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Is there a historical reason why Judaism and Islam require fairly quick burials while in Christianity it can be longer? And has it always been this way?
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Part of it's probably because Judaism and Islam unlike Christianity ban embalming and cremation(autopsies are also not normally performed unless medically or legally mandated); especially in warmer climes this essentially requires the burial to be within a day or two before things become extremely unpleasant.
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Islam requires bodies to be buried within 24 hours. Burial at sea is acceptable. This gave them a way to respect Islamic beliefs while not creating a location that could become a focal point for his followers.
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If my headphones have bigger speakers will the battery life on my iPod drain faster?
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Ramast's answer is incorrect. Changing the volume doesn't change the output power, it changes the output voltage range. At a constant volume level, if you switch to a set of headphones with twice as much impedance, you'll halve the sound output, but you'll also halve the power consumption. The parameter you care about is how well sound from the headphones couples into your ears. This is reasonably well approximated by putting the headphones on and asking someone to judge how much sound they can hear near you.
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Impedance is basically electrical resistance, if you are familiar with the principle. But anyways, low impedance headphones are louder because they have less resistance and so more current flows through them. High impedance are not necessarily worse, but since they have higher resistance they are not as loud, which can be good in some situations. Generally low impedance headphones are good for portable electronics for a number of reasons. Less current used means the battery will last longer, because the device can use less current to create the same sound output as for higher impedance headphones.
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why is BODMAS used in mathematical problems? why not just solve the problem the way its shown?
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It's just a convention. But it's not a *random* convention. There are reasons behind it. One possible reason: Sums of products arise naturally all the time. Let's say that a hamburger costs 3 dollars, a hot dog costs 2 dollars, and a coke costs 1 dollar. If I want to buy 5 hamburgers, 7 hot dogs, and 13 cokes, how much will that cost me? Well, of course, 5 hamburgers at 3 dollars apiece is 5\*3 = 15 dollars 7 hot dogs at 2 dollars apiece is 7\*2 = 14 dollars 13 cokes at 1 dollar apiece is 13\*1 = 13 dollars The total cost is 15+14+13 dollars, or 42 dollars. Now *if* we adopt the convention that multiplication takes precedence over addition, then we can write the total cost as 5\*3+7\*2+13\*1. If we didn't use the BODMAS convention, then we would need to write parentheses to indicate that we need to do the multiplication first: (5\*3)+(7\*2)+(13\*1). TL;DR: BODMAS is a convention we've adopted in order to cut down on brackets.
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I'll tell you what my professors used to tell me when I asked why we used them so much: "Because we know how to solve them."
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What would happen to light if space was not a vacuum?
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Space isn't empty. It's full of crap. It's a near vaccuum. So you do get attenuation of light in space. But i don't know how the sun wld look if there was as much gas in space as there is in the Earth atmosphere
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The photon sphere of a black hole bends space itself into a circle and in a perfect vacuum a photon would travel around it indefinitely.
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How is it possible for any politician or official to endorse a candidate without violating the Hatch Act?
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The Hatch Act specifically prohibits employees of the Federal Government from using the personal influence and official authorities given to them by their job, to interfere with an election. The Act has provisions which specifically allow the President, Vice President, and other high-ranking members of the administration to engage in most kinds of political activity. Furthermore, the Act also specifies that individuals employed in the Federal Government are allowed to engage in limited forms of political activity. Basically, the idea is to make sure the employees of the Federal Government remain non-partisan and don't use their positions of authority to leverage support. So, people working in positions at the Department for Homeland Security aren't explicitly allowed to support a political cause or use the powers afforded to them by their job to turn departments of the government into partisan support-bases.
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A politician is allowed to make any promises during his campaign. It is up to the people to decide if he/she can actually fulfill them. Sometimes it is not even possible because of other parties forming a coalition. I have seen a situation were a party won the elections by a good amount but the others decided to form one and sort of blocking them out.
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the Nxivum "sex trafficking" charges
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Leaders of the cult would blackmail female members into sexual encounters with Raniere. Blackmail is bad. Using it to essentially force someone into sex with someone else is trafficking.
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I take it you're talking about the US where if she did that she'd be arrested for prostitution?
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How is it possible that 200 unique species go extinct every day without much notice or change in our lives?
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There are a *lot* of species. It's estimated we still don't know ~87% of land based species and ~91% of ocean species. Considering there are ~8.7 million estimated total, 200 a day is easily unnoticed. Also, the most important species to our ecosystems, that is, the ones we would notice missing, are numerous enough to not have a major risk of extinction. [Source](_URL_0_)
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It's quite rare for humans to _observe_ a species wipe out another species, because that sort of thing only happens at rare intervals. Consider species A which is capable of wiping out species B. Before species A encounters B, nothing happens. When species A encounters B, it wipes it out. Afterward, there is only A. Over the (we'll say) several hundred-thousand year lifespans of species A and B, the extinction of B only takes a relative instant. So we are pretty unlikely to see it. Basically, other animals don't wipe each other out because they _already_ wiped each other out, for the most part.
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Theoretically, could one record video on 8-track tapes?
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There used to be a camera that recorded video onto audio cassettes. Made by Fisher-Price, it was called PXL-2000. It wasn't good but it was interesting. So, I would say that it could be done. It's magnetic tape, so, yeah.
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No, you can record faster than the playback speed. Many consumer dual cassette decks actually had this feature, called high speed copying or dubbing. You can also record many target cassettes from one source, so you'd have one master recording to many slaves.
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Why did the Manchu Qing emperors allow for Chinese settlement of Manchuria??
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At first it was because of harsh economic conditions in northern China and allowing the settlement of some land in Manchuria was seen as a way of relieving hardship by increasing the amount of land available to be farmed. But in the mid-late 19th century it was largely because of the Russian Empire, who desired and coveted territory in Manchruia and to whom the Qing was forced to cede major parts to in 1858 and 1860. The Qing government realized that the area was very thinly populated and therefore should Russia make a grab for even more territory there wasn't that much Qing could do to contest it. However, if the area was settled with Chinese immigrants than the Qing would have a much much better claim to the area and conquest by Russia much harder/less appealing. Hence lifting of restrictions on immigration and by the 1900s 10s of millions of Han Chinese have settled in Manchuria.
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In the late 18th century the Manchus abolished the old barrier keeping Han immigration out of Manchuria. Initially as means of reliving bad economic conditions in northern China. By the 1840s urban Manchuria already had a Han majority, and the Manchus encouraged further immigration in the aftermath of losing outter Manchuria to the Russians because having a large ethnic Chinese population there was a way of preventing foreign powers from claiming further territory. By 1900 population in Manchuria had increased from 1 million the century prior to 14 million, largely because of Han immigration.
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Why do springboard/platform divers sit in a jacuzzi after their jump?
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The water in the diving pool is cold, and when you're cold, your muscles tense up a little, and your circulation gets worse, especially around your extremities. Divers need to be very flexible and very precise with their movements, so they need to warm back up before their next dive - the jacuzzi warms them up so that they don't have any of the problems that come from cold water.
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It is the blood that carries oxygen. Divers have their oxygen level highest possible before the dive. Extra breathes minutes before the action can help. Also there is no proof some of them havent got brain damage.
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Why is German ancestry the most common in the US even if the nation had English founders?
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Keep in mind that for British immigration slowed after independence when we only had 13 states. Although Brits continued to come over to the US after independence, they tended to favour their other colonial possessions after that date, leaving the rest of the continent to be settled by waves of immigrants from other places. Although German immigration was even prevalent in the colonial era, Germany in the 1800s was rife with political, social and economic change leading millions to seek out better lives in the New World and their own their destination of choice was America.
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Actually, before English became widespread, French was the language of the Aristocracy, and before that Latin was the top international language (at least on a Europocentic sense). English's current dominance stems from the fact that the British empire of the 19th century was "the" empire at the time, spreading English into India, Australia, certain parts of Africa and the Americas. Current American power certainly contributes to the fact that English remains an "international language" but the US only truly became a world power post world war 2.
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Reddit "fuzzes" posts' upvotes and downvotes to prevent "spam bots." How does this prevent spam bots, and what are spam bots in the first place?
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It doesn't prevent spam bots. What it does is it prevents people from knowing if their spam bots are working or not.
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It is to stop people from using bots to up vote their own posts. What it does specifically is stops them from knowing if their vote has been ignored or not. If they had a bot, and up-voted a post, and the post number stayed the same. Then it would be obvious that the bot was ignored and then they could work towards circumventing it. However, if instead of just ignoring it, it gives the post one up-vote and one down-vote. They wouldn't be able to tell if someone just down voted it, or if it was the number fuzzing program. So put simply: It constantly moves the numbers around so you can't tell if your vote actually counted or not, but it totally does count unless you have blocked by spam protection.
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Why do streaming videos and Youtube take up so much data, but playing online games don't?
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With most games it is your computer that is generating the images you see. It's not just receiving video from a server. The data a multiplayer game needs is small compared to video. It's things like the positions of other players, who's shooting who, positions/velocities of objects and so on. The game uses this information to generate the image you see. Your computer already has the data relating to things like textures, models, sound effects, etc because that's typical in the game data you have installed.
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Compression. A typical camera records 1080p 30fps at 17Mbps, which is just under 1GB/min. Whereas a typical bitrate on YouTube is ~3Mbps, which is < 1/5 the size. Every time you re-upload it, YouTube goes through the whole compression process again. Compression is where they take a group of similar looking colors and make them a single color (less variation means less data). So, when you re-upload it, the video already has a lot of these groups of similar colors, so it makes these groupings even larger by combining some portions from another group, and so on and so forth. [Here is an example of extreme compression](_URL_0_).
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How influential was the American Revolution over the French Revolutiom?
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Look at [this question](_URL_0_) and [this question](_URL_1_). Generally, the only influence that the American Revolution had on the French Revolution was the cost that it had on the French debt, which grew substantially over the 18th century. I'd say that your professor is falling to American Exceptionalism by saying that the American Revolution set off revolutions, it was a conservative Revolution that changed very little compared to the very liberal and deadly French Revolution.
