query_id
stringlengths 3
6
| question
stringlengths 1
299
| goldenAnswer
stringlengths 3
35k
| doc_id
stringlengths 36
36
|
|---|---|---|---|
cej5tz | Why do people vomit due to radiation? | Vomiting and diarrhoea are the body's reaction to poisoning, to void any toxin remaining in the digestive system before it is absorbed. Evolution has never been in a position to develop a specific mechanism to cope with radiation and the damage it does is interpreted as poisoning, hence that response. | 3cb705ab-927f-4468-9ef1-af0ac399ead3 |
cejhqx | How does credit card fraud work exactly? | I don’t know how it works where you live, but here in Brazil there are people that install a device at ATM machines at places with few people around and that device copy all data.... after they use it into a “clean” card. It’s a pro job, i think. Here we use chip and password and even though they can clone it! 😰 | 9bdf2a3f-2c12-4f23-a57b-98e4a6a50a35 |
cejt4r | Why is it that when you put your ear up to a seashell/plumbing pipe/anything circular, you can "hear the ocean"? | It mostly is **not the sound of blood flow** in your ears. It is ambient sound bouncing around inside the cavity before reaching your ear.
But don't just take my word for it, go get a cup right now and listen into it from an inch or so away. Hear that rushing sound? Now press the cup to the side of your head around your ear, blocking as much access to the outside as possible. Notice how it goes almost completely silent? Obviously blood is still flowing in your ear but that wasn't what you were listening to.
Blood can be heard if all outside sound is blocked, but that isn't what people hear in seashells. | c4b8d720-7bb0-4d12-b5e0-ebea4bb3b903 |
cejye6 | Are there any elements besides Uranium and Plutonium capable of creating a thermonuclear explosion? | Uranium and plutonium are not able to create thermonuclear explosion, they are only able to create nuclear explosion. Nuclear explosion mean fission energy, while thermonuclear mean fusion energy. Uranium and plutonium are used as a source of fission energy to force the fusion of hydrogen and that's this fusion of hydrogen that create thermonuclear explosion. In the Sun there is enough pressure to create thermonuclear explosion without any uranium or plutionium. Hydrogen alone is needed if you have enough mass.
& #x200B;
But you probably mean nuclear explosion and in that case you have two type of material that can do that. Fissile material can create nuclear explosion directly by absorbing a neutron, while fertible material can only create nuclear explosion indirectly. By that I mean that absorbing a neutron will transform them into fissile material and if they absorb a neutron again, they will create a nuclear reaction.
Fissile material include : Uranium, Plutonium, Radium, Curium, Californium, Actinium, Berkelium, Thorium, Neptunium and Protactinium. Important to know, only specific isotope of those element are fissile. So for them exmple Thorium239 is fissile, but Thorium232 (which is the Thorium we most often hear about) is not fissile, but is fertile.
& #x200B;
Fertile material include : Thorium, Uranium, Plutonium and Americanium.
& #x200B;
Keep in mind that even if there is 10 fissile elements, most of them can only be artificially created, which is super costly or they are highly radiactive, meaning they decay too fast to be of any use. The reason why Uranium and Plutonium are the only one you heard of is because Uranium235 if fissible and Uranium238 is fertile and will transform into Plutonium 239 which is fissile and both U235 and U238 are found in nature, so they are by far the easiest material to use. Anything else would be vastly more costly and harder to get. | de4e14ed-ccb4-442b-b687-052675f15da1 |
cejzmc | what is happening when the computer loading bar takes way longer to complete the final 1% during the installation process. | Generally, a progress bar doesn't work how you think it does (and each different bar may be measuring different things).
& #x200B;
Generally the ones that stick at the last 1% are cleaning up whatever was downloaded. When you are downloading something to C:\\ it's probably downloading to a temporary directory somewhere (like Temporary Internet Files or c:\\temp). When it finishes, the last step is to move it to the place you wanted it to go in the first place. That last 1% is the time it takes to move it and close the connection.
& #x200B;
Some progress bars are based on number of items, and not amounts of data. So if you're moving 2 files, the first file is 1 MByte, and the second file is 1 TByte, when it finishes that first file, it will move to 50% because it has completed 50% of the files, even though it's not 50% of the data to be moved. | 8b5d86e3-9a91-4eec-a079-d9099b24573d |
cek1mm | how can documentaries show illegal activity without any repercussions? | Half of it is probably staged. Most people have no idea how such things truly work and will accept any story that sounds reasonable enough to them. Hell, there's countless series out there that are entirely and obviously staged and people still watch it.
If it is genuine there's the freedom of press. Journalists in most countries have the right and obligation to keep their sources secret. | 74d09f03-a6d3-4961-8d74-4047fdac8658 |
cek73i | How does long exposure to the sun cause our skin to burn and/or tan? | The sun's Ultraviolet radiation (which we can't see) damages our skin. If you are exposed to too much of it, you get a sun burn, which is not a burn in the "I touched something hot" sense, but as in a radiation burn.
& #x200B;
Our skin will try to protect itself by creating melanin (which is dark in color). This helps absorb some of the radiation, but not all of it (people with very dark skin can still be sunburned). | 9d97246c-bd31-40f2-8724-80d00c825831 |
cek88l | Why does in general foods taste better warm and drinks taste better cold? | I would contest this. So, actually, things don’t taste better or worse hot or cold, they in fact taste LESS. Human tongues aren’t as capable of tasting at temperatures to far below or above room temp. That’s why wine snobs say wine should be room temp (actually cellar temperature which is just below room temp, but basically the same) because it allows us to fully taste. I would wager drinks “taste” better cold because, when you’re hot, cold liquids are refreshing and that feeling of being refreshed translates to a pleasurable experience which you associate as tasting good. The same thing with food. Often, hot food means SAFE food because that is how we remove bacteria and other harmful microbes from food, we cook it. I guarantee there is more flavor in a slightly warm bowl of soup than a piping hot bowl. If you don’t prefer the taste when it’s room temp, you either don’t truly like the taste or you just really associate positive feelings with the soup being hot (nostalgia from being a kid and getting a hot bowl of soup when sick, being dog tired from playing out in the summer sun and coming in to a cold soda that feels like heaven, etc...) | cac364c3-9d69-45b9-b137-376c3f59460a |
cekegg | How the names of countries are translated to other languages. How is their pronounciation determined, why are they often completely unrelated to the native name? Example - Deutschland is Germany in english. | Names for countries are not always directly translated from other languages.
People from other parts of Europe knew about the people inhabiting the area, that would one day become Germany, long before anyone was making any concerted effort to translate the German language in order to know what they called themselves.
In the case for Germany, the English word comes from the Latin word for the barbarian inhabited area to the north east of Gaul. This etymology is shared with Russian, Italian, Greek, Romanian, Albanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. Their words for Germany come from the Latin name of Germania thanks to Roman influence.
In France, Spain and Portugal, their name for Germany comes from the old word Alemanni which was a confederation of Germanic tribes in the Roman times.
The Slavic word for Germany is derived from the Proto-slavic word meaning "people who can't speak" obviously referring to the fact that they couldn't understand the proto-germans.
The word for Germany in Germany, the low countries and the nordic countries comes from the proto german word for "land of our people" because it is where they lived.
_URL_0_ | fadd74bd-02c3-4e19-a906-c0e2db71bbf9 |
cekg9w | Why are Andromeda and milkyway colliding? How common is it for galaxies to collide and what are implications of the collision? Lastly, since our universe is ever expanding isn't it the case for galaxies to move away from each other rather than colliding? | > Why
Because they are very close to each other, and are attracted by the gravity of the other.
> How common are they
Very. Most galaxies are in groups and clusters. Galaxies thus tend to have a lot of neighbors in close proximity, which increases the collision rate.
> What are the implications
Not all that much. The night sky becomes brighter as the swirling mass of stars dance about trying to find a new status quo. Eventually the cores merge and the galaxies settle in to a comfortable rhythm and starts its life as a single, larger galaxy.
> Expansion
Generally yes-ish. However expansion is really slow for most galactic scales. Galaxies inside clusters have stronger attraction than expansion can overcome. Clusters themselves might be far enough apart however, but even they try their best to get closer to other nearby clusters. | dbd590f2-4100-4383-9e75-e0804dc5355b |
cekht5 | What are the applications of studying the fourth dimension? | Mathematicians don't study real world in any capacity really.
