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72hvgs | What is the scientific reasoning behind some substances that have a reverse tolerance? | "Reverse tolerance" or drug sensitization is a real thing that can occur with certain drugs or alcohol. If you think about alcohol in particular, over time you build up a tolerance for it and it takes more alcohol to get you intoxicated. Supposing you continue to drink heavily, you can damage your liver, which can lead to a reduced tolerance or "reverse tolerance".
Some drugs require a sensitization period, in which your brain/body needs time to build the proper neural connections and uptakes in order to feel the full effect of the drug. Antidepressants/antipsychotics tend to fall under this category. | b9a62243-f6d5-4fcf-a592-5aed06246b2f |
8yl4pc | How do spiders get to the top floor of apartment buildings? | They can climb. They can also get blown along by the wind until they land on a higher floor of a building. | 283f0228-24b0-4857-ad47-ef5e423a7270 |
49aqs2 | Why do big threads from the default subs never appear on my front page until they're 8 hours old and have 5000 comments already? | Because of the way you have it sorted - by "Hot." It takes the subs you're subscribed to and picks the hottest ones, so big subs like pics and adviceanimals show the highest scored threads.
Switch to sort by top - hour and you'll see a lot more, relatively quick revolving threads. Be active on them and comment/contribute to the things you like. Some will likely work their way to the big boy front page. | 5b6e4dbf-f5c9-47a0-8bf7-a598fe5809e0 |
jd0li | Where gold gets it's worth from and why it's so valuable to economies | If something is useful, then it's valued more.
If something is hard to find, then it's valued more.
If something is shiny, it's valued more.
Since Gold is useful, hard to find, and shiny, it is very highly valued.
A few reasons Gold is used:
* for jewelry and awards, because it's shiny and has a nice color.
* for making computer parts, because it conducts electricity and is easy to mold into many shapes.
* in spaceships by NASA as a lubricant between mechanical parts, because it can withstand harsh space conditions.
There are plenty of uses for gold now, and the list of uses will grow, which means it will get even more valuable. And as Gold supplies get used up, fewer Gold will remain, *further* increasing it's value.
And that is basically why Gold is so valuable. | ab49869e-f95f-4460-b5e5-4dc6d263ac26 |
1xklix | Why is it more expensive to eat healthy? | Your premise is somewhat flawed; it is not necessarily more expensive to eat healthy. It certainly *can* be, if you buy certain types of raw ingredients, but does not have to be.
Industrial scale food processing is extremely efficient, so a lot of prepared food is cheaper than the make-it-yourself equivalent...so if you try to eat the same stuff as just build your own, it usually doesn't work out.
However, if you adjust how you cook and eat (stay in season, stay local, stay low on the food chain) it's fine. | bfb6a9b8-8b2a-429a-9019-a85b3c0cfff9 |
qusg8 | circular polarization. | Take a piece of rope and hold one end of it. Let the other end hang towards the floor.
Now wiggle your hand back and forth in a line from side to side. The rope will now make a wavy pattern in one direction (to the left and right). This is essentially linear polarization.
If you stop, let the rope settle, then start wiggling your hand back and forth in a line forwards and backwards, the rope will make a wavy pattern in another direction (towards and away from you). This is also linear polarization.
Now stop, let the rope settle, then start moving your hand in a circle. The rope will start spinning around in a circular pattern. This is equivalent to circular polarization. If you go in a clockwise circle, you get clockwise polarization. If you go the other way, you get counter-clockwise polarization.
The way to visualize unpolarized light would be to move your hand in random directions, or simply wad the rope up into a ball and throw it at the floor.
A little more advanced: Imagine doing the two types of linear polarization I described above at the *same time*. What would happen? If, every time you moved your hand to the right, you also moved it away from you, and every time you moved your hand to the left, you moved it towards you, your hand would wind up going in a diagonal line from (left, close) to (right, far). The rope would still be linearly polarized, but now on a diagonal.
Now, here is the advanced part: Delay the back and forth motion by 1/4 of the wavelength. What I mean by this is you will still be moving your hand left and right at the same time that you are moving it back and forth, but you won't start the back and forth motion until you have moved the rope all the way to the right (assuming you start by going to the right). You might think that this would produce another straight diagonal line (and thus linear polarization again), but instead your hand will wind up going in a circle, and you will produce circular polarization.
Sorry if my advanced explanation was too confusing, but if you can understand that, then you can understand how they make circular polarization filters. They take a linear polarization filter, then attach a quarter-wave delay plate on a 45-degree angle. This will turn linearly polarized light into circular polarized light. Or, if you shine light through the other way, it will only allow the correct circular polarized light through (which is how they make 3D movie glasses). | c41042aa-11bd-4890-bbf6-647fef33e218 |
4vp05e | What should I ask college student programmers if I want them to be able to design VR simulations for my research team? | Do you have an actual computer science department at your university? I'd give the project description to a professor in that department and ask them to advertise. (This happens at my school... but my school is a small college, not a university, so maybe these kinds of interactions are more appropriate.) If what you want is simple enough, you could even ask them to make a single example and see who does what you need the best to make the rest?
That said, this isn't really an ELI5 question. I'm just answering because I didn't want you to feel lost if I could help it. You can try one of the computer science/programming reddits for a more specific answer, too. | 7a44b77a-cba2-4050-86a9-02adaed8ebc6 |
m9nq8 | The game Skyrim. I've watched half a dozen videos about it, but don't get it. | It's an "open-world" RPG. Kinda like WoW, but tailored for a single player. Essentially, they've plopped a big sheet of land down; decorated it with trees, mountains, and other nature stuff; built some towns, cities, dungeons, and people or creatures to populate them; wrote stories and quests for the player to do; then told the player to have at thee. It's exploratory fun. | 1177ea77-d7da-4968-b097-94e0b045d862 |
3c3q15 | How do we see images in our head? | Going for an explanation a 5 year old might really get:
Part of your brain (the back part) controls vision. When you see a real banana, that part of your brain responds to the light coming into your eyes, and it tells the rest of your brain about what the banana looks like. It says things like "it's yellow," "it's curved," and "it has a brown spot right in the middle."
When you imagine something, the visual part of your brain isn't responding to the light coming into your eyes. Instead, it's responding to what you're thinking about. You remember what a banana looks like, so you can imagine it. The same kind of messages are being sent by the visual part of the brain to other parts (yellow, curved, brown spot). But when you're imagining, the messages are less clear then when you really SEE a banana. That's why "it's there, but it isn't there."
But, this is really a good thing. Think about this: what would happen if you COULD really see something when you imagined it? Every time you imagined a tiger, you'd see a tiger appear in the room! That would be bad; you'd probably run around screaming and being scared a lot. So your brain has evolved a way to let you imagine things without being confused whether or not you're really seeing them.
OK, bonus ELI-25 time: There's a really cool study that came out recently, which looked at exactly this question. They used functional MRI to examine how responses in the visual cortex differ when people saw a set of 5 familiar paintings, versus when they imagined them. They found similar (but for the sake of simplicity, messier) response patterns during imagery versus perception, even in the lowest levels of visual cortex, suggesting that imagining a picture activates these parts of the brain in a similar way to actually seeing it.
Here's a link to the paper: _URL_0_
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm friends and colleagues with some of the authors, and I was around when they were working on this project (was finishing my PhD in neuroscience at the time), though I wasn't directly involved in their work. | b454e0fd-d76f-495f-ab64-eef8b127ecd5 |
3jrd2h | How can IQ be so confidently ascribed to racial characteristics (i.e. hereditary)? | Simply put:
1) There is really no consensus amongst psychological sciences that IQ tests can be considered to be an accurate measure of anything, other than performance on the specific and abstract tasks that constitute IQ tests.
2) Even when using an arbitrary test like an IQ test, it has proven completely impossible to isolate and filter out learned and acculturated abilities.
