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Is it possible to have one eye color blind and the other one not?
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For most common (i.e. genetic) forms of colorblindness, no. However, if you have some degenerative disorder that specifically affects one eye or optic nerve, then you can selectively impair color processing in that eye. Also, you could be colorblind in one hemifield (left or right visual field) if colorblindness is cortical in nature (i.e., caused by brain damage). This is called [achromatopsia](_URL_0_) and can either apply to the whole visual field or to just one hemifield.
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Theoretically, yes. The lens of the glasses filters out some of the light so that one eye gets one image and the other eye gets another. If the person is red-green colorblind, that doesn't mean that red or green are invisible, just that there are wavelengths of light that they cannot distinguish. The 3D effect arises from your two eyes getting different images, not because they are processed as being different colors. This would still be the case for a colorblind individual.
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The human heart is used a symbol of strong emotion; even love. But none of our emotions reside in our hearts, why is this?
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Because we didn't know about that when humanity decided that the heart was the center of emotion. The heart beats. It's where life happens. That the brain was more important didn't get discovered until years later.
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Brain. The world has some kinda of sick fetish with the heart but it has nothing to do with emotion or conciousnes.
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Why is task manager more effective and faster rather than pressing the X or alt + f4 when something freezes?
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Because being able to end a program that won't exit by normal means is one of the features of the Task Manager. Whether you hit X on a program window or press alt+f4 you are essentially asking the program: "will you please exit?". Under normal circumstances the program will then go through whatever it needs to do before ending, like asking you to save unsaved changes for example. When you end a program through the Task Manager you're no longer asking nicely. Instead you're telling Windows that you'd like the program to exit and if it won't exit willingly Windows should force it to. The downside is that a program that is forced to exit might not be able to go through the steps it would normally do before ending.
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The real answer is that it depends. Many things can cause a computer to freeze, and there are different kinds of "freezing". It can happen if a program does something unintended and doesn't have the code to correct it, meaning that it just doesn't have any more instructions to carry out. I can happen if you use more RAM than you have (though this usually just slows the computer down, not freeze). The CPU could be at capacity and not be able to make any more calculations. Your hard drive could have physical damage or bad sectors, meaning that the computer can't access what it needs at the moment, causing it to wait (but never get it).
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Why is the age for buying mature video games 17 (at least in the US)? Most other "mature" things require you to be 18 years old, so why is the video game industry different?
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The ESRB is not a governmental organization. There is no legal mechanism to determine a game's age rating, nor to prevent an underage person from buying one. Most retailers won't sell M games to minors, but that's their policy, not a law. The ratings exist purely for the convenience of the consumers. I could sell a copy of Halo at a yard sale to a ten-year-old and no laws would be broken. But if I sold him a pack of cigarettes or a six-pack of beer, I would be in serious trouble.
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Simply answer, because consumers keep buying them. Longer answer, due to the new and easier channels of distribution, mainly pre-order, digital downloads, etc. games can be bought way before any serious reviews by game critics or consumers alike have been established. So by the time the problems of a game are known, the majority of sales have already been made. Coupled with promises of updates and fixes, many consumers stick around or even buy the game later when it's fixed. This way game companies get both, the money from early buyers who purchase the game without knowing it's quality as well as patient gamers who wait until the game is fixed. Since this behavior doesn't seem to damage the long-term reputation of the company it remains a viable business model.
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how can Jupiter and Venus pass in the sky when one is closer to the sun and one is further from the sun than us?
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It has to do with relative position in the three orbits. Have a look at [this diagram](_URL_0_). Earth is in blue, Venus in green, and Jupiter in orange. Venus appears to pass in front of Jupiter, despite being closer to the sun than we are.
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And does it have to do with the planet Venus appearing brightest in the sky just after sunset and just before sunrise?
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Why does vanilla extract taste metallic by itself, but actually like vanilla when mixed with other food?
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It's not so much just mixing with other food, but the cooking process. Extract has a high percentage of alcohol that evaporates quickly under heat, so you bake the food and it infuses it with Vanilla but vanishes otherwise.
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Usually its not the coffee making those tastes. Their other substances added to it afterwards. There isn't a vanilla coffee plant unfortunately.
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If I stood on a platform that was accelerating upwards (towards me) at 9.8m/s/s in space, would it realistically simulate earth's gravity?
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From Einstein's equivalence principle (which existed in more primitive forms even in Newton's work), the only physical difference between being in a constant gravitational field and being in an accelerated frame is tidal forces, which are generally defined as any difference in gravitational force over distance. If you're on the surface of the Earth, you never feel any tidal forces on your body, nor can you measure any change in the gravitational field in a decent vicinity of your position. But already if you check out the period of a pendulum at different altitudes, you start to notice that the gravitational force the Earth depends on where you are (this was noticed before Newton), and if you want to work out planetary orbits you definitely need to include how force varies like 1/r^(2). So if everything you're considering allows you to set g = 9.8 m/s^2 everywhere, then gravity is equivalent to acceleration, but this breaks down as gravity varies with position.
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You already are in a time dilation gradient. Your head is running about 7 nanoseconds per year faster than your feet. If Earth gravity was about 131 million times stronger, the rate difference would be 1 second per year. Except that if gravity was that strong, Earth would be squeezed a lot smaller (not a black hole, more like a neutron star). Redoing my calculations ... Earth squeezed down to 528 meters radius (not kilometers!), surface gravity would be 145 million g's, then time dilation over a two meter height would be 1 second per year. Except, how are you going to stand up in that gravity? If you could stand up, the tidal forces are over a million g's between your feet and your head. Conclusion: the time dilation gradient is not going to bother you, but the gravity stresses will. P.S. I recommend this story about gravity: [Neutron Star](_URL_0_)
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What limitations are currently stopping us from collecting and using lightning bolts?
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Engineering difficulties aside, from a practical standpoint, a lightning bolt has energy in the range of a few megajoules to possibly a gigajoule. Even if this could be collected and used, it's about the same amount of energy that a large power plant delivers in one second, so even if it were possible, harvesting lightning wouldn't contribute very much energy to the electrical grid in the long run.
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The biggest hurdle is it simply isn't that practical, but it can be done. Lightning delivers a lot of energy in a short time, which makes it hard to store or route, and they occur in variable locations over variable timescales, which would make it difficult to build infrastructure to handle it. Beyond that, it simply doesn't provide all that much power relative to our other power generating technology. So basically, the biggest hurdle is "there's no good reason to do so," with "it would be rather difficult and costly" coming in as a runner-up.
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If I raised a big cat solely by myself from birth, would it eventually want to kill me?
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if you raise a small cat by yourself, would it eventually scratch your hands quite badly while playing? probably, yeah. big cats are practically identical to house cats, behaviorally. but when a housecat is funny when it gets aggressive sometimes, a big cat would kill you. it doesn't necessarily *want* to though, no. but it probably would.
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There's actually a good chance it would - a cat has a large surface area relative to its mass, so it reaches terminal velocity quite quickly. In terms of the 'hit' at the bottom, cats reach and survive falls at terminal velocity from high buildings all the time - so yes, there's a good chance the cat would survive it.
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What is the difference between up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange quarks?
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The biggest difference between d, s, and b quarks (similarly u, c and t quarks) is mass. u and d quarks are the lightest (~1 MeV), and therefore form the stable nucleons: protons and neutrons (note that neutrons are only stable inside stable nuclei). The s quark is reasonably light (~100 MeV), but will decay via the weak force, which can change quark flavour. c, b and t are collective called the "heavy flavours" (~1-200 GeV). Due to its mass, the top is so unstable that it decays (almost always to a real W and a b quark) before it can become bound in a hadron. Another difference between the quarks arise from flavour mixing. As a result of the Higgs mechanism, the weak and mass eigenstates of quarks do not align. This allows, say, a b-quark to decay via a tree-level charged current interaction to either a c or a u. The mass eigenstate of each quark is a different superposition of weak eigenstates, parametrised by the CKM matrix.
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Strangeness is just a quantity (like lepton number) that is conserved in particle interactions. Strangeness is conserved in strong and electromagnetic interactions, but not weak force interaction. If a particle has 1 strange quark, then it has a strangeness of 1 (or -1 for an antistrange quark). _URL_0_
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Why is it that people will automatically call someone “Alex” instead of “Alexander”
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People automatically shorten names if possible. It’s just a cultural trend to use short names (like Mia) or shorten long names to nicknames Jennifer = Jen or Jenny Alexander = Alex Zacharie = Zach
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This has very much to do with the Russian connection to the Greek Orthodox Church. Many orthodox Russians adopted names from orthodox tradition. Thus first names will often be East Slavic versions of originally Greek names.
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In 1791, when the 2nd amendment was truly about militias and muskets, was there any debate about gun control?
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I came across this article the other day. **[The Secret History of Guns](_URL_1_)** Not an academic source, but interesting and eye-opening, nonetheless. > The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution. > > For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the “individual mandate” that has proved so controversial in President Obama’s health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.
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> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the **security of a free State**, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. STATES have the right to a well organized militia. PEOPLE have the right to bear arms.
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does the peel of a banana serve a purpose?
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Wild bananas and the bananas you buy in the store are very different. Wild bananas are about 3 inches long and not terribly "meaty". Lots of seeds. The banana you buy in the store was grown to be huge and tasty and have no seeds in it. Modern Bananas like the Cavendish variety are actually sterile and have to be manually propagated. Wild banana's peels are just a covering or skin. The ones you buy in the store were specifically bred to be that way - peel included. We feed monkey's those store bought one's in zoos because they are cheap and easy to get.
