you've done some work yourself and specify the que... | null |
64b3r5 | why is chemotherapy used the way it is? | [
{
"answer": "I think that is what radiotherapy is. Radiotherapy focuses on one spot but chemo kills cancer cells which are trying to spread. I could be wrong tho.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Chemo attempts to stop cells from dividing. Ideally the cells that stop dividing are targeted (hence... | null |
3iho7w | Where does the church's money come from? | [
{
"answer": "This goes well within the 20 year rule, you may want to ask this on a religious oriented sub, such as /r/Catholicism or /r/Christianity.\n\nAs an aside, the church can have jobs outside just being a priest. I know my local pastor is also a successful doctor, and a local brotherhood prints and publi... | null |
6dp3y9 | what causes the cloud rings to form around and above a nuclear or thermonuclear bomb? | [
{
"answer": "The immense force of the blast creates a wave of high pressure in the air, traveling outwards from the centre.\n\nFollowing this high pressure is an area of extreme low pressure, this low pressure causes a drastic temperature drop.\n\nDropping temperature results in water in the air condensing, cau... | null |
1nreak | How did "x" become the conventional, go-to variable? | [
{
"answer": " > You'll find details on this point (and precise references) in Cajori's History mathematical notations, 340. He credits Descartes in his La Géometrie for the introduction of x, y and z (and more generally, usefully and interestingly, for the use of the first letters of the alphabet for known qua... | null |
qr5s2 | Question about tooth decay and evolution. | [
{
"answer": "Yes, we got cavities. Go google image some pics of old skulls.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I don't have the study in front of me, but I remember learning in college that the native Ohio river valley people had a much lower incidence of cavities during their lives as hunter-gath... | null |
2qjyz2 | (Math) Do we know everything there is to know about math? Or are there new discoveries being made in mathematics? | [
{
"answer": "No, we don't know everything there is to know.\n\nOne good way of getting a quick view of recent advancements in mathematics is to read the list of winners of the [Fields Medal](_URL_1_) and the [Abel Prize](_URL_4_), paying attention to the citations. In general, though, recent advancements in mat... | null |
fqn0o | Does every neuron contain every neurotransmitter? | [
{
"answer": "I can answer the following question: \"Does every neuron have the genetic capability to *create* every neurotransmitter?\" **Yes** (short answer). The two main excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters are glutamate and GABA, which are both derived from Amino acids. In fact, almost all neurotrans... | null |
9m0xgn | Would a plant/crop grow faster if it had artificial sunlight and perfect conditions all the time? | [
{
"answer": "It is not so much 'growing faster' but 'just growing with minimum light'. \n\nA(not very satisfactory) explanation is [airmass](_URL_0_), if a plant grows during spring in the Nordic countries with (due to airmass) only 15% of available light, then on the same area in Southern countries you ha... | null |
g3pjxv | what does hormones actually do to our brains, how it makes us think, and if we extract all the hormone and hormone producing glands will the person be dead or lose his ability to think and feel? | [
{
"answer": "Hormones is a functional name for dozens of chemicals that serve as messengers between organs, and mediate physiological processes. They basically change what cells/tissues/organs do by changing the chemical environment in which said cells are. If you removed all glands, yes a person would die, pro... | null |
apx17e | could an organism living in the ocean at a pressure of 5 tons/in^2 survive a hit from a sledge hammer? | [
{
"answer": "It would die. Constant even pressure from all sides is not the same as non-uniform pressure hitting you from one direction, which would splatter the poor thing in the other direction.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "You have to remember that organisms living at the bottom of the oc... | null |
31xmlg | how do united states defence contractors make money when they are not needed? | [
{
"answer": "Many still have personnel overseas re-building infrastructure, training foreign and US troops, and cleaning up everything afterwards. Weapons and equipment are still used and destroyed in training (things wear out or break), even in peace time. Some of them sell to foreign governments. A few do env... | null |
2s981m | Is there a 4 dimensional analog to a sphere like a tesseract is for a cube? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, the sphere *S*^(3), which is the *three-dimensional* sphere (embedded in Euclidean four-dimensional space), is the set of points (*x**_1_*, *x**_2_*, *x**_3_*, *x**_4_*) such that\n\n*x**_1_*^2 + *x**_2_*^2 + *x**_3_*^2 + *x**_4_*^2 = 1\n\nSimilarly for higher number of dimensions.",
"prov... | null |