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Although it seems counter-factual, you could argue that it was the French Revolution which influenced the American Revolution rather than the other way round. If you take a revolution to include a change of thought rather than just the violence that ensues from those new thoughts, then French revolutionary philosophy, most famously espoused by Rousseau, had a big impact on the thinking of American revolutionaries, while I'm not aware of any American thinkers who had a similar impact on French revolutionaries.
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Difference between X(st, nd, rd, th) cousin, X removed vs X (st, nd, rd, th)
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For Xth cousin, Y removed, it means * the nearest common ancestor is X generations back. * There are Y generations difference between you and your cousin. So if you and your cousin share grandparents, you are 1st cousins (nearest shared ancestor is 1 generation back: parents - > grandparents), not removed at all (you are the same generation). If you and your cousin share great-grandparents, you are 2nd cousins (nearest shared ancestor is 2 generations back), not removed (same generation). If your cousin's grandparents are your great-grandparents, you are 1st cousins (nearest shared ancestor is one generation back- you always use the lower number for this), once removed (there is one generation difference between you and your cousin). The [wikipedia article](_URL_0_) has charts if seeing it visually helps you.
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Once removed means the cousin is either a parent or child of the numbered cousin. A B. C D. If A and B are first cousins, A and D would be first cousins once removed. C and D would be second cousins.
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What are Turbochargers and Superchargers in vehicles and how do they increase horsepower.
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The ELI5 version is that they both literally force or pump more air into the engine's combustion chambers. More air means you can burn more fuel. Burning more fuel means the pistons get pushed harder. More push on the pistons means more torque on the crankshaft which then goes through your transmission to the wheels.
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Need more info. Are they the exact same engine? What power, what does the power curve look like?
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Does anyone know what Toxic Stock is and why it would be considered unethical to sell a Toxic Stock item?
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Likely the store was not able to sell it for a high enough price, compared to the price the distributor was willing to give for the return. It literally would cost them money to sell you the product, making it "toxic" As for the later call, they probably were denied the return, meaning they had to get rid of the product, and it would have looked better on paper to give the item away in exchange for a donation (meaning they could claim the purchase price of the item) rather than sell it.
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> From what I understand it's being tipped off on the stock Pretty much - Insider trading is exactly what it sounds like - using inside information (information that the general population doesn't know about) for your own advantage. > Why is it bad to get rid of stocks if you know a company is not doing well? I feel like I would want to know if it was my money. How would you feel if your roommate discovered a carbon monoxide leak in your apartment and ran out the front door but didn't tell you about it? Insider trading is illegal basically because the people who don't have access to inside information (most people) lose out when it happens so they "want" it to be illegal. I put want in inverted comma's because insider trading happens all the time and because most stock trades are speculative (guess work) it's very hard to prove.
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Given DNA samples, one belonging to a parent and the other to their child, is it possible to determine which is the parent and which is the child?
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Epigenetics. Depending on multiple factors, only certain parts of the genome are active in a given cell. One immediate mechanism for how this happens is DNA methylation, which silences portions of an organism's DNA by directly attaching a methyl group to nucleotides in the DNA. The methylation "profile" can and does change with age in certain cells. So if you look for certain methylation markers, you can potentially figure out who's the parent by seeing whose older. Here's a study: _URL_0_
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If these people you are trying to identify are from your mother's side of the family, you would be advised to get a mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) test comparison done. If these people are on your father's side of the family, a Y-DNA (Y-Chromosomal DNA) test would be appropriate to try to match. These tests usually compare 2 individuals to eachother, but can factor in others. Sometimes, when the original sample (say the people who are deceased) is not obtainable, they may use more "related" individuals to compare the similarities in the tests. It's a complicated process, but it's not totally impossible. Sorry I couldn't be of more help!
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In the US, prior to the invention of formula, how were babies with dead mothers fed?
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Wet nurses weren't only in existence in countries with nobility. Wet nursing was for a long time more about affluence and family wealth than noble title. In fact, the history of wet nursing can be traced back to ancient times. The United States has a history of the use of wet nurses, and many women who were alive and well did not nurse their own children. Instead, it was left to slaves or employees to do. Jefferson did indeed have a slave woman nurse his children. Her name was Ursula Granger. It's almost certain that Granger nursed Jefferson's children when his wife was alive. And I can't really answer your last question - it's entirely possible that some babies did starve to death because their mothers had died and they had no one to feed them.
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Originally it was because women were "fragile" and might have to lay down because of cramps and other mystical female stuff. Now it's usually to give mothers somewhere to nurse babies without inflicting the sight of this natural act on the rest of society.
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I just surrendered in an 18th century battle, and was afforded the Honors of War. How do I and my men proceed?
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Well I can give some anecdotal evidence. After George Washington surrendered at Ft. Necessity in 1754 he was given the honors of war, which meant that his men got to keep their guns, some ammo, and one of their 9 swivel guns. His men were also allowed to keep personal belongings, but because they had no transportation all that stuff had to remain behind. In short, the honors of war in this instance meant remaining a viable fighting force (not becoming prisoners) and being allowed to return home.
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Not the American Revolution specifically but general practice was via dispatches to the Admiralty (Royal Navy) and Horse Guards (British Army). They were sent, sealed, on fast sloops commanded usually by a senior lieutenant. Source: Lord Crochane: Seaman, Radical, Liberator- A Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald by Christopher Lloyd.
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Why do insects like flies rub their eyes/heads with their legs ? What purpose does it serve ?
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They cannot blink so they clean their eyes with legs. Their legs also have brushy hair called setae which are very sensitive and inform the insect if anything is on them (mold, dust, whatever). They also have little hair on their entire body that acts as an advanced sensory organ. This also has to be clean.
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While some kinds of flies do bite, what you're likely feeling is the hairs on their feet that can be irritating especially to sensitive skin. Flies have adhesive pads on their feet called pulvilli that consist of tiny hairs that have spatula-like tips. These hairs produce a glue-like substance made of sugars and oils that help them stick and can irritate some people's skin.
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After seeing several high definition photos of moons and planets, there is a large amount of visible craters. If the earth was devoid of all life, would earth's surface show just as many craters?
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To add to the excellent answer here: take a look at the surface of [Venus](_URL_1_) to see how active geology and a thick atmosphere can reduce the number of visible craters. Venus's surface does have craters, but they don't dominate the landscape as they do on Moon, Mars, or Mercury. (Earth's atmosphere isn't quite as good at stopping impacts as Venus's is, but you get the idea.)
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If you are thinging craters, then no, nothing that obvious which might titillate your naked eyes I'm afraid. The reason is simple, unlike the Moon, the Earth has a dynamic crust which is constantly recycling itself. The LHB occured about 3.8 to 4.1 Ga ago; we have very little rocks that old left. Much less than 1%, and those we have are deformed and metamorphosed.
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With the new tube sites and their content being pirated, how do porn companies make money?
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> How do porn companies make money? How do you think it ends up on the tube sites or on file sharing sites? People buy it. Trust me, it's a small minority of people who actually use file sharing (although it's magnitudes larger than 10 years ago), so the porn sites are fine, especially the big ones like Brazzers. I also have a theory that the tube sites pay some ad money to the porn sites, although I have no sources for that, so it's not worth mentioning.
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Same way google survives. Advertisements. Even if you just go to tube sites like most internet savey people they have adds. And not just easily blocked adds either, you will notice many have the advertisements worked into the actual video player. The porn industry stays on the cutting edge of tech to keep making money. Also the age old saying "You get what you pay for" holds true with porn.
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If Every Other Major Object in Our Solar System Has a Name, Why is The Moon, just 'Moon', and The Sun, simply 'Sun'?
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Moon and Sun got their names long before we knew that other moons and suns existed. The Moon was just Moon - it was a proper name, the same as Mars or Venus or Jupiter. When we found out that other planets had things orbiting them, we called them "moons" because they reminded us of Moon. But the proper term is "natural satellite". Little-m "moon" is just an informal term based on their similarity to big-M Moon. The same reasoning applies to other stars; you can call them little-s "suns" based on their resemblance to the Sun, but the proper term is "stars".
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Our moon was named as such before we knew other planets had natural satellites also. When we discovered that other planets had natural satellites too we called them moons but gave them specific names to distinguish them.
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What percentage of total world photosynthesis are plants responsible for?
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_URL_1_ > From a 2010 study by the University of Maryland, photosynthesizing Cyanobacteria have been shown to be a significant species in the global carbon cycle, accounting for 20–30% of Earth's photosynthetic productivity and convert solar energy into biomass-stored chemical energy at the rate of ~450 TW That may shed some light, though I imagine algae and such also contribute a non negligible amount. [Maybe this link will shed some more light, but I haven't actually read it, sorry.](_URL_0_)
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> if plants absorb sunlight, the photons add to the plants mass. Kinda, it adds energy to the plant. It doesn't create new atoms in the plant. Photosynthesis looks like [this](_URL_0_). There are the same number of atoms of each element before and after photosynthesis, but they're arranged in a different way (new molecules.) Most of the mass that is added to the plant as it grows is the carbon it pulls from the air (from the carbon dioxide.) > The attoms and molecules to create more than 17 times the population must've come from somewhere. Nope, they were already here.
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At the molecular level, what is a fold? (e.g. Folding s piece of paper)
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I'm not sure of this is what you are asking, but long polymers can fold into complex three dimensional shapes. This is actually a key process used by all living cells. DNA encodes linear sequences of amino acids or RNA that can [fold into complicated 3D structures](_URL_0_). These structures form the enzymes, receptors, and often the main structural features of cells and tissue. In this case, a fold refers to the complete set of angles between each unit of the polymer that determines its basic shape. Many proteins fold into similar structures even though their functions can be very different.