Math is about studying ideas and how they connect to each other. Ideas can be about anything. If you apply ideas to real world, you then get applied mathematics or other fields of science like physics. It's a bit hard to tell what field you're studying if your idea is deeply tied to the real world but you want to study that idea in particular. Applied mathematics is sometimes used to describe this. Anyway, ideas can relate to real world, but unless stated otherwise, mathematicians don't care about that connection.
Theory of relativity views the world as 4-dimensional. Some computer graphics depend on 4d objects as they kinda use 4d to simplify 3d. Also there's a lot of stuff being done in even higher dimensions, like, many times with computer science you end up having to do things in a million-dimensional space or something.
Now, I'm no expert, but my take on this is that while 4d is somewhat useful, the real reason mathematicians tend to like it is that it has some weird properties that other dimensions numbers don't have. Like, there are lots of things that hold for 1d, 2d, 3d and 4d worlds, but don't hold from 5d onwards. Some things only hold for 4d worlds. So it seems curious. Like, 5d and onwards, dimensions kinda blur together and don't seem to have their own individual quirks, like, 1000-dimensional space and 1001-dimensional space? It's hard to even notice the difference. But 4d is really clearly unique, it has bunch of things that make it clear it's its own thing. So mathematicians are like, well, this 4d seems like an interesting thing with lots of personality, I want to know it better!
So you end up having computer scientists and such use bazillion-dimensional spaces and be totally unfazed because bazillion-dimensional space is pretty much the same as bazillion+1 dimensional space, who even keeps count, but with 4d specifically, it has personality! You couldn't just replace it with 5d or 3d space and not notice, its clearly its own thing. So that sets it apart from most other dimension numbers. 4 is not just one number among many, you're really trying to get to know it.
And this makes 4d really popular target for recreational mathematics. | b0a6c556-b981-4972-b3b5-17e80d8a5ae6 |
cekus4 | If I suspend a weight in the center of a lateral string and the string is anchored on both sides to a solid structure. Is the total weight felt in full on either side or is the weight distribution halved for each side? | Neither. Each string will have a greater force as a function of the string angle from horizontal. Perfectly horizontal strings would have theoretically infinite force, while a string hanging straight down with the weight at the bottom would have the force of the weight of the object.
This is why when you wrap objects for lifting you want to have a lot of slop on the tie rope.
Trigonometry.
In simple terms the weight pulls down and you need a counteracting force pulling straight up but the strings aren't straight up so it's actually a larger force required because it's not lined up with the force of the weight. | b90ebb6e-6412-46e5-be2a-f5ac0cff7f80 |
cekxri | What makes us feel full? Is it the caloric value of the food? Or the amount of fat? Or the overall volume? Or a combination of things? | It's certainly a combination of things, but scientist aren't exactly sure what the mix of things is.
We know for a fact that foods with high quantities of certain components, such as protein, fiber and water tend to keep us fuller for longer then those with only fat, which does a very poor job of making us feel full.
We also know that the stomach communicates with the brain to indicate whether it is expanded or contracted, which signals fullness or emptiness respectively.
But part of why it's so poorly understood is due to the fact that there are so many variables at play. For example, the temperature of food, social setting you are in and level of fatigue all affect how full or unsatisfied you feel, although at first glace it seems that none of these things should have any impact since the nutrients in the food should be the same.
But perhaps the wackiest thing that I've heard about this is that the bacteria in your gut can make you crave particular foods that they find nutritious. So weird!
Hope this helps! | f5e5dd95-05fc-4df9-8ce5-ec24fd5b4b3b |
cel11a | Why are animals that are much stronger, faster and can easily kill us afraid of us? | Two reasons.
First reason is that animals will tend to avoid conflict at all cost. Attacking anything carries a certain level of risk, and that risk can end up killing the animal. Breaking a bone for example, is pretty much a death sentence. Especially if you are a predator and require a significant caloric intake.
The second reason is that humans are pack animals. For the past thousands of years humans would hunt in groups, so seeing one human could actually mean several humans are hunting you. | 2ef15ea8-d777-4124-afe4-4aa917a32492 |
cel267 | If you're short-sighted when you're young but gradually become long-sighted when you age, is there actually a point where you have perfect vision? | Are you talking about how old people need reading glasses?
That’s not because you’ve become far-sighted. It’s because the muscle that control the lens in your eyes weaken, and it happens to pretty much everyone.
If that’s what you’re talking about, the answer is no. They just get bad at both near and far sight. | c6c4260e-4d36-43c8-aa6a-20cc66eae22b |
celin6 | How do these "illegal, offshore holding accounts" work and why are they beneficial to the super-rich? | The biggest benefit is the Us government doesn’t have access to many, so they don’t know how much is held there and is unable to tax the money. So the rich can save money on taxes.
Also this money can be legally had or ill-gotten. The banks don’t really care. They make money on the money they are holding, so they don’t really care where it came from as long as it doesn’t cause them issues. | a2c5013b-0162-4b0c-9e0d-83243540bbb8 |
celx27 | How did we go from lifeless atoms to animate singe cell “life” | Calls for speculation, try r/askscience for the latest theories | dc6396b8-2da9-4304-a383-b700f4797643 |
cem2za | how do we know the structures of molecules and how is it figured out? | It depends on what type of structures you mean. If you care about the energy structure, it can be calculated from first principles (you use the Schrodinger equation and a lot of math). If it's a simple molecule this can also give you the physical locations of the electron orbitals and the physical layout of the molecule.
If you want to find the structure by "looking" at the molecule you can use something like x-ray crystallography. This works by shooting x-rays at a very pure sample of the substance and looking at where the x-rays come out of the other side. The x-rays interact with the electrons in the molecule in a very predictable way, so you can look at where the x-rays landed after they passed through and get a very accurate map of where the electrons are. Add this to your knowledge of what atoms are in the molecule and you can get a computer generated image of the molecule with very precise measurements of how long the bonds are and at what angles. | 353d2e34-a6c1-4798-bd57-441a809f4b65 |
cem30v | How do fat burner pills work? | That question is impossible to answer because there is no standing "fat burner pill." Anyone can call whatever they want that. And they don't have to prove that any of them work.
So in summary, there is no way to know what they contain (and like all supplement aren't regulated and may not contain what the ingredients list says it does) and if they work at all, there's no way of knowing. | 79e2f9ad-9ea5-4e9a-bd1c-e009eb9a2a42 |
cemefx | How do chess sites detect cheating? | _URL_0_ has some sort of "advanced algorithm" that they refuse to release. To me, this proves that the decision is highly subjective.
That said...Basically the moves of a player are run against an engine and if they match too closely for too long a period of time, it becomes progressively more likely that the player is cheating with an engine.
I was part of an experiment with the creator and owner of _URL_1_ a few years ago. I was given a bunch of top level correspondence games and a bunch of games from banned _URL_2_ cheaters and was unable to differentiate the games with any statistically significant accuracy. To make this scientific I'd have to have access to _URL_2_'s methodology, but it was enough to convince me that cheating detection is highly inaccurate. | 9675371b-83de-4636-ad11-b4a38f93f6f2 |
cemhl3 | How does the https transfer the key to decrypt the data without compromising the contents of said data? | If data could be encrypted with a paint colour, then...
If I wanted to send you encrypted data, first I would send you some random colour paint.
Next, you and I would independently choose a second secret random colour paint (both different) and mix it with the first colour I just sent you. We would come up with two new colours.
We then send each other our new paint colours, and mix in our own second secret random colour with each other's new colour. The result is that we both come up with the same final colour (the final colour each being a total mix of the three colours: the original, your secret colour, and my secret colour).
I can now use this final colour to encrypt the data, knowing that you will have independently come up with the exact same colour.
If someone else were watching us send these colours, they would get the first colour and the third pair of colours that were produced, but it would be very difficult for them to figure out what each of our secret colours were; it would be difficult for them to un-mix the third colour back to the first colour and whatever secret colour we each chose, so they would not be able to produce their own final colour.
