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does eating more protien help heal a strained muscle faster?
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Eating more protein won’t heal it faster it’ll just give your body optimal conditions to heal.
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Doesn't muscle recover stronger? I mean, isn't that how you get big muscles?
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How is it possible that socalled "red meat" affects our body more then fish and chicken?
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Red meats have a much higher concentration of myoglobin, a protein that makes red meats look "redder." Myoglobin is similar to hemoglobin, the protein that makes your blood red and both proteins also contain iron. Myoglobin and hemoglobin are used to store oxygen, one of the vital compounds needed for our body to produce energy. The issue with cancer is that myoglobin is broken down during digestion but not fully absorbed. Much of the iron and other broken protein parts will end up going through your large intestines (colon). These products stimulate the cells in your colon to grow which can lead to cancerous growths.
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Um, chicken is pink. Cooked is white or dark. The amount of use a muscle gets, and age (maturity- young vs adult) of the animal causes the change in color. Myoglobin (like hemoglobin in blood) is reddish in color and increases in concentration in muscles that get constant use. So thigh muscles in chicken are dark, they don't fly much, so breast meat is light. Pigs are eaten much younger than cattle, so even similar used muscles are lighter. Salmon is an odd one, the color comes from pigment in their crustacean diet. Fish do have red meat in active muscles like the tail used constantly in swimming, but most of their skeletal muscle isn't used as much because water supports it.
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Why raising minimum wage will/won't work
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To add to what others have said something that is rarely mentioned in debates on this is that minimum wage laws hurt younger people. When companies have to pay a teen worker the same as an adult they are much less inclined to hire the teen. Teens typically have no experience and because they don't rely on the money for food and rent are much less reliable. So minimum wage laws decrease the number of teens who can work. Well next these teens become adults but they now have no work experience. Which means they are paid minimum wage. And if the minimum wage is a good amount you'll have 30 year olds wanting to do the job too. 30 year olds with more experience so they are hired rather than the 20 year olds. Now you have 20 year olds who can't get a job and when they turn 30 can only get minimum wage jobs. But they now have kids and more expenses. So politicians say we need to raise the minimum wage! Which just makes things worse again.
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Not really. I mean, there will be an increase in the price of certain products but it's not going to be an increase in equal proportion to the minimum wage hike. Like, you're fast food burgers aren't going to suddenly cost twice as much. They might go up by...like, a quarter. And I mean as in 25 cents, not 25%. And that pressure to increase prices will likely be countered by all those minimum wage earners now having significantly more disposable income, most of which will be pumped right back into the economy buying those goods that other minimum-wage earners helped produce. Tack on the downward pressures from competition and it's safe to say that prices won't skyrocket out of control. Like, you know, every other time there's been a significant increase in minimum wage.
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Are there really only six simple machines and all mechanical devices just combinations of these machines?
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The hydraulic/pneumatic cylinder is usually the most common example of something that isn't a simple machine but acts like one (i.e. something that can provide a mechanical advantage). For example, you can picture two hydraulic cylinders of different sizes connected to each other. Applying a force on one will cause a force to be generated on the other. The magnitude of theses forces depends on the size of the cylinders.
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Yep. A machine still needs someone to fix it, but if you have one guy available to fix 5 machines, you've given 4 jobs to robots, increasing unemployment. This isn't necessarily bad, it's just bad for now. Imagine a future where robots do all the work, including fixing each other. Then nobody has to work, and everyone can benefit.
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if you have a box that was completely void, how long would it take for matter to form from the subatomic particles that flicker in and out of existance?
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Statistically speaking? Never. The sum of the energy will always be the same. So if you had a whole hydrogen atom appear, it would create a deficiency elsewhere. This would be unstable on time frames humans are familiar with. Now, a box made of any "real" material would allow gas to slowly seep in. That would happen quickly.
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It depends on the kind of particle and its energy. Fast neutrons will go through basically anything, while heavy charged particles will not make it very far in dense matter.