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A pretty big part of it is chemical bonding. Throughout the structure, there are different types of bonds with varying strengths and affinities (hydrogen, ionic, and covalent). There are different levels of structuring that also aid in shape, those being primary, secondary, tertiary, and sometimes quaternary. These levels of structuring are basically a new type of "fold". You can think of this as creating origami - you start with a plain piece of paper, then you have a simple fold and you'll still have a somewhat plain looking thing, but as you continue folding, your paper takes shape into a complex design.
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How does a voltage divider actually work?
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It's possibly easier to consider an old-fashioned slide potentiometer that we used at school years ago, rather than discrete resistors. A length of resistace wire is fixed stretchad out along a piece of wood and one terminal of a battery connnected to each end. Connect one probe of a voltmeter to one end and slide the other probe up and down the wire. When the two probes are at the same end, naturally there is zero volts measured. When they are at opposite ends, it reads the full battery voltage. At intermediate positions you get intermediate voltages that go continuously from 0 to V in proportion to the distance. So you have a continuously variable divider where Vout = Vbatt x (separation/total length) and thats equivalent to the resistances either side of the slider. That setup is exactly the way a volume control works on a radio etc. the slider runs along a carbon resistor track and passes a signal on that is a proportion of the feed source.
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I see others are using analogies here, I'll just keep it simple. :) Voltage is measured between two points. In the case of your two parallel resistors, the ends of each resistor are effectively shorted together, just one big piece of low resistance metal. As such, they must both have the same voltage on either end.
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Why does a regular sleep schedule increase quality of sleep?
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Quality REM sleep is the most important with uninterrupted sleep times coming in second. Sticking to a regular sleep scheule is like sticking to consistent meal times. The body and brain acclimate and performs better when consistent patterns of activity or inactivity are routine versus varied patterns with different intervals.
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This is still a pretty hot topic as we're still not 100% sure as to why we need sleep to survive, but we definitely do know that we need it and how we get it. You're body goes through several stages in sleep, 4 specifically. After you hit the 4th, you go into something called REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement). This is essentially the period of deep sleep where most dreaming occurs as well as where most of the "rested" feel from sleep comes. So when you sleep for 8 hours or whatever, only ~20% of that is spent in REM. Here's where the distinction comes into play. We need about 1.5 - 2 hours of REM sleep a day to function properly. Some people are capable of falling asleep and going through sleep stages and into REM much quicker and more effectively than others, which is why it may seem like they need less sleep. In fact, it's not that they need less sleep, it's that they're simply more efficient sleepers. See: [Polyphasic Sleep](_URL_0_)
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The different types of logical fallacies
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There are a few dozen common fallacies, so it would be tough to explain all of them. [This should help you learn some of the most commonly found ones though!](_URL_0_).
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Here is a list including a lot of fallacies I tend to use including examples. _URL_0_ (I did not make it sources are at the bottom)
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal in Florida
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The GOP hired a company to "get out the vote," which means they're supposed to register people to vote (and help people get absentee ballots if they're not able to make it to the polls on election day). The company only helped people who are likely to vote Republican, and messed with people who probably won't be likely to vote Republican. The problem is for the people who are likely to not vote Republican, because they filled out an application, so they think they're going to be able to vote, but when they show up at the polls they won't be on the list, so they won't be able to vote. The GOP promptly terminated their contracts with this company. There are serious legal consequences to committing fraud this way. It's likely that only this company will get in trouble, unless it can be proven that the GOP instructed the company to do this.
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How do you think that a non-secret ballot would reduce election fraud?
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Will two quantum entangled particles constantly switch between states until we measure them, or are their spin already determined at the moment they get entangled?
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Neither. It's not the second because quantum mechanics violates [Bell's inequalities](_URL_0_). Basically, this means that when spins are entangled, you can never replicate the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics for that system by instead considering a system where the spins are determined at the start but appear random to us because of some complicated dependence on initial conditions. It's not the first either, though. If two spins are entangled, it means that it doesn't even make sense to talk about the state of one spin until you actually measure it. The only thing that makes sense is the state of the two spin system as a whole, and this state (for typical setups) doesn't actually change in time unless you measure the system. This whole-system state, though, does tell you information about the probabilities of measuring the individual spins to be in particular states.
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Entanglement doesn't work like that, with particle spin or particle motion. You can't change one entangled particle's state by fiddling with the other; you can just measure the state of one particle and know the state of the other. You can definitely entangle particle motion, although practically keeping the particles coherent is going to get harder.
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what body organ actually generates the body heat? by what chemical process is it created?
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Heat is generated across the body with burning of sugar. The difference between cold and warm blooded has to do with temperature *regulation*. Warm blooded (and this a range, not a binary state) organism generate heat for the purpose of maintaining a temperature. Thermoregulation involves cooling (sweating, flushing, etc.) and heating (burning more, shivering, etc.). The regulation involves both local responses (you will flush in response to local heating) and hormonal response primarily from the hypothalamus.
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Your body is a chemical reactor, essentially. You put food in, and your body breaks down the food into simple molecules (glucose, sucrose, and the like I think). It then breaks the bonds between the atoms of these molecules to get energy (which it stores in the form of ATP). When your body uses up ATP, it releases up energy in the form of heat, movement, electrical pulses, or the like.
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Why isn't inpatient, rehab-style treatment for obesity more common?
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One thing that is a major difference is that a drug addict is trained in rehab to avoid drugs, people who do drugs, things of that nature. Obese people, though, they still have to eat, and can't escape junk food because they're always going to run into it. One reason why people on The Biggest Loser always gain the weight back is because, when they're taken out of a controlled environment and put back into real life, the bad habits come right back because they're not trained to make good choices in the context of their lives.
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There ARE people who talk about food addiction and obesity as a disease. Especially those who know about the support for the "set point" theory, that our bodies will basically *make* us want to eat more calories to keep our weight at its desired set point. The reason that this has not widely spread is because it is still a much newer phenomenon than alcoholism or even drug addiction. Obesity is only started to be studied in the last few decades; there has not been enough time for people to get over their gut feeling that obesity is simple to avoid.
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When Xenophon passed through Nineveh, he didn't know what the city was and no local knew what it was. Considering the survival of the ethnic Assyrians, how did this happen?
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Not to discourage further answers but u/Iphikrates addressed the abandoned cities in Xenophon [here](_URL_0_)
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Hi there -- you may find [this older answer](_URL_0_) of some interest, particularly the comments about mapping from u/xenophontheathenian but also the older threads linked in it from u/Searocksandtrees.
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If I was at the midpoint between the sun and the next closest star, how big and bright would the two stars be?
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The next closest star is Proxima Centauri, 4.24 light-years away from the Sun. In spite of how close it is to us, Proxima Centauri is a very dim red dwarf - at magnitude +11 it's not visible to us on Earth without a decent telescope. Halfway to Proxima Centauri would put you 2.12 light years from the Sun. Proxima would be magnitude 9.5, still too dim to see without a telescope or at least a very good pair of binoculars. The Sun, meanwhile, would be almost 135,000 further than we usually see it, meaning it would be 135,000^2 times dimmer. That would place its brightness at magnitude -1.1, almost as bright as Sirius as viewed from Earth, the brightest star in the nighttime sky.
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It would look like a bright but not super-bright star. It would be about half as bright as the Alpha-Centauri system, which is basically two suns.
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what makes some country prone to military coup while others don't?
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Various reasons. Stable countries tend to have civilian control of the military(Elected President is Commander and Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces). From there you could factor in history of coups making a new one more likely, corruption of the government making the general population more likely to support a coup, a lack of history of having a stable democracy amongst others. Also, in the case of the U.S., the various branches of the military are so far removed from each other structurally that it would be difficult for the Army to launch a coup without the Navy and Marine Corps turning on them or visa versa. Most countries have a more centralized control over all their military branches, or only have 1 effective military branch anyway(Functioning Navies and Air Forces are expensive and most countries don't have them)
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To follow up: What are characteristics of Governments which tend to produce coups, versus the characteristics of Governments which tend to maintain peaceful transfers of power?
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What causes the blur that we see over hot surfaces?
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The object heats the air around the object and causes convection currents in the air. This causes fluctuations in the density of the air (hot air is less dense than cool air). The density fluctuations cause light rays traveling through the affected region of air to bend due to refraction. The refraction distorts shapes. Some of the blurriness is due to refraction itself and some of it is due to the fact that air density fluctuates from one spot to another and over time, creating slightly different images (not unlike the twinkling of stars when seen through the atmosphere).
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The same effect that causes [mirages](_URL_0_) is at play. Basically cold air is denser than hot air, which in turn causes it to have a higher refractive index, causing light two take different paths depending on the temperature of the air. If there are pronounced changes in the temperature within your field of vision, different optical phenomena will arise. In this case, because the air moves around (e.g. through convection), the image you see when looking through the air will appear hazy and you may see riplles.
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How come playing a game in split screen doesn't destroy performance?
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Yes, and a lot of games that used to offer split screen don't anymore such as call of duty and Halo. When splitting screens each display only is half the resolution as usual, which is easier to render. Also, many games actually cap the framerate when playing split screen resulting in a much less smooth game. Mario kart and Halo did this.
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Because Internet. You can just play games online and be able to see the whole screen. Many times you don't need to be huddled around a game console with your buddies playing split screen.
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What is passive voice in English
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In a nutshell; **Active Voice: The Subject is DOING the verb** *Ex: The Frisbee hit the dog in the face.* **Passive Voice: The Verb is being done to the Subject** *ex: The dog was hit in the face by the frisbee.* (*There's more technical explanations of Noun Phrases and Sentence Objects, etc. But this is the general gist of it*)
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Aggressive: Being angry and yelling. Passive: Leaving notes, letters, avoiding confrontation. Passive Aggressive: Leaving very angry notes
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How is the timing of self-dissolving sutures controlled?