3) It is thus impossible to attribute any results of IQ tests on a population scale to genetic traits, as the social and learned effects cannot be discounted. The claims to heritability do not thus necessarily point to genetic inheritance, IQ scores are far more likely to be passed on by upbringing.
4) IQ tests are a product of a pursuit - the assessment of intelligence - that is controlled and influenced predominantly by white, upper-middle class, academia. So, unavoidably, the results will be a bit skewed towards white test-takers. | 4710c88e-218f-46ef-bee8-12c677dfa5d7 |
5yfpln | Is there any significant difference between different brands of water? | Significant, I wouldn't say. The source of the water changes its composition, and therefore also the taste. If two brands get water from the same source, they would be practically identical, unless one of them really screwed up the bottling process.
Unless you have a serious mineral deficiency, I can't imagine one brand being measurably more healthy for you, and if you had a mineral deficiency, you should get a proper supplement for that anyway, not bottled water. | 533a5351-83e5-451b-9f6a-7028977d28c2 |
1nj5tr | When I have a cold, why does my nose often continue to feel blocked after I have blown it thoroughly? | The blocked feeling doesn't only come from mucus, it's usually inflammation of the sinus cavities and nasal passage. | 1e6ba3bf-6cd5-4bba-becd-5c3096cdc5bc |
yoezj | A compulsory music license. | From my understanding (and a brief brushing-up-on-it), it basically means that if you pay a copyright holder for the license to cover their work, they're required by law to allow you to do so.
In other words, they (have to) shut up and take your money.
EDIT: Clarity. | 8a9a1057-8f8a-4168-8558-b80f7fb4f5b3 |
tszdz | "Jailbreaking" phones | An iPhone is made up of bits of metal and code. The metal bits are called the hardware. The code is called the software and is the operating system and apps. There is also something called 'firmware" which allows the software to talk to the hardware.
When Apple sells you an iPhone they only want you to be able to deal with their operating system in the software. This is because they want users to have to buy apps for their operating system. To prevent users from installing their own software they have special firmware that prevents it.
Jailbreaking an iPhone is installing one's own firmware so that they can then install their own software. Firmware however is very sensitive. If the installation messes up then the iPhone won't even know what pressing the power button means and it can "brick" your phone (make it as useful as a brick).
You are paying someone to flash your firmware and thereby allow you to edit absolutely everything about the operating system not just what apple wants you to be able to edit. | 4a62b146-12bc-4272-992e-a1c38e7eb533 |
2rj243 | Why do some "antibacterial" agents cause resistance, and some don't? | Right, I don't know the specifics regarding triclosan and tea tree oil but I can take a crack at this.
Antibiotics and antimicrobials work, in their broadest sense, by either killing bacteria or preventing their growth. To do this they must interfere with some process that the bacteria need to live or to grow. If the bacteria evolve a way to bypass the process or have it function anyway then it will have evolved resistance. If the antibiotic only targets one process then the bacteria only need to bypass one issue in order to become resistant, but if the antibiotic has multiple targets then the bacteria has to evolve counters to all of those before it is resistant. If it doesn't counter them all then it will still be killed, so bacteria have to develop all the necessary counters at once. This doesn't make it impossible for them to do so, but it does make it much less likely. There are other ways in which this works as well, if the process targeted is more core to the bacteria's function, it will be more difficult to evolve a resistance than if you targeted something that has an easier work around. Sorry if that isn't very clear, I can try to explain further if you like.
As for your side question, yes, every single antibiotic runs the risk of causing resistance. The simple act of killing off most of a given bacteria puts a massive selection pressure on those bacteria. Bacteria are evolving constantly and any one bacterium might develop a resistance to a given drug at random, if it's only one bacterium of many then it might not really get anywhere, it might even be outcompeted by its sister bacteria for food or something and die, but by killing off all of the non-resistant bacteria you are removing the competition and allowing it to thrive. As for alternatives, antibiotic is a very broad term, anything that kills (or stops the growth of) bacteria is by definition an antibiotic. Bacteria don't become resistant to ALL antibiotics at once and, even if a type of bacteria develop a resistance to antibiotic A, they can still be treated using other antibiotics. | ea850315-f4a7-4a54-9bba-6eab6874e5c3 |
122a93 | Why does being tickled make us laugh when it is such an unpleasant sensation? | The short answer is we really don't know. Of course, [people have their guesses](_URL_1_), and it seems to be that it isn't a naturally occurring physiological response driven by (as you put it) a biological imperitive. Most of the hypotheses point out that you typically 'learn' about tickling through a parent/child interaction. Indeed, if you feel like reading up on scientists scarring childeren for life, [Cracked](_URL_0_) has 6 good tales, one that tried to prove whether tickling was a physiological response or a social learned response. | 90edc64e-51db-4b64-9530-34e7065cc3ac |
35bpem | How is it that prisoners can earn law degrees while serving time, but on the outside people go into six-figure debt to get the same degree? | Offering prisoners the chance to study in prison lowers their chances of returning to a life of crime afterwards and improves their behaviour while inside.
That said it is not the same degree. Do you really think prospective employers are going to look at a harvard degree and a prison degree and are going to go 'yes, these degrees are exactly the same in terms of worth'. | c9503703-e0bd-47c7-9d95-a391f288df00 |
4vi6f3 | How do they measure how fast a continent is moving? | There are fixed points all over the world. People are continuously measuring the position of these points in relation to each other. It used to be with triangulation and celestial observations but nowadays they are using GPS. | a024082c-5beb-4dd7-8b0e-e10c5b3178be |
395bcs | What the hell happened to Shia Lebouf? | Well, art being subjective and all, it's hard to ELI5 when the tone of the question implies that there is a level of negative judgement that leaves no room for an answer that tries to explain - because it would always sound like a defense...
But I'll try?
So there is Shia, a guy with problems like me and you, and the added backstory of liberal parents with artistic views and intentions that most likely shaped him as a kid.
This dude gets famous but isn't the ideal candidate for being rich, in the spotlight and on top have some sort of perceived responsibility over the younger generation that grew up watching him.
So he fucks up.
He fucks up a bunch.
My guess is that this dude is rather aware of the fucking up a bunch - as it is happening - but can't stop it and so he starts to reflect on the situation.
He has a ... Eureka! kind of realization.
Why not make the absurdity of the situation obvious, why not dive deeper and explore fame through performance art?
He starts to study things like meta-modernism , post-postmodernism, post irony (I AM SORRY BUT THESE ARE REAL THINGS ) and applies them to his life - creating himself as art.
Whether or not that's awful to you , and the fact you are asking ELI5, is by extent part of his performance-art.
Whether or not his "art" is actually bullshit and pseudo-intellectual as many think, might be too.
Whether or not the mistakes came first and were later disguised as performance art that now has taken on a life of it's own is just my speculation - I have never talked to that man.
*format
?!!! gold ?! I'm super happy that after reading this sub for months and always thinking: I *wish* I had something to say I finally got the courage to open up an account. you kind of have no idea - but this is awkwardly touching. is there an abbreviation for thank you kind stranger for the reddit gold? tyks? tyks! | f5502ee8-3beb-4b13-8a75-ab24db6f182a |
22pxjl | Why is the Word "Character" Pronounced as "Ka" racter and not "Cha"racter ? | Character and chameleon come from Greek root words. When the Greek word was adopted into our alphabet the "ka" sound was written as "ch".
Champion and Chalk came from Latin and over time were pronounced with the "cha" sound that was also written as "ch" in our alphabet. | 842a0596-c2a0-4545-8650-d8514d3dac88 |
4xcva1 | Why do we humans get so easy problems with their teeth while animals don't brush their teeth at all and most of them do fine their entire life? | We have terrible diets that contribute to damage to our teeth. Many animals also don't live as long as humans, and that damage can take a while to really compromise your teeth.