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In theories that state that the Planck length is the "smallest possible length," would that imply that space itself is quantized into discrete points? If so, how are those points geometrically arranged?
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There is no evidence that space is discrete. Planck length is merely the length at which you can no longer make distinct measurements.
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The Planck length is *not* - necessarily - a minimum length. It's just the length scale where we expect to need brand new physics to describe how things work. Sure, there are some theories in which space *is* discrete, broken up into chunks around the Planck length, but there are others in which it's truly continuous. Until we can test those theories - which would require technology we can't currently imagine, or very sensitive telescopes probing (probably) gravitational waves from the very early Universe - we won't really know for sure.
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I just chopped up a pineapple, and now my fingers feel weird
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Pineapple has some [really strong enzymes](_URL_0_) in it which can break down proteins. So you've probably stripped a bit of skin off. Do too much pineapple and you can loosen your teeth because it digests your gums.
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Pineapple actually has a chemical in it called * bromelain*, which is a mixture of enzymes that essentially start to break down the tissues of your mouth as it sits there. Your mouth hurts because as you're eating the pineapple, the pineapple's sort of eating you, too.
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In American courts, why do you have to refer to the judge as "your honor"?
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It's because of our roots in the British legal system. There, the courts are considered a direct extension of the Queens (or Kings) will; as such, when you call a judge "your honor", you are referring to their position and respecting the monarchy, rather than the actual person wearing the robes. That's also why judges are only referred to as your honor during court, as opposed to when they're just wandering around in public (unlike something like the title of doctor, where the respect is seen as something personal and inherent to the doctor). Now obviously the American legal system is not a representation of Elizabeth, but we kind of branched into representing a more abstract notion of justice, so we still use your honor. Also notable is that we don't extend such niceties to politicians, who after the revolution were explicably not tied to the divine will of a monarch. Hopefully this also informs the idea of the severity of contempt of court
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Dates back to at least 1551 _URL_0_ > With possessive adjective and freq. with capital initial, as Your Honour , etc.: (a) a deferential form of address for any person of higher rank or status (now rare, chiefly regional in later use); (b) a title of respect or form of address for a person holding a particular office, esp. that of court judge. so i'm guessing it derives from the ancient form of addressing superiors which got applied to english offices, especially the bench but it seems from the OED definitions (more via link) that this concept of honor was widely used and over time got narrowed down. high quality dictionaries like the OED are really an amazing resource that the internet hasn't been able to quickly and easily replace.
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How do Fragrance companies know if the smell they are creating is already taken or not?
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It doesn't matter. You cannot patent a fragrance. However, this may be of interest _URL_0_
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[It doesn't.](_URL_0_) Hydrogen peroxide chemically alters the molecules that hold the smell, neutralizing them.
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What did women do hundreds and even thousands of years ago when they would get their periods? What was the general and the religious reaction to it? (Native Americans, pilgrims, Romans, Neanderthals, ect)
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The Museum of Menstruation site has some lovely articles on [menstrual history](_URL_1_) and [historical European undergarments](_URL_0_) which may shed some light. Most of this information is from about the 1700s onward, but you can assume that any culture that had textiles/sewing could probably make similar things. A lot of information about menstrual history is lost because it's a domestic and feminine problem, and would not be considered important by people writing about kings and wars and so on. Also because absorbent materials like grass, cotton, etc. would not be preserved well for archaeologists to find. Lastly, historical women might have had far fewer periods than modern women, because starvation, pregnancy, and breastfeeding can all stop the period.
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There's always room for discussion, but perhaps these previous topics found through the search bar will answer your inquiry. * [How did women cope with personal hygiene particularly menstruation in a Poor/Workhouse?](_URL_0_) by /u/colevintage * [Have bathrooms always be segregated by gender? If not, when did this practice begin?](_URL_3_) by /u/chocolatepot * [Did women wear menstrual belts without underwear?](_URL_1_) by /u/chocolatepot * [Native Americans and Menstruation](_URL_4_) by /u/Gorrest-Fump * [The AskHistorians Podcast Episode 32 Discussion Post - Early Modern Medicine & Women's Health](_URL_2_) by /u/historianjen
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Why does 5 gallons of water feel way heavier than a 40lbs dumb bell?