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So when your doctor was considering what kind of sutures to give you she had to keep 3 things in mind: the thickness of the suture, the elasticity required by the suture, and the decomposition rate of the suture. Naturally dissolving sutures will only be dissolved by enzymes in the body because they are made from, "natural materials, such as processed collagen (animal intestines), silk and hair, as well as some synthetic materials that the body can break down." They can change how quickly this process occurs by the material used and how thick the used material is. While I bet you can do somethings to speed up the decomposition process, I don't think you can speed it up or slow it down a significant amount. However this short paragraph is simply conjecture. [Source 1](_URL_0_) [Source 2](_URL_1_)
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They are designed to dissolve at a certain speed. When you chew it up into smaller pieces, you break that designed dissolution threshold.
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Can you be born with an allergy?
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The simple answer is no. You cannot be born with allergy. You have to have a first exposure to the allergen in order to develop the allergy. The real answer is more complicated....you can be born with a predisposition to becoming allergic, and you can (in rare cases) be born with a predisposition to become allergic to a specific thing.
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No, a fetus cannot have any allergy that the mother does not have. Allergy is a hypersensitive response of the adaptive immune system, and the adaptive immune system does not develop until after the baby is born, and presented with exogenous antibodies.
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- What do politicians actually do?
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Well up to 50% of their time....is spent phone banking for more money. Yup, we pay for them to spend time trying to get more money for campaigning. > Despite a $174,000 salary, members of Congress do the job we elected them to do only “part time.” The rest of the time, they are chasing money for their re-election campaigns. [Source](_URL_0_)
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Generally, they don't. The only thing that forces senators to work for their states is the threat of being defeated in the next election. However, many senators are so secure that they don't have a realistic prospect of being defeated (e.g, Kohn Kerry 2004). In addition, they face election only once every six years: had Barack Obama failed in 2008 he would have had another two years to get in the good graces of Illinois before facing them at the ballot box.
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how does putting a lawyer on retainer work? What are the advantages of doing this versus just hiring/consulting a lawyer when you need one?
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TV shows do not represent real life. The reason some gets a Lawyer on retainer is because it is *cheaper*. It is essentially buying in bulk. Someone pays the lawyer to be on retainer so that they can consult with them whenever they want/often. This is cheaper than paying the lawyer each time the person needs legal advice. Normally this is only done for companies or people with a lot of wealth.
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Most people in those movies are in a business, and yes they have a contract with a firm. Now remember this is Hollywood, so it is not a staple to real life. In truth keeping lawyers on retainer is quite costly and most people in America do not have one. And back to the movies it is just a lazy way for writers to end a confrontation with out having to go in depth and continue the story. In a criminal environment then every one who can not afford a lawyer is assigned one from the court. So yes they all do have lawyers. Alas public defenders are not the best way to go, considering most are over worked and working for way less then what they would normally would be paid. In the real world this causes quite the inequality between the have and have nots, because in American court, its not about being guilty, its about how well you can abuse the system to get away with it. Hope this helps.
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How do they determine the caloric value of different foods?
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Originally they used a [bomb calorimeter](_URL_1_) but now it is just calculated using the [Atwater system](_URL_0_) from the percentages of individual components. i.e. if we know the energy in a single gram of protein, fat, carbohydrate, fibre, or sugar then we just need to know how many grams of each is in a piece of food and add them up.
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I've heard of three methods. The first is to burn it and see how much heat it produces. This is basically what the body does except that we use enzymes to control the burn rate. In labs they burn it in an oxygen rich environment in a sealed insulated container. This will give you a good measure of the total calories in food. The second is to feed a lab subject carefully measured quantities of food and to regularly weigh the subject and their feces while monitoring their physical exertion. Then we can back calculate the calories from the relationship between these measures. This gives you a good measure of how many calories humans absorbed from food. Finally for some foods we just add up the calories in the ingredients. This has the advantage of being significantly easier than the other two.
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Would trash decompose in outer space?
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Well, I think this is essentially identical to putting some item in an extremely high quality vacuum and waiting to see if anything happens. All the volatile gases will escape. Water will go away. Volatile components of plastics will escape into space. Heavier oils and solvents will start to disappear. In other words, the trash will undergo an extensive outgassing. I suppose some residual colonies of anaerobic bacteria hiding in some microcosm of the trash that isn't directly exposed to space could do some decomposition, but generally speaking, I think the rate at which desiccation will happen is fast enough that this effect is essentially negligible. The stuff that is left will be at the mercy of whatever random particles and energy that the lonely floating trash is exposed to. On occasion some chemical bonds will break, but this will happen awfully slowly. Space is pretty cold, and pretty empty!
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Sure, you could dissolve a lot of trash using a high concentration of say, Hydrochloric acid. But with every bit of trash you put in, the acid becomes diluted more and more until it can't dissolve anything else. Then, you have the same amount of trash, but now it's separated into chemicals and it's mixed with acid, and you still need to get rid of it.
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Why didn't the European settlers of America contract terrible diseases?
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As far as I know, diseases like that did not exist very much in the Native American population. Europe was a great breeding ground for multiple reasons: It had a denser population that the Americas, diseases that started as isolated cases were quickly spread by war and trade, and the Europeans also used more domestic animals, which spread even more types of disease. Over time, European population began to gain immunity to these diseases. In addition Native Americans were not very genetically varied (compared to Europeans) and as a result, if a virus was able to kill one person, it was most likely able to kill everyone.
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There apparently weren't any native diseases that were contagious or virulent in the way you mean. This is possibly due in part to the small p population size on the continent overall and the fact that the population was broken up into smaller groups rather than huddled together in filthy cities like in Europe. The conditions in which people lived in more populous parts of the world literally bred the diseases that colonizers brought to the New World.
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Why is Greenland called Greenland if it's all icy, but Iceland called Iceland if it's all green? What happened historically?
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I believe I've read that scandinavian explorers gave them those names to discourage people from going to iceland so that they could settle it easily, and encourage them to go to Greenland, which would be very difficult for them to live in.
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Follow up question: how common was it for Greenlanders and Icelanders to travel there for timber/other things?
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Much of America's high school history books tend to focus more on the journey of taming the western frontier, than what was going on back east. So I'm wondering what was the general population's thoughts on those who decided to head out west?
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The book is not yet out, but Mark A. Eifler, an Oregon historian, is working on one about this subject. He has researched correspondence between those who stayed East and those who went West, in some cases having found the letters each way, and has some great stories about it. I think it should be out some time in the next few years.
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Can you give some specific examples of what you mean? Without them, this question is impossibly vague, and rests on a highly suspect assumption of fundamental difference between "West" and "East."
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Is there an inverse relationship between infinity and 0?
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It is perfectly valid to define a number system where 1/0=infinity. This is basically the Riemann Sphere from a branch of mathematics called complex analysis. This space turns out to be the most natural space for complex numbers (in some sense) and does include a number or point at infinity. The reciprocal function z- > 1/z on this number system takes 0 to infinity and vice versa. You can do the same thing with real numbers but probably best to only add a single point, which is both plus and minus infinity. This turns the number line into a "number circle". As others have said though your number system with infinity will lose some properties, for example a*b/a=b may not be true.
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Yes, even if this is counterintuitive. For example the natural numbers are an infinite amount of numbers, but they are a subset of rational numbers. Inifinity is a construct that is hard to get our head around. I read an example that helped me understand it. Imagine you have a hotel with an info ite number of rooms. And all are occupied. Then a new group of an infinite number of tourists show up. If you want to give them a room, you have to move every inhabitant of a room to the room, that is his room number times 2. So the guest from number 1 moves to room 2, guest 2 moves to room 4 and so on. Then you have moved an infinite number of guests in an infinite number of rooms and got space for another infinite number of tourists. So yes, one infinity can contain other infinities, but I don't know if mathematicians would call it larger and smaller.
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If someone were to ejaculate much more frequently than normal, would their body produce sperm quicker, effectively having larger 'loads'?
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i think you need to rephrase the question. > If someone were to ejaculate much more frequently than normal, would their body produce **seminal fluid** quicker, effectively having larger 'loads'?
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Short answer: no, it is likely to have *lower* sperm count. In a healthy male, abstinence time is strongly correlated to seminal viscosity. After ejaculating, seminal viscosity decreases in a linear fashion with respect to time. [Source](_URL_1_) In a healthy male, abstinence time is the primary determinant of total ejaculant sperm count. After ejaculating, sperm count increases in a linear fashion until a maximum level is reached after about 5 days of abstinence. [Source](_URL_0_) Both of them are strongly influenced by abstinence time, so in general, a thicker ejaculate will have had a recent ejaculation, and will therefore have a lower sperm count. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to clear my browsing history...
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Can AskHistorians recommend a book on Russian expansion into Siberia?
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Although I'm not especially well-read in Russian history, a well known and frequently-cited work on this topic is Yuri Slezkine's *Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North*. The "Arctic Mirrors" refers to the ways that Russians saw the indigenous peoples of Siberia (the "small peoples") as profoundly Other to themselves in ways that colonizers often see the colonized, as opposites of themselves.
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This may be a little dry but *Bear Went over the Mountain* by Lester W. Grau provides a decent tactical history of the conflict from the Soviet perspective and how those tactics evolved, thus it gives a pretty good guide for how the war operated on the ground. Also if I remember correctly it was heavily referenced when the US military updated its counterinsurgency manual a few years ago.
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Is it possible to have an identical pair of snowflakes?
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There is some dispute on this topic. Whenever there's a dispute, it's better if you check the references and take a position of your own. In the Yes it's possible camp, we have [work done by Nancy Knight of the National Center for Atmospheric Research](_URL_3_); there is also [an article in the New Yorker which references this work](_URL_1_). In the No it's not possible camp, there is [an article disputing Ms Knight's work](_URL_2_), stating that while they may look alike, they're almost certainly not alike at the molecular level. In the "There is no way this should be in an ELI5" camp, I offer you [a scholarly look at several reasons for the formation of different crystal shapes](_URL_0_).