And ultimately, if an animal's teeth go bad, which does happen, that's typically *the end* of their entire life. You don't see the bad teeth animals running around because they have died from complications to having bad teeth, like disease and starvation. | 873be0e8-e96e-4bf5-8e90-5768533588b9 |
6lw8sg | If any, what would the differences be to your body if you lost weight by burning calories through exercise, as opposed to eating the same amount of calories less? | As far as just plain weight loss goes, there would be no difference whatsoever. Your body requires somewhere between 1500-2000 calories per day just to survive adequately.You burn X and consume Y. If X > Y you lose, if Y > X, you gain, regardless of how you create that imbalance.
However, muscles mass takes more calories for your body to maintain than fat tissue. So if you lose it through exercise, you're probably also building muscle. More if you're doing muscle-centric workouts like lifting. So *over time* you will end up losing more from the exercise since adding more muscle will increase the amount of survival calories your body needs to consume each day.
But it's also a lot easier to just eat less than it is to burn 500 calories in exercise. The human body has grown to be ridiculously efficient in how it uses its calories, a huge benefit that served us well for thousands of years, and has only recently become a drawback. You really don't burn all that much from working out by itself. This is why they always recommend diet *and* exercise to lose weight. Diet for easily dropping the amount of calories you consume (subtracting 500 per day will make you lose a pound per week) and exercise for adding more muscle and general health so that you're not just burning more, but increasing the rate in which you burn them over time, creating a snowball effect.
tldr;
Eating less loses fewer calories but quickly while exercise loses more calories, but much more slowly. Do both. | abda6c3e-7246-4e21-a201-c9c85aed1ccd |
3onkbm | Do film companies pay theatres to show their movies, or do theatres pay film companies for the rights to show their movies? | It's a shared pool that works out roughly like this, the ticket price is split between the studio and the theater at a percentage
1st week: 90% studio / 10% theater
2nd: 80/20
3-5: 60/40
...etc
Specific movies and specific studios may have deals that alter the percentage for each week and timeframe, it's all negotiated, and these are estimated but it's a good rough base of how it works. The theaters still collect all the money on concessions, that's where they make the bulk of their profits. | b0b0d95e-2e5c-4c33-ada6-a6e21a99462c |
1zzrbl | Why is it, that on the same amount of food consumption, I feel fine to exercise, but feel empty to edit an essay? | The empty feeling when thinking about the essay is a psychological process. There could be many reasons your brain wants to avoid it. This most likely has nothing to do with food intake.
Sounds like small dose of the maladaptive coping mechanism psychologists call *avoidance*. (Yes, it's a thing.) Plain old procrastination is different. I'm guessing it's the coping mechanism because you have some deterring "feeling" associated with it. | 0e1965b0-6971-4258-94f1-bc98079abe80 |
2ngo9h | Why do people listen to music with earbuds in while driving a vehicle that most likely has a stereo in it? | They could be listening to music from an audio player which can't connect to the car stereo (for example if the car doesn't have an aux input).
Or they could just be using their headphones to talk to someone on the phone.
And where I'm from it's very illegal. | 0bbb35d3-e6bf-47ec-b1d4-07ab1f82000d |
2yjxxi | Why are head-lice a 'kids thing' that seems to only exist amongst groups of younger aged children? | Because kids, when at school and play they get their heads close to others. Adults, consider it rude/weird/childish to do that. While the lice may spread from child to adult, it is less likely to happen between two adults. | be16e386-d5ec-44ce-850e-cc6d438ec892 |
4ub953 | What is Citizens United and why is it such a big deal | Say you want to donate money to Hillary Clinton's campaign. There is a limit to how much you can donate. You can donate a max of $2,700 to Hillary Clinton this election.
Now say you want to make a $1 million commercial about how deporting illegal immigrants is a horrible thing to do. You spend the money and you want to play it on TV. It's reasonable to spend money on commercials, and it is reasonable to want to convince people deporting people is ok.
But the twist is that if you play it between now and the election, the commercial basically tells people not to vote for Donald Trump. It is a pro-Hillary commercial because it criticizes the policies of her direct competitor.
In that sense, you aren't technically supporting Hillary's campaign. But you are spending $1 million dollars on what is essentially anti-Trump advertising. Before Citizens United, this was a grey area. Citizens United ruled that this was ok to do as long as you don't directly and secretly coordinate with Hillary Clinton's campaign team.
Furthermore, if it is ok for 1 person to spend their money on an advertisement, it is ok for 2 people to form a group and spend $500,000 each. And if it's ok for 2 people, why not 3? Why not 1 million people, each spending a dollar? That group could be anything. It could be a corporation, it could be a labor union, it could be a non-profit corporation. However those individuals want to organize themselves is fine because if they have the right to spend the money individually on the ad, they have the right to do it as a group.
Of course all of this is great in principle, but what ends up happening is that large organizations are much better organized than grassroots people, and they can spend a million dollars like it's no big deal. This essentially means that that more money you have, the more you can spend on advertising, and the more you can influence elections. | e33e6f95-4a13-4cdc-a69d-e4b5e28bd12d |
21vy83 | non-alcoholic beer | It's still beer (or it was). It's brewed by creating a beer with a very low fermentable sugar content, fermenting it out (results in 2-3% abv) and then placing the liquid in a vacuum chamber and reducing the pressure until the alcohol boils itself off. The vacuum chamber is used to prevent the addition of heat much later in the brewing process than is desired. From there the ~0.5% abv beer is packaged and sold. Technically it is beer because it is a barley based fermented liquor. | d750df41-a3d6-44aa-b364-08a70f3a4d6f |
5z73g6 | The Turkey/Netherlands Diplomatic Tensions | Basically Turkey wanted to send someone over to the Netherlands to campaign, but the Dutch government was like 'we want none of that here'. Turkey said some not so nice things about the Netherlands and they responded by not allowing the Turkish campaign dude to land there with a plane.
Turkish people in return tried to burn the Dutch flag but it turned out to be the French flag (I laughed so hard at this) and stabbing oranges for some reason.
Now more countries are getting involved and basically scolding Turkey for handling things poorly. | 2519ceb3-2cb4-4529-899b-4e56b57b60d0 |
2ely0z | Why does the toast get crunchier when it cools? | The steam evaporates off, so it's less moist. | 2c418e42-d247-4a5f-b77d-6cd698b05490 |
216y0g | How do computers know what time it is? | They have an internal clock, a lot like a wristwatch. It keeps track of the time. There's even a small battery on the motherboard to keep track when the computer is unplugged. | ea42992a-8925-4e69-ba1f-8d4b0cbe7098 |
215wf9 | Can someone please explain the sunk cost fallacy? | Imagine you've had a car for the last fifteen years, and that car is a piece of shit. It breaks down every few dozen miles, it smells gross, it looks like shit, and you're constantly pouring money into it. The Sunk-Cost fallacy is where you would be more likely to keep the car and keep pouring money into it than to spend a whole bunch of money on a new car. The thinking is something like "I've spent so much money on this car, it'd be stupid of me to buy a new one." This is also extremely common among gamblers, who might keep playing a machine, reasoning that since they've put so much money into it already, it's bound to pay off eventually.
TL;dr, It's where you think that it's more beneficial to continue doing something, despite that something being obviously detrimental, because you're sure that if you keep doing it, you'll get a return. | 34794b3d-a37e-4383-81ff-b52c03338351 |
1brywf | What's the difference between the different tiers of gasoline and is it really worth the extra money for premium gas? | Higher grades of gasoline are refined more carefully to give them a higher octane rating, which means they burn more consistently and are less likely to "knock" (ignite prematurely) under the higher compression in high-performance engines. Unless your car's owner's manual specifically says you need to fill the tank with a higher grade of gasoline, it's a waste of money.
Check the owner's manual. | e760d702-6b4c-4df3-a42c-6b9bfa7e826a |
1f78qz | finite elements method | Ok I'll have a go..