HTTPS uses mathematics that have similar properties, easy to compute one way, difficult to reverse. | 59a864bc-f7f5-4131-a496-9c7e7a79dc4a |
cemhll | how do climbing vines find structures or trees to climb up? | Wisteria grow towards dark, so they'll grow from sunny to the shade provided by a tree. When they touch climbable surfaces they climb them. (Before we trained it properly, our wisteria would grow down our entryway and climb our front door.) English ivy just grows; it's happy spreading all over the ground. It only reproduces when it's found something to climb. | 58c6c82f-4d75-4c48-810f-5bfb40b0ba03 |
cemkc2 | What are the advantages (and disadvantages) of animals having larger males vs larger females? | It varies from species to species really. With lions, a single male keeps a pride of females and he is the only one to mate with them. Male lions grow very big because they are essentially brawlers. When a male lion wants to mate, he'll have to fight and beat a pride leader to take over his pride. If a male lion has a pride, he'll have to defend it from all other male lions. So they evolved to be very large for these fights.
The deep sea is a very dark and lonely place. There is very little nutrition down there so animals tend to be spread out over a vast cold pitch black desert. It can be difficult to find a partner to mate with down there. Angler fish solved this problem by having large females and tiny males. When a male actually finds a female, he bites her to hold on. Over time, the male fuses with the female and obtains it's nutrition from her bloodstream. Eventually the male shrivels until he's hardly more than a pair of testicles hanging from the female to provide her with sperm when needed. That way the female never has to go looking for a mate again.
In many bird species, males are brightly coloured while females are drab shades of brown. The male needs to show off his fitness by demonstrating that he can produce glorious plumage and still survive while being so conspicuous. The female on the other hand needs to sit on her nest and brood on her eggs, she needs to be small and well camouflaged.
In many invertebrate species like spiders, the females are larger to be able to better handle the physical demands of producing hundreds or even thousands of eggs.
Anyway as you can see, there is no single reason why males or females grow larger. | 8c8b370f-37e6-4522-93b5-236fbc64034e |
cemnfp | Why does the urge to pee become stronger in front of a toilet? | A condition known as [Latchkey Incontinence. ](_URL_0_)
> Two words: “Latchkey incontinence.” No joke, it was the actual terminology used in an actual study of patients with overactive bladders. The study’s researchers defined it as “a loss of urine that occurs when one arrives home and puts the key in the lock of one’s front door.” “Latchkey incontinence” also entails the need to go even when you don’t actually expel piss dribbles.
Basically, our brains associate our homes with our toilets, and our toilets with the need to tinkle. This is why, even when already at home, a simple stroll into the bathroom to grab a Q-Tip or tweezers can turn into a urination red alert. | df828be4-e1aa-4639-b04b-b678f2ebe1eb |
cemp9i | How antennas receive signals | The metal car does also "receive" the signal, and you could in theory detect the signal on it, but because its geometry and electromagnetic properties aren't tuned to the types of electromagnetic radiation that makes up the signal, it will be very difficult to get the useful information from the received signal as most of it will have been lost through attenuation or non-existent as the metal chassis wasn't being affected by the signal precisely enough to pick it up in the first place, among other challenges. | 77d80e16-954c-42bc-9ee0-44432c02c593 |
cemuhy | Why does our body cringe when we remember something embarrassing? | So, here's what's fun. Whenever we experience something emotionally significant, it gets "bathed" in hormones that strengthen our memory of that event.
This is fantastic for fun memories of playing in the mud, baking cookies with Grandma, first kisses, weddings, babies. etc. But our brains don't differentiate.
If something really insignificant happens- but we have a strong emotional response to it- our brains still act accordingly. The hormonal "bath" strengthens the memory, making it easier to recall. This is part of the reason why we're so good at remembering embarrassing events, awesome moments, harsh break-ups, etc. They're all emotional, and they've all been reinforced by our brains' recall mechanisms.
It's not always terribly helpful for modern times, but you can imagine how effective it would be for our ancestors. "OH SHIT, I'm being chased by a tiger again! What did I do last time this happened?!?" -This is what our brains are trying to accomplish, but the end result is you recalling that time you farted in 3rd grade, next to a cute girl. As you're trying to fall asleep before a final exam. Brains are great. | 60f6f5a6-2cbd-4746-a724-4878b23a3f9d |
cen4fi | Why does it hurt/sting when you are holding something cold for too long? | Frost bite.
Holding onto a cold object for that long is often roughly as damaging as holding onto a hot one.
The tiny blood vessels contract to keep heat in, so some cells get starved of oxygen and die.
As temperatures keep dropping, ice crystals could form inside cells, causing them to burst.
It might get so bad that whole blood vessels get burst from the ice crystals forming inside them. | 6859c375-080b-4c9e-b818-daf683d600e2 |
cenf6k | What causes damaged Lithium ion batteries to often swell up? | Generally, swelling occurs from one of two things: extreme temperatures or being in a discharged state for an extended period of time.
The extreme temperatures cause swelling due to gasses being released on the inside of the battery cells due to an “over-excited” environment.
The other cause has to do with the cathode (negatively charged part) of the battery. The cathode is the part of the battery through which electrons (electricity) is allowed to flow. It has been found that cathodes that remain inactive for long periods of time are likely to degrade, thus allowing oxygen into the battery, which causes gas to be produced. | 285bd25f-247c-4ce7-911f-3014d678b7b0 |
cengma | Why do hunters bother wearing any kind of camo when they have orange vests on? | The bright orange isn't noticeable to the animals they are hunting. What *is* noticeable is a particularly human-shaped outline, and the camoflauge helps break up that distinctive shape. | ccdd789a-38fd-474d-aea9-fe97006f3518 |
cenj8u | why do lamps take two clicks to turn on and off? | Most likely you are dealing with a 3 way lamp switch. Off-low-high-off
I haven't seen one in a long time, but there used to be light bulbs with 2 filaments in them, and the switch would light one for low, then both for high. If there is just a regular one filament bulb in it, you still have to click through both low and high, but the bulb won't change brightness. | e6943ea1-7cbc-4a3c-9854-da760a41ec23 |
cenl5r | What's the difference between mechanised, motorised and computerised? | If something is "mechanized" it utilizes a mechanical advantage. Things like levers, gears, screws, etc.
Motorized means that it incorporates some sort of motor...electric, internal combustion, whatever. Typically means that it is also mechanized.
Computerized things include an electronic computer system. May or may not be mechanized / motorized. | 448d34af-a482-47c4-88ed-8e04b1d3026e |
ceno1f | When you are having joint pain and you spray pain relief on it, what actually happens? | Generally, it's a topical anesthetic, like menthol. All it does is penetrate the skin to the nerves and deaden the nerve's pain signals for a small amount of time. | 41d3a64c-64c9-4efe-9e4e-ae0718208807 |
cenu5b | Why does drinking chilled water help you breathe freely after extreme cardio? | Well, let’s establish a couple things off the bat. Cold water does *not* hydrate you more than other water and does *not* directly change your overall body temperature.
Now, here’s the weird bit. The refreshing feeling you get from drinking cold water actually has nothing to do with your body “liking it more.” Instead, it has to do with how your brain interprets it.
Cells are delivered water through the bloodstream, which means that it can take a while for water to begin helping. Therefore, when you drink warm or room temperature water, it is not immediately refreshing to your body.
When you drink cold water, however, your brain knows exactly what is coming. It knows that your cells are about to get the water they desire. It responds positively to this. Something about the coolness of cold water makes our brain respond positively immediately.
That thing is homeostasis. Our body is constantly trying to maintain a good, happy state. Since you’ve just worked out, your body temperature is slightly higher than normal, and your body is working hard to bring it back down. A glass of cold water in your warmer than normal conditions is a godsend to your body, thus why it responds positively immediately.
When you drink room temperature or warm water, your brain will *eventually* send you this stimuli, but it will take longer than cold water.