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The weight distribution is different. With the dumbbell, the center of gravity passes through your hand when you're holding it. With the water bottle, the center of gravity is farther away from your hand and, therefore, from your bicep when you're holding it. Being father away from your bicep means a longer "moment arm" therefore creating a bigger "moment" that your bicep has to resist.
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According to the [hydrostatic paradox](_URL_0_), the pressure in a fluid **only** depends on the height of the water column, not the volume of the water. Thus it is irrelevant how much the water on the side weighs.
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Why are men allowed to be guards at women's prisons?
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It's important to understand that is fiction largely. Prison staff are unisex across the country no matter the location or type. This creates problems in both male and female prisons. However, the government has determined that this is not enough of a concern to prohibit one from a prison job.
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Well from my experience as jail guard. We lock them up for whatever crime they commit give them the most basic of help so the institution does not get sued for not meeting minimum requirements of care. release them with out caring what they do and get them back when they commit another crime.
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Do Tectonic plates ever change in size and or break apart?
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Yes. Plates breaking apart is known as *rifting*, and is the process that creates new oceans with their ridges. For example Africa and South America were once on one plate, that then rifted about 100 million years ago, forming the South Atlantic Ocean between. Plates can join together as a result of continental collisions. The join is known as a *suture*. An example is the Iapetus Suture which runs through eastern North America, Ireland, and Great Britain, marking where the Iapetus Ocean closed around 400 million years ago; England and Scotland were once on two seperate tectonic plates before they joined along that suture.
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Complete chance. the plates move around over geological timescales, their distribution has varied greatly through earth history. _URL_0_
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Can I own a personal ATM machine?
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You can certainly buy one. If you want it to actually talk to the bank you can go to any number of distributors that will install in in your living room for X amount of money/month. Or you can start your own business; I know a guy who did it. Lots of paperwork. Lots of cash so the gov't makes sure you aren't laundering money.
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When ATMs starting becoming the norm everyone was up in arms that we would lose all our bank teller jobs. Those bank teller jobs got replaced with technicians, security (to move money from mobile ATMs) and more telephone assistance personnel for telephone banking. I'm not saying this is true for every case, I can see car manufacturing being one, but it was the case with ATMs.
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How can a battle go on for weeks?
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You have your guys dug in along the front, and the other guy has their guys dug in along a different front. Movements push the line around, but holding recently taken ground is hard. The lines might be different every day but it takes a long time to gain a decisive advantage or wipe out the other guy. You see a lot less of this in modern (post Korea) times, both sides use more mobility and try to avoid direct assaults where they don't have a significant numerical advantage.
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_URL_0_ u/duxbelisarius has a good answer to this one I would add that on average a soldier in the British Army spent one month in the front line trenches, and two in the support trenches. There really isn't a measurable means (that im aware of) to know how often any individual was likely to go over, only because it was dependent on many factors. On campaigns, more likely, but you're rotated to a support trench? Unless the enemy attacks you it's not likely at all. Some vets could over a few times from a major campaign or raids, and others could spend months in the trenches not involved in a full scale assault.
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How come some 3-letter ISO country codes do not phonetically match how you say a country's names
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In most cases, the codes are based on the country's name in that country's native language. A country like Germany has the country code DEU because the name of the country in German is Deutschland; similarly, Spain's name in Spanish is España, so it uses the code ESP. Switzerland is a special case: it has four official languages, and so it uses its name in Latin (Confoederatio Helvetica) for international purposes, so as not to give preference to any of the languages over the others. Hence CHE. I don't know why Aruba's country code is ABW, but I would assume it's something similar.