So FEM is a numerical method used to solve boundary value problems..
To give you an example, imagine a system where a metal rod was placed with one end in an oven at constant temperature, and the other in a fridge at constant temperature. FEM could be used to approximate the temperature profile along the lenth of the rod, since at both ends of the rod you have a fixed boundary condition (temperature is fixed).
Practically what you would do is discretize the system. This just means break the length of the metal rod up into *n* number of micro-rods, all joined up end to end.
You could then form an equation that describes the temperature profile (including any necessary heat transfer properties) for the the first section of rod. Since you know the temperature is fixed at one end, you've only got 1 unknown to solve for. Similarly, at the other end of the rod, you know the temperature it's being kept at.
For all of the interconnecting micro-rods, the answers from one feed into the equations for the next. But to start it off you can use the feed out from the first rod.
Practically, this gives you three equations to solve. One for the first piece, one for the last piece, and one that describes what's happening in all the middle pieces.
Once you've worked out the equations that describe to first, last, and all interconnecting micro-systems, you can go about solving them...
Does that help at all? | 56fe5250-8f72-4c01-8bb4-d9e803ff8f42 |
7oetcd | What happens when we sleep? How does sleeping “recharges” us? | Someone can explain this much better, but it basically gives your brain and body some downtime to do some repairs, make some different proteins, etc. It also gives your brain time to process the events in your day and serves as a break from constant stimulation | 6b2fd6ed-b522-4d82-83f1-433d523586e8 |
37hhe9 | How come New York City is so expensive yet 8,000,000 people live there? | Uh, can you explain your logic of why 8 million people living there would prevent it being expensive? | 4de0ea40-3899-4d03-a195-a41961a4d35e |
1t8bff | How come I can tell you the numbers that come before and after 7 right away but have to go through the alphabet in my head to tell you the letters that come before and after H? | You do addition and subtraction on numbers when you are a little kid all the time. So, 7-1 and 7+1 are intuitive. You don't do the same for letters. H+1 and H-1 aren't drilled into your head as a little kids, so many people have to recite the alphabet to know the position of letters. | 66292364-312d-4d8f-8fd6-2fbc1f08b38e |
16mpkt | What causes SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and what helps? | Though not definite, some think SAD is a caused by a lack of sunlight during the winter months. People have come to this conclusion since countries that are further North are more likely to report higher rates of depression during the darker months.
Melatonin is a hormone that our bodies produce. It is important in our wake-sleep cycle, making us drowsy. Light inhibits the production of Melatonin. So, during the winter months and especially the further North (or South in the Southern Hemisphere), we are exposed to less light and thus increasing the production of Melatonin.
Blue light (wavelengths between 460-480 nm) has the effect of halting production of the hormone. To help mitigate SAD, one can use light therapy. This is pretty much a box with a bulb that produces the necessary wavelengths that one stares at for a period of time with the goal of impeding the production of Melatonin. One can also force themselves outside more often, especially on sunny days, in an effort to get as much light as possible (this is probably very difficult for extreme northern and/or cloudy areas). Exercise is also an option.
_URL_0_
_URL_1_ | 5334fbf6-f0df-44d1-bfb0-38eb70b4c6f6 |
1k061c | Why do the windows in the back seats of cars not go down all the way like in the front? | It's not to keep children in the car. It's simply that there isn't enough space inside the door for the window. The bottom of a front car door is bigger than the window, so it can go entirely inside. The rear doors have a cutout for the rear wheel well, which keeps the window from being able to go all the way down. | b10fbbf7-b30c-4cb2-9b82-d8deda1ecefb |
29trxd | The current American immigration problem | The **unbiased** report is that the politicians are still arguing what they think needs to be done. And since they're arguing and arguing and arguing about it, nothing gets done.
In the meantime, many poor and desperate people from the impoverished countries of Central America will continue to immigrate illegally to the USA.
They will do the jobs which most US-Americans refuse to do, like agricultural work and cleaning jobs. | 6fefd50a-ae3e-44fe-bf07-4e5da1f3c06a |
mwmy5 | Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan | It regards taxes. 9% tax on corporate income, 9% tax on individual income, and a 9% national sales tax across the board.
of coarse this is impossible, but people are having fun with herman, and I think he is having fun too | 491f1bda-6b89-4b48-a4f5-12716ba269d5 |
34in1g | Why is it I must wear I seat belt and have to get safety checks on my car constantly but people can drive in a Jeep with no doors or sit in a school bus with no seatbelts? | For jeeps I know its safer tp have your doors removed when off roading so you can jump out if needed when rolling. As for busses without the seatbelts im assuming its becausw the vehicle is so large it will blow through most vehicles but ya never know, thats why our god, google, is here to help | 7497e9e6-596a-445f-b4af-3251e17c7550 |
30gplk | Why is it that some days after my hour long drive home, I cannot remember the journey at all? | The human brain has (as I understand it- could be wrong) a bit of an autopilot function. However, with this said, if the brain detects a problem, it pops out of it. That's the reason why you start paying attention just as the guy cuts you off, from what I understand. | 7b20286d-7cd5-4795-b060-ca44c697c235 |
68k4e0 | Why do a lot of hospitals have religious connections? | For centuries medical care was provided by churches and temples. This is because for many religions care for the sick is a major command of their faith. This tradition has carried on into modernity and a lot of hospitals are heavily funded by religious groups, and many are physically owned by them with the religious group actually paying to have it built and owning the land. | e877c0fd-a9a0-4a27-bd4d-812fde21ce00 |
3mnpzs | Friendzoning | Someone is in the friend zone when they have romantic feelings for a friend and that friend does not have romantic feeling in return. Orientations are not a factor.
With this there are a few outcome possibilities.
1) The person with Romantic feelings ignores them and continues being a friend. Often at the cost of severe emotional pain.
2) The person with Romantic feelings shares their feelings with the person they are in love with (note I say love, not a crush). They work through the awkwardness and the friendship is strengthened.
3) The person with Romantic feelings shares their feelings with the person they are in love with. They do not work through the awkwardness and the friendship is lost.
That is what the real friendzone is. Many however use it as an excuse to complain on the internet. This leads the ignorant to assume that the phenomena does not exist when it does. | 7fafecde-15e0-402f-bb6a-6453518b2850 |
3z5fn0 | How are the elements in the 7th row of the periodic table created in a lab? | Particle accelerators fire streams of one type of atom at another type of atom. The kinetic energy is enough overcome the repulsive forces, and smash the nuclei together, creating new elements. It is nuclear fusion, not chemistry, so while you can't change an element through chemistry, you can through physics. | 1ec4b71e-3e47-421c-b2b6-72db20a0aec1 |
6agepv | Why does licking your lips make them dry out? | Moisture is kept in your skin by a thin layer of oil. This includes the skin on your lips. When you lick your lips, it wipes away those oils, allowing water to evaporate from the skin, causing them to dry out. | c63976e0-840e-41b0-8c83-daca7bccc7d1 |
72zdtd | From a biological standpoint, what is happening to these guys? | They're faking it.
This will make you light headed and dizzy, but it won't make you hallucinate. You can achieve the same thing by huffing co2, and it's because the buildup of c02 in your blood. (You said oxygen deprivation, close enough, but you don't actually feel that, when you're drowning or something, what you experience is caused by co2 buildup in your blood) | 594fc5b8-0f9d-4ee2-b9e6-cdd9cc5146f3 |
1n2w5r | How do corporations and wealthy individuals minimise their tax? Can a 'regular joe' use the same techniques? | Others have given you an answer, but not very good, concise answers...
Everyone can, and does, minimize their taxes. A great many individuals donate cars, clothes, etc, and take those donations as deductions against their taxes; that is tax avoidance, just the same as companies do.
The difference is that companies and wealthy people have much larger sums of money with which to play.