Conversely, if you lived in a very cold place and your body temperature was lower than normal, your body would react similarly to warm water. | ff11c1f8-fb5d-41e5-82fb-bc52939d86b9 |
cenwlk | Since CO2 is basically food for trees, won't extra CO2 make trees grow faster and bigger so earth will self-adjust the level like other cycles in nature? | Well, CO2 isn't really like food for trees, but that's not the point. Trees (all photosynthetic organisms really) can only consume and utilize a certain amount of CO2, sort of like how once you eat to the point of being full, you can't eat any more no matter how much food is on the table (not to reinforce the idea that CO2 = food). We're dumping way more carbon into the atmosphere than all the photosynthetic organisms on the planet can use, so it's building up. If we planted vast areas of trees, then they would use more CO2. That's a very real and feasible possibility for curbing global warming if we actually did it **and also dramatically cut CO2 emissions.** | 9a3ad535-a646-4391-96e5-99a4f6fa03d2 |
ceo024 | Does the location of where I plant trees matter? | It does matter. Different types of trees have different sun vs shade requirements as well as how much space they need to properly grow. That being said, trees can withstand a lot. Look at your typical forest- the trees are densely populated and yet manage to survive. The ones that don’t just become fertilizer for the ones that make it. | 1a3d2b02-e72f-4b23-ae4d-066270ac7baa |
ceo4ei | How did the KGB work? | The KGB was a network of informants. They had their ears everywhere.
& #x200B;
This presented the problem. If you said something that someone thought might get them favor, they passed it on. Eventually, it would reach the ears of an actual KGB agent, who were allowed to do whatever they saw fit to eliminate dissidents. | 678b7714-bb5c-43a2-aba8-ea095c9a62b1 |
ceo827 | How the human body can lose tolerance to alcohol if it has not been exposed to alcohol over a long period of time. | Various other parts of the body notwithstanding, tolerance to the intoxication that stems from drinking is a very brain-heavy process. Ethanol - the "drinkable" alcohol found in booze - binds mainly to receptors for GABA, a chemical your brain naturally produces in balance with another chemical called glutamate, which excites your central nervous system and makes it more active.
When ethanol binds to GABA receptors, your central nervous system becomes depressed - that is, less active - as though your brain was producing more GABA than it normally would for a given amount of glutamate. This (in large part) produces the feeling of relaxation and the eventual issues with motor contol/speech/etc. associated with getting drunk.
If you drink every once in a while, the effect is pretty pronounced because your brain is otherwise acting normally. When you drink regularly and often, however, your brain begins to produce *more* glutamate than normal because it strives to chemically maintain a balance, and "thinks" there is not enough glutamate to maintain a normal operational state. Over time, this elevated level of glutamate becomes the new "normal," and so even with the extra GABA-like effects of ethanol you don't feel as drunk because your brain is now at a higher baseline of excitation.
Just as it takes repetition and regularity to create this state, it also takes a while for your brain to dial things back if you simply stop drinking. Tolerance for the chemical intoxication will gradually decrease, and at some point you will be roughly back to normal.
It is important to note two things, however:
Stopping drinking flat-out leaves your brain overproducing glutamate, which can cause all kinds of problems - what we call alcohol withdrawal. If you drank enough for long enough, this withdrawal can be extremely unpleasant and even life-threatening because an overexcited central nervous system is very bad at managing normal bodily processes.
Additionally, withdrawal from drugs acting heavily on GABA seems to produce an effect called "kindling," whereby the symptoms of withdrawal get worse as multiple subsequent episodes occur. This can lead to very serious problems with relapsing alcoholics suffering worse withdrawals each time they attempt to stop if they do try to stop cold-turkey. | c1b7e447-f458-4dc1-8bdf-aa885610aaab |
ceok9u | Why does a water stream break up into droplets after falling from some height? | Air resistance. Y’know when you swing your arm through the air or jump on a trampoline and it feels like wind, even if it’s not windy? Water can’t hold itself together after a certain amount of force is applied to it, so it breaks up after gaining enough speed. | d5ae18d2-aba9-4c7b-83aa-de52cddb29da |
ceolt1 | How do Electrodes Detect Voltage Changes in ECGs | The simplest way to describe this is that an electric charge causes a magnetic field to form and change when the charge moves. This magnetic field can be detected by the electrode by the "reverse" process - called magnetic induction. A moving/changing magnetic field induces charge particles to move and in this case the charged particles are the free electrons in the electrode.
This is how electrical transformers work. An alternating current flowing in one coil, causes an alternating magnetic field that induces a current to flow in the second coil (close by) | 2e30e1f4-ef9d-4021-b4b0-d941a4b92009 |
ceosgo | Why are our bodies so sensitive to even small temperature changes? | Well outside temperature and inside temperature are very different. Your body works extremely hard to maintain your internal temperature and so when that goes off its VERY noticeable. Effectively all of the chemical processes that happen in your body are optimized for your normal body temperature and when you heat up even a little you lose efficiency and so feel like crap.
Outside temperature you are much less sensitive to and if you were just outside doing your thing you probably wouldn't notice a few degrees of change. | 26ca8f16-9933-473f-a38e-f13e0f401505 |
ceozkh | what’s the worst that FaceApp can do now that they “own rights” to so many faces? | First, they down own your face. Just the images you create with their app. But they own them good. Appleinsider has done a breakdown of their privacy policy.
"Essentially, if you make something in FaceApp, FaceApp can do whatever it wants with what you've made. Not only can it repost your images without your permission, it can monetize the images, either directly or indirectly, without compensating you or notifying you that it has done so in any way.
This means that while FaceApp acknowledges they do not own the content that they are creating, they are legally, perpetually, and irrevocably allowed to do whatever they want with said content. Not only can they use the content in whatever way they want, they also state that you waive all rights if their use somehow causes damages to you."
_URL_0_ | 2e0a99e0-c052-437b-ae29-df885529ab28 |
cepvpx | Why do you die almost instantly when the level of CO2 in the air is above 10%? | The red blood cells serve the purpose of transporting O2 from the lungs to where it's needed, and transporting waste CO2 from where it's produced to the lungs. The mechanism is simple: It'll grab hold of dissolved oxygen or CO2 if there is much of it, and release it when there's little. Since there's a lot of oxygen and little CO2 in the lungs, it will release bound CO2 and grab oxygen.
Now if there's a lot of CO2 in the air, instead of picking up oxygen in the lungs, many red blood cells will pick up CO2. This will massively reduce the amount of O2 you can breathe, which by itself is already dangerous. On top of that, the dissolved CO2 will make the blood acidic, which is dangerous because many functions of the body rely on the pH of the blood to be slightly basic.
On top of all that, CO2 is usually not just added to the air, it's produced by burning oxygen. So the 10% CO2 air also has only 10% oxygen, half as much as air normally has.
However, you're not going to die almost instantly. You will however quickly pass out and die if you keep breathing that air. | 8a326446-b2f6-487d-8e3d-6665f607a920 |
ceqo2r | How are massive, multi billion payments made between states? | close enough. no "physical" money are being moved. Only "virtual numbers" on PC's, databases etc. There is no hard money behind that transfers. | 66e0997f-bae6-4678-a835-db974fdfe10a |
ceqon1 | how do lizards regrow limbs and why can’t I | There is a trade-off between expending resources to regrow the lost body part (which takes a lot of time and energy) and patching the wound up as quickly as possible to prevent infection and damage to the rest of the body. Whether an animal can regrow a given body part depends on whether it's useful for survival - what good is the ability to regrow your arm, if it leaves you weakened and vulnerable for several months?
In fact, the ability to regrow different body parts was gained and lost several times in evolution. In the evolution of our mammal ancestors, the trade-off was balanced towards quickly patching things up, preventing blood loss by forming first a clot, then a scar. The same is actually mostly true for lizards. Lizards can regrow their tails, but not their limbs (arms and legs). In contrast, newts and salamanders are able to regrow arms and legs as well.
In animals that can regrow body parts, the damaged stump forms a so-called "blastema". This is a mass of cells that includes stem cells that will re-form the lost body part. The blastema will activate the genetic program that was used to form the body part in the first place before birth/hatching. | 2213c3c7-6551-4061-a24b-51f06129bd4f |
cequvq | How do non-stick frying pans work at a molecular level? | Polytetrafluoroethylene, PTFE, aka Teflon is a fluorocarbon molecule. Made from carbon atoms and fluoride atoms. It doesn't like to stick to anything, forms no atomic bonds with other atoms, because it's stable as it is, carbon-fluor bonds take a lot of energy to break, so it likes to stay that way.
Then how does it stick to the pan? The aluminium that most Teflon coated pans are made from is pitted with tiny tiny holes all over it's surface, and the Teflon gets stuck in there.
But it's not a strong adhesion, which is why you needed to treat those pans gently, no scratching, and no cold water intro a hot pan, the Teflon will detach over time.