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Just water content, dry 100% un-melted snow will never stick together and is terrible at making snow balls, however once some snow has melted and is "wet" then the water amidst the ice/snow can join the snow/ice together when you compact it as it will re-freeze
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How do racing motorbikes go so low when turning without falling?
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When turning, you are accelerating sideways toward the inside of the turn. This acceleration is applied at the ground, so if you are on a motorcycle and you don't lean, you will fall over toward the outside of the turn due to the torque. Because they are traveling at very high speeds, the turning acceleration is much higher, and since the angle is proportional to the ratio between the turning acceleration and gravity, the higher acceleration means that you need to lean farther in order to balance the forces. This is a simplified explanation. For more specific/numerical analysis, I can offer an example calculation upon request.
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So, everyone so far has mentioned inertia and the gyroscopic effect. While these do have an effect, they aren't what keeps the bike from falling over. Simply put, the mass and speeds of the bike aren't enough to counter act you falling over. The true reason why you don't fall over is centrifugal force. If you were to start to lean to the left, the bike starts to take a curved path. This generates a centrifugal force which pushes the top of the bike back to being vertical(on a straight path). Here's the link to an actual [paper on this topic](_URL_0_). If you don't have a math/physics background then you can just jump to the end of it and read the first paragraph of the conclusion.
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Frost Wedging in the Grand Canyon?
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Perhaps you're thinking of Bryce Canyon? [This link](_URL_1_) says that it's the most important form of erosion at Bryce: > Snow in the winter melts a little every day and flows into joints. At night it freezes and expands, breaking the rock into smaller pieces. This is called frost wedging. Bryce Canyon experiences over 200 days of freeze/ thaw during the year. The frequency of frost wedging in this region makes it the most important type of weathering at Bryce Canyon. Generally, the freeze/thaw cycle drives the sculpting of pillar-like formations (called [hoodoos](_URL_0_)), so it is likely an active process in the Grand Canyon as well.
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Nice! That's a prime example of patterned ground or polygonal terrain. It forms from freeze-thaw cycles in arctic-like climates. _URL_0_
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Do we know for sure what is in the center of the milky way? And is it 100% a super massive black hole?
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We are very certain is a supermassive black hole. You can trace out [S stars](_URL_0_) and you find that, just from basic gravity and orbital dynamics, there must be a central source of a bit over 4 million times the mass of our Sun confined in a region at least 6.75 billion km (else one of the stars would collide with it). The Schwarzschild radius of a black hole with that mass is about 12 million km. So, no, we haven't shown that it is exactly that size. And, while you could get some kind of cosmic conspiracy to have mass distributed within the 6.75 billion km radius, it would collapse to within a black hole in a time much shorter than the current age of the Milky Way (source is given a few paragraphs in that section of the wiki). So, 100%? Nothing is 100% in science. But there is overwhelming evidence for it.
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It's not actually known! We know that all the ingredients are there, because the centre of a galaxy is full of dense material - lots of stars, lots of gas etc - so it makes sense that you might form a huge dense object there. But we have several different ideas for how it might happen, and it's not clear which is correct - it may be a combination of things. One is that you might just have a huge concentration of gas in the centre of the galaxy that smoothly collapses into a black hole. On the other extreme, you might have a central cluster of stars that collapses into a bunch of black holes that collide. And then on top of that, we know that galaxies merge and it looks like their supermassive black holes end up merging as well, building up the mess over time. Plus you have continual accretion from random space gas and sometimes even with direct interactions with stars.
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How could the Sea People have iron weapons and not the more advanced Egyptians and Hittites?
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While we wait for a new answer, it might be worth reviewing the [FAQ entry](_URL_5_) on the Sea People. Quite a few questions have been asked about them over the years, and some of those previous answers might help to inform our thinking about the subject!
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Because they existed in water that protected them!
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When a company goes from public to private? (e.g. Best Buy)
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You may not be aware of this (I wasn't) but private companies have stock, too. That stock will likely still be around, just not held publicly or traded publicly. Usually I think a third party (like an investment group) holds ownership of the shares, at least for a while. They buy the stock back at a premium (usually higher than it trades, to try and get people to actually want to do it).
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A business is owned by somebody, or sometimes it's owned by a group of somebodies. If you wanted to invest in a business, you'd have to contact the owners and negotiate with them and probably sign a contract, but you could. The business is under no obligations to report to anybody how it's doing or what it spends money on, other than the IRS. "Going public" means listing your company on the stock market so that anybody can quickly buy and sell shares of it. Your business suddenly has millions of owners. There are some extra rules that kick in, like you have to report what your company spends money on every quarter or so.
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1 ELI5: How do you instantly get knocked out when someone hits the 'sweet spot' of your jaw?
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Simple physics, the jaw is furthest from the head center of mass. Hitting the jaw is like hitting the end of a lever that will cause the fastest acceleration to the brain. Boxers will tell you people with long narrow jaws get ko'd more than those with short, stout jaws for what it's worth. Someone will probably say it's because of a nerve but I don't think there is any evidence of that.
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Only your lower jaw actually moves. The upper jaw is fixed. So when you get hit in the face, your lower jaw smashes into your upper jaw. If there were to be something hard on the lower teeth, they would hit the upper teeth really hard and actually make the damage worse. Only putting guards on the upper teeth prevents this from happening and cushions the blow better.
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Why do different car manufacturers decided to put the fuel tank on different sides of their cars
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It's not totally random. There are trends in general that north American cars have it on the passenger side and "foreign" cars have it on the driver. But this day and age it's more of a "that's what was most convenient when designing the car" than anything else.
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From Howstuffworks: > Near the tip of the nozzle is a small hole, and a small pipe leads back from the hole into the handle. Suction is applied to this pipe using a venturi. When the tank is not full, air is being drawn through the hole by the vacuum, and the air flows easily. When gasoline in the tank rises high enough to block the hole, a mechanical linkage in the handle senses the change in suction and flips the nozzle off. > Here's a way to think about it -- you've got a small pipe with suction being applied at one end and air flowing through the pipe easily. If you stick the free end of the pipe in a glass of water, much more suction is needed, so a vacuum develops in the middle of the pipe. That vacuum can be used to flip a lever that cuts off the nozzle. The next time you fill up your tank, look for this hole either on the inside or the outside of the tip
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Was the Han Dynasty of China related in any way the the Han State which existed during the Warring States Period? If so, how were they capable of emerging victorious in the civil wars that occurred after the fall of the Qin Dynasty?
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To make a short story as short as it really is, the answer is no, as the characters are distinct both in writing and in tonality. The 'Han' in the 'State of Han' is rendered with the character 韓, and pronounced *Gar* in Old Chinese, *Han^2* in modern Mandarin and *Hon^4* in Cantonese. By contrast the 'Han' in 'Han Dynasty' is rendered 漢, and pronounced *Nar* in Old Chinese, *Han^4* in Mandarin and *Hon^3* in Cantonese. As to why Han, that is 漢, triumphed, I'm afraid I must defer to the wisdom of flairs familiar in this area such as /u/cthulhushrugged and /u/Jasfss.
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Some time early in Han Dynasty, (around 200 BC), China began to establish military outposts in Western China, stretching toward the Gobi Desert, defend its borders from the Xiongnu/Hun incursions. After the fall of Han and Jin Dynasty, the proto-Tibetan ethnic groups Di and Qiang rose in power and established several Chinese Kingdoms. One of which is the Western Wei Kingdom. Around 380AD, Western Wei conquered most of Northern China (including the current day Xinjiang), and attempted to conquer all of Southern China, but failed. _URL_0_
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Why does turning the lights off save energy if all the light's energy turns to heat in the end?
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If you want to heat the room up, it is not much of a waste, but it still is somewhat of a waste. Yes, the energy basically all goes into heating the room, so if it is a question of light bulb vs. electrical space heater, then the light bulb is only slightly less efficient because of the light that will escape the room. However, if it is a light bulb vs. gas heating, the light bulb is substantially less efficient. In this case the power going to the bulb first gets converted to electricity before it comes to your house, and electrical power is a form of "work", which is thermodynamically the expensive kind of energy, while the gas goes straight to heat. There are gas powered electric plants, and they will burn more gas to make electricity to power the bulb than if you just burned the gas locally to make heat directly.
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Traditional light bulbs produce light through incandescence, which is when a material releases light energy when heated. They are inefficient because much more of the electrical energy that goes into the bulb is dissipated as heat than light. LEDs basically excite electrons in a semiconductor which causes them to emit photons (light) of a specific wavelength while generating comparatively little heat. Therefore it converts electricity to visible light with a higher efficiency.
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How would a speedometer work on a spaceship?
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There are two basic ways: The first is to integrate your accelerations. When integrated with respect to time, they give you a velocity. Bob's your uncle. This won't be accurate over very long timescales due to slight accelerations due to radiation pressure and thermal noise in your accelerometers. The second is to measure the doppler shift of your radio communications with Earth. This is already done, and was used to help confirm the [Pioneer Anomaly](_URL_1_). Stealth edit: A third would be to measure parallax shift of objects of known distance, or simply to establish your position periodically (headings to three nearby objects in space will give you a known position, do that twice at different times and you have a vector). This is not exactly the same as a "speedometer" which I would expect to give off continuous readings. Second edit: A fourth method, if you were moving sufficiently quickly, would be to measure anisotropy in the [cosmic microwave background](_URL_0_).
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> but if light has a fixed speed, doesn't that mean that it's speed must be measured with respect to an absolute point in space. No, that exactly the opposite. When we say that light has a fixed speed, it means that any observer (whatever relative speed they have with respect to each other) will always measure the speed of light to be the same. Yes, that is counter-intuitive. Before the [Michelson-Morley experiment](_URL_0_) I think that it was not really conceivable that two observers going at different speeds could measure the same speed for light. The fact that it is indeed the case, is one of the main breakthrough that eventually led to Einstein's theory of relativity.