There are several individual tricks which are only available to certain taxable entities (corporations and partnerships). A person in a partnership, for example, can turn almost all of his income into capital gains and therefore greatly reduce his tax burden. Capital gains rates have been modified recently, but they used to be 15% whereas a wealthy person could be paying around 40% in income taxes. When we're talking about millions per year, that is a great savings.
But doing this is all completely provided for in the tax code, it is a feature, not a bug; therefore it is not a loophole but mere, legal, avoidance.
Generally, how partners in a partnership can characterize their income as capital assets is: all the income, according to the law, passes through the partnership to the individuals. Then, and this is the "trick," the individuals loan that money to the entity which then pays the individuals payments on the loan; those payments are characterized as capital investments of the individual and not regular income. | 6af1e090-2729-45d5-8f5e-f33176f459db |
5uaa5r | Why do people have favourite colours, and for what reason is my favourite colour different to someone else's? | personal aesthetics are a complex issue. why one person likes a song or color or food is not really explainable other than that it happens to be what they like. sometimes people have a reason for liking a color. "i like red because fire trucks" "i like blue because ocean" but for a lot of people it is "just because"
so there is no answer to your question | 0508aa3f-4136-4458-b226-2b15c8b6ae9a |
11fk0p | Why is Indian food so spicy? why people in hot climates tend to eat spicy food? | Spicy food in hot climates causes you to sweat, which, ironically, causes your body to feel cool.
Spice was never used to cover the smell of old meat. If you were wealthy enough to afford spices, you can bet you weren't eating old meat. Besides, spices were too valuable to just dump on meat. What little you had would be used very selectively.
"White people" have no special aversion to spicy food. However, spicy food is an acquired taste that you develop and Caucasians/Northern Europeans traditionally don't use a lot of spice so they often aren't used to it. | 0304b983-e798-4f16-9bcf-a32c0cd61ac2 |
71bzlu | How do Bionic limbs function? | The go to way is to take a bunch of sensor units, attach them to whatever muscles are left in the stump, and convert their muscle movements into electric signals.
These signals are then used for rather rudimentary commands. Hand prostheses for example are either "pull to open" or "pull to close". If you don't pull, the prosthesis goes back into its default. Imagine that your hand was always closed, but would open when you flex your biceps. Something like this.
Now, ever amputation is different. Not only does the prosthesis have to be fitted neatly on the stump of the patient, it also has to be done in a way that it stays in place, but without putting to much wear in the stump. That's one reason for why they are tailor made.
Also, in each amputation different muscles in different places will be retained. You need to check where a clever place is to actually put those sensors mentioned above. | 068d9c73-7137-4560-858a-8f9008ef0b88 |
2jwx1a | Jupiters Great Red Spot and why it has lasted for such a long time? | Jupiter's Great Red Spot has been around for as long as we've been able to SEE Jupiter with the first telescopes. Some of the main reasons its lasted for so long include the fact that Jupiter is a ball of gas that slowly becomes denser as you descent into it. There are no mountains to collide into or plains to dissipate its power. Just atmospheric currents to further fuel it or sap a bit of power here and there. Secondly, Jupiter radiates more heat than it receives from the sun, which is opposite of Earth. Our storms are driven by solar power. Jupiter's are driven by the heat of its gravitational contraction, which has been going on since its formation. Its theoretically possibly for there to have been GRSpots on the face of Jupiter since its creation, though probably not the one we're looking at now.
TL;DR: Jupiter's GRS couldn't form on Earth and the storms are powered by inverse processes. Earth's are solar-powered and peter out when they hit land. Jupiter's comes from continual interior heat on a landless planet, which is why its so long-lived. | 7b2183ab-c8b7-4ba1-8fea-a0581812aa82 |
2lerp6 | Why do most single-vitamin supplements cost the same amount as a multivitamin containing the the same vitamin, plus many more? | My best guess is that 90% of costs is in the manufacture of product, packaging, and distribution. The cost of vitamins raw materials are very very minimal. | 15388940-4427-48fd-9e18-69c32cf3c667 |
1xu9jn | Chrysler is currently requesting a subsidy from Canadian federal and provincial governments in return for expanding investment. Why do profitable private corporations need government subsidies? | Chrysler: We need a new factory, we could put in in Mexico, or we could put it in Canada....Mexico *is* cheaper...
Canada: Here's some money, pick me! Pick me!
Chrysler: Well, if were to put a factory in Canada, we could put in in Quebec, or we could put in in Ontario...Quebec is...
Ontario: Here's some money, pick me! Pick me! | b7f9ef42-b646-4bb2-b078-2e6691b46857 |
2g8kse | What does the US spend tax money on? How does it compare to other countries? | First, some perspective. The total budget of Canada is 279.2 Billion Canadian dollars (249 Billion US Dollars). The US budget is 3.77 Trillion US Dollars. In other words, the US budget is more than 13 times the size of Canada's budget.
The US spends more discretionary money (more on this in a second) on the Department of Defense (526 Billion) each year than the entire budget of Canada. We spend nearly 80 Billion on health services. 70 Billion to the Department of Education. 60 Billion to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The list goes on and on.
And that is just discretionary. More than 60% of the US budget, or more than 2 Trillion Dollars, is "mandatory spending," or spending that does not need to be appropriated. The largest of these are Medicare and Social Security, which together account for about 1.5 trillion dollars. | fd3dfa98-49ad-4596-bf42-12950a21d11c |
3iixs1 | How is mandatory overtime legal? | The U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act does not limit the number of hours someone can work in general. There may be state laws ( [here is an example](_URL_0_) ) or occupation-specific laws (e.g. the number of hours an over-the-road truck driver may work) that do. The FLSA only requires time-and-a-half pay for hours worked over 40, if the employee is not "exempt" (basically, if they're salaried).
The idea is that paying time-and-a-half is supposed to be economically disadvantageous to employers-- it would be cheaper to hire a new employee for less rather than to require employees to work for more. But sometimes that's not the case, or sometimes hiring someone else is not convenient. So employers can force employees to work overtime.
If the employee is forced to work so much that they can no longer do their job safely, other entities, like OSHA, might get involved as well. | 943c90f2-6d6b-4cd7-9bc0-e45e3e199625 |
3vti6o | If Amazon is estimated to be worth $175bl, why don't they choose to undercut Netflix on service and movie selection? What is stopping Amazon from outdoing Netflix for streaming? | Could Amazon do this? Sure, with enough money they could, though it would be a significant amount of money. Amazon is worth a lot of money not because it's sitting on huge reserves of cash, but because they have very high revenues and own a fair bit of land and facilities that make them a lot of money.
In other words, they'd have to lose the stuff that makes them money, like distribution warehouses, in order to fight Netflix on their home turf (streaming).
EDIT:spelling | 231ddde7-bc97-4740-941b-4c3a47b7bccd |
341w16 | Who keeps maps up to date? | Google, and other mapping companies, of course have a group of workers to update their own maps system, but there is no way a small group of either can keep up, so that's why users can report bad/missing data.
Google also has Map Maker, where people, like myself, can contribute to add and review roads, businesses, etc. I have added new roads in newly built subdivisions, I've added buildings, businesses, walkways at my university, etc. Now, the company that made the subdivision can add it to Google if they want to. If you own a business, you can upload your floor plans to Google so that you can see the layouts not Google Maps, from stores like Home Depot and Lowe's to whole shopping malls, no more need to wander around and look for a directory. For the property lines, Google gets this data from a 3rd party. | 63f78af9-9e7d-4a9a-8b51-5ef5812c500c |
2jig03 | What authority permits the US National Guard to be deployed overseas? | Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution (the Militia Clause) also authorizes use of the National Guard under continuing state control but in the service of the federal government to "execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions."
The premise behind the national guard is that state governors have direct control in assessing what are the needs and demands for its usage. However under certain specific instances (one is noted above, e.g invasion) the president can pull the trigger and enforce that the national guard must be deployed. In the case of invasion governors would no longer have explicit control of the national guard - the president would.