TL;DR Strong independent molecule that don't need no man. | dfb92e18-6fcb-459e-aa1f-c6f299a30820 |
cer0ba | How can women get infections when they sit on a public toilet seat? | Short answer: They don't. People cover the toilet seat because the idea of sharing a toilet with a stranger is disgusting to them, so they cover it as a placebo to "block" that person's bacteria. It's also an assumption that the toilet they're using is dirty.
Infections from a toilet seat can really only happen if someone has an open wound or doesn't wash their hands thoroughly. Covering the toilet seat isn't actually a very good method for preventing the transfer of bacteria as it's porous and lets basically everything through. | 13974f69-21d5-4d96-a7f1-829f54463aa2 |
cer71c | Do small bugs (flies, ants and so on) don't realize the danger they're in when there's a human around, or do they simply just don't care? | Humans are hardly the most proficient animal when it comes to hunting bugs. They're in danger from all manner of animals wanting to eat them.
These insects are not devoting brainpower to contemplating why they're on the bottom of the food chain. They simply react to threats as they occur instead of trying to predict when one might happen.
They'll have a general response to danger, but not one tailored specifically to the sight of humans. | 596b3678-bc32-48c2-9a4e-eb9431733395 |
cer9j0 | How does Netflix stay in business? | It’s costs a lot of money to make a movie or television series. So they borrow money to make the movies and tv shows. Once the shows air and they make money, they pay back the people they borrowed money from. And since Netflix makes a lot of tv shows they have to borrow a lot of money. But since so many people watch Netflix, a lot banks will let Netflix borrow a lot of money. One day they might not make enough money to payback the people they borrowed the money from and that would be bad for Netflix. Or they could make the most popular show in the world and that would be good for Netflix. So far they have been able to keep all their banks happy. 😃 | 7b49875a-8564-4545-82d4-aa47e2c895d1 |
cerc3d | What is neuromorphic engineering? | Attempts to use electronics, chemistry, software etc. to simulate the works of biological neural systems. Initially analog electronics was used.
The science consists of two parts: understanding how these systems actually work in bological organisms, and replicating the effects technologically. | a8f89d19-5898-41e2-819a-c85737acf1ca |
cerpvg | how do people actually make different shapes with fireworks such as faces ladders flags etc. | It has to do with what configuration the pellets are in when the firework is constructed. If you force the combustibles into a certain shape, when it explodes it has no choice but to go in a specific direction. Often the pellets will be glued onto a piece of cardboard inside the firework. | 409c5b0e-8b4a-4e37-8275-3fc0d9a95936 |
ces3un | Why are there so few recumbent motorcycles? | While recumbent bikes can be more aerodynamic, the main reason people use them is that they are more comfortable. Instead of having all your weight supported by a tiny seat and your butt, your butt and back take on the weight. Motorcycles are already much more comfortable than bicycles.
Also motorcycles are thought of as being for cool or tough people. Recumbent bikes are the opposite of that. | 1b3fcb3e-2c68-4988-85f5-f31e2d67bb80 |
cesbqp | how is it that when you are packing dirt or other material for earthworks construction, when you apply vibrations the water comes to the surface? | When you just pour any kind of loos materials (like dirt and sand and such) the individual grains don’t stack up in the most efficient way. Friction prevents that. In between the grains there are little cavities filled with whatever is around. Usually air or water like in your case.
Dirt and sand grains are denser than both air and water, meaning that they will have a tendency to sink to the bottom while the water will rise to the top.
When you apply vibrations to your freshly poured material the grains get shaken around and they fall into the gaps between them. They now stack in a slightly more efficient way. The water that was previously filling up the cavities gets forced out of the cavities and has nowhere to go but up. | 65917ad3-9af4-4e9a-ad9f-b38d20fe8a7a |
ceseat | Why do young people nowadays look more their age, than young people 40-50 years ago? | Age perception changes as you get older. Ever walked into your favourite bar and thought to yourself that everyone looks really young compared to how you remember? Even though they're probably the same age as you were when you started going there? It's because you've gotten older yourself. | b96ac010-a605-4671-ada8-9db75fd9eba9 |
ceslpe | Why do our hands get wrinkly when in the water a long time? | Because your body is recognizing you’re in water or in wet situations, the reason for the wrinkling is for added grip incase you need to grab something or hold onto something | 7d38ca14-b29c-43d5-bedf-de3f67bac283 |
cesu2b | Why is it that whenever I have a stuffy nose, blowing it only seems to clear it for about a half of a second before the snot regenerates? | The cause of your stuffy nose is inflammation in your sinuses which produce excess secretions/mucus. Blowing your nose is temporarily relief of the symptom, but as long as you're still inflamed, it just resupplies itself because that's the function of your immune system. | f62c1ec9-8c08-4940-8da5-0949fbee6b5f |
cesulz | How does radar blocking technology work and are there more advanced systems which can get around those hardware systems? | Radar relies on a signal bouncing off the target and returning to the radar dish.
If you can deflect or absorb the signal instead of reflecting it, you're effectively radar invisible.
Modern stealth aircraft rely on a combination of the two - angular surfaces to deflect radar pings off at odd angles and radar absorbing paint to weaken any signal that does reflect.
That's why the stealth aircraft are always a dark matte finish and always odd and angular shaped.
There are also radar spoofing systems that detect the radar frequency and bombard the radar station with additional signals at random intervals to confuse it. These do not conceal the presence or general direction of your activity, but they can make the radar station extremely inaccurate. | 90a08c1a-242a-48c3-9913-d0808cddb54d |
cet2y2 | Why do diesel trucks often keep their engines running while refueling despite it being illegal for gas cars to do so? | Gas vapors will ignite if you provide a source of ignition, diesel won't. Diesel fuel is basically a very light oil that only combusts when a vapor of it is mixed with air then compressed until it explodes. Diesel is so stable it's not as dangerous to work with as gasoline. | ea0e71e1-7686-45fa-b7d3-1852bfcc9e52 |
cet9rl | What's the difference between a warm light and a cold light? | warm and cold has to do with color difference in lights. a warmer light is more orange or fire like, a cold like is whiter more like crisp snow | adbe9078-b382-4dc2-811e-06203493df65 |
cet9t4 | . What is the psychological reason people are terrified of rodents or other small animals/insects that will not harm them? | What makes you think rodents are harmless?
Rodent-carried (or rather the fleas they carried) bubonic plague wiped out a third of Europe's population. Areas where rodents and insects are aplenty generally point to less sanitary conditions which in turn has an association with human health. Is it an entirely rational response when someone freaks out over seeing a mouse or a spider or something? Nope. But there's evolutionary reasons to be adverse to such things. | 2da09d98-4dbb-4ca6-9436-5f238bff003d |
cetsaq | Why didn't the bones get destroyed? | Either the bones are from creatures that went into the crater much later, or were bones that were underground/in adjacent areas that were later displaced from either surface or subsurface geological activity.
As you suspected, anything in or remotely close to that crater would have been completely vaporized. Not sure which crater you're talking about but the impact that formed the Chicxulub crater would have unleashed energy equal to ~100 trillion tons of TNT. | 45f336d2-c4de-4aec-a3d3-894b8846e5d7 |
cetwhm | Why are gold, silver, gemstones, etc. considered valuable? | Pretty much what you said. Gold and silver are also valuable in their own right as components of manufactured goods. | 446cf8e1-c05a-4a85-b02f-457ba5cad02a |
cetzrq | What happens with out of duty nuclear reactors? | The fuel is removed from the reactor and everything that can be decontaminated is removed.
All the buildings and structures outside the containment vessel are torn down or taken apart
And the core of the reactor is moved to a safe place, encased in concrete and buried. | 200d0ddb-499c-4747-90e9-cd715745e5b5 |
ceu3eo | Why is it parrots can talk but other animals can't? | They physically can't. Dogs, gorillas, pigs, elephants, dolphins - a lot of highly intelligent mammals can learn limited vocabulary and be taught various sounds or gestures to interact with handlers, but none of them have a vocal/respiratory structure that can form sounds approximating human speech.
Parrot physiology is even less human-like, but it gives them the unique ability to recreate a huge number of sounds accurately. | 668ad1be-af55-4e59-bc9e-7f84deb14ffc |
ceuci5 | Why are old photos warmer in color than more modern photos? | The color temperature of a photo is determined by the white balance. Nowadays, with digital cameras, this white balance can be adjusted on-the-fly in software. A warm, yellow color room with incandescent light bulbs can be adjusted to have a cool, blue temperature.