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They do. HOWEVER; they don't taste like the banana *you eat*. When the "standard" banana flavour was created the most popular banana was the [Gros Michel banana](_URL_0_). This species of bananas tasted just about like what we call "banana flavour" and was the main imported banana around the world well into the 1950's. While artificial tastes won't really hit that flavor perfectly either it is much closer to the Gros michel. . However, this strain nearly went extinct when an infestation of Panama disease early in the 20th century struck. Because all bananas are cloned no Gros Michel bananas had any defense against the illness and the entire population quickly died out. So, now we have a banana flavor but no banana. . After the demise of the Gros Michel we moved on to cultivate and export [Cavendish Bananas](_URL_1_) which are the bananas we eat today. They don't taste as sweet as Gros michel and thus was created the difference between the banana (cavendish) and the banana flavor (Gros Michel)
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If Hollywood constructed the Cowboy era, what was the reality of those towns and that time period?
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Another few questions I have: * It seems that every old west town has a quite public brothel on top of its saloon. I understand that brothels might be common near mines, where women are scarce and morale needs to be maintained, but was this common of most towns to just generally have? * Are there any recorded duels and was this a legal practice? From what I've read, if you're facing an opponent with the guns that they had, you'd be more likely to hit the person next to you than your target. * Where did the original cowboy stories derive from?
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I would probably think of the marine in that case, as it is one of the most prominent warrior in the US armed forces, and one with a proud history since the Barbary Wars. The cowboy is a labourer who happened to often be armed and be romanticised. In how many regular battles did cowboys partake, really?
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Where does the water go when the tide changes?
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> Does the tide just shift to another coast? Yup. The tide is kind of like water sloshing in a bucket...one side is high while the other is low.
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Tides are caused by the gravity of both the moon and the sun “pulling” at the water in the sea. Because the Earth is constantly turning, the “pull” of gravity affects different places as each day goes on - so when the tide is “out” in your area, it is “in” somewhere else.
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As governor of California during the 'high sixties', what were Ronald Reagan's personal feelings about the counterculture?
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This was Reagan's thoughts on student disruptions on the UC Berkeley campus:"If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer." Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1970
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* Reagan was loved by the right and the middle, he won 49 states in 1984. * Reagan was able to work with the opposing party and had a legendary relationship with his chief domestic adversary, Tip O'Neil. No president since has been able to work with the other side of the aisle like he did. * Reagan formed a relationship with his chief foreign adversary, Gorbachev. Reagan forged a better relationship with Gorbachev than most presidents have with their foreign allies. * Reagan had a history of being a great negotiator, even before he took office. There are several policy reasons to not like Reagan, but he was an amazingly successful president on both the foreign and domestic fronts.
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Why is Senator Rand Paul doing a filibuster? What will he gain from doing this?
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So he can stall (aka: filibuster) the bill making process. Normally when people filibuster, they try and make it so a bill doesn't get passed. Since congress has a boatload of bills to go through in little time, pulling a filibuster can make the other party opt that law out and go to the next one. Or they can choose to sit through the filibuster. Filibusters are normally speeches, but these speeches can be about anything. Onetime senators read nursery rhymes.
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If Congress is going to vote on a bill, and it is anticipated to win, a member from the opposing party can start a filibuster. Its basically just a very long speech that takes up the time that the bill would have been voted on.
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What are the limitations, if any, of making lab-grown diamonds of large size?
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All these lab growing procedures need to grow the crystals very slowly (since they basically add the carbon layers one by one). This is in a way the limiting factor (see below for more details). But 1 carat is not the limit. I found 30 carat for yellow diamonds (with impurities). Or here in this paper they present a method to get a 1cm 8carat pure(white) diamand: _URL_0_ (took them 200h). Unfortunately the limit growth rate decreases as the crystal size increases (the surface area you need to grow increases with the volume - but the speed they can "coat" new layers on top stays the same). In other words: They grow slower the bigger they get. You can not deposit faster if you want to maintain a good quality diamond without impurities and defects.
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> and you quickly reach the limits of material strengths. I want to make sure you know that people are currently making *perfect* lab grown diamonds already. We have the materials and temperatures to make diamonds and it is not beyond our technological abilities. [**GEMESIS**](_URL_0_) is one of the first companies to sell diamonds directly to people online, though they have been selling to wholesalers and jewelers for nearly a decade allready. They make diamonds up to 3 carats. The Other company is [**SCIO DIAMOND**](_URL_1_) who seem to have a broader view of diamonds in industry and manufacturing as well as gemstones. I for one look forward to the day we have diamond-wafer microchips instead of the silicon-wafer microchips we have now. [NOVA has an entertaining 14 minute video of one of those companies and their production processes](_URL_3_). also this _URL_2_
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Why are the geological features of Mars larger than the ones found on Earth?
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Volcanoes on Mars grow to be larger than on Earth due to the lack of plate tectonics on Mars. Take a look at [this](_URL_0_) from the web pages of one of the Mars rover teams. The first section on this page answers the question "Why does Mars have bigger volcanoes than the Earth?" The answer has to do with absence of plate tectonics on Mars. This means that on Mars, magma comes up and continues to collect at the same spot. On Earth, by contrast, the plates move, and so magma first collects at one spot and then at another and so on. This leads to the larger volcanoes seen on Mars. [This figure](_URL_1_) summarizes what's going on.
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Why do you think Mars is less diverse in its elemental composition?
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Why does taking a block from a structure extremely quick cause it to not fall, unlike if you remove it slowly? (i.e in Jenga)
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It works in Jenga because you can apply force quickly enough to overcome fiction and cause slippage. That way the block you're pulling won't pull others with it. This doesn't really apply to structures not made of smooth wooden bricks.
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When a substance enters a rapid deceleration such as hitting an object it does not have enough energy to overcome the inertia of, such as a brick wall, the energy within the substance in motion is reflected back fully into the substance in motion. If this energy is greater than the force holding the substance together, the substance will fracture along it's weakest points first until the energy is exhausted.
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Where does the term "Scandinavia" truly come from?
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From to the OED: The name Scandinavia, which appears in the existing text of Pliny, is a mistake for Scadinavia, < Germanic *Skadīnaujā, whence by normal phonetic development Old English Scędenig (Beowulf 3336) = Old Norse Skáney (adopted in Old English as Scónég), the name of the southern extremity of Sweden; the terminal element is *aujā, Old English ég, íg, island.
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The Scandinavian countries have over the course of history been very involved with each other politically - Sweden claimed Finland for quite some time, Denmark claimed Norway, the Kalmar Union united Sweden, Norway and Denmark politically for a good while, etc. Sweden's southern border towards Denmark, in particular, has shifted many times; to this day, the people living in Scania (Sweden's southernmost province) speak a dialect that echoes many sounds of the Danish language, with guttural r's and several loan-words. Culturally, they were (and are) similar in many ways. There are obviously differences, but I think you're going to have to explain further what you mean by "cultural unification" before any proper answer can be given.
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Why is Chicken Pox so much more deadly in adults rather than children?
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Honestly, we don't know yet. The current theory is that there's a difference between a child's immune system and an adult's. A child's immune system prefers to eat up bacteria and viruses, while an adult's prefers to shoot bullets at bacteria and viruses (antibodies). Some think that the "eating" method is just more effective against the chicken pox virus.
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You seem to have your facts wrong. Chickenpox is not deadly to adults. Mumps poses a great risk to post-pubertal males, because it can render them sterile once the testes have fully developed. However, it won't kill them. Rubella poses a great risk in pregnancy, as it causes birth defects. Measles is dangerous to everyone, but moreso to children.
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Early Black Churches in the United States?
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African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture by Fulop Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South by Raboteau and After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875-1915 by John Giggie (who is an awesome professor and historian. For articles, try the ATLA database as well as the Jstor database
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I asked a similar question regarding why the Church was not prosecuted by the government as an entity, and got some good answers from /u/Bank_Gothic and /u/Pau_Zotoh_Zhaan on this thread: _URL_0_
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Since we exhale Carbon dioxide when we breathe, aren't we sucking it back in when we inhale for another breath?
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Firstly, remember that you don't exhale pure carbon dioxide - there's still plenty of oxygen in the air that you breathe out. Also, consider what happens to the air that you're breathing out - as it leaves your nose or mouth, it's moving - think about what happens on a cold day when you can see your breath in the air. Is it hanging around right in front of you? No - it billows out, and away from you, leaving fresher air directly around your face for you to breathe in.
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I'm a little rusty on my dive theory but breathing in even a little bit of CO2 at depth can be lethal. It comes down to partial pressures of the air and CO2, at depth depending on the atmospheres. The deeper you go, the higher the partial pressures of all the gasses involved go up.
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Why do professional basketball players not use the backboard more on their shots?
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You're taught when you first learn to shoot at the rectangle because the concept is easier to grasp. Overtime, you build muscle memory and having an accurate and higher arc increases the possibility for a basket. You wouldn't have to worry so much about the bounce or spin of the ball - less room for error.
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basketball is a team sport, the big men aren't the best in every position, usually guards are shorter and more agile, while the big men play forwards and center. a team with a few taller players doesn't necessarily have the clear dominant edge that a wrestler with 50 lbs on his opponent would have.
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Have there been societies where the husband was absorbed into the wife's family rather than wife into husband's? Where children were considered primarily part of the mother's family rather than the fathers?
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Yes. The term you're looking for is either "matrilocality" or "matrilinearity," depending on which angle you're actually interested in. Wikipedia has a short article on matrilocality, _URL_0_ (which also has a link to "matrilineal"). Briefly, the difference has to do with physical residence vs. family membership. In a matrilocal society (no doubt you can see this coming), the married couple resides with or near the wife's parents' family rather than the husband's. Such a society is probably also matrilineal, which refers specifically to the concept of lineage, i.e., membership in a family or clan, but for analysis purposes the two things are slightly different. ... I guess I've read more anthropology than I thought I had!