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This isn't an "English" thing: a quick scan down the "Languages" sidebar of the [Firenze](_URL_0_) Wiki page shows that other languages have many more variations: Florenz, Florencia, Florentia, Florensiya, Florenceje, Firenca, and on and on. It's the same for country names (Italia, Italy, Italien, Italsko...). This recent post includes some discussion and links to several more posts (including the /r/AskLinguistics FAQ: * [Why does the english language call countries by names that are different than the names those countries bestow upon themselves? I.e. Germany - Deutchland, Spain - Espana, Austria - Osterreich, etc.](_URL_1_)
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Unsolved math problems.
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Here's another example of a problem which is simple to state but is so far unsolved. Suppose you have a natural number, like 7. If the number is even, you divide it by 2. If the number is odd, then multiply it by 3, and add 1. If you repeat this process with the number you get, you generate the sequence 7,22,11,34,17,52,26,13,40,20,10,5,16,8,4,2,1. The question is, will you always get 1 eventually, no matter what number you start with? Nobody knows. This is called the Collatz conjecture.
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Pure maths has been a field dominated by men historically, for whatever reason (and you didn't really ask about those reasons, so I'll let others handle that question here). More importantly, even if that changes over time (and it appears to be somewhat), less than fifty of these have ever been awarded in total. Let's revisit this question in, say, 200 years.
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I recently saw an art installation about the relationship between Abe Lincoln and Joshua Speed which strongly suggested a homosexual relationship. Can any scholars shed any light on this?
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I've heard of the assertion that Lincoln was gay but never in a context where it was being taken seriously, nor have I ever come across any evidence which supports it. I would be very interested to see what evidence people are using to make this claim and how they are using it. If credible evidence is presented that supports the claim, I'll hear it out and might take the argument seriously. But not before.
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[This answer](_URL_2_) by /u/Algernon_Asimov goes into the historical evidence of homosexual/homoromantic behavior for two historical figures. Otherwise, you might glean much from the [FAQ on sexuality and gender identity.](_URL_2_)
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What a person in my family tree being 2 times removed means.
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x times removed refers to the generations between you. Your father's sister's (your aunt's) son is your cousin. Your father's sister's grandson is your cousin once removed.Your father's sister's son's grandson is your cousin twice removed.
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All that removed means is that there's a generational difference from you. Your parents' first cousins are your first cousins once removed. Your grandparents' first cousins are your first cousins twice removed. So it goes up or down (your cousins' kids are your first cousins once removed as well.) First and second and third and so on indicate how many generations you have to go back to find first cousins. Your first cousins are your parents' siblings' kids. When you have kids and your first cousins have kids, those kids will be second cousins (and your first cousin once removed). When those kids have kids, they will be third cousins (and your first cousins twice removed). Hope this helps and didn't just make it worse. :)
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Why are prescription bottles always translucent orange with a white top?
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Certain "colors" of light that can harm certain medicines. This includes some colors people can't see, such as the ultra-violet light which gives you sunburn. The bottle's plastic is a mix between (A) letting people see inside and (B) blocking these harmful colors. It's still a good idea to store most medicines in a cool dark place, rather than your windowsill. See also: [Wikipedia: Prescription Bottle](_URL_0_)
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I don't know for sure, but it's almost certainly solvatochromism: _URL_0_ Briefly, the color of something can depend on the environment, particularly the polarity of the solvent. When the solvent evaporates, the environment changes and so does the color. Less likely possibilities are the dye being volatile and evaporating or the color not really changing, just the amount used is small enough that you can't detect the color in a thin layer like you can in a thick bottle. If you have particular products in mind, we can try to find the composition and determine if one of these hypotheses is correct.
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Standing up to fast?
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It's called [orthostatic hypotension](_URL_0_), which is just medical Greek for straightening-up low-[blood]-pressure. Some people, when standing up quickly, sometimes get dizzy. It's caused by temporary low blood pressure. It typically passes after a few seconds. It doesn't happen to everyone- apparently, it's never happened to you.