Most photos and print are set to a color temperature resembling daylight which skews quite cool/blue. This temperature shows well on our digital screens that produce a lot of blue.
For old film photos, the physical film has a set white balance based on the chemicals in the film. Depending on manufacturer, this can skew towards warm or cool. Old photos often appear warmer because the physical photos lose their blue pigments first with time and exposure. Everything becomes yellower so we associate old photos with that tone. | 22c276ea-1a12-49a4-98f6-140fbbedff71 |
ceuoxa | how is it so difficult to go to the moon in 2019 even after all the technological advances - why haven’t we been back? | It’s expensive and useless. What would we go back for? Another publicity stunt?
Drones and rovers are leagues cheaper and more scientifically useful. We went once to prove it could be done, there is no practical reason to go back.
It would be easier than it was the first time with modern equipment, but theres just no reason to. Humans are heavy, fragile pieces of kit and there is no reason to pay to put one on the moon again. | 286cfd42-2d86-4f80-a5f8-99bb5d15e296 |
ceuqrz | Why is it common practice for music streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify and Pandora to have an overlapping catalogue but video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu are seemingly all done through exclusive contracts? | Music companies (the record companies and artists) get paid on a per use basis. Each time a song is played, they get paid. Thats how the pay works. So the goal is to get your music in as many places as people could possibly listen to it, to rack up maximum plays.
From a further standpoint, there are 3 main record companies (Universal, Sony, and Warner), and after much time, they've all figured out that individually each of their catalogs don't really provide a great service, however together its an amazing service. They've tried exclusivity, it didn't work. At all. They really really tried to go it alone, and it was a complete disaster each time. (Note: Apple was actually the company that finally got them all to work together, and iTunes was born!)
Now streaming TV such as netflix, does not pay on a per use basis, they pay a fixed lump sum (or on a per subscriber basis) for unlimited usage.. You licenses the content for unlimited usage at a set rate (you generally pay a certain amount per year, say like $10M/year to license a specific show for the year, (or you pay per subscriber w/ access) but you can show it as many times as you want).
Netflix, and these other companies do not have to buy exclusive rights, in fact its WAY more expensive to buy exclusive rights. However, they use what exclusive content they have to differentiate themselves, i.e. The Office is only on Netflix! Always Sunny is only on Hulu! If you want those shows you have to go to the service to get it. But of course they also have tons of other content. | 12f81bce-eb4f-4430-92f0-06b56e37f993 |
ceuu8i | How do scientists date prehistoric footprints? Wouldn’t the stone with the imprints be much older than the footprint? | Prehistoric footprints are not made in stone, because of course you can't leave a footprint in a rock. What you can do is leave a footprint in something like mud, ~~with~~ which over millions of years mineralizes and becomes rock(y). You can date the footprint by dating the resulting rock if you're lucky, or with careful examination of surrounding geological layers (called strata) which can give you other dates. If you're very *very* lucky maybe a bug or leaf was squashed in there and fossilized as well, and you can get some approximate dating by identifying it.
In short, archeologists and paleontologists have a huge array of tools they use in various combinations to come to these conclusions. | 61d9e508-dea7-4e6c-8392-26d7a14b033f |
ceuvi4 | How can bronze hold an edge, but brass can't? | Brass can hold an edge but not very well.
Brass is a softer, more malleable metal than bronze so any edge won't keep as long. It also oxidizes more easily, forming the green-blue patina associated with it. The oxidation will ruin the edge much like how rust ruins iron edges.
Brass was also discovered in 500 BC, later than bronze (3500 BC). Thus, sharpened bronze would have been a very common commodity when brass was being first used. It would be difficult to discover brass first because zinc is rarely found in a pure form in its natural state. You would need to figure out the technology to extract zinc and by then, you should have already figured out bronze. | 39c11724-81d0-4f3f-87f3-df877c18a90d |
ceux8o | What exactly happens in the body during drug withdrawal that makes you so sick? | you are being starved of dopamine activity, which is required for many more neural processes other than pleasure. These other functions that aren't receiving the activity they should are what causes these withdrawal side-effects. Dopamine downregulation occurs when a neural synapse is saturated by the neurotransmitter. To prevent toxicity or damage to any of the structures in the clef, the post-synaptic neuron will start removing receptors for dopamine. If you suddenly stop stimulated dopamine via your drug use, neurons which require dopamine to function normally will not have enough dopamine to create an evoked potential. This has the effect of fewer neurons firing and thus less activity in areas of the brain that need it. | 66ced666-8929-4b3d-81b6-cbc4557e9e79 |
cev7bn | Why do microphones occasionall make high-pitched ear-pearcing noise? | this is called feedback and occurs when the signal from the microphone is amplified through a speaker and fed back to the microphone, which is then amplified again in a loop. As you already know, this cycle gets very loud very quickly. | 628b1214-fd3b-42ec-ac05-da4e2b4f27e0 |
cevlcx | (how) Do the veins in our palms or traps not get damaged/crushed when we hold a heavy barbell or place one on our backs? All that weight in pushing down on them, right? | because they are elastic. You can squash and bend them and they will deform and return to their original shape when you release the pressure. | 4ff6d4ff-9135-4af5-935a-0fe0d388afc1 |
cevq61 | How can something be "anti-microbial"? Cant germs and bacteria grow on any surface? | Antimicrobial surfaces are usually impregnated with a chemical that deters bacterial growth, such as silver or Triclosan. These substances interfere with the bacterial life cycle, preventing growth and reproduction. These surfaces are not used for everything because they are more expensive, and Triclosan in particular can contribute to bacterial resistance, and some studies suggest it can be harmful to humans over extended exposure. | 26730e90-8018-4c8f-9345-f87600450e0c |
cewgwk | Why are there different types of police forces in the US vs just one type of police? | Law is complicated. Being knowledgeable about all law is impossible, and more specialized topics like fish and game law is not something you want your run of the mill officers worrying about. Specialized agencies can do their particular job better, so you save by having a more effective force. Training, equipment, priorities, etc will all vary, and ultimately you'd wind up with different departments within the agency. That's not so different from having separate agencies; and from there it's really a matter of how you want to organize things for administration. | 95613889-60d4-41cc-ba8c-cc1ed532ce41 |
cewidh | How can an LCD panel independently control every pixel without having one signal wire for every sub-pixel? | Lets keep it simple and use a 3x3 grid of LCD cells. In front of the cells, there are 3 horizontal electrical conductors, behind the cells there are 3 vertical conductors.
1v 2v 3v
[ ] [ ] [ ] 1h
[ ] [ ] [ ] 2h
[ ] [ ] [ ] 3h
In order to actually change what a cell is displaying, you need to pass a current through it. For the top left cell, you'd send a signal on 1v & 1h. Middle cell? 2v & 2h, etc.
Passing a current along *only* a horizontal conductor is not going to have any affect on that row without a signal on the vertical conductors as well.
So in our example, we would need basically 6 wire connections to control 9 cells individually. As you scale it up, the disparity between number of connections and individual cells increasing exponentially. so for 640x480, you have 640+480 = 1,120 connections for 640 * 480 = 307,200 cells. | 90d39b67-9e49-4dfe-8afd-8ab524b3c683 |
cewpet | How is it possible that there are fish in isolated bodies of water? Like in a lake in the crater of a volcano with no rivers going in or out. Wow did they get there? | Eggs can hitch a ride on birds feet. People could have put them there. Freak weather has been known to suck up fish and frogs. only to drop them somewhere else. Some fish, like eels, can move quite a distance over land, especially if the ground is wet. Sometimes the "isolated" lake will be connected to other bodies of water because of heavy rain. And sometimes the lake wasnt always isolated. Oh and its possible that there are underground connections unseen from the surface.
I think that exhaust the possibilities.. unless you want to include gods and aliens. | 3673098c-7e70-434a-8a4d-b903fafd2bfe |
cewqdt | When does our brain decide which hand will be dominant and why? | "handedness" and "dominance" are nebulous terms that have no set meaning even though anyone reading this would have not trouble stating whether they were left or right handed.