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As mentioned by others, this account of Britain sounds highly suspect. I would like to drop in with a bonus, though. The form of marriage you're describing, though extremely rare, does exist. It is called polyandry. One case I know of where it actually does take place is Tibet. The practice is only found in remote regions these days, and in most cases, several brothers share a single wife. In these communities, the men often have to spend a lot of time away from home seeking pasture for their livestock or sometimes working in caravans. Linkage: [Wikipedia](_URL_1_) [Anthropology Study (review)](_URL_0_)
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Why is America suddenly interested in restoring Cuban connections?
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Because it's absolutely fucking stupid to refuse to have diplomatic relations with a country that embarrassed us over half a century ago. We have diplomatic relations with countries that we've gone to war with since then, for crying out loud. Cuba is allowing it because it's in their financial interests to do so.
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Not much for the average American; but potentially huge improvements in quality of life for Cubans.
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How have spelling mistakes in ancient or medieval texts ever influenced the subsequent development of that language?
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I don't this quite answers your question, but I hope it does. The development of a language is really a large thing, but I have an example in French which still influences how Francophones write today. I know if you can count it as a mistake per se, but the French word Nénuphar, also written Nénufar, was an adaptation of a word taken from medieval Latin, but initially from the Persian language. The ph letters are attributed normally to Greek inspired words, like Philosophie. The ph Nénuphar stood its ground and still does, even though the major language instances in the French-speaking world nowadays prefer to honor its roots by recommending to write with an f : nénufar. And like many things in French, it complicates the learning of the language. Yet again. Hope it helps.
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It has happened in other languages as well, but probably English seems more like a mess because there's no organisation to actually sit and decide how language is regulated. In that time, English was still trying to get used to the changes by the [Great Vowel shift](_URL_1_) which later on, kept merging and changing pronunciation from the English that Shakespeare used. To this, add that English also borrowed a lot of words from French a bit later, which also caused some changes in how words were pronounced, as well as some vowels shortened and changed their pronunciation if they were followed by some consonants. Plus, Samuel Johnson's dictionary that fixed the spelling of some words, but kept the different pronunciation. In Spanish happened the same between the Latin American Spanish and the Castillian Spanish and the change of /s/ and /θ/ or [el yeísmo](_URL_0_) among others, but possibly *doesn't seem* that messy because there's an academy that regulates this.
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What gives milk its white colour?
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The white stuff it contains: * [Butterfat](_URL_0_), which is a bright yellow color * [Lactose](_URL_2_) (sugar), which is white. * Proteins, mainly [casein](_URL_1_) which is rich in calcium.
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If you mix chocolate milk with equal parts white milk, the milk will still be brown and referred to as chocolate milk.
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Why is the population of the planet basically 50/50 when it comes to gender?
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There are mechanisms that can cause departure from a 50/50 female to male sex ratio, by making it more likely to have a female or male child. So now the question is why is it so close to 50/50? The answer is frequency dependent selection. If we had a hypothetical population with 200 females and 5 males, which sex would have an increased chance of leaving offspring (higher fitness) males or females? It would be males, so any mechanism that produced more male offsprings would be selected for, thus increasing the ration of men to women. If the sex ratio was 200 males and 5 females, female children would have higher fitness and the ratio of females to males would increase. This ratio balances around 50/50 because male and female children have the same fitness.
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What other species? It's generally the case that species with a biological male and female sex system tend towards 50/50. Anytime that it isn't 50/50, members of the more numerous gender who have more kids of the less numerous gender have increased fitness. Let me give you an example: Consider a fishbowl that contains 80 male fish and 20 female fish. Male fish who can make more female babies are more fit because their children will have a much easier time finding a mate and thus, passing on their genes. Therefore, it's hard to maintain any kind of huge gender disparity.
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Why is it easier to balance something on your finger when it's rotating (like balancing a spinning basketball on your finger) compared to when it is stationary?
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Top comment from march 2015 when this was asked: (answer by u/Toppo) Every object keeps continuing its movement until there is an opposing force preventing that motion. When the basketball is spinning, the spinning is force in motion, which keeps its resisting change to its position. When you put a ball to spin, it attains energy to resist other forces, like gravity pulling it out of balance. If the ball does not spin, it has no force to resist gravity. Also [this video ](_URL_0_) was posted by u/LinearWave on the same thread
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Your sense of balance, or equilibrium, is determined by a fluid, and the position of stone-like things in it within the inner part of the ear. When you vigorously spin around you shake up these stones, so when you stop spinning they are still moving about causing you to feel dizzy.
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What's the mechanism that causes neuropathy in diabetes?
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Two main pathways: 1) High levels of glucose lead to high levels of [sorbitol which is neurotoxic](_URL_0_) 2) The ischemia from vascular damage from [metabolic changes from high glucose levels also leads to nerve damage](_URL_1_)
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Diabetes causes two kinds of problems which both contribute to foot problems: Peripheral artery disease and diabetic neuropathy. With the neuropathy the nerves are damaged by high levels of glucose in the blood leading to a loss of sensation. The less controlled their sugar levels the faster this progresses and it means that injuries can occur to the feet and not be noticed and addressed as they would be in people with fully functioning nerves. The other issue is the peripheral artery disease which reduces blood flow to the extremities. Lack of blood flow means that injuries which occur can be slow to heal and may become infected or gangrenous as the tissue dies from the lack of blood. Both of those factors mean that diabetics are particularly at risk for their extremities to suffer problems, particularly the feet because they are more hidden and difficult to monitor.
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Why is it dangerous to stare right into the sun?
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It is dangerous because the sun is really bright and your eye works like a lens, focusing the light onto the back of your eye. We all know of the kids lighting leafs and ants with magnifying glasses, thats what your doing to your eye :P I strongly suggest you not to do it ever again, you eye can take some rough handling, but once you've scorched the nerves your blind.
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It is not okay to look directly at the Sun through clouds. The back of your eye will not feel the damage that is occurring. If you can see the disk of the Sun through the clouds, then visible and UV light is making its way through, slowly burning your retina.
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Can you make snow out of a different liquid besides water
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Technically, snow is the solid phase form of water when condensed from the gas phase to a solid phase directly. Any substance has a solid phase crystal structure, even proteins, and so crystals of every chemical can be made. Therefore, "snow flakes" of a substance can be made and are usually called "single crystals." The complexity of snowflakes arises from its unique crystallization properties so you may not get a "snowflake" style pattern with another substance but you will get some type of crystal.
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Because temperature isn't uniform; the snow might be warmer. Also salt (that blue/white thing that you throw on the snow), when dissolved, lowers water's melting point, so it can stay liquid at lower temperatures. ASL?
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Can rust be melted back into its original metal?
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Yes. In fact, most all metals are extracted from the ground in a dirty oxidized "rust" form, which is more commonly called ore. When you smelt the ore you break the bonds between the oxygen and the metal and are able to separate out the metal. I should add that smelting doesn't just mean melting. In order to actually break up the metal oxide or metal sulfide in the ore, you'll need a chemical catalyst as well. The catalyst steals the oxygen, because it has a higher binding energy at high temperatures, leaving a slag and a pure metal. For a metal like hematite (iron oxide), I believe carbon is a popular catalyst. Edit: The chemists have spoken. Technically the carbon in that reaction is not a catalyst because it is consumed in the process; this makes it a "reducing agent."
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As iron is heated it reacts readily with oxygen and basically rusts quickly. This forms black flakes or "scales" on the surface of the metal and basically you lose parts of your workpiece. This black scale is actually where the term "blacksmith" comes from. Obviously that is undesirable but you also don't want to hammer it into your work as it would weaken the final piece so it needs to be cleaned away.
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how do Mosquitos and any other insects survive through the winter?
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They don't... Well not in mosquito form anyway. They lay eggs in water (puddles, pond etc.) these eggs hatch larvae which grow and develop in the water until spring comes around at which point they swim to the surface and become mosquitos.
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When it's really cold they will herd up in areas with thick undergrowth, especially evergreens with low branches which shelter as a tent might. They also move to areas with better foraging opportunities or less snow.
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What is this? What's it purpose and name?
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It's a low pass filter, to get rid of noise produced by the power supply, and perhaps to avoid that the cable acts as an antenna for some radio frequency signal. _URL_0_ Perhaps an electrical engineer can give some details?
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Pretty sure it's called a wet down. It's used to reflect light to make the scene more visible.
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What exactly is graphene, what does it do and why is it so talked about.
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Carbon is a really interesting molecule- it can bond in a bunch of different ways. It can form into a crystal (diamond) or stacked sheets (graphite, which is what we use for pencils) or balls (buckminsterfullerene). Graphene is what you get when you have a single sheet of pure carbon, so it's sort of like a single-atom thick layer of pencil with no impurities. It's hard to get large pure sheets of it, but it's incredibly strong when you do get it. And it turns out that you can manipulate it in such a way that it becomes way better for computers than silicon. In theory, graphene should be able to give us processors with clock speeds in the hundreds of gigahertz.
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Firstly, graphene is one atomic layer thick by definition, the great challenge has been getting larger pieces. Graphene absorbs about 2.3% of visible light passing through it. Fascinatingly, this number is given by πα, where α is the [fine-structure constant](_URL_0_).
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What's the Difference between an Assault Rifle and a Carbine?