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Blood leaving your digestive tract, this happens especially after leg press or squats, because quads are huge muscles, that need a lot of oxygen and blood supply. This basically means, that you're are pushing your body too much at the time, so take it easy. And after intense set, don't stand up immediately.
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How does the DEA make any money off of saying Synthetic Cannabis is safer than naturally grown?
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Synthetic Cannabis is made by pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies spend MASSIVE amounts of money bribing (I mean, "lobbying") politicians for decisions that are profitable to them. [In terms of political bribes (contributions), they blow away every other industry by a long shot.](_URL_0_) Making their product legal and everyone else's illegal is obviously a profitable decision that they're encouraging the politicians they bankroll to support.
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Some of the most well funded anti-legalization lobbies in the state are sponsored by the legal dispensaries and co-ops. They would hate to have inexpensive, high-quality, locally and responsibly sourced cannabis flood the market and ruin their racket.
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Why are prison sentences so different?
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If you're charged with multiple crimes as a result of killing someone then the separate punishments for each one is added up cumulatively. & #x200B; So not just the homicide itself but also the kidnapping, and the use of an illegal weapon, and so on. & #x200B; Maybe that other guy was only convicted on one of those charges (they know he killed the guy but there's not enough evidence on the weapons/kidnapping charge). Then you have different states with different laws and even then judges/juries have a lot of discretion when it comes to sentencing.
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Because people still fight cases while in prison. He was probably charged with 20 counts of murder. So if he fights and gets 10 of them overturned somehow, he would only be serving 300+ years. For this guy it probably doesn't matter, but imagine being charged with 20 counts of some lesser crime where the total punishment is 20 years. If you get 10 of those overturned you have half your prison sentence lopped off. They just don't bother with rewriting any laws such that any amount of time beyond a certain number of years is just arbitrarily too large for the criminal's life span.
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Did the Western Roman Empire Actually Fall or Transform Itself and Survive In Some Form?
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Now there's a question, isn't there? The answer, of course, depends on who you ask. In [this recent thread](_URL_0_) I give my best summary of the current historiography of the fall of the western Roman Empire, and there's also a discussion between u/shlin28 and I on this very question. (Part of that discussion is in a linked Sunday Digest thread) More answers and discussion is of course always welcome, but that should hopefully provide a nice starting point.
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Well, the fall of the Roman Empire has always been intriguing and difficult to explain. To this day, there is no consensus among historians as to what exactly caused the Roman Empire to fall.
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Why does the color black on clothes create a "slimming" effect?
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Because it's very hard to cast a shadow on black... Therefore it smooths an appearance and creates the illusion that's it's also smaller.
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It's because you use an antiperspirant containing [Aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex gly](_URL_0_). "When mixed with sweat, aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex gly is known to stain clothing with a yellowish tint. It can also cause a stiffening of the affected areas of clothing. These stains can be removed with the application of vinegar or a mild bleach."
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Not sure if the right community to ask, but why don’t cemeteries bury our loved ones vertically? Wouldn’t it save more space to do so this way?
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It would be MUCH harder to dig, as you'd need to dig far deeper so the body would have sufficient amount of dirt covering it.
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I know this one sort of! Back in yon olden days, caskets were a luxury item that could only be afforded by the rich. So, rather than just dump their dead in a hole (ironically: because ghosts), the poor would wrap them in sheets and blankets. When it was scaring time and people wanted others to think they were ghosts, they would dress up in sheets (and presumably jump out of freshly dug holes and shout BOO!) to make it look like they were a ghost, or a body risen from the dead.
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Why don't political debate moderators have the ability to turn candidate microphones on and off?
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These debates are as much of a back and forwards narrative between the question asker and candidates as it is between the candidates. If they gave that much power to the question asker it would come off as shallow. It would be like rigging a fight.
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The justices don't want cameras in their courtroom. If they did, there would be cameras. The participants don't have privacy -- the hearings are public, and there are audio recording available.