In today's age we live in a very federal government-focused society, as opposed to an age where state's rights are clearly defined, defended, and respected. You can expect Obama to pressure governors to deploy for the purpose of defending America from Ebola spreading here any further than it already has. Either that or he will boldly attempt to usurp any control of the national guard away from governors.
We are America, we defeat deadly viruses with soldiers & guns apparently :) | 37d83282-f71d-4e65-a4fe-69854ec13bae |
6d4k0w | How come we never taught birds of prey to fish for us? | We do. Chinese fisherman have been using comorants to fish for thousand years.
But it's highly inefficient compared to netting. | dbb53c38-397e-472c-a4d8-95f3e794e098 |
4ew0un | Cancer , how does it attack the body , and why haven't we found a cure yet ? | Cancer is when a part of your body grows uncontrollably. Normally the result is piece of your body that doesn't actually do what it should (the super growth part, often just flesh not functioning stuff like an extra heart or lung) called a tumor.
There are LOTS of different cancers because "uncontrolled growth" is a pretty broad category. Because it presents in so many ways, and is rooted in our actual DNA being messed up and causing our own body to mess up we can't really apply cures what work in other fields.
We cure bacteria by putting antibiotics in our body to kill it. We prevent some diseases by exposing our bodies to dead or weak versions so our built in defenses can get stronger. Cancer is our own body so these approaches don't work.
Obviously more complicated but I don't know how to expand and still ELI5. | f7bb5ce6-459f-4a67-bd22-42620a2df3a9 |
3hnhwo | Why do need to be taught to lift with our legs and not our back? Is lifting with our back a learned behaviour that we need to unlearn? | Upright standing is a very recent condition for humans on an evolutionary timescale. Our spine isn't that much different from our primate ancestors, who had horizontal backs, and therefore adapted to carry weight in a very different way. This is the root cause of most of our back problems. However, our instincts haven't changed much since then either. Bending over to pick something up feels natural because that's basically the position our ancestors were in all the time.. | 62d11df0-465d-43a5-8f46-8136ba0113dd |
3jdho9 | How do credit repair agencies work? | Working for a credit union and fixing people's credit daily I can tell you this. Almost every credit repair company / site / expert is a waste of your time and money. There is a reason they are numerous. They mostly exist as a paid Googler. And they run a hard pull on your credit on top of that.
Most of these companies simply grab a form doc off Google with less than proper grammar, a lot of big sounding "legal" words and demands. They take this doc and shape it for the customer to say things like "I am not responsible" or "this was my ex wife not me". They force experian, transunion and or equifax to submit inquiries to all places the customer has loans with for example and we verify if the letter they sent is accurate (it isn't).
The objective here is to send letters to the major bureaus and subsequently places the customer owes money to in hopes that they will remove late pays, credit lines, charge offs etc.
But the reality is that almost never happens. These places take your money knowing full well nothing truly gets accomplished. You aren't getting bad trade lines or charge off removed because of a letter mentioning the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
TLDR I'm sure some companies are reputable and will pay down your debt so you can then pay fewer payments but most of the places you'll find just charge you and won't produce any results. | c693e6e2-6cd7-4604-a23c-749450f12374 |
85nbwi | what is the purpose of the US Congress forming a committee specifically targeting ISPs and the migration to IPv6? | Committees are used to study a specific issue, and draft the first forms of a bill before they open up to general voting/debate. They are specifically targeting the issues of ISPs because of the FCC choosing to get rid of Net Neutrality. | 014a67e6-9b6d-4ed4-9c8a-70ef7101bb9b |
160bae | - How can you make a profit on a tuna or bluefin when buyers bid up to $1 million for one fish? | If you were a millionaire, how much would you pay to eat just a meal of a species you know is about to become extinct? If money were no object and somebody offered you a bit of dodo, what would you pay?
There's a cachet to it, even if it's a bit abhorrent to most people.
So you have 200kgs or more of fish. You only need to sell it at $50,000/kg to make a profit. That for very, very high quality bluefin is not impossible, and even if you decided to take a loss on it, think what it says about your restaurant... | 393a35de-0d08-4307-804f-65717cbee41f |
74almh | How does our body read data (genes) | Genes are made up of sequences of four different types of bases: A, T, G, C. You may have heard that DNA comes in two strands, the double helix. One strand binds to the other strand through matching up bases to their "complementary base" on the other strand. An A on strand will bind to a T on the other, G to C, C to G, and T to A.
When a gene is being analyzed, the strands are pulled apart and specialized proteins build a *new,* shorter strand out of a substance similar to DNA called RNA. The strand is built on the principle of complementary base pairing, and is packaged and transported away from the DNA once the copy is complete.
Once the copy is made, it gets picked up by a "ribosome," a little cellular machine. The ribosome looks at the base pairs in sets of three (each set is called a codon). Using complementary base pairing, it builds a protein.
It can do this because it has access to amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Each amino acid has a chunk of three bases attached to it that are specific to the type of amino acid. The ribosome matches each codon to the corresponding amino acid, and moves on to the next codon. The amino acids are strung together in a chain, and when the process is complete the chain folds into a protein.
Once the protein is complete, it performs a function based on its shape and what amino acids it's made of. | 99c232e2-85a2-4566-8e1a-7cc11d2ca383 |
35y30j | Do water pressure valves actually reduce water consumption? | Depends on the application. Probably works in the shower if you don't change how long you shower.
But for static uses like your toilet, it will just take longer for it to fill. Its still using the same amount of water.
People used to stick a brick or something in the tank to reduce the amount of water it uses. But this is back in the day of the 5 gallon (or more) tanks. With the smaller ones now, putting a brick in there may severely impair the ability of it to flush.
It may help a tiny bit when it comes to stuff like showers. But to a toilet, or if you're filling a pot with water to cook, it'll just take longer to fill. And in a shower situation, it may take you a little longer to rinse your hair, for example.
30% seems a bit high though for household stuff. For landscaping it may make a major difference as long as you don't change the watering times. The only issue is that the sprinklers may not cover as much (lower pressure means the water isn't thrown as far).
But for things that use a set amount of water...the consumption will be the same. Depends on what you do with it. | 4b9c4f1c-0415-4c02-9e6e-f2d58d3751d5 |
15v08i | Why is it on hot days, I can stick my hand out a car window while driving and feel a cool breeze? | The air outside the car isn't at 100% relative humidity. There's room for it to absorb more water by evaporation. So as you stick your sweaty disgusting paw out your window, the water on your nasty mitts gets evaporated quickly as it is exposed to a great deal of air in a hurry.
Evaporation causes cooling, so your hand cools down. | 093c6b8a-c045-4d25-aebe-c693c4fd75d1 |
2130sd | Why is Google not providing external sd card support for the nexus, moto g etc? | Google Drive. If you don't have local storage that gives you more incentive to put your files in Google's cloud. | 1d590e5a-9480-4c8d-a10f-26f7929023e2 |
7ktaio | Why is the Lion so widely used in European Heraldy even though they are mostly found in Africa? | Well, the dragon is used a lot too, even though it's found... no where.
It isn't about the actual, physical representation of the animal. It's about the symbolism and ideas it represents. Europeans thought of the Lion as "king of the jungle." A powerful, noble animal at the top of its food chain. There really isn't an analogous animal in Europe (aside from wolves, which always had a negative connotation). | 7ef14638-665a-477b-96fd-2c3cd38d46ae |
1sv1v3 | Why did we Americans name our sport "Football" when there was already a sport called that with entirely different rules? | Because your premise is faulty. There is no single game whose English name is "football". Football is a category of games played on foot and using a ball (in opposition to something like polo that uses a ball but is played on horseback). Games within the football category include Association Football, American/Gridiron Football, Australian Football, and Rugby Football. Also, most of these had their rules codified in the 1860s, so there's not even much if a which came first.