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An assault rifle is weapon capable of automatic fire that fires and loads *intermediate* rifle rounds, which are generally lighter and faster than their predecessors(retroactively named 'battle rifles'). As a result, assault rifles are fairly controllable in automatic fire. The term carbine actually encompasses several different designs. 1) An assault rifle that has a shortened barred (generally around 18"). 2) A rifle sized weapon that loads pistol calibre ammunition the M1 carbine for example) 3) A sub-machine gun that can be converted to a rifle layout by adding stock or extending a stock. This usage is mostly obsolete - most weapons like this are referred to as Personal Defense Weapons (PDWs) and have begun to transition to their own family of calibre.
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"Assault weapon" is a political term used to deliberately confuse people with its similarity to the well-defined term "assault rifle". An "assault weapon" is whatever the law or person in question happens to think it is, although it usually involves defining by the number of rounds in the magazine and being semi-automatic (1 trigger pull = 1 shot). An "assault rifle" is a rifle that is smaller than a "battle rifle" and is able to shoot multiple times each time the trigger is pulled (aka "machine gun"). There are civilian versions of assault rifles that are not machine guns, they are semi-automatic, and that is what is legal in the US (with the exception of full auto rifles grandfathered from 1986 and before).
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Why did no one copy the roman military system?
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I suggest that the premise of your question is a bit skewed: Roman infantry wasn't so unstoppable as all that. They lost any number of battles. What was unstoppable was the Roman political system: The bastards just refused to admit they were beaten and *give the hell up*, like any other state at the time would have done after a disaster like, say, Cannae. Worse, they had the reserves of manpower to back that up. At a pinch, they would free slaves, recruit gladiators, give privileges to allied cities, admit subject peoples to citizenship - anything to stamp new legions out of the earth and *fight on*. So what other states needed to copy wasn't a tactical system, which is relatively easy, but a whole state organisation and mindset, not to mention sheer size. These are not points that can easily be deliberately copied.
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Hey there! This is actually one of our more popular questions, and it's featured [here](_URL_0_) in our list of popular questions! :D More recently, I posted one up here on [Roman generals](_URL_1_) that follows the same vein :) Hope those help!
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How to multiply very large integers in programming ?
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The simplest solution is BigNum or LibGMP. These are libraries of all the routines you need to do these operations. Essentially, the "numbers" are stored as a structure, like a string. Then the algorithms go through the structures, digit by digit, and do the operation. Want to multiply by a 50 digit number, do 50 one-digit multiply & shift operations and then add up the 50 results.
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A simple algorithm works by using the binary representation of one of the numbers (which is easy because numbers are already stored in binary inside the computer). For example, if b is 00100011 in binary then: a * b = a * 00100011 = a * 00100000 + a * 00000010 + a * 00000001 Now, multiplying binary number a by a binary number of the form 1000.…0 works by adding zeros to the end of a: a * b = a00000 + a0 + a And now you have a simple addition.
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How do smoke detectors detect smoke?
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There are more than one type. The most common is an ionizing smoke detector. Simplest form: You have a power source connected to an alarm. You then create a short circuit that has a gap of air in it. (Electricity will pass through the short circuit if it can and bypass the alarm) Next to the air gap there is a radioactive element, usually Americium-241 that releases alpha particles (two protons and two neutrons). The alpha particles ionize the air and completes the circuit. When smoke particles enter the gap they disrupt the ionization and the alarm is tripped.
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Nice try But seriously, special tools can detect gasoline even after it's burned, for example. Also analyze fire burn patterns. They know to looks for patterns that aren't natural, and the patterns tell them where to look closely.
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During biblical times, what happened to babies born with severe autism or Downs Syndrome?
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Since your actual time frame is impossible to really give a definitive answer. I'll explain this. 1-Autism is the diagnosis du jour. Like ADHD back in the 90's if you kid is a bit different they get slapped with an Autism diagnosis. [The early 1940's are when the diagnosis was first made.](_URL_0_) We speculate that many of our most celebrated scientists likely had some form of very high functioning autism. People with sterotypical severe autism likely wouldn't have survived past early childhood. 2-Down's syndrome has quite a few severe medical complications, including heart issues, digestive track, inability to consume enough calories. While a child that is less affect may have lived into adulthood, most children would have died in infancy to early childhood.
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Heya, I have a few posts that might interest you, focused on Europe/America: * [How were people with autism treated in the past?](_URL_0_) - looks at the 18th-20th centuries * [How did medieval people deal with Down's Syndrome and autism?](_URL_3_) - Middle Ages * [How did medieval people think about/explain developmental disabilities like Down's syndrome?](_URL_2_) - Middle Ages And this one is mostly more recent, but has a little bit of background about the early 20th century: * [It's 1959 in middle-class America. My child has just been born with Down syndrome. I don't listen to the recommendation to institutionalize him. How do I raise him in a hostile social context?](_URL_1_)
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Why and how did Hawaii become a state rather than remaining a territory?
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> How? The population that lived there voted to become a State. They then went to Congress with that request and the evidence of their vote, the status of their economy, and whatever other information Congress wanted. > Why? Being a State grants your citizens more protections and rights. It also allows your citizens to have a voice in crafting Federal law by having representatives in Congress, and allows your State to vote in the Presidential elections. Being a State is never forced upon a region. They have to request it. Puerto Rico has never done that. They came close to doing so in 2012 but did not actually submit a request into Congress.
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Often for all kinds of political reasons, economical reasons, and geography reasons. There's an entire show about this on the History channel called, [How The States Got Their Shapes](_URL_0_).
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What are the differences between RMS value and Peak value?
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RMS is like an average value. It stands for root mean square. It's a statistical object, where you take each data point, square it, average them all up, and then square root it. Peak value is the highest value. So for sound intensity, I would guess that the peak value during some interval is the most intense (loudest) point during that interval. Whereas the RMS is basically the average intensity over an entire interval. This is just speculation. Maybe someone who knows more can confirm?
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Sound is a wave. Peak is the highest point that wave ever reaches. RMS is the average of all points on that waveform, basically a long term average. You'll often see musical equipment/DJ equipment/car stereo stuff with insane peak ratings. The way I explain it to people is, "That peak number is how much power that speaker can handle for one thousandth of a second, but any longer than that, the speaker is dead. RMS is the power it can handle all day"
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Why is Spotify able to provide almost every artist and album out, yet Netflix is only able to provide a fraction of films?
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Films aren't aggregated by recording companies to *nearly* the same extent as music (so the minimum set of companies to make an agreement with in order to cover most films is much larger), and they're much *more* likely to be subject to exclusivity agreements. Plus, there's no semi-standard mechanism for licensing them in the first place, as (again) there is with music.
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*This is conjecture with no evidence* I think it has more to do with the fact that they only have the rights to distribute the films for a few months. Some may be in the rotation more often (I've seen Escape from L.A ALOT more than New York for example.) It's cheaper to rent the rights of fewer movies with more repeats than a more diverse collection.
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How does a duck knows how many ducklings it has?
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Most animals can do rudimentary counting, they, most likely, don't conceptualize counting in the same way, but they can be aware of discrete numbers.
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they find the number of animals per square mile in each habitat they live in and multiply. to find the number in a given region you can tag some, release them, then take a random sample and see how many have tags. for example if you tag 50 members of the species, then later you find that out of a random 100 members 6 have tags, then you know that 50 is 6% of the total in that area.
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Historians of Reddit, can you please explain why France obtained a permanent seat on the UN Security Counsel, but Canada didn't?
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Both domestically and abroad, France was a far bigger player in geopolitics when the UN was formed. 1.) Circa 1945, France was an empire, with a far greater global reach and role in both Africa and Asia. Look up all its colonies and territories from this time. France certainly controlled or influenced a much larger area than Canada. 2.) France was a very important part of the post-war plan for security in Europe. France had to be a core part of this plan (NATO) as well as failed plans (European Defense Community). Although Canada was important, France was far more so, being in Western Europe, and much more directly involved in any plans to counter the Soviet Union. By no means exhaustive, these are two of the most important factors in my opinion.
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Because those permanent seats (along with veto rights) were given out to countries that were world powers at the time, not just winners of WWII. Basically, the security council realised that unless they got these five world powers involved, a security council was going to be useless. So they were willing to offer these particular countries a few concessions to get them to sign up. While other countries, such as Canada and India contributed greatly to WWII, they also didn't have the same sort of influence on world politics as Russia or the US did, so it was not that critical to get them on board.
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Australia's Carbon Tax
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The top 400 emitters of carbon in Australia (ie big businesses) will start paying a tax/levy/price/call it what you will of $28 per tonne of carbon emitted. This money will go to the Australian government. About half of it immediately goes straight out the door again to households in the form of government assistance. Honestly the carbon tax hoo-haa is a mountain out of a molehill. (And I'm saying this as someone who generally supports the coalition over the ALP). In the context of the entire Australian economy the amounts are tiny. The added cost to business is not that great, the added money coming into households is not that much either. It will do stuff all to reduce global emissions, but it sets up a system that allows us to slot right in if a global market for carbon ever takes off. The Tasmanian economy is in a lot of trouble for sure, but it doesn't have a lot to do with the carbon tax.
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Well for Australia it’s getting more popular but we are a country run by dinosaurs that still think Coal will save the world. Sorry...correction...that are paid by lobbyists to think that
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Is there less water in a pint of sparkling water than I pint of still water?
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Short answer: yes Realistic answer: no While the carbon dioxide does take up some molecular room in the water it’s dissolved in the amount is negligible for most purposes like sub 5% decrease in water. A great way to see this is just let a bottle of sparking water go flat and check with a marker where the water level before and after it goes flat is.
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Drinking water has some level of salts and minerals dissolved in it that give it a flavor. Tap water from different locations will taste different, as will different brands of bottled water, because they have a different concoction of trace minerals in the water. Pure H2O like distilled water tastes terrible.