& #x200B;
For example, I am left handed, I write, shoot pistols and throw baseballs left handed. I shoot rifles and bows right handed probably because I just held it the same way the people I was learning from were holding it. I chop wood with either hand and never knew most people have a dominant hand for that task until my dad pointed it out to me. That gave him the idea to teach me to switch hit in baseball, so I am ambidextrous in one activity accidentally and another through practice.
& #x200B;
Our hands are pretty complicated and the systems we have to learn and train our bodies to do things are super complicated. It makes sense that we don't know a lot of specifics about a mess like that. | 9083a11a-5ac3-4f94-94f7-f886bc5f7d97 |
cewr31 | How is the antivenin CroFab® sheep-derived? | It's made from sheep antibodies.
You can expose live sheep to snake venom, but not enough to kill them. Over time, the sheep make antibodies that bind to the venom molecules and prevent them from causing harm. You can isolate these antibodies from the blood, and in this case, the antibodies are further processed - a part called the crystalizing fragment is chopped off so it doesn't cause complications in humans. | ee1c36dd-7f85-4729-b784-d9da7f14bca0 |
cewrga | What do people exactly mean by "images" in relation to virtualization/emulation-related discussions? | It's basically a backup of an already installed and setup OS which can be copied to another system all in one go, instead of the slow "install process" where everything is unpacked and put into place step by step. | 7b3a8449-aa16-4745-b93b-8f676216b6db |
cewrj8 | We often see inter-species friendships in the wild, but it's always seems to be 2 animals. Why aren't there entire groups hanging out together? | TL;DR: law of the jungle
You are talking about a Timon-Pumbaa-Simba kind of group, with 3 or more species involved? Starting from the begin, you would need 2 individuals A and B that finds each other to start with, that are already in a stable friendly relationship meaning all basic needs (e.g. eating, drinking, sleeping) satisfied, that could mean:
1. they are in a long time friendly relationship (that is rare because one could be hungry at a time)
2. The relationship isn't long yet, they are still alerted even between them and adding a third unknown party member C would imply stress level to increase for everyone of them, having their survival instinct to let them run away.
Also, there are more relationships to guarantee: A and B could be in a mutual friendly relationship, but either of them could be hostile towards C or vice versa.
Supposing 2 individuals you'd have only 2 links (A likes B, B likes A), while they would be 6 for 3 individuals, 12 for 4 etc. | 82edbfad-6d46-4635-8592-e37125b593dd |
cewrnx | How is it that the United States has the top ranked universities in the world, while simultaneously having a high school system that underperforms compared to other developed countries? | The US also has a large number of underperforming universities as well. When you look at the top ranked universities, you're mostly looking at very well-established private institutions or the very top-tier of state-sponsored schools. That ignores hundreds and thousands of other institutions that would bring down the average considerably.
If you only took the very top-performing private high schools in the US and maybe the highest performing percentages of public schools, they would probably compare favorably to the rest of the world. But once you expand the number that you're looking at, the picture becomes much less favorable. | 17441dc7-14f3-4451-aa32-f85ee520cd3c |
cewu0r | William Barr is in Contempt. What is contempt and how severe is it? | Being held in contempt of Congress is a meaningless charge. 'Contempt of Court' in general means the witness is uncooperative. | acf9cd1d-f927-45b4-a9f3-ecf717ace358 |
cex0ju | How 64bit OS run 32bit programs? | 64 Bit mainly refers to the size of the memory bus on the motherboard. If a system has a 64 bit memory bus then it can address memory spaces that are much much bigger than 32-bit systems. It also means the internal registers in the CPU are 64 bits wide. That means the CPU can work on larger chunks of data at the same time.
& #x200B;
Running a 32-bit program is fine because they system doesn't need to use every single bit of the memory bus or every bit of the internal registers.
& #x200B;
Going the opposite way doesn't work because you can't fit 64-bit values into a 32-bit register. | bf4f9f6d-6af1-482c-b7ad-e61ee1692ee1 |
cex6pc | Why is it a big challenge to get people back on the Moon again? | Money is the biggest issue.
It wasn't cheap to get to the moon before (in fact it was wildly expensive), and it still isn't going to be cheap now. Technologically, its not that insane a task, we have the knowledge, expertise, and means to do it and build the items... however its gonna take a TON of money to do it, especially if you want to do it fast. | 76dc5d21-2e63-4732-b7f5-ee3fdb14c672 |
cex9t2 | Why does fire turn from orange to blue the hotter it gets and why is the sun (a very hot thing) stay orange? | The sun isn't orange. It's white. It emits the entire visible spectrum (ie. A rainbow).
Different things burns at different colors. Potassium chloride, for example, makes a purple flame. | 7bc1bcc2-5bed-4180-9fa0-07e7ed74c139 |
cexc0i | How does sunscreen make you stay longer in the sun? How does the higher number change things. | > Does it block a certain percentage of UV rays?
That's exactly what it does, more specifically it blocks UV-B rays, which are the type that cause sunburns. To my knowledge it doesn't "last" a certain amount of time, but rather it is worn away due to water, sweat, etc over time, which is why you need to reapply it.
[Here's](_URL_0_) a pretty good video that shows the UV protection of sunscreen.
EDIT: A little more research - SPF tells you how much longer it takes for the UV rays to burn your skin when used properly. SPF 30 means it takes 30 times longer to burn the protected areas than the unprotected. | 6d1b9ceb-7603-4153-bb8c-509f4ba52122 |
cexq60 | Why did it take the entirety of human history to even figure out how electricity works, but then only 200 years to get to where we are now? | So I think where you want to look is the age of Enlightenment as the beginning of the rapid development of change. A big part of what drove scientific progress was the printing press, being able to reliably pass information across time and space helped the spread of ideas and as ideas spread and people could recreate others experiments aha now we are on to something. What prevented that from happening sooner the Church, and the Roman Catholic church had a stranglehold on society because of the Black Death. Something similar had happened in China before it happened in the west. An industrial revolution had taken place with mass produced goods like clothing and pottery and arms and so on. Before the Industrial Revolution population growth was constrained by food production. Giving people time away from figuring out where their next meal is coming from unleashed humanities potential for creating the word you see around you today. | 49f25ed1-db6b-4e01-98cb-1654aea131e3 |
cey2td | How does one computer use another computer's IP address to find and talk to it? | You are very much on track with your post office analogy.
I am going to focus on public IPs only and ignore private or internal IPs for this explanation, although the process is similar. For the most part, the internet is just a large group of independent machines that talk to their neighbors, and know how to get out of their network on to the next one in the chain. The pointer to the next one in the chain is called a gateway, and (again for the most part) all devices can have one. When a machine wants to get somewhere, it compares its target IP address to a list of its neighbors, and it if can't find it on that list, it asks the gateway to pass it on. The device that is that machine's gateway (most likely a router) then does the same thing until it reaches it's destination.
This is an incredibly simplified explanation, because that would be incredibly inefficient if that's all there was to it. A public IP address has identifiers just like an address does in that part of an IP can indicate its country in order to get it pointed in the correct direction.
Hopefully I shed at least a little light on your question. | 7e7b1a5a-1c35-44a2-9a2b-36cabfe331b1 |
ceycci | Why do trees stop growing? | They don't. As long as there is water, nutrients and sunlight and as long as it is not getting infected or damaged it will technically grow forever. There is however some limitations to how high a tree can pump the water and nutrients from its roots. This means that there is a height limit where its branches can not grow higher. The branches also might have issues growing further out as they will sag and eventually snap off. The trunk of the tree will however grow as wide as it is allowed to given enough time and that it does not suck up all its water and nutrients. | 3315650b-8280-47a6-89be-1e3041f39e25 |
ceyvrt | How to analyse statistics in quantitative research. (What's strong and what's weak?) | This question is far too broad to be properly answered. For different types of research it’s completely different.
However if you want a super general explanation.
Adult version: Generally when conducting research you have a hypothesis or an idea of what is going to happen/what you expect to happen. You then perform your tests or design your experiment or do whatever to get the results you’re looking for. You then compare these results to your expected and are looking for high levels of correlation. This would then prove that a certain system is working as expected or if there’s a low correlation you could attempt to explain why.
To test correlation or expected values you can run a numerous amount of simulations. Monte Carlo, probability distribution functions, even just comparing numbers and seeing that one is better than the other. But without a general idea of what research you’re performing and what you’re trying to prove about it I can’t really explain it.