t1u3v | As an international programmer, how do you deal with using computer science in languages from different countries? | [
{
"answer": "I am an American working for a Japanese astronomical observatory in Hawaii.\n\nAll code is in English (mostly C, Python, Java, some C++ and some Objective C). Documentation around the code may be in english or japanese. Stand-alone documentation is often in japanese only (depending on the author)... | null |
317u8h | What would a gas giant look like from within? | [
{
"answer": "\"About 500 kilometers over the dense cloud cover, we enter Jupiter’s troposphere, and keep diving. This “haze” area is filled with all kinds of odd compounds, most interestingly hydrazine and the increasingly important polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons created by UV-blasting of methane that circula... | null |
45sbv3 | are the black panthers a racist hate group? | [
{
"answer": "That's gonna be a touchy subject and one just asking for a Reddit War. However, here is the wiki on them _URL_0_ and you make your own conclusions. Remember that when they were active it was a very different time for African Americans and they were quick to be demonized. For the record, I have no o... | null |
l2jh9 | nominalism | [
{
"answer": "4 upvotes and no comments, wtf?!?!?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "4 upvotes and no comments, wtf?!?!?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "21176",
"title": "Nominalism",
"section": "Section::::V... | null |
ngcdz | Is it correct (Scientifically) to refer to Humans as Omnivores? | [
{
"answer": "We are omnivores by design, even if we arent all by habit. Same way that someone with backwards sleep habits would not put our status as diurnal as any different.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Evolutionarily speaking, we are omnivores. Biochemically, we have the means of obtaini... | null |
6mm2ny | What are these straight line formations in the middle of Australia and what caused them? | [
{
"answer": "**EDIT:** It appears, as pointed out by /u/eliminate1337, these are related to linear dunes in the Simpson Desert [(e.g. this paper discussing the formation and migration of said dunes)](_URL_1_). I've (1) seen so many similar questions about 'weird straight rivers' in various subs and (2) encounte... | null |
1me92i | what exactly is a time share? | [
{
"answer": "It's partial ownership in a property. In a simple example, you and 25 other people would get together to buy something very expensive, like a condo that would cost millions of dollars. Then you all agree to each spend two weeks per year in the condo.\n\nThe problem with timeshares is they are almos... | null |
1lhg87 | If dreams are memory solidification processes; What are nightmares? | [
{
"answer": " > From what I understand, dreams are the loose association process needed for short term memory from the day to turn into long term memory.\n\nThis is not known to be true. Right now, we don't know what dreams are, nor what is the benefit in having them, if any.\n\nWe know that there are a number... | null |
2gomha | How often do electrons move energy levels? | [
{
"answer": "This is actually quite complicated. In short, it depends on the specific atom and how its electronic structure is. It is not possible to further understand this from Bohr's model which just considers the different energy levels n=1,2,3... as you described it.\n\nTo go into a little more detail: If ... | null |
4w5ev1 | in the restaurant industry, why do prices increase from breakfast through lunch and into dinner? | [
{
"answer": "I'm not sure about breakfast, but my first guess would be that most breakfast ingredients are cheaper. \nAs for lunch to dinner, the basic answer is portion sizes. Even ordering the exact same entree, if you order from the lunch menu, your potion will be smaller than if you order during dinner hour... | null |
5ync4i | how is exercise an anti-inflammatory? | [
{
"answer": "Think of inflammation as coming in two different flavors. \n\nAcute inflammation is temporary and strong. It breaks down your body in a temporary way and when your body is done repairing itself, you just made it stronger and better than it was before.\n\nChronic inflammation is a different beast. I... | null |
n52ae | What is going on inside a battery to establish the potential difference that causes electric current to flow? | [
{
"answer": "The difference in potential for molecules to donate/receive electrons. Some molecules are great proton donors, while others are great proton acceptors. When put in two different cells bridged by a salt bridge, the electrons will flow from the Anode (-), to the Cathode (+) end.",
"provenance": n... | null |
1a9uld | What causes the dark coloration around anuses? Poop? Friction? Is it just the same process that darkens genitals and nipples in puberty? | [
{
"answer": "Similar threads - [1](_URL_0_), [2](_URL_1_)",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "439380",
"title": "Flushing (physiology)",
"section": "Section::::Causes.:Sex flush.\n",
"start_paragraph_id": 53,
... | null |
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