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Would using a local anesthetic like lidocaine help with the burning from hot peppers like habaneros?
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Interesting idea. I'm not sure if it would or wouldn't help. I will note that milk doesn't (directly) counteract the pain or heat, at least that's not its primary function. The hot substance in peppers is an oil which doesn't mix (easily) with water. Milk contains fats that will mix with it and wash it away. Normal soap is also somewhat helpful, but milk is one of the only things you'd want to put in your *mouth* if the burning issue was caused by *eating* a hot pepper. Lidocaine might help on skin, but might not be safe to use in your mouth (read the instructions carefully before using any product like that).
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I'll generally explain capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers spicy. Essentially, the chemical excites the same neural pathways that are excited by heat, causing our brain to interpret the sensation as a burning. There's generally no actual damage done, but our brain is tricked into believing that our mouth is burning. It also only affects mammals, since birds are able to eat the seeds without crushing them, passing them on.
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why doesn't our brain allow us to play chess with ourself?
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Why wouldn't it? You can play chess with yourself, the problem is that advanced chess has a lot to do with predicting your opponent's future plays. If you are your own opponent, you generally have a very good idea of what you are going to do. If you were to think of each move as an independent event and make your moves based on what is best for that moment, then you could easily play chess with yourself. However, you lose out on long-term planning.
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There are more possible chess games than there are atoms in the universe. This means it is far too complex to compute every possible game
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Why do people hate the .gif file format?
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It's old and terribly inefficient, meaning that a small number of frames make a file that is much larger and slower to load than modern file formats.
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Gif is old and was never designed for more than small animated buttons and icons. It is essentially wrong to use it for small video clips.
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Why didn't we put a lot of missle silos and air wings in Alaska where the Soviet Union was only a few miles away?
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From a practical standpoint: The largest Russian settlement* on the Pacific is Vladivostok (population: 592,034). The missiles placed in Turkey were (among others) the PGM-19 Jupiter, whose range is 1,500 miles. From the northern coast of Turkey to Moscow is ~1,000 miles, while from the furthest reaches of the Aleutian Islands to Vladivostok is < 2,000 miles. Also, here is a [population map of the Soviet Union, 1979](_URL_3_). *Magadan has 100,000 people, and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy has 194,000 people. From the farthest (closest to Russia) reaches of the Aleutians to Magadan is ~1,300 miles, and to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy it is ~1,000 miles.
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I'd like to hear an answer that addresses all of your questions, but for now, here are some very well sourced answers in a related question. The top answer by /u/The_Alaskan gives a lot of information that would apply directly to several of your sub-questions. _URL_0_
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Is there an anti-placebo effect as in a patient believing a treatment doesn't work reducing the effectiveness? If so, how strong is it?
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Although there are plenty of examples of the "nocebo" effect causing adverse events in patients in this thread, I believe what you are interested in is examples where there is a drop in efficacy. There has been a lot of research recently into the nocebo effect potentially leading to a reduction in efficacy when a patient is switched from a biologic medicine to a biosimilar. There is still some debate as to whether or not this effect actually exists, however there are now a fair few clinical trials for biosimilars which appear to observe a drop in efficacy if a patient thinks they are switching to a potentially inferior medicine in a blinded trial, even if they are kept on the same drug. This article is a good starting point for reference: _URL_0_
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Because knowing you are taking the placebo kills the effect, you have to be blind to it.
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Why is it as kids, we could eat candy/sweets all day long, but as an adult, I'm done after a single cookie?
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Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why is it when we are younger we like sweeter food and can eat large quantities of them. But as adults we tend to like more fuller and bitter flavors, and sweeter foods can sometimes be "too rich"? ](_URL_2_) 1. [ELI5: Why do kids love sugar? ](_URL_3_) 1. [ELI5: Why do young children seem to be natural born sugar fiends? ](_URL_0_) 1. [ELI5: Why do kids like sugar so much compared to adults? ](_URL_4_) 1. [ELI5: Why as a kid do we prefer sweet foods, but as an adult we dont as much? ](_URL_1_)
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[This](_URL_0_) is worth reading. Basically, it says that kids are hardwired to like sweet things from day one. They are extremely calorie dense. Growing is a calorie hungry business. There is also the chance that growing bones secrete a chemical that can signal the brain to want more sugars.
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What Happens In American Psycho?
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The ending is left ambiguous. The viewers never know if all the violent acts committed were real or whether or not they were delusions of the main character. One of the running themes that's a lot clearer in the book than the movie is that the characters are always mistaking people for someone else. This is kind of important because at the end, one of the people that Bateman supposedly killed (the guy he killed with the axe) is reportedly alive because another character says that he had lunch with him only a few days ago. It's unclear if the victim was really alive and attended that meal, or if it was just another of the many, *many* cases of mistaken identity.
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Freudian psychology is essentially regarded as a joke in modern psychology. It's more of an historical relic than a current practice. Psychodynamics was just Freud making shit up as he went along with no real scientific method being applied. Freud was a smart dude, and some modern theories are based off of his work (attachment theory is what first comes to mind) but in essence, Freud could explain mental illness however he wanted, and people would've accepted it at the time because he was Freud. Something like depression or schizophrenia could be explained by an oral fixation, or an internal struggle between the ID and the superego. Freud would just sort of ponder these things and then counsel people based on his own musings.
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Why and how do mosquitos give off that annoying sound in flight?
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It's actually the sound of their wings vibrating at a high speed. Hummingbirds do much the same.
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Holy crap my mom is an amateur bird enthusiast I actually know this one! Pigeons and doves both lack the ability to make loud, warning noises to alert their fellow bird friends of danger. To get past this, their wing tips actually whistle when air rushes past them. The noise you hear comes from their wings, not their vocals.
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If a telescope could see far enough, is it possible to see the very beginning of the universe?
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It is possible to do with a telescope such as [LISA](_URL_1_) . What we would see then would be the bulk motion of the mass in the very early Universe, since that's when we get gravitational waves, when mass is accelerated. And in the [epoch of inflation] (_URL_0_) there was **A LOT** of mass being accelerated **VERY FAST**, this generates **A LOT** of gravitational waves. So with a telescope such as LISA we would basically be able to reconstruct the Big Bang... which would be awesome.
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I thought that the inflation theory is pretty well supported? We observe things moving away from each other, wouldnt that mean that at one point they were all closer together? Aren't we able to "see" the beginning of the universe because of the background radiation of the Big Bang?
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How is a drone different from a jet fighter attack and why are the drone strikes so controversial?
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This comes up a lot. [You can search for past ELI5 results using the search bar to the right.](_URL_0_) The main ethical issue is that Drones impose no risk on the operator, so the US is much more likely to use them, where otherwise we might pursue diplomatic means. This means the US is killing individual people inside nominally friendly countries. Another issue is that drones could probably be operated fully-auto, raising fears about killer robots. Fortunately, that hasn't come up yet. Of course, a cruise missile or smart bomb *is* a killer robot, but one with a very narrow ability to make decisions on its own.
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Most 'drones' aren't actually drones. A remote controlled vehicle is exactly what is sounds like, it's a vehicle that is directly controlled by a person from a remote location (not actually in the vehicle). A drone has some level of autonomy and can control itself with minimal input from an operator. Basically, if you have a quadcopter that you have to directly control, it's a remote controlled quadcopter. If you put waypoint into a app or set a destination and the quad flies itself there without your direct control, it's a drone. For example, predator drones in use by the military can be flown directly, but they can have patrol routes pre-programmed and the pilot simply monitors the flight and takes control if needed.
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Who were the Philistines, and how did they become a go-to reference for a group lacking in culture and sophistication? Who originally was making the reference?
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There's lots to say about the Philistines, but you might find [my previous response about the Philistines](_URL_0_) useful for answering your question of who the Philistines were. Hopefully someone will chime in about the term's use as a pejorative.
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There's a lot to say on the subject, but I recommend beginning with my post on the [textual and archaeological evidence for the Philistines](_URL_0_). I provided a bibliography at the end that should be helpful.
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How does the mitochondrial dna get copied?
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In essence, they just replicate their own DNA when the mitochondria themselves replicate in a process very similar to bacterial replication. However, the host cell can regulate when and how rapidly mitochondria replicate. Mitochondria are broadly thought to have come about via endosymbiosis, basically at one point in evolutionary history eukaryotic cells became "infected" by bacteria. But instead of causing harm, this "infection" was mutually beneficial. Over time, these internalised bacteria became more and more specialised to energy production and lost other functions to become mitochondria. Thus they lost a lot of genes they no longer needed, but have retained an important core set of genes in their own mitochondrial DNA and still behave in many ways like bacteria.
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Your question is a little unclear. Do you mean the DNA strand being replicated (which is made of nucleotides ) or the available pool of deoxy-nucleotide triphosphates used in making the new strand? AFAIR. The deoxy-nucleotide triphosphates just diffuse around the cell and are not thought to be transported specifically to the site of replication. i.e. there is just a lot of them bouncing around.
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Why do we have capital letters but no capital numbers?
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Why would you have capital numbers? Capital letters fulfill a role linguistically (signify the start of a sentence, highlight that something is a proper noun, etc.). There is no need for a similar device in numbers.
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Because we read word shapes. Having all words starting with a capitalized letter or having the words written in all caps makes the word shape different than what we are used to, and therefor harder to read.
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Why do 20 MB Android apps say there's not enough free space to install, when there's 500 MB+ free?