Kid version: you’re walking around and pick up a stick. You throw it to the ground and it falls to the ground in a certain time and bounces a certain amount of times. You wonder if this is normal. You repeat this over and over recording data. Finally you take all your data and average it. The average data point turns out to not be far at all from any other data point. In this case you just analyzed quantitative data through averaging.
If you have a question about a specific mathematical simulation of data analysis please let me know so I can better explain it to you! | f4a9e6f4-f579-4e71-a36a-140efaec8d88 |
ceyw3x | Large chains distributing to other companies | Walmart specifically is known for having some of the most advanced sales metrics gathering of any company in history.
Every single sale Walmart does is recorded and sent in real time back to their servers for analysis. They have been a company on the absolute cutting edge of sales analysis for a long time. You probably think of Walmart as trashy or cheap, but their IT infrastructure and data gather and analysis is absolutely the envy of all retail businesses across the world | b5950b53-54c1-4989-ad5a-2e8e0dafedee |
cezd6z | What is bioinformatics and what is it used for? | Basically the idea of analyzing huge amounts of data. These days in biology, we generate unbelievably massive amounts of data. For example, researchers in any field of bio might do an RNA-seq, in other words sequence all of the RNA in 2 different cultures and compare to see what changes between them. You'd get a data set of something like 50 million RNA sequences- strings of about 75 letters - per culture. Obviously you're not going through 100 million sequences in Excel; instead you would use programs that perform statistics and let you look for what you're interested in. Some of them are made for biologists like me that don't really know what they're doing. But for more advanced stuff, there's bioinformaticians. A bioinformatician is someone that almost entirely deals with data analysis using software. The job is sort of a combination of biology, computer science, and data science. They learn programming and mainly use/develop software to analyze huge sets of biological data. | 7325b484-d9eb-4d98-80be-25f1a9842d44 |
cezdob | Does the mirror make you more attractive, or does the camera make you look ugly? | The image is flipped with a camera, and since your face probably isn’t symmetrical you look different. I’m guessing the fact you see your face everyday in the mirror is why it seems more attractive, because it’s more familiar to you. | 95c47392-6ba7-47f0-8eb4-9f94cb80b2b6 |
ceze2q | How can something like the big bang to start the universe come from nothing? | It didn't. The Big Bang was because of a Singularity, containing all known matter, exploding and spreading into the universe.
We just don't know where that Singularity came from.
Some believe it was created by a God, some believe it is the remnants of an older universe, some believe it to be the collision of higher-dimensional P-branes.
We may never really know, but we have a good idea what happened afterwards. | 1c07f802-7d0d-47a8-a562-ddc7ab29ce3c |
cezigw | Why is intubation necessary for general anesthesia? | General anesthesia usually includes a muscle relaxing or paralyzing component. No muscle function = no breathing. Tube is attached to a machine that provides the patient with oxygen and ventilation. | 19743fb9-542c-48dc-aecf-0d62d7398a4c |
cezp59 | What's the situation with Area 51? | Area 51 is a very secretive military base in a desert, with huge amounts of conspiracy about them having alien technology and such. What we know is that they do R & D for various military planes. The "situation" in the popular culture is a mostly meme meetup to "storm" the base to "find the aliens". It's mostly silly, but for anyone who actually does it, it's very illegal and will either get you charged for trespassing or shot. | 66c98e06-225e-4418-b8ba-6a641f60911a |
cezyvy | what does it mean if a currency is ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ | A strong currency is a currency that has an increased value compared to other currencies. But this has little to do with the numerical value of the currencies, despite what other commenters above said.
1 dollar is usually worth 100-120 yen. If the dollar becomes worth 80 yen, then it means the yen has become stronger relative to the dollar, and the dollar weaker relative to the yen.
It's completely meaningless to say that if 1 dollar = 1000 of X currency then X currency is weak, and if 1 dollar = 0.1 Y currency then Y currency is strong, because prices in the countries of those currencies will be adjusted accordingly.
Another example is the Brazilian Real, which is currently US$ 1 = R$ 3.70. The country is in recession so the dollar is strong compared to the real. But in 2008 US$ 1 = R$1.60. At that time, the US was in recession and the brazilian economy was still strong. The dollar was weak compared to the Real, even though one dollar was worth more than 1 real.
Edit: another example is that governments with hyperinflation usually need to remove zeroes from their currency every few years. Imagine if the zimbabwe government changed its 100 trillion dollar (40 USD cents) and removed 14 zeroes. Now 1 zimbabwe dollar is worth 40 US cents. But why stop at 14 zeroes? They could remove 15 zeroes, so now 1 zimbabwe dollar is worth 4 US dollars. This would not make the zimbabwe dollar a stronger currency than the US dollar. It's just a numerical trick. To decide if a currency is strong or weak you can't just look at the numbers they are being traded for, but also their value history, and evaluate their purchasing power. | 231e5ffa-37b1-4e63-af46-9786c8eabf5b |
cezzk0 | Why is rabies so deadly and can remain “dormant” for so long? | Rabies take a long time to move through the nervous system from the bite site to the brain. During that trip, it tries to stay as sneaky as possible because a strong immune response would kill it.
When it gets to the brain where it "takes over" it essentially short circuits the brain. Because the brain is a privileged site, a sufficient immune response never mounts despite the virus shedding its sneaky status. The virus blows your gasket in order to attempt the next horizontal transmission and nothing survives the electrical impulse cascade the brain undergoes.
What's interesting is that this results in very limited light microscopic brain pathology. But it's deadly nonetheless. | 326fad55-58ec-42ea-b464-6d6711dc1d9e |
cf00ff | If heavier elements need to be formed in stars bigger than our sun, there must have been at least another star in this region of space before our solar system formed, right? What was there? Do we know anything about it? | Stars are born in gas clouds called nebulas.
It is believed the universe is 14 billion years old. How long a star lives is dependent on its size.
The sun will live about 10 billion years, we're about halfway through our suns life.
A star much bigger than the sun will blow through its fuel in a few million years, meaning many stars could have lived and died in the 9 billion years before our sun was born.
A massive star will explode in a supernova creating lots of different elements. Then the cloud can collapse to form a new star with the lighter elements, with the larger atoms forming the solar system.
So all those previous stars created the larger elements ultimately forming the large elements we see on earth.
Eventually our star will die. The sun will swell up to a red giant, swallow several planets. Then the sun's core will collapse and the outer layers will drift away. The change in the subs mass will probably cause the rest of the planets orbits to go haywire, maybe shoot a couple off into space.
The gas giants are full of gasses that could one day find themselves creating a new star with new planets orbiting. But that wont be for billions of years. | 2769fa1d-498a-4225-92a0-188af9265e8d |
cf01fs | What is biologically happening inside the body when you feel an urge to take a leak or dump but unable to atm and you "hold it in" - is there harm in this practice if you repeatedly hold back defecation or urination say for hours or a day? | The urge to take a dump or a leak is just a suggestion. It’s your body saying “Hey, you should go soon.” But of course if the situation dictates your body hands over control to your conscious decision making systems and allows you to hold it off for a while.
The only problem with holding it in is your body will do stuff automatically with or without your consent. Most people who hold in their urine for a long time end up just peeing when they’re asleep as your conscious brain no longer has control.
Holding in your poop I’m not too knowledgeable on. But I imagine it leads to constipation, obvious discomfort, and of course the consequences of long term constipation but hopefully someone else can acknowledge that. | edef8c4d-c8ef-49cf-9466-a9452807387a |
cf02fm | If the average person drinks around 60 gallons of water every year, and Joe drinks almost 100 gallons per year, does Joe’s liver or Kidneys have to work harder to process it all? Are there long term issues from drinking an excess amount of water? | Including water, coffee, and other drinks I drink at least 90oz of liquid in a day (around 65oz of water). That works out to a little over 250 gallons per year (~182 of pure water). I think Joe is going to be just fine with only 100 gallons per year.
(And before anyone thinks this is an absurd amount) I drink an 8oz cup of coffee in the morning and afternoon, 1-2 12oz sodas (diet cause I don't need the sugar), and at least 4 16oz glasses of water. And that's obviously not counting any liquid I absorb from food I eat....yes, I go to the restroom quite often and I do run and generally workout regularly too. | 9ee12981-ade3-42e4-af28-f2ee57958277 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.