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When I move a light switch into a certain position in the middle, I can hear crackling. If left there long enough, would it start a fire?
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The crackling you are hearing is most likely electricity arcing between a set of contacts. Depending on how the light switch is made it could generate enough heat to start a fire, or alternatively, if it doesn't start a fire the arcing could build up enough carbon and pitting to the point where the connection would be bad.
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You're probably thinking of the crackling sounds that comes from burning wood. Wood has pockets of moisture in it, and fire boils that moisture and increases the internal pressure in the wood, causing it to crack. The cracking wood is where the sound comes from. A fire like a bunsen burner doesn't make any sound other than the gas coming out of the nozzle.
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Does someone who has undergone a sex change still feel pleasure during sex? If so are they still able to achieve orgasm?
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I just had my operation in February and let me tell you the answer is a resounding yes. Also the orgasms are MUCH MUCH better then they ever were before the surgery. The first time I orgasmed after my surgery I was literally unable to walk for about 10 minutes afterwards. As for the how, basically only clitoral stimulation feels good. Penetration feels psychologically satisfying, but physically it doesn't really feel like much. I've heard from several cis women that this is the case for them as well so it doesn't seem like I'm missing out on much. Edit: Thanks for the gold stranger! I never thought I'd get my first Reddit gold for talking about my vagina!
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There was a study conducted by Laura Berman, director of the Berman Center and a professor of OB-GYN and psychiatry at Northwestern University in Chicago, and Dr. Jennifer Berman, director of the Female Sexual Medicine Center at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on this very thing. The results are preliminary, but seems to show a statistically significant improvement in arousal, lubrication, and orgasm.
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why do things turn black when they burn?
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The black is elemental carbon / soot. When there is not enough oxygen, food isn’t burned to CO2 but becomes just Carbon. Soot is carcinogenic and provides zero nutritional benefit, so best not to eat burned food.
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Black surfaces are black because they absorb light instead of reflecting it. The energy from the absorbed light gets converted into heat, which is why black things become hotter.
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About seismic activity: would a series of small quakes release enough pressure to prevent "the big one"?
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Smaller earthquakes do not actually prevent or appreciably delay a larger earthquake; however they can indicate a possible larger earthquake. An earthquake of magnitude 5 releases ~32 times more than a magnitude 4. You would require millions of magnitude 3 earthquake to release the same energy as one magnitude ~9. As we know, we don't have that many magnitude 3 earthquakes :P Source: Undergrad Geologist
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[This USGS FAQ](_URL_0_) does a good job of explaining why larger ruptures can't be prevented using smaller, harmless, "controlled" earthquakes. The main reason is that you need thousands of smaller quakes to release the equivalent energy. For example, 32000 M3 earthquakes release equivalent energy to one M6 event. This scales to around *one million* M3 events if you want the equivalent energy of an M7 earthquake! Secondly, how do you guarantee that the earthquakes you trigger will be minor enough to cause no damage? Now guarantee that for every one of the many thousands of quakes you will need to trigger.
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The Cold War and the development of American Suburbs? Is there a historical link to these two events?
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Decentralizing populations and industries was an obsession of strategic planners in the years after World War II. [This annotated bibliography is from the September 1951 issue of the *Bulletin of Atomic Scientists*](_URL_0_). In 1949, the National Security Resources Board stated "there is no known military defense against the atomic bomb itself, except space." In 1951, the NSRB adopted decentralization as a factor in awarding defense contracts, and suburbanization was directly linked to national security in the Defense Production Act of 1956 which stated in part: "It is the policy of the Congress to promote the geographical dispersal of the industrial facilities of the United States in the interest of the national defense, and to discourage the concentration of such productive facilities within limited geographical areas which are vulnerable to attack by an enemy of the United States." See: David Monteyne's "Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War."