The form of football that became popular in Europe is Association Football, this becomes more evident when you look at what FIFA stands for (federation Internationale de *football association*).
Fun fact: the term "soccer" to refer to association football comes from England. In the 19th century students at Oxford had a tendency to create slang names by adding an "-er" to the end, thus Rugby became Rugger and Association Football became Assoccer and then finally Soccer.
Tl;dr: there is no single game whose English name is football. Your premise is faulty. | 4af3342c-0ced-4ae3-82b4-688a7f5cd93c |
3708m7 | Why drones are so prevalent right now. What tech breakthrough occurred to make them so common and versatile all of a sudden? | Probably the driving factor was the reduction in the price of accurate gyroscopes, which keep the drones oriented correctly. | a976f8ae-73ac-4639-abe8-ee20c31f4f55 |
3h3ob5 | How does the Fight Club "soap-bomb" work? Is it really possible? | In the movie it was a fake way to make explosives but in the book it described a real way to do it. They changed it in the movie adaptation to keep peele from actually doing it | d1f00800-46af-4306-a259-5bebefebc451 |
5a0adw | Is sleeping with "one eye open" possible. Could your vision work while you're fast asleep? | No, that's just an expression.
You can't literally do this. The expression means to sleep lightly and while some people *might* be able to semi-consciously sleep "lighter" on some occasions, most people have no control over that.
Interestingly, some animals (like dolphins) only have half of their brain sleep at any given time, so that they can still breathe while sleeping. It has been found that this phenomena is more common than we thought, and some animals use this method in order to stay alert while sleeping.
But, as I said, humans do not share in this ability. | 14770bd0-1ad4-49fc-b766-10ae6aead45c |
x9e6c | My six year old daughter just asked what's beyond the edge of outer-space. I have no idea how to answer. Help? | A common misconception is that the universe is like a bubble or a balloon, this is due to the somewhat related analogies such as "The universe is expanding!" and so we think to ourselves, "Well, it must be expanding into something!" Or that we live in the world, which is in space, so "Space must be inside something!"
It's a difficult thing to imagine. It is itself, it isn't inside anything. It is bound to itself so when we travel in one direction forever we can end up right where we started. There isn't a way to study anything 'outside' the universe as the question doesn't make sense. The concept of 'outside' can't apply here in the everyday sense.
Also, remember that the universe is expanding, so for our intents and purposes, we study what is called the *observable* universe - this is the part of the universe that we can see, because its light has reached us. But there is more beyond that since the universe is expanding so fast. We can't see those parts and so it isn't dealt with normally. | af1b3b4f-8a6c-49a5-aead-b723048d1f2b |
7i2jyb | Can smoking related diseases be noticed before becoming full blown? | This is a tricky one.
I guess it depends what you mean by noticed.
Let me preface this by saying it seems any consumption of cigarettes causes an effect on body tissues. It is noxious and causes a response.
The end diseases we associate with smoking, at least personally, are emphysema, lung cancer, and heart disease.
Emphysema, or its early manifestations can be picked up early. Shortness of breath on exertion and such.
The problem with most of these things is our bodies amazing capacity to cope and the inbuilt physiological reserve we have.
In the lungs this means we open more airways when we don't have enough oxygen because of emphysema or cancer. So you don't really notice the deficit.
In heart disease it is much the same. Most of us are only using a percentage of our overall cardiac or respiratory capacity. So when there is a problem our body just works a bit harder. This causes some other problems.
The chronic use of most cigarette smoking means that there is also continually irritation and injury meaning nothing gets a chance to recover properly either
Very basic over view. Hope it helped | d1c4d479-6389-4498-9b79-a8886eda501f |
3nom72 | e^i*pi + 1 = 0 | This is a special case of Eulier's formula:
e^ix = cos(x) + i*sin(x)
Because sin(pi) = 0 the imaginary component disappears and you're left with cos(pi) = -1; adding 1 gets you to zero.
It's a mathematical coincidence but a pretty cool one.
_URL_0_ | d6f42539-798d-431a-b5be-9544f1de0b72 |
2ylhln | What defines something as edible or inedible? How is this determined? | Can you eat it and not die, get sick, or gain some nutritional or functional benefit? Then it's edible.
Plastic isn't edible because you can't absorb nutrients from it or use it as food for long.
mercury isn't edible because you'd die pretty quickly from mercury poisoning.
Bread is edible because you can sustain yourself on it
Poison ivy isn't technically edible because, well, it's slightly poisonous.
.
Basically, something is edible if it is fit to be eaten without negatively affecting you. | 2edae446-2dc4-4934-a61d-253c2f4745a2 |
4c00ff | Why would a company sell stock and buy it straight back? | Sell when it's high, stockholders may start selling too which can bring down stock price, buy it all back again. Profit. | c192fd48-9249-41db-9370-28fd3c1483d7 |
8o97dv | Why can you replace only the glass in some phones and you have to replace the full display on others? | On some phones, the screen is bonded (glued) to the glass. This was done supposedly to achieve a clearer image, having less material and an air gap between the top surface and the display.
So rather than use a heat gun to carefully separate the screen from the glass (and put it back together with the same quality as manufacturing), I usually just opted to go the easiest route and replace the whole unit. It’s usually not that much more expensive anyway. | a870418f-3f3e-4d0c-8164-bc1c96bd1541 |
2kj4dk | What is the process they use to teach deafblind individuals, like Helen Keller, to read and write? | Well, first they have to learn how to communicate in some nontrivial way (i.e. communication more involved than simple things like pushing and pulling). Once they have learned some such way, learning another such way (such as Braille) is a straightforward (if difficult) process - they can then have the new system explained to them.
In Helen Keller's case in particular, Anne Sullivan first taught her to communicate by running her fingers over Keller's palm in certain patterns (corresponding to letters) and giving her the related object. For example, she'd spell out "D-O-L-L" and then give Keller her doll. Of course Keller at first didn't understand this or even the point of it, but eventually she figured out what Sullivan was trying to teach her. Once that major breakthrough was made (famously with the word "water" and running water), nothing held her back.
[Here](_URL_0_) is a fascinating video that's not exactly what you're asking about, but strongly related. It's a video of Sullivan and Keller, with Sullivan describing how she taught Keller to "hear" spoken language and to speak herself (this was after Keller was taught the spell-on-palm method I mentioned above), and the both of them demonstrating the process that they used. | 33dff440-3947-41de-add4-c917fdbd5ed6 |
46wdpt | if you need yogurt to make yogurt, how was the first ever yogurt made? | You don't actually need yogurt to make yogurt. The acidophilus bacteria needed to make it occur in the stomach linings of most young mammals. Cheese and yogurt could be made by accident if you carry milk in a bag made from a lamb, calf, or kid stomach and bump it around in the hot sun. Please don't try though! | 5fda2ff7-6654-4a2b-880c-f581a1c3c945 |
2uf2f9 | Why does a refrigerated can of juice take so long to return to room temperature after it has been removed from the refrigerator? | There are no stupid questions. Only stupid people. | 4da6d804-7e6d-4917-8f9b-b7915b2c53a0 |
3p5564 | What stops someone from opening the emergency exit on a plane? | Their feeble human muscles.