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Did sailors that were traveling to the New World fish and collect rainwater on the voyage?
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[I found this article](_URL_0_) that says that sailors did fish during the trip. It mentioned water in passing as a less-preferred beverage, but nothing about collecting rainwater.
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Mentioning previous answers is just intended to help with faster answers, but is not intended to discourage further questions or discussion. It was discussed a few days ago in /u/mikedash's reply to the now deleted "Did Late Age of Sail Ships, (16th-18th Century) do any Fishing during their long journey's across bodies of Water?", at _URL_0_ As well, /u/jschooltiger and /u/expostfacto-saurus replied in "Were naval explorers (Polynesians, Vikings, Spanish) concerned that they would sail forever without hitting land or did they plan to turn back after a certain amount of time? Did they re-supply while sailing (fishing, collecting rain water)?" under _URL_2_ . Please read it, but I think I can spoiler it: there tends not to be much life where the ocean is deep. That factor, but also another, are mentioned by QuickSpore in "When Magellan's crew crossed the Pacific and was starving, why didn't they fished the ocean for food?" in _URL_1_ .
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How far above the ground could a winged-insect(I.e. housefly) fly around without issue?
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According to [this article](_URL_0_) in LiveScience: * *Scientists have collected locusts flying at heights of 14,764 feet (4,500 m); true bugs, stoneflies, mayflies, and caddisflies at altitudes over 16,404 feet (5,000 m); and flies and butterflies over 19,685 feet (6,000 m).* However it's not clear in the article whether those insects were flying at this altitudes or delivered there by atmospheric forces. In 2008, a colony of bumble bees was discovered on Mount Everest at more than 5,600 meters (18,400 ft) above sea level. Subsequent testing of the bees in an altitude chamber demonstrated that they retained their ability to fly at a simulated altitude of 9,000 meters (30,000 feet).
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[National Geographic Article about bumble bees](_URL_0_) I mention bumble bees because they were studied a lot by scientists. Some people thought bumble bees shouldn't be able to fly because they are too heavy, so they ran a lot of tests on them! Helicopters have an upper limit of height in which they can safely fly because as you go higher, the atmosphere thins. Less air, means less lift. The same goes for insects! To answer your question directly, there is no absolute value at which insects can reach, but bumble bees can fly higher than Mt Everest. Flies, and other fast flying swift insects could reach those heights as well, but they have no need to. They have extra power, so they can carry pollen, nectar, eggs, fly quickly and efficiently at low altitudes.
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Could a planet ever capture a moon in a stable orbit perpendicular to it's own rotation?
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I don't see any reason why a polar orbit would be unstable. There are many artificial satellites in polar orbit around Earth. However, orbiting along the prime meridian doesn't sound right. The planet is rotating under your satellite. The most similar real thing to what you're asking would be a [sun synchronous orbit](_URL_0_). In a hypothetical tidally locked planet, i.e. a planet that always shows the same face to its star like the Moon does to us, then probably a star synchronous orbit could overfly the prime meridian of its planet constantly. However the chances of this happening naturally are very low, if not impossible. Synchronizing with the Sun is the result of very precise engineering. I've only heard of polar orbits for artificial satellites.
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In an idealized two-body system with point masses, yes, orbits are perfectly stable. Unfortunately for us, neither the earth nor the moon are point masses, and there are significantly more than two massive objects in the system. The main reason the moon changes distance has to do with the the tides.
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[Medicine] When your body takes Antibiotics, how does it know where to distribute the stuff(?) inside the pill to a specific place?
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It doesnt. It enters your blood stream and circulates throughout your body. When it comes in contact with bacteria or a particular bacteria it destroys it, so to speak. This is why the development of antibiotics is very complicated and time consuming because you cannot just send it to one location in the body where the infection is (well I guess technically you can put a topical antibiotic on a cut or wound. but if youre taking a pill in general its going through your circulation)
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It depends. Some drugs specifically target areas with certain properties, such as low pH, water or oil solubility, etc. Most drugs, however, spread through the body pretty evenly and only act where their target receptor is. Many stay bound to protein in the blood and only a small amount is released to the tissues. For example, opioids (like morphine) may spread through the whole body when given IV but only have an effect in the brain and spinal cord. Aspirin, on the other hand binds to enzymes through the whole body, and so prevents prostaglandin production everywhere.
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If the speed of light in a vacuum is the top speed that anything can be accelerated to and the speed of light decreases in an atmosphere, does that mean the universal speed limit is (in that environment) decreased as well?
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No. The effective speed of light in a medium can be exceeded, [Cherenkov radiation](_URL_0_) is the name given to the light emitted by a particle that travels through a medium faster than the speed of light in that medium. Saying the speed of light slows down in a medium is a bit of a misnomer because the actual photons themselves *always* travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. The apparent slower speed is due to repeated absorption and emission as the photons interact with the atoms comprising the medium. You also can't accelerate a particle with mass to the speed of light in a vacuum, but you can get arbitrarily close. It's a nit-picking difference that comes up *a lot* in /r/askscience.
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No, photons always travel at the same constant speed (in a vaccuum, of course it changes depending on the medium) and there is no acceleration or deceleration.
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Why could you make a pay phone ring by picking up the receiver, dialing 958 plus the last 4 numbers of the phone's number, then hanging up the receiver twice?
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It is a way for a telephone technician to make sure a new telephone line is working. 958 is a special exchange for ring back so you know the phone can route calls. _URL_0_
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You picked up, that confirms the number is active. Possibly increases the value of the list for them to sell on. Might just be an autodialler that rings multiple numbers, the first one to pick up gets connected to a call handler.
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Why do planes take what seems like huge detours instead of straight lines to the destination?
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Airplanes take [Great Circle paths](_URL_0_), the shortest distance between two points on a globe, effectively a straight line. And when you look at the globe, they do look like straight lines. But when you flatten the globe into a map, [they get distorted](_URL_1_)
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Lines are painted 1/4 mile (or possibly other distances) away from each other across the highway. A plane flies above the marked area with officers who will time cars from point a to point b. He/she will then radio down to patrol cars the location, color, and model of the car, and the calculated speed based on the time it took them to travel from a to b. It's generally not used as its pretty expensive to keep the planes up in the air.
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Was every human lean back in cavemen times?
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Most humans were lean up until 200 years ago. Prior to that point in time food supplies were alway precarious and famines were common. It was not until modern agricultural innovations happened that we were able to have stable enough food supplies to have enough extra food for a sizable portion of the population to be obese. Now you have likely always had some obese among the leaders of any given group, but most were lean.
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I think what you are asking is why do so many humans have back issues. I think it's because humans are not supposed to sit and lounge all day like we do so much in our society. Back in our primitive days, we did so very little sitting around that our bodies did not adapt to having the need for "strong" lower backs. Therefore, as time went on and as technology became a huge part of our lives, we adapted into lifestyles that allow for more lounging.
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Why aren't viruses considered alive?
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As a virologist, this question comes up quite a bit. To be 'alive' a few things have to be true: (1) it must maintain homeostasis, (2) it must make its energy, ie ATP, (3) it must be able to grow/divide by its own machinery. Now by their very definition viruses do not meet any of these points and as such are not considered alive.
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> Years ago in school, my science class book stated that viruses were smaller than bacteria and not alive. The alive/not alive thing is a matter of open debate. Some say they are not alive because they don't have the ability to self replicate. Viruses, by definition, need to hijack the mechanism of existing cells to make those cells replicate the virus for them. Others consider that to still be alive. That said, until very recently (within the last 15 years or so) the origins of viruses was extremely poorly understood. Recently, a couple of super-viruses have been recently discovered that mix the features of a virus and bacteria. This seems to suggest that viruses and bacteria share a common origin, and has strengthened the argument that they are alive as of late.
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Are you more genetically similar to your parents or your siblings?
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It depends. You share 50% with each parent. Statistically you share around 50% of your genetic material with your sibling, but theoretically it could be as low as 0% or as high as 100% or anywhere in between. * 0% (basically impossible) - Imagine that your sibling got 50% from mom and 50% from dad. Now imagine that you got the *other* 50% from each parent. That means you share 0% of your genetic material. * 100% (more common) - If you you got the same material from your parents as your sibling you would share 100%. This happens with identical twins. *It's actually quite a bit more complicated than this, but I think these examples give the general idea.*
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A lot of mutant genes don't cause problems if you only have one copy (you get it from one parent), but can cause serious illness or deformity if you have two copies (from both parents). Each of these genes is incredibly rare (1 in 100,000), but most people have a few. Your siblings are far more likely to have the same mutant genes (1 in 2 for siblings, 1 in 8 for cousins), so the odds of a baby being born with two copies go from near-impossible to very likely.
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Are you more genetically similar to your parents or your siblings?
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Technically you are on average more closely related to your sibling, because if identical twins are included in the average they push it slightly above the 50% DNA match. If identical twins are excluded, you could compare DNA mutations. You should be distinct from your sibling by twice as many mutations than your parents. Women mutate at a slightly lower rate, so your mother is the closest match followed by your father. Your siblings have their own mutations so they come third.
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A lot of mutant genes don't cause problems if you only have one copy (you get it from one parent), but can cause serious illness or deformity if you have two copies (from both parents). Each of these genes is incredibly rare (1 in 100,000), but most people have a few. Your siblings are far more likely to have the same mutant genes (1 in 2 for siblings, 1 in 8 for cousins), so the odds of a baby being born with two copies go from near-impossible to very likely.
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Why are some cooling towers at power plants "hyperboloid" shaped?
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Just from the structural side, a 'hyperboloid of one sheet' (which is the kind of hyperboloid they are) can be constructed of straight segments on two biases, cris-crossing. Depending on the eccentricity of the hyperboloid, each straight member crosses several of the ones in the other direction, this allows it to be very resistant to buckling. Using a hyperboloid you can make a rather tall and wide clear space without the need for internal ties to keep the walls from bowing out under the weight. Similarly the structure is very resistant to wind loads because it basically turns a side load into internal torsion and shear.