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Android, up until 5.0, did a thing where it separated different parts of storage. There was system storage, which is where your apps go, and media storage which is where music/pictures/that sort of thing go. I'm not entirely sure why it was done, but it was generally implemented to have tiny spaces for apps and lots of space for music and such. This, as far as I'm aware, was removed with 5.0 and now storage is presented as one big volume.
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Because if the best Apps are blocked, there's less reason for someone to buy the phone.
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How do people in China put things in alphabetical order?
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Chinese characters are made up of a certain number of strokes. For example, the Chinese chracter for water is 水, and it comprises 4 strokes. In Chinese dictionaries, words will be commonly arranged by the number of strokes they contain. They can also be arranged according to the primitive elements that form them. 花 is the chinese character for flower. You might not remember that is has 7 strokes, but you remember that it has the little 3-stroke element at the top. This is a common primitive element, and you will find words that use it grouped together in the dictionary.
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Because they are traditionally sorted by the ACSII code and special characters and numbers have lower values than letters. _URL_0_ Some systems may sort by different rules.
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What is in salt that makes food taste so much better when it's added?
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Salt is one of the 4 main tastes (for lack of a better term) the 4 are salt, sweet, sour, umami. Adding any of these to certain dishes enhances the flavour of what's already there, for example vanilla tastes more like vanilla if we add some sugar, salt just brings out the flavour in savoury dishes, but also has its own distinctive taste, unlike umami which just brings out other flavours In short, nothing's in it, but it's a special flavour that brings out other flavours
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Not an Expert so here is a completely low level explanation. Sodium ions can directly travel to ion channels in taste receptors, making them easier to activate and send the signals along to the brain. An analogy I have heard is that salt "turns up the volume" of a dish. A strange thing to note is that Na+ blocks the bitter sensing taste receptors, making bitter/sweet foods actually taste good. Most chocolate and caramel based confections have some salt in the recipe to block out the natural bitterness. [Alton Brown](_URL_0_) explained this to me.
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Do women live longer than men naturally or is the disparity caused by a predisposition of men to do more dangerous activities?
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A small part of the difference is due to men performing more dangerous activities. Among demographers, there is a known anomaly in the death rate for males in their teens/20's that is thought to be associated with risky behavior. Here's a quick graph of what I'm talking about: _URL_5_ Data is from _URL_6_
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It has mostly to do with behavior - social norms or perceived aspects of manlyness. Therefore, men are more likely to engage in dangerous activities, show off, etc. Also, men (in general and in the manlyness lens) take less care of their health, not going to doctors as regularly as women, disregarding ilness and self medicating more. (I'm excluding casualties due to war - internal or external)
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How unrelated can two siblings be?
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Theoretically speaking, the two siblings can have completely different DNA with the exception of mitochondrial DNA which comes from the mother. The chances of this happening are very, very, very small. Both the mother and father give the same amount of genetic material to their offspring, which means each child receives 50% from each parent. That means each parent only gives 50% of their own genetic code to their children, so under the most unlikely circumstances, each parent could give a different set of 50% to each child. EDIT: When I mean very, very small, I mean that you could probably have a trillion sets of siblings and not have this event happen once. I'm sure there's some super computer that can approximate the odds, but for the most part, I doubt such an event will ever happen.
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It depends on the pair of siblings. If you ignore the sex chromosomes^1 and mitochondria, everyone shares *exactly* half of their genome with each parent. However, because of the inherent randomness of Mendelian segregation, [siblings can vary around this 50% by a substantial margin, in some cases as low as 40% or as high as 60%](_URL_0_). So some paris of siblings are more similar to one another than either is to either parent, whereas for some pairs both individuals are closer to both parents than they are to one another ___________________ 1. If you add the sex chromosomes, then men are actually slightly closer to their mothers (at least in terms of total number of bases they share, because the X chromosome is longer than the Y), whereas women are still equally close to each parent. The mitochondrial DNA is very small and has a negligible impact on these comparisons.
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What is a "lien" when purchasing a home, car, etc.?
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A lien is a form of security interest. Suppose I loan you $5000 with your car as collateral; this means if you don't pay my $5k back then I can take your car and recoup my losses. Now obviously if your car is security for my loan then someone trying to buy the car from you really wants to know about this arrangement, as if you don't pay up *I am taking that car*. It doesn't matter if you sold it.
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If you can't pay, but you own property, the judgment creditor will often put a lien on your house. If you sell the asset, the lien must be paid from the proceeds.
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If red is the longest wavelength and blue/violet is the shortest for visible light, how do they blend together in a rainbow?
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I'm a layman and this might be a dumb question but can you give us a picture of a rainbow where red and violet are next to each other? (I may be misunderstanding you)
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Interestingly, this is basically how Ultraviolet and Infrared were discovered. They will indeed refract in a glass prism, and they end up on the extreme edges of the rainbow. In 1800, [William Herschel](_URL_1_) put sunlight through a prism and compared the temperatures of the various colors, and to his surprise found that the warmest area was just past the color red, hence infrared. This inspired [Johann Ritter](_URL_0_) to go looking at the opposite end of the spectrum, and what he found was that silver chloride (a chemical used with photographic film) oxidized fastest if it was placed just past the violet end of the rainbow, hence ultraviolet. For an ideal prism, all of the light will refract, but in actual practice the material the prism is made of will absorb in some frequency bands, and eventually the relationship between the size of the prism and the wavelength of light will become significant.
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Rather than splintering from the Catholic church in order to divorce his wife, why didn't Henry VIII simply have her murdered?
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She was the cousin of the Habsburg Emperor, Charles V (I'm assuming you're talking about Katherine of Aragon here). Doing so would have incited a European wide war.
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I just finished watching a documentary on the Battle of Agincourt that discussed Henry V's killing of captured french soldiers. During the battle, King Henry was afraid that they would rise up and overwhelm the English forces (which were outnumbered). So he ordered that only the noble prisoners should be spared, and the rest killed. _URL_0_
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According to the BBC: pilots used the aircrafts' sensors to confirm "no civilians were in the proximity of the targets" In the Syrian Bombings. How?
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It basically means "We hit the designated target. The target was defined as hostile, therefore everybody there were enemies. If there were any civilians, we define them as enemies as well.". In other words, they only know that the bombs hit as intended, they don't know who was there or if the intelligence that selected the target was correct.
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We didn't. The first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, had nothing aboard but a transmitter that simply beeped until its battery ran down. Tracking was purely by radar.
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Why is heroin so addictive? What does it do to the brain? Can anyone explain the feeling?
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Imagine that relaxed feeling you get when you are being pampered. For some people it's nice massage or maybe a pedicure. Or imagine that warm, relaxing feeling that comes over your body when you first lay into a warm bath or hot tub. Opiates (Heroin) are close to that feeling, but depending on your tolerance, it lasts for a few hours. Almost anything you are doing while high is just... nice, like a warm blanket on cool winter night.
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Because addiction is a medical issue. An addict is always going to be predisposed to relapse. Recognizing that you are an addict and always will be will help to continue on the right path of recovery. Addiction is an extremely tough thing.
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Why do flavoured frozen things like icy poles and slurpees taste much stronger and sweeter once they’ve melted?
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Coldness reduces our ability to taste sweetness. This is why soft serve ice cream can contain less sugar than normal frozen ice cream... because it is served a few degrees higher so it’s warmer, thus needing less sweetener to seem as sweet to us.
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If you mean frozen in a freezer, then it’s because it absorbs many of the smells that come out of other foods and drinks, gases, etc. in your freezer. If you break off some ice from a pristine stream, or even sea ice in the arctic and melt it it will almost definitely taste like pure water (unless there was some pollutant present in the environment).
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In Game of Thrones, the Unsullied patrol the streets with spears. Was this a common choice of weapon for street patrols?
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> I guess they'd be good for riot control, but wouldn't a sword be better for fighting in close quarters? Spears are great for crowd control, because they keep the crowd far away. However you are correct in saying that a short sword or a long dagger would be much better in the tight side streets of Meereen. Maybe they never expect to actually have to use their weapons and were carrying them for psychological effect. > Did any civilisations use spears? What are the more common patrol weapons in medieval Europe? Spears (or other long and pointy weapons) were pretty much the standard for almost every soldier or mercenary in all of history.
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The spear was probably the earliest weapon used by "armies." There were probably tribal bands with clubs and stones before that, but keep in mind spears were ancient hunting implements. They had a long life for a number of reasons. They were easier to make than swords as they were just a pole with a pointy end. They were cheaper than swords and used less metal for the same reason. They allowed troops to stand back and offered some protection due to that. They were well suited to the rank-and-file style popular in the ancient world. They were simple weapons that could be used by ignorant peasant levies with minimal training, whereas swords required specialized training.
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Since water expands when it freezes, and most of the mass of Ice is beneath the Surface of the water, why wouldn't melting polar ice caps cause a decrease in the water level.
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First off, ice floating in water displaces a volume of water equal to it's melted volume - so floating ice melting does not lower or raise the level of the water it's floating in. Second, there is a lot of ice (like most of the south pole) which sits on land, not on the ocean, and so would melt into the ocean raising the level.
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The northern polar ice cap is much smaller in the summer than it is in the winter, for obvious reasons. If temps rise slightly, the amount of ice in each season will be less due to more melting. However, average temp is not the only factor. A slight rise in average global temp can result in large temp increases regionally.
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What is the driving force for osmosis?
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All colligative properties are manifestations of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. That is, they neglect all enthalpic contributions to the effects (these lead to deviations from ideal behavior). Osmotic pressure derives from the driving force of a solution to become more dilute, because spreading solute out results in higher entropy. Osmotic pressure can be reduced by making glycogen from glucose because you're simply reducing the number of things available to create pressure. Glycogen would still be subject to concentration gradients, though glycogen may be large enough of a molecule that you never have a statistical sample in solution and different factors could take over.