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hi! you may be interested in these other threads related to urban decline, "white flight" and deurbanization in the US * [Why were the Late 70's/Early 80's a low point for many American cities?](_URL_14_) * [What happened in Detroit that made it what it is today?](_URL_13_) * [What are some pivotal events in the decline of Detroit?](_URL_10_) * [about Chicago and Detroit...](_URL_10_) * [Did America have any blighted/depopulated cities (like how Detroit is today) during the 1950s? Cairo, Illinois seems like one example; are there any others?](_URL_13_) * [Was New York of the 1970s the shithole movies make it out to be?](_URL_11_) * [Detroit during WWII](_URL_12_) * [How much was "white flight" influenced by racial violence (riots, terrorist attacks)?](_URL_14_) * [Why did suburbs in America develop differently than those in Europe?](_URL_12_) * [Was there ever any equivalent to "white flight" in Europe?](_URL_11_)
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Can someone explain exactly how Spider Web is stronger then steel?
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The reason spiderwebs are so easy to break is that they're just very thin. If you had really thin steel wire, it also breaks pretty easily. If you had a giant mutant spider that could produce a fat cable of spider web, then that would be stronger than a similarly-sized steel cable. So yes, it has to do with equal amounts.
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because strength is measured proportionally to the size of the object in question. In this case, the strength being measured is tensile strength (or how strong it is while being pulled, think of trying to measure how much weight you could hang on one strand of silk before it snapped) We don't think of spider webs as strong because they are so small in scale. (a spider's silk is significantly thinner than a human hair) However, if we produced a piece of steel as thin as the silk, it would take less force to snap it than the spider's silk. In theory, if we could harvest enough spider's silk you could create a large rope of it that would be stronger than an equivalently sized steel cable. (As you can guess this presents a whole other set of challenges that are the reason we don't have spider silk supported structures)
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Why is there so much USA currency (quarters/nickels/dimes) circulating in Canada and can it be exchanged at a bank for Canadian change with the exchange rate? Why or why not?
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There's a fair amount of Canadian currency circulating in the US as well. For the most part, small change is inter-changeable between the two nations and there no exchange rate applied when making a purchase. But if you insist, yes, you can absolutely exchange it at a bank. Just note some banks may have minimums, charge a fee or direct you to a kiosk (particularly for coinage) which will charge you an even larger fee (yay fees!). Alternately you may be able to deposit it has cash into your Canadaland bank account at a lower rate.
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A penny does cost more than one cent to make but it is used more than once, so it that way it has a much greater value to the economy than its one cent face value. For the same reason the US tries to bring out a dollar coin every ten years or so, even though a paper dollar is much cheaper to make. The coin stays in circulation much longer, because it's reused more roi on a coin is much better(the face value doesn't really matter). Americans just don't seem to like it very much. That's why Canada uses 1 and 2 dollar coins.
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Why is health insurance linked to employers?
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In WWII there was a government issued wage freeze in the US. In order to attract the best employees companies had to offer other things. So they started offering healthcare benefits. This has became the standard ever since.
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Insurance is pooled risk. Everyone puts in a dollar in case they need 10. The company collects 100 knowing that they will only need to pay out 3 lots of 10. Everyone is still paying a dollar so all is well. However the company knows that some people are at a higher risk than others, to protect its profits it either makes these people pay 8 dollars or simply turns them away. Obama care to my understanding removed the ability for the insurance company to turn people away, even based on history. So they were forced to take people who they know will need to claim 10 every 3 months. To cover this they had to increase everyone how was paying a dollar now has to pay 3 to cover the companies profits and the people who would normally have been turned away.
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Why do people hate blackberry?
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Because the pre-BB10 devices had severely underpowered processors (remember the spinning clock of death?) and BlackBerry hasn't done any significant advertising for BlackBerry 10. As a result, very few people have ever heard of, much less used, the new OS. So everyone judges BlackBerry by their old phones from years ago, and not their new ones which are amazing. *posted from my LE Z10
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Before the iPhone got popular, the Blackberry was the only phone with excellent text capabilities (email integration). Even today some professionals prefer it because of its great mechanical keyboard and its strong security.