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As the hot air rises out of the tower, it draws cooler, denser air in at the bottom. There may or may not be fans helping this. The shape improves convective airflow, and makes this work more efficiently.
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how do families leave their individual 'scent' in their home?
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It's one of the unwritten rules of home ownership -- in the buying contract it's stipulated that the head of the household must devote no less than 1 hour a week rubbing himself all over various areas of the house. Quite similar to how a dog might rub it's face or butt all over the carpet. Seriously though -- just their habits (food/activities/etc) soak into the materials. The indian family who cooks lots of curry based dishes, is going to smell quite a bit different than the family that eats KFC and mountain dew every night. God help you if you buy an ex-smokers house... I don't mind smoke at a bar or whatnot, but holy hell I've seen some horror stories about that stuff in the home.
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This has an evolutionary advantage as I read somewhere. Initially, you would smell your own body odor and the smell of the place you live in but within the next few days, you stop noticing the smell at all. This helps you identify if something or someone new had entered into your place of residence and thus alerting you to the danger that someone or something new at your place poses.
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Why do texts only allow 160 bytes per message?
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The dirty secret of text messaging (and text fees) is that the message gets stuffed into the spare room of a data packet that was going to be sent anyway. Your phone says "I'm still here!" at regular intervals, but when you send a text it says "I'm still here, *and* I have something to say!" That message then gets routed to the recipient and is stuffed into the tower's reply: "I hear you, and somebody has a message for you." 160 bytes happens to be how much room is available to stuff a message into those packets.
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> Is there some sort of restriction because of the infrastructure texting was built on? Yes. Text messages have a standard amount of data they can use and that data doesn't have enough space in it to allow you to encode extra information like italics or bold etc. It would be possible to create a new standard for text messages but all the carriers and phone makers would have to all agree on that standard. What should they add? Just bold and italics? Or maybe also other features like encryption? There are lots of possibilities which makes it harder for everyone to agree. Also there are so many other ways to effective do the same thing like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, What'sApp etc. that perhaps there isn't a big push to update text messaging.
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Is it just a coincidence that the maximum number of electrons in the nth electron shell is generally 2(n^2)?
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Quantum mechanical treatment of an atom tells us the number of states in each shell. each shell corresponds to a fixed value of angular momentum. a shell of angular momentum l has 2l+1 possible values for the m quantum number (m=-l, -l+1,...,0, 1,..., l) and 2 values for the spin, so you get 4l+2 per shell and if you add the numbers for l=0,1,2,..,n-1 you get 2n². _URL_0_
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The concepts are sort of linked, and it’s still somewhat useful to think of orbitals in terms of shells. The shells are made up of atomic orbitals which I’m sure you know are essentially volumes of space where electrons are likely to be. Each new shell introduces a new type of orbital, that’s why each shell can hold more and more electrons. Despite it being taught, it isn’t 2,8,8,8,..., it’s actually 2,8,18,32,... The first shell only has the 1s orbital, which is why the first shell can hold 2 electrons. The second shell has the 2s and 2p orbitals (note there’s three p orbitals in a shell, from the second shell onwards), so the second shell can have 2 electrons in the 2s orbital, and 2 electrons in each of the three 2p orbitals for a total of 8 all together. Does that help somewhat? As with most things in chemistry you have to start with an easy to understand model before complicating it with reality.
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What are the neurological differences between male and female?
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It's mostly chemical. Women produce more estrogen and progesterone, men produce more testosterone. This affects neurological development over time so that certain traits are more pronounced. Men are more impulsive and determined while women are more careful and methodical. Men are better at focusing on a single task for long periods of time, women are better at multi-tasking. Ultimately, these differences are minor. No one gender is universally better at one thing than the other. Instead, our propensities are nudged slightly in one direction or another. Additionally, the difference between the genders isn't so cut and dry, and I don't mean the whole LGBTQ situation. It is possible for a woman to have vestigial testicles embedded in her hips, and some men are capable of producing milk. The organs that produce our gender specific hormones are rarely perfectly formed to be exclusively male or female, and it is the hormone levels secreted by these organs that affects our neurology during development.
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Whichever of the two sexes has the bigger sex cells has the eggs and thus is the female. Other attributes are specific to a species in humans males might be the bigger more muscular of the two in other species males are tiny compared to females same with homogametic vs heterogametic. But it's the sex cells that help you designate which is the male and which is the female not the chromosomes or other attributes.
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What makes an object sharp? How does it cut or pierce through other objects?
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As u/fael_7 said, a sharp edge basically concentrated the force applied. If you weigh 60kg and walk on your toes in sand, you will leave deeper footprints than if you walk on your entire foot, right? Same idea, basically. If you apply an equal force using a sharp point it edge compared to a blunt surface, that force is pressing on your "target" on a more concentrated area, increasing the pressure (force divided by area) you can apply. If this localized pressure can break the material (either on a macroscopic scale by separating individual pieces or segments, or on a molecular/atomic scale by breaking bonds) and if your sharp tool is strong enough to withstand the force being applied with it, so as not to break itself, you will cut. It can be complicated to describe it exactly as different materials have different properties and mechanisms for failure (being broken or cut) so if you are unclear or want to ask about a specific example, please do.
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short answer: it depends. things are made of atoms. atoms are extremely small. atoms bond together in different ways to make up hard objects. some of the ways they bond are strong, and some are weaker. when you cut something it breaks some of these weaker bonds and separates the atoms. & #x200B; so the stuff in the middle usually ends up on either side, like when you cut with a knife, or winds up as sawdust or powder when you cut with a saw.
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What would happen if a pedestrian pulled out a rocket launcher and shot a rocket at the oval office when the president is inside?
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Walking around with a rocket launcher is pretty conspicuous. You can't just "pull one out."
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Clean up would be a massive problem, not a slight one. And pedestrians would likely get hit in the head a lot. It'd cause many more problems that far outweigh the benefits.
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How do tribute bands not have to pay royalties?
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Tribute bands that play only at venues that have contract with a licensing agency (such as BMI or ASCAP) are covered by that for licensing. Or, a really popular tribute band may have directly handled the licensing. Many cover bands, however, are performing illegally, and just hoping not to get caught. A small bar band isn't likely to be noticed. if anything, the venue is more likely to be fined. Here's an interesting paper done on this: _URL_0_
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They actually don't pay royalties. So far, they haven't been sued, but it could happen. They would cite fair use laws in their defense, but it's unclear if that would work. It probably would depend on the judge.
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Why, during the War of the Austrian Succession, was Prussia content with capturing Silesia?
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The main reason that the Prussians declared on Austria was due to the fact that they wanted to increase their strength and did not endorse the Pragmatic Succession. The Pragmatic Succession was a treaty written by the old Austrian king stating that the HRE(holy roman empire) could be inherited by females. The reason they only conquered Silesia is because they were economically very strong, and if they were in a position to, they would have taken more. the problem was that Prussia was not a very large nation during the Austrian Succession. the land they took in the war increased their population by ~50%. if Feredrick took much more then the Prussians would not have been able to effectively administer the land, or suppress rebellions.
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If I remember my German history Prussia was a minor kingdom until Frederick the Great's conquest of Silesia in 1742, and the subsequent acquisition of Polish territories in the 3 partitions of Poland (1772-1795). These two pushed Prussia to become the 2nd most powerful German state after Austria. Silesia had iron, silver, coal, and over mineral wealth. More land meant more people, and hence more taxes. Without the conquest of Silesia, Prussia would have remained a small German kingdom. (And thus may not have been invited to the Partitions of Poland.) Frederick the Great was able to conquer Silesia because his father had nurtured a formidable army and an efficient government.
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If you are shot, why is better for the bullet to go through you completely than to become lodged in your body?
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If the bullet passes through, it left your body with a significant fraction of its energy. If it stays, that energy has been delivered to your tissues. If the bullet breaks into fragments and stays in your body an even larger area has been damaged.
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Something no one has mentioned yet is hydrostatic shock. A bullet with a high enough velocity, even if it is of a very small caliber, can create a shockwave upon impact. This shockwave can travel through the body, damaging organs or that are relatively far from the point of impact. Getting shot in the torso can cause brain damage of the bullets velocity is high enough.
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Could I build a Faraday cage to effectively protect ice cream from being warmed in a microwave oven?
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By placing the rods at the correct distance (wavelength is a few centimeters for domestic MW ovens), most of the energy would be absorbed by the cage. They bars would heat up tho, and at least part of that heat would be radiatively/convectively delivered to the ice-cream, probably just melting it a little slower
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You can most certainly put aluminum foil and metal in microwaves. The problem is sparks, which is why forks aren't allowed but knifes and spoons are fine. Put a smooth sheet of aluminum foil, no problem. Crumple it up so it forms arcs when charged, then you have problems.
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Why does the chain "screen" that goes across my fireplace not get as hot as the other metal or rocks around it?
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no cite available: I **suspect** it's because it functions like a radiator, the chain link would effectively have a lot of surface area to transfer the heat to the surrounding air.
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It looks like it gets light enough by the end of the burning to be carried up by the hot air currents it's creating.
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On escalators, why do the stairs and handrail always move at slightly different speeds?
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They're supposed to move at the same speed. The treads (stairs) are made of interlocking metal pieces driven by gears and chains. The handrail is made of plastic/rubber driven by tension rollers. The tension may relax, allowing the handrail to slip and go faster than the system wants it to.
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They are supposed to move at the same speed, but as the handrails tend to slow down (slip a bit) with time and load, they are sometimes installed to initially run a bit too fast. [Source.](_URL_0_)
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What is happening when something "gives me chills"?
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There hasnt been much scientific research done into the causes, but depending on the 'trigger' of the chills, it could either be attributed to [ASMR](_URL_0_) or [Frission](_URL_1_)
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Your skin is hot and you're probably sweating. When the air that is cooler than your skin touches you, it gives you the chills.