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to fully understand the idea, you would have to look at the thing from thermodynamical point of view. all complex systems tend to end up in a state with the biggest entropy. that means, simply put, just that system ends up in some of the most likely state it can be. for example, if you have box split with a wall, with gas in bottom half and vacuum in the upper one, and you remove the wall suddenly, then the gas molecules, because of their random motions will move also to the upper part against the gravity. similar thing is happening with the osmosis. concentration of some element tends to become equal in all parts of the system. if flow of water should make it unequal, then the laws of thermodynamics will force balance that can be rather unintuitive, but is just a result of random motions of the molecules.
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Explain to an Australian: What is lobbying? Is it true that it's similar to bribery, and if so, how is it legal?
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Basically, lobbying is benign in its first instance: it's when a group hires someone to try to persuade politicians on their behalf. So, you're a businessman, maybe you hire a guy to go to city hall to sit in on meetings and ensure your viewpoint is heard and your interests protected. It starts to get sketchy about when he figures out he can get more influence on the council by donating to campaigns and the like. Lobbying is not bribery, because bribery in the US requires an explicit exchange, called "quid pro quo." That is, "I will give you X if you give me Y." Lobbying is more "I threw that great fundraiser for you last month that got you $X. Now, I'd really like to talk to you about Issue Y..." They're technically unrelated, but there is the understanding and assumption of future potential contributions.
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Lobbying is trying to convince elected officials to change the laws (or not change them) in a way that is beneficial to your interests. Not only is that not corruption, but the right to petition for a redress of grievances is so important that it's right there in the First Amendment, along with freedom of the press and religion. If you've ever sent an email to a congressman asking them to vote YES or NO on something, then you've lobbied too.
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Why do you have to buy domain names?
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You don't actually buy the domain name, you rent it from your registrar. The price you pay them is for the service of routing the domain name to an actual server. Without that service a domain name would lead nowhere, they have to point visitors to the right server. They need servers to do that, which you pay for.
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Don't think of it as "owning" a domain name so much as it is "buying a listing in the directory". If your run your own Domain Name Server (a computer that turns domain names into addresses), you can give anyone any domain name you want. But if you want people using every other name server in the world, you have to go through ICANN. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is the non-profit organization that's responsible for keeping the domain name system. They've designated a single company to run each top level domain. .com is run by Verisign, for example, and .org is run by the Public Interest Registry. Those companies can either sell the domain names directly or make deals with other companies like GoDaddy and HostGator to sell the domains for them.
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How do tv channels know the number of people that watched a show? And if I record a show and watch it later, do I still count as a viewer (can they also track that?)?
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There's a company called Nielsen that tracks the TV watching behavior of a bunch of households. Based on what those households are watching, the extrapolate that behavior to the rest of the country.
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There's two ways they go about doing it: 1. They mail random selected people an envelope with the world's crispest $5 inside. In the envelope is another return envelope, a little diary booklet with a week's worth of dates and hours, and instructions asking you to please write down what you watch on the TV, when you watched it, and then at the end of the week, mail the diary back to Nielson. They say you can keep the world's crispest $5 even if you don't send back the diary, but a lot of people feel guilty about the money and do it anyway. 2. In a much smaller population sample (Due to cost, time, etc), they send you a box to hook up to your TV setup that records what you watch and when you watched it.
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Why is it not possible to grow taller after puberty?
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Linear bone growth occurs at "growth plates" near the ends of the bone. These plates are made of cartilage. These plates form bone by extending their cartilage matrix, which later becomes mineralized into bone as we know it. The end result is a longer bone and a taller you. During childhood, hormones (e.g, GH) stimulate these plates to do their thing, but around early adulthood, these growth plates "solidify/close" and cannot lay down new cartilage for further growth (this is also hormone-mediated). So once these plates ossify your final adult height has been achieved.
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Nutrition is not always the case, although it does appear that generations are progressively getting taller it's also because the older you get the shorter you get. So when you see a young man with his father, his father was probably at one point taller but he's getting shorter as he's aging thus the son appears taller
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How can software not have mass?
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Consider a table covered in coins. You can store information by turning coins to heads or tails, each coin representing one bit. We might say the table is "full" when you're using all the coins to represent some meaningful data, but the coins are always there and have the same mass as they do if you "blank" the table to all heads.
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Let's say that we have a bunch of bottle caps laying on a table in a big grid, just bottlecap after bottlecap, red on top, silver on the bottom. If we turn some of the bottlecaps over, we can draw a triangle. Now the bottlecaps are storing data (a picture of a triangle). But they're still the exact same bottlecaps, and weigh the same as they did 'blank'. Computers store 'data' as a pattern of switches. The switches weigh the same whether they're switched on or off. But once all of the switches are being used to store something, if you want more data you need another hard drive, and that will have weight.
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I've read that 43 out 44 presidents are linked to King John of England. Is this true?
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Yes, though it is not as significant as it sounds. Due to the number of generations involved, most of the population of England and around a third of the population of the US are estimated to descend from King John, mainly through his illegitimate daughter Joan who had six children and many grandchildren. These and other descendants were no longer royal, so were more likely to appear in commoners' ancestor trees. The other relevant fact is that nearly all US presidents have been of Anglo Saxon descent, and typically from well-off backgrounds. Eisenhower was German, Kennedy was Irish and Van Buren (the one president not descended from King John) was Dutch. The other 'non Anglo-Saxon' presidents, the Roosevelts and Obama, were actually of partial English ancestry. Finally, the good preservation of genealogy records in the US and UK and the obsession of the LDS church with genealogy mean that it is easier to prove a royal line of descent for Anglo Saxon US presidents than for many other people worldwide.
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Yes. There have been three times where there were six concurrently living presidents and former presidents 1861 - Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, & Lincoln. 1993 - Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, & Clinton. 2001 - Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, & Bush.
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Which games have good depictions of historical eras/facts?
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Paradox Interactive (Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Victoria, Crusader Kings) is pretty good with its historical detail and accuracy, at least by video game standards. I think in general strategy games are one of the better genres for accurate historical settings, whereas other genres might have to sacrifice more for playability and accessibility.
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The one I know of is an anthology: Matthew Kapell and Andrew Elliott, eds., *Representations of History in Video Games* (2013) If you search through the recent archives of pop culture and media studies journals I bet you will find some individual articles as well. A little while back we did a [Monday Methods feature](_URL_0_) on history & video games that got some amazing responses. It won't count as historiography for paper purposes, of course, but you might be interested anyway!
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How does a computer delete data?
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Think of a hard drive as an encyclopedia, and the files as entries in that encyclopedia. The computer needs to look in the encyclopedia's index to know where to find a particular entry. When a computer says it is deleting a file, all it is really doing is deleting the reference to the entry in the index. Since the computer can no longer find a mention of a particular entry in the index, it stops looking and assumes there's no such entry to be found, even if the entry itself is completely intact. This also means that new entry can take part (or even all) of the space used by the previous entry. Eventually, newer entries will likely overwrite that space. This is also why you can buy programs that "undelete" files from your hard drive. Instead of relying solely on the index, they go through your hard drive, and find everything they can.
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The way I understand it, it gets "marked" to be overwritten. Meaning when new data is put onto your hard drive, it goes into space on the drive waiting to be written to. This space could be empty or have data on it that is "marked". There are programs that will overwrite this free space numerous times to ensure that the data cannot be recovered. CCleaner is such a program. _URL_0_
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Why do TV series' from cable/streaming services like HBO, Netflix or Hulu seem to be so much higher quality than network TV?
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Because of advertisers. Since on subscription services most of their revenue comes straight from the consumer they are willing to create more diverse content. So they might not have as many viewers but they're getting more money from less viewers. On network TV the advertisers want to be seen by as many people as possible so the producers are forced to put on shows that appeal to the most audience, your lowest common denominator. Also advertisers don't want their products associated to shows that may be offensive to someone. Same thing is happening on YouTube, advertisers are getting more restrictive on what they want their products being associated with so any thought provoking video will be demonetized. And all its left is rich kid vlogs, makeup tutorials, tech reviewers, click bait, top ten anything's, and grown ass men screaming into a microphone while playing a child's videogame.
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Because they are all part of the same funding pool. The obviously don't know what station you are watching at any given time, so there is no way to make that distinction, or somehow split profits based on what percentage you watch one over the other. > Are there any other situations that occur where you have to pay a rival company...to use another company's services? That's not what's happening, you are paying the government for the privilege to watch any live broadcasted tv program OTA/cable/satellite/online (anything except on-demand content basically), and that money is collected and used to help fund the BCC/ITV. Trust me, if you didn't have to pay the license, your taxes would just increase to compensate.
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What exactly is plastic and how did it become so wide spead?
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Plastic is composed of [polymers](_URL_0_). Polymers are organic molecules composed of a chain of many monomers; basically an organic molecule that easily links to others of its kind to form really long strands or surfaces. Basically, carbon has 4 links and can easily link with other carbon molecules present in organic compounds, forming really long chains or large surfaces. Plastic is wide-spread because it is easy to create (chemically), because it's easy to get different plastics with different characteristics, from soft to rubbery to hard, transparent or not, etc., because it just takes a little bit of heat to be able to shape it into whatever shape you need, and because it's chemically inert. Thus, plastic is an alternative to glass (which is brittle), to metals (which can be shaped but can be rare or expensive), to wood (degrades if wet or left outside in weather), and to ceramics (also brittle). This is why it's popular.