Doors on jets are designed so that they have to open inward before they swing outward. That means that to open them, you have to be strong enough to overcome not just the weight of the door, but also the difference between the pressurized atmosphere inside the plane and the low pressure air at 10 or 30 thousand feet. I've seen estimates as high as it being equivalent lifting 1,500 lbs. | 6ec24121-2c35-4535-86cd-32d22a3ebb82 |
3i047p | How come all these amazing breakthroughs I see in articals such as cancer treatments and battery advancements just seem to disappear and never to be heard from again | Because by adding the phrase 'amazing breakthrough' to an article, they've made you more likely to read it. But in most cases the article either describes an idea someone had that may or may not work and hasn't been tested yet, or a single step in the right direction on a path with millions of steps to go before that battery advances, that cancer gets cured, or that frikken shark gets a frikken laser on it's head. | df4df351-777b-403d-b92f-0750e8d476e7 |
5n5sc5 | Why do little kids elongate words (such as drinky, milky, nappy, etc) when you would think its easier to just say one syllable? | It comes from parents usually. The parents use it as it's been shown to help kids learn, specifically the repetition. Parents probably won't say "milky", they'll say "milky milk", it helps little kids learn easier. From that the kids shorten it to just "milky" since that's the first word. | a2bd38fe-4ba4-47c4-b3e2-81bd2fc0697d |
49yo3t | Why is it so much more expensive to send texts and make phone calls internationally? | The string that ties your tin cans together gets really expensive when you get further away.
In reality, because they can. | 54ad6ff2-cdff-4394-9f86-041747ea3237 |
3thqzz | What makes it frowned upon for OPs to respond to their own post? | The interwebs culture views it as spammy. Use an edit to your original post instead. After someone replies to your OP then it is OK to respond with one new post. | a14efb77-00e3-48e5-8b41-2990e780e309 |
2khbmr | How do tribute bands not have to pay royalties? | Tribute bands that play only at venues that have contract with a licensing agency (such as BMI or ASCAP) are covered by that for licensing. Or, a really popular tribute band may have directly handled the licensing. Many cover bands, however, are performing illegally, and just hoping not to get caught. A small bar band isn't likely to be noticed. if anything, the venue is more likely to be fined.
Here's an interesting paper done on this:
_URL_0_ | d92c8c31-e7d5-44ea-b4cf-200eec03516f |
w41te | Difference between bisexuality and pansexuality. | Seems to me that the difference is very nuanced. Bisexual means being attracted to both males and females, while pansexual means being attracted to any human, the difference being that transgendered or in between gender people or whatever are included on the pansexual menu while they are not specifically included for a bisexual.
It is confusing because we think of bisexual as being attracted to either men or women (gender), or males and females (sex), so I suppose there could be a bisexual person that is only attracted to men and women but only the male sex, while all pansexuals are attracted to men and women who are either males or females or in between. | dc9ed765-e576-4557-b46a-cb589f8777d4 |
2zbzsv | If California is running out of water, why do we continue to allow industrial agriculture to continue creating more and more water sucking farms to turn a profit and ship goods out of state? | It's not obvious to me that there is actually a trend of new farms sprouting up. The place to look would be [USDA statistics]
(_URL_0_). We don't have the numbers since the drought, ie the difference between 2014 and 2015 yet. If this is really going on, it doesn't look to me like part of a long-term trend: there were 77 900 farms in 2013, as opposed to 76 400 farms in 2014. Total land in farms was unchanged, at 25.5 million acres in both years.
Looking back a few years: there were 77 900 farms in 2012, with 25.6 million acres of farmland; 81 500 farms in 2010 and 2011, with 25.4 million acres of farmland in both years.
There seems to be a trend of fewer farms, but bigger ones on average, since 2010. If new farms are indeed being established or new farmland being used, that'll appear in next year's statistics.
TL;DR: Too soon to tell if this is even happening. | 3ff47f61-fede-4d11-b722-ec3c36fa3029 |
56jrrm | How did racism begin if no one is born/inherently racist? | Humans are immensely tribal in nature. We are comfortable in our own groups and hostile to people from outside our groups, because we don't know if they can be trusted. So, it's probably a more accurate statement to say that people are by nature xenophobic, and all sorts of hostility arises from that. Skin color is just a really easy way to label someone as different and allows a simple target for that hatred and fear. | d47f66d3-3325-4b84-9ff7-1996074a8fae |
skon5 | The difference between all of the programming languages, and what they are used for. | There's a lot of languages (literally *thousands* - there's at least a few dozen in regular use), explaining all the little differences is beyond the scope of an ELI5. In short, when you're designing & implementing a programming language, there's going to be trade offs. The biggest one is between how easy the language is for the computer to use vs. how easy it is for the programmer. For example, [if you compare C++ and Ruby](_URL_0_) you'll see that C++ is much faster & uses more less memory, but Ruby requires fewer lines of code. Less code means a programmer can get more work done. For many applications, programmer time is more expensive than computer time.
As I said, you're question's pretty broad - what is your interest in this? Are you just randomly curious about programming languages, are learning or planning on learning to program for fun? Are you considering studying computer science and/or going into a career programming?
You won't get all the answers at once - there's too much to learn & without some background, it wouldn't make sense in the first place. Just work on small pieces & you'll pick the rest up gradually by exposure. | 3372cd8e-6b64-461f-8d5d-b5dfa8258166 |
jatdh | Explain Evolution Like I'm Five | When anything is born, it is not the same as the thing it came from. You are not just like your mother, but you have some similar things- maybe your eyes are the same color, for example. Some things you get from your parents, and some things you get from living- like when you get tanned by the sun when you go outside.
Now you're fairly similar to your mom, but if you had a kid, who had a kid, who had a kid, who had a kid, there wouldn't be much of YOUR mom left in your great great grandkid. When you do this for thousands or millions of years, those changes will be more than eye or hair color.
For example, let's say that there was a "horse" in Africa who had two kids. The first kid had a short neck, and the second kid had a slightly longer neck than normal and was teased for it by the other horses. The short-necked kid had a bunch of kids, but most of them starved because they couldn't reach the leaves of trees during a drought. The longer-necked kid had a bunch of kids, and most of them lived because they could reach things others couldn't. This happened over and over and over again- with necks getting slightly longer and longer, until that "horse" became a giraffe, and no longer looked like the original mother from all those years ago. All the short-necked horses eventually died, because they didn't adapt and couldn't eat. That's evolution. | bc9abcdd-3dc8-4d11-a98c-9f72a3d5b619 |
3x2imc | How does your body remain its form and know when to stop growing? | It sounds like someone found Reddit as an easy way to answer some Biology essay questions... | d7a3e717-b209-489f-a48e-aeadd3d0a286 |
139wug | why prostitution isn't legal. | The modern argument typically revolves around the kind of activities that surround prostitution, (eg. human trafficking, violence, drug use). and that legalizing it could be viewed as condoning the associated activity. | 99e6e301-64d2-43f8-93d9-b733cacf7ef9 |
5k5m1a | If a mother is vaccinated against a disease, why doesn't her child get that immunity in utero? | They do, actually, but only in some cases.
When a person gets vaccinated, they produce antibodies (or, as scientists say, immunogloblins) against an organism. Antibodies are proteins, and they come in many flavors. IgG and IgA are two types that can cross the placenta, but IgM can't (these are just acronyms for immunoglobulin G, A, and M).
Unfortunately it isn't possible to make IgG producing vaccines for every pathgen.
You must also consider that these immunoglobulins only last for a while. They are proteins, not living cells, and thus they are unable to replicate themselves. Eventually the baby will lose this immunity, so he needs to get his own vaccine. This way he will teach his immune cells to make the antibodies, and as in other things in life, what is truly learn is hardly forgotten. | 6cac465f-da84-4f41-b8c4-f26d5af3d2cd |
2k9p1f | Why does your throat get so sore when you're sick, regardless if you have a cough or not? | Most sore throats come from the irritation of your sinuses draining, not from coughing. | a4d0369e-e695-4872-b5ea-3f31d7f1f8db |
3k89g1 | How does wireless phone charging work? | Electromagnetism.
When electricity flows through a wire, it generates a magnetic field perpendicular to the wire. Basically to create a wireless charging system, you reverse the process: create a magnetic field that induces electric flow in the wireless charger on your phone and that electrical flow charges the battery. | 27ff5080-6262-4acd-9686-6ebe14b8bc61 |
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