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What is bandwidth in terms of signal processing?
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In very simple, rough terms, the bandwidth is the full range of frequencies that a signal or communication system (like speech, music, etc.) covers. The *frequency* itself is a characteristic of one component of the signal, but the signal might have many different components, and the difference between the upper and lower frequencies is what determines the bandwidth of the signal.
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It doesnt. In network bandwidth is how many bits you can send per second. Bandwidth have many many different meanings.
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What is the god particle
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"The god particle" is a nickname for the Higgs Boson. The nickname is from the title of a book, which was originally meant to be "_The God**damn** Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?_" (emphasis mine), but there was a certain amount of meddling from the publisher and the "damn" was dropped. Scientists tend not to like that name much, because the Higgs Boson has nothing more to do with any God than any other particle, and also finding it won't make us into gods; there is no actual sense in which it *is* a "god particle". The Higgs Boson is the particle associated with the Higgs field, which is a quite complex concept in particle physics which explains why some fundamental particles have mass even though you might expect them not to.
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The idea of a deity in the religious sense (i.e. some number of omnipotent beings, external to the universe, but influencing that universe) is outside the realm of scientific evidence. Presumably, (assuming the Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is accurate), an infinite number and variety of beings that could be described as "god-like" exist in an infinite number and variety of universes, as beings within the confines of their universes.
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What's stopping us from creating a device that negates a force (I.e. Gravity) between two objects?
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> What's stopping us from creating a device that negates a force (I.e. Gravity) between two objects? Nothing, for the right definition of "negates". With gravity as an example, when a magnet picks a paper clip off of the floor, it "negates" gravity, in the sense that the magnetic force between the clip and magnet is pointed in the opposite (or at least has a large component in the opposite) direction of gravity, eliminating the downward force of gravity, when you consider the total force felt by the paper clip. The gravitational force is still felt by the paper clip, but because the magnetic force is so much larger, it doesn't have any influence other than to slightly damp the total force felt. > Can't that exchange be blocked in some way to negate those forces? Nothing known can "negate" fundamental particle interactions, at least not in the sense of making them not happen at all, since most everything is made of the same elementary particles on a subatomic scale.
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Gravity is the weakest of all forces. It takes something the size of the earth, 6 trillion trillion kilograms, just to exert 180 lbs of force on my body. So it's difficult to imagine engineering applications for such a small force. Especially when it isn't understood at the quantum level yet.
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When the Saturday Night Massacre occurred, was there a 'Fox News'-type news outlet that vehemently defended Nixon for his actions before his impeachment?
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As for your first question, there wasn't a 24 hour news cycle, but print news was still really popular. The New York Times was the "liberal" newspaper, and The Wall Street Journal was considered the "conservative" newspaper and this is still applicable today even though newspapers have fallen out of favor. However, even there, most people only read their local newspaper during the days newspapers were relevant, and most local papers would be considered liberal. Magazines like Time, Saturday Evening Pose, and National Review were also considered conservative. I'm not sure about the reaction to Watergate though. I assume some supported him. As for your second question, at the time of Watergate, Democrats had a 56-42 lead in the Senate (with one Senator James Buckley from the Conservative Party of New York and one independent Senator Harry Byrd who was a former Democrat) and a 255-180 lead in the House of Representatives.
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The White House Press Secretary put out an easier-to-read summary document. The Chicago Sun-Times has a copy [here](_URL_0_)
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On a biological level, why do I feel compelled to check reddit or facebook whenever I sit down by a computer or walk into my room(where the computer is located.) Bonus: How do I break this habit?
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There isn't a biological aspect to that. You're talking about something that's purely behavioral. And you already answered your own question: You made it a habit. Habits are patterns of behavior that we carry out regularly until we start doing them without conscious intent. If you want to break a habit, simply interrupt yourself whenever you carry out the habitual action. Over time, it will cease to be a habit. (That's how habits are distinct from addictions. Additions are have both physiological and psychological components, and sometimes *can't* be broken cognitively. Habits, though, are just psychological, and they're totally under your control.)
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It's called a habit loop. Your brain does this for thousands of daily activities. You probably always brush your teeth in the same pattern, always put one particular shoe on before the other, without any thought. Your brain does this to make your life easier. If you were always under the stress of having to manage micro decisions and movements, you'd likely have a breakdown. MIT did research on rats running mazes to test this in which they actually measured brain activity. During the initial runs, rats exhibited mental stress trying to determine the route and find the reward. After hundreds of runs, the rats running the maze showed that their brain activity decreased significantly, because they were operating out of habit or like you said, auto pilot.
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Can dogs tell when you're wearing clothes / naked?
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Not a professional, but I seriously doubt the concept of clothes means much to them. We react to "nakedness" because we see a penis/vagina and our society-induced shock mechanisms kick in. This is entirely due to society; every single other species on the planet is naked 100% of the time. Dogs probably don't think of a penis much more than we think of an elbow, aside from when they're looking for some action, and I don't think dogs have the mental capabilities of making the leaps that some human people with bestiality fetishes take, in thinking that sexual behavior with another species is even an _option_. So tl;dr - maybe they can see there's a difference, but they don't care.
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How do you know that your dog is not staring at you for hours?
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If Light is a wave, why does it travel on a straight line?
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Most waves (and particles) travel in a straight line, unless an outside force acts on them. What wave characteristic leads you to conclude that waves don't travel in straight lines?
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Both photons travel in straight lines. The wave is not the path that the photon takes. The wave is a representation of the electromagnetic field associated with that photon.
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Assuming it was possible, what would happen if you dug a hole straight through the earth and went through it?
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If, somehow, you could make a tube through the center of the earth and ignore all the lava and the heat and all the other crap that would kill you first... You could take an object and drop it, starting from the surface of the earth at once side. It would then accelerate inward until it reached the center, where it would be going rather fast (you can calculate this if you want). Then it would decelerate as it moved past - and assuming no losses from air friction, would *just* reach the surface of the earth on the other side. Then the reverse would happen, and it could oscillate there forever, assuming it never hit the wall. This, of course, would never happen because there's air resistance, it would hit the side of the wall due to the earth's rotation, and you can't drill a hole all the way through the earth.
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There would be massive explosions every time a tiny meteor entered the atmosphere.
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What makes rain clouds darker than other clouds?
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A rain cloud would be denser (ie hold more water) and have a greater thickness because of the amount of water it holds. Both these factors point to a rain cloud scattering more light than a 'normal' cloud, hence resulting in less light penetrating all the way through it
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The cloud moves. First, the cloud's (thinner) edge comes over you, and because it's thinner there's less rain to unload; then the bulk of the cloud, then finally the trailing edge. Clouds are water vapor suspended in air (and so is fog), and the ability of air to keep water depends on temperature and pressure. Air is always moving up there, and at some point the air that contains a cloud may hit colder air or different pressure air, and the cloud will start unloading. But it keeps moving; air keeps moving it along. So, more rain vs. less rain depends on the thickness of the part of the cloud that happens to be passing above you at any point in time.
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Why can't I get internet without an ISP or cable company?
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Well, not to make it too simple, but they have the connection to the Internet. Same reason you need to go to a gas station to get gas. You can't go to the refinery and get it; they are simply not going to sell you that small an amount of gas. The refineries only sell to distributors, who in turn only sell to gas stations. ISPs buy connectivity in bulk from backbone providers (Level3 for example). Level3 couldn't care less about your measly 10 megabit connection; they deal in gigabits and terabits.
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Google doesn't want to be an ISP. They are showing people what a good ISP can do, so that they will demand that their ISPs (Comcast and what have you) do better. Google's trying to shock the market into changing.
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If deflation increases the value of money and inflation decreases it, how come deflation is bad and inflation is good?
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During deflation, it becomes a good idea to keep money around and not spending/investing it. This hurts business, as they get fewer customers. It also reduces the likelihood of companies getting investment funding. Also, during inflation, the wages will pretty quickly rise to match inflation. If there's deflation, it's much harder to actually lower peoples wages - this is called [nominal rigidity](_URL_0_). As long as the wages aren't at the natural market level, you'll get misallocations/unemployment and a general reduction in market efficiency.
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Slight inflation is a good thing. Too much is bad. And deflation is worse. The Fed doesn't control the money supply via manufacturing. It controls it via price. When you hear news about the Fed raising or lowering rates those are the interest rates (ie. The Price of Money) that they are charging banks to buy money from them. Money is just another commodity no different than soy beans, company stock, or a house.
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Why are the bees so much bigger this year than in previous years?
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Are you sure you didn't see a carpenter bee and think it was a giant honey bee?
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They're still here, but they've claimed all the territory they're likely to claim and people have gotten used to them and developed coping strategies. Beekeepers have to frequently replace their queens from known good stock. They are [somewhat resistant to Varroa mites](_URL_0_).
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Why does running a mile a day over 100 days benefit someone more than a 100 mile marathon if it's the same amount of exercise?
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If you work your muscles way, way past the point they are used to -- like suddenly running 100 miles -- you will deplete their energy completely, leaning first to poor form and then to actual damage. In fact the *marathon* is named after a place where a runner famously *died* after running 26 miles. If you do a medium amount of exercise many times, you give your body time to adjust. Your muscles, your lungs, and eventually even your bones, grow stronger.
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Most body frames (skeletons) are very similar, and most "shape" comes from fat or muscle on those bones. The heavier you are, the more work you have to do. It's easier to move 150 pounds 100 feet than 200 pounds 100 feet. Running results in injury to heavier people more often. Joints stand up better to 150 pounds coming down on them than 200 pounds. This is a "[squares and cubes](_URL_0_)" problem. Stuff gets heavier basically in a cubic function, stuff gets stronger basically in a square function. n^3 grows much faster than n^2. Marathoning and training burns a lot of calories. Compared to eating less, running isn't usually as effective for weightloss, but when you start talking 20 miles, you're talking about burning in the area of 2500 calories, which is more calories than the average person should consume per day.
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