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That depends on the type of plastic. Consider a ball pool for children. It is easy to bath in it, because its easy to move them away. So it's like a liquid. If you would now glue two balls together and make a new ball pool out of these, is would get harder to swim, as the two balls are not round anymore. Now imagine a chain of several thousand balls. If you move one, you also have to move a lot of other chains. So they basically become solid. Polypropylene and Polyethylene are such chains of carbon molecules. With chemical reactions small molecules (propylene and ethylene) are glued together to form long chains. This is called POLYmerization. Hence the name polymer.
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If humans were transferred to a nonrotating planet,would they notice?
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There are two answers, depending on the what you want to know. We don't "feel" the rotation of the earth becouse we are rotating with it, much like we don't feel the movement of a TGV train when you are inside one. So, if you somehow got magically instantly teleported to a fixed planet without rotation, it would be the same to you. Of course, in the grand and real scale of things, a fixed planet would have alot of trouble mantaning temperature, and days and nights would not change, so you would notice that
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Not yet. We have only just begun to image any planets.
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Do historians have a tendency to forget that historical figures (Charlemagne,Napoleon, Alexander the Great etc...) were, above all else, men (and women) just like any of us?
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I think that historians remember that better than people who don't know much about history. Just look at the deification of the "Founding Fathers," and how their word is taken as gospel concerning issues that they couldn't have even fathomed.
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Could you specify which historians you are talking about?
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The History of Nude Dance
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The Celtic tribes had a huge tradition of nudity. Nude warriors, nude dancers. I would look into their traditions. I would be of more help, but I don't have any sources for Celtic ritual nudity and don't want to start spouting things I can't immediately provide a citation for. :(
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Hey there, this is a great question. I tried to reproduce a previous post I wrote on the topic below but the formatting gets messed up, so you'll have to make do with a link: _URL_0_ Happy to take any questions on that post, but to copy the **TL;DR**: Belly dancing is basically 19th century prostitute gyrations as interpreted through European writings, performed by baffled 19th century Arabs in a human zoo, taken up by American and European vaudeville and cabaret acts, thrown onto the screen and exported back to Egypt where it's been a staple of Egyptian culture, but is today viewed by much of Egyptian society as being a bit whore-ish.
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When my parents bought a house in the 70's it was 2x their salary. Today that same house was appraised at 10x my salary, and I'm better off now than they were then! How will those us in our 20s and 30s ever be able to afford a house?
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Since the 70's, prices have skyrocketed while wages after inflation adjustment have stagnated.
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I realize this is too simplistic but I keep coming back to it. Is there not a huge parallel with the Thirties and now with how much the wealth has been removed from the economy at the level of the middle classes by the very rich Didn't this happen to the Romans? I wish I could ask all that in a different way I must sound like someone with an an agenda but this is an honest question. I have no reference to the Roman period I mentioned but I am under the impression that this has happened many times in the past.
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How was modern Russia formed?
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This is an enormous question that takes several books to answer properly. You should check out the [master book list](_URL_0_) and ctrl+f 'Russia'.
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More can be written about this. I found these previous discussions: ["How did the unification of the Slavic peoples under Moscovy/Russia come about?"](_URL_2_) by /u/the_gnarts about the Gathering of the Lands of Rus. ["How was Russia able to form into such a large country?"](_URL_1_) by /u/ayyum and /u/facepoundr about general factors and some about Cossacks. Out of the FAQ, specifically about Siberia: ["How did the Russians conquer Siberia? How long did it take them?"](_URL_0_) by treebalamb and facepoundr . EDIT for future reference: ["How did Russia permanently subjugate the steppes, a feat that was unachievable by multiple Chinese dynasties?"](_URL_3_) by /u/Kochevnik81 has something of a different approach to this. This is not to discourage discussion. Further questions, data, and debate are always welcome.
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Isn't 1080p on the iPad 3 irrelevant because the human eye won't be able to tell the difference?
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You asked a question but made an assertion: > because the human eye cannot see the difference between 720p and 1080p Perhaps you can clarify more on this as your assertion could be flawed. _URL_0_ A quick calculation using your numbers shows that on a 10 inch screen: 1280x720 = 146.86 PPI 1920x1080 = 220.29 PPI These numbers are sufficient enough to be seen by the eye (under 280-300 dpi a foot away) so you might want to rephrase your question as your "because" statement isn't factual.
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Still 1080p, you monitor just scales it to be whatever size it is, think of a sponge, same amount of sponge but if you fold it in half and squish it to the same height you end up with it in a smaller space
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Were ginger people considered Arian during Hitler's time?
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Oh and BTW, Arian and Aryan are totally not the same thing. Arian refers to a theological teaching attributed to Arius somewhere during the fourth century. It has something to do about the meaning of the Holy Trinity and was considered an heresy by the Council of Nicea.
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The term Aryan to describe blonde hair and blue eyes was inaccurately created by Nazi 'secret history' researchers for political purposes. You could have just asked about the genetic traits.
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even if a password is 20+ characters long and case sensitive, why does it take a super computer like Watson 'years' to crack it given their capabilities?
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26 letters, 2 cases, numbers, and many special characters, you could assume there are 75 possible characters to use, with 20 places there are 3.17e+37 combinations. If you tried 1 per second it would take more years than the universe might exist. how many per second can you expect any device to actually confirm? Youd need a super computer on the other end to reject the failed attempts so quickly.
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Because you enter the same password every time it is required (if you use the same password for everything, which most people do), eventually it becomes part of your muscle memory, where you don't even have to think about what you are typing, you just do it because you have learned that it will get you to where you want to be (logged into whatever program/website required the password). Because of this, pretty much the only time you really think about what your password is was when you created it initially, which for most people was several years ago, which is why it can be hard to remember when you aren't actively typing it.
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Why are all deep trenches on Earth underwater?
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So the really deep trenches in the world form at [subduction zones](_URL_0_). This is where one tectonic plate slides underneath another and sinks down into the mantle. Because oceanic crust is much more dense than continental crust, the oceanic plate is always the one that subducts (slides underneath) the continental plate. When this happens, a trench can form. The deepest trench is the Marianas where one oceanic plate is sliding underneath another plate. If you compare a map of [tectonic plates](_URL_1_) to the satellite images of Google earth, you can predict where you'll find trenches and then you can see them in the topography (or, technically, bathymetry since these are underwater).
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You might be under the misconception that the "trench" is like a deep canyon. In reality it's more like the bottom of a very wide valley. Check out this xkcd for an accurate representation of what the trench looks like with a 1:1 horizontal vs. vertical scale (see inset): _URL_0_ The ocean floor is actually pretty flat, so the deep points are pretty obvious.
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What is the technology that separates CD-Rs from CD-RWs?
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A CD works by having groves cut out in a reflective surface. When a laser is pointed towards the CD it gives a different reflection where there is groves and where there is a higher surface. CD-R have a crystal layer that turns opaque when heated. So if you have a powerful enough laser you can make it appear like there is groves when it is just crystals in different configurations. CD-RW on the other hand have other crystals that turn back to its original reflective configuration if you heat it even more. So you can turn it back to the way it were before you wrote data to it.
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CD-Rs have a reflective layer which stops being reflective when you heat it with a laser, allowing the writer to record 0s and 1s as reflective or non-reflective areas on the disc. CD-RWs are much the same for writing, but use a different material for that layer. If you turn down the laser and heat the material up less than you did for writing, it goes back to its original state ready to be written again.
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Why do tennis and golf matches require silence right before play, but other sports cheer loudly before the start?
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It is part requirement and part tradition. Sports that have been historically played by the upper class (golf, tennis being prime examples) tend to frown upon cheering since it was considered undignified for people of high stature, and the tradition still continues in some clubs/societies for these sports.
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It's called a [gavel](_URL_0_) and the short answer is because it makes a short, sharp, loud noise. It's not especially different to blowing a whistle in a sports game. From that wiki article: "The sound of the gavel strike, being abrupt to start and stop, and clearly audible by all present, serves to sharply define an action in time in a manner clearly perceivable by all, and to endow the action with practical as well as symbolic finality."
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How is it recounts of even modern elections always give slightly different results?
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Ballots that are spoiled, unreadable, and etc. are set aside to be sorted out; generally they are not really relevant to the outcome of elections and so can simply be totaled up at some later date. A verity close election makes such ballots immediately relevant, whereas normally they’d just be added to the final count at some later time.
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The BREXIT polls weren't "so wrong." They pretty consistently depicted about equal amounts of support for each side and the final vote ended up being 51-49. There is no "phenomenon" in play here and the BREXIT polling has nothing to do with the US election.
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What exactly is natural death?
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I can only speak from a UK perspective but, here the term "old age" is very very rarely used on a death certificate as a cause of death, we tend to have to specify a cause such as "pneumonia". You mentioned that an organ has to fail in order to die which is correct but terms such as "heart failure" or "respiratory failure" tend to be shunned as they aren't a specific cause of death, you could however write heart failure secondary to myocardial infarction ~~ischemia~~ (heart attack) To answer you question about natural deaths, there is a list of things we have to notify the coroner about if someone dies, things which may imply a "non natural" death, these include * Suicide * Violent death * Death within 30 days of surgery I would class these as un-natural but it isn't a clear distinction Edit: Correcting night shift induced mistake, thankyou wrestleboy557
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Essentially what happens is the body looses the ability to fight off common bugs, bacteria, and the wear and tear of living. The little things all pile up as little problems leading to bigger problems until the body just stops. Generally speaking there is not specific thing that kills them, but a ton of little things. Like a cold with a weak heart while also having a lung condition. Who’s is to say what actually went first. Ergo natural causes. On a personal note It is actually quite frightening to think about how statistically I will die from a ton of little diseases after cancer takes out my ability to fight.
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