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Some metal devices feel grippy when plugged in to the mains, but why did my umbrella have the same feeling when held up at the station platform?
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The most plausible thing that comes to mind is that the magnetic or electric field generated by the power line generates small voltages in you umbrella that cause currents, which in turn cause it to hum very slightly at the mains frequency (50 Hz in Great Britain if Wikipedia serves). This is noticeable in transformers, but I would normally expect the effect to be too small to be felt by humans for metal sheets or small rods. Here's a link with some measurements: _URL_0_ When you feel it next time with a metal object, if you know how to, you could try grounding it and see if the vibration remains. Often, small electronic devices have ungrounded plugs, which might cause them to act as something like a capacitor.
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Here is a good video showing how the mechanics all work together. A cheap plastic umbrella is essentially the same. _URL_0_
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Why does a balloon filled with ordinary air drop slower than a balloon filled with an equal volume of, say, water?
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You are correct when you say the air resistance for each object is about the same, lets say it has a value of 1 newton. Then if you consider the weight of each object, lets say the air filled balloon weighs 5 newtons and the water filled balloon weighs 50 newtons. So the total force on the air filled balloon is 4 (5-1) newtons downward and the water one has 49 (50-1) newtons downward. Finally using F=m*a you get get that the air balloons acceleration is 4/5 or 80% of what it would be normally. And the water balloon is 49/50 or 98% percent of normal gravitation acceleration. Thus the water balloon falls significantly faster. To sum up what I just said without numbers, air resistance is small compared to a heavy object and makes almost no difference. But for light objects (such as air filled balloons) air resistance is a not small compared to the weight and therefore can change the acceleration a decent amount.
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Short answer is the drag of the ballon. Not a lot of weight and a large area the air has to get out the way as it has to move round the balloon vs slightly less weight but a lot less area the air has to avoid. Same reason a skydiver falls faster before the parachute opens but he weighs the same.
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Why do pyramid schemes still work when they get so much bad publicity?
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The people running them can point very convincingly to how much money can be made, and can point to specific people (high in the organization) who have done very well. The promotors of these programs are very enthusiastic, they talk up the potential profits as if they were a guarantee, and imply that the program is an easy way to riches, playing very well on the inherent human dual tendencies toward sloth and avarice.
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Signal boosting? Help them gain traffic to their content which makes more donations possible. If they get enough traffic, advertisers will be interested
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Did flightless birds like ostriches evolve from surviving Dromaesaurs or flying birds?
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There was a great article in National Geographic from May of this year that explains this. [Here it is.](_URL_0_) Here is the basic answer though: all flightless birds likely trace their ancestry back to a flying relative. They likely began in the southern section of Pangea and when that broke up they were dispersed and each land-locked group evolved in place.
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The statement "dinosaurs evolved into birds" is very misleading. It's kind of like saying "mammals evolved into whales". It's better to think of it this way. Birds *are* dinosaurs. They are the one group of dinosaurs that survived the KT extinction event. All the dinosaurs you know of (T-Rex etc.) have no living descendants. These did not "evolve into" birds. As far as how flight evolved, there is no consensus yet. [Wikipedia](_URL_17_) is a good place to start. We are not sure when powered flight started (as apposed to simply gliding). It may be that feathers initially evolved for display and then later evolved for use in gliding and eventually flight.
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Why do Telemarketers call and hang up without saying anything?
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Step one in telemarketing is "Qualifiying the lead". One way or another, you acquired an excel sheet with names and phone numbers in your target demographic. However, have no real idea how many are actually real phone numbers, and not just some bullshit someone entered to get a free ice cream. Before dedicating the valuable time of your telemarketing sales team on calling each of these, you have robots (or robot-like humans) call the numbers just to see if a real human actually picks up (or at least has a human-sounding voicemail). This scrubs the list down for the real sales callers so they spend more of their time talking to real people.
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They're likely scammy telemarketing calls. Outbound call centers typically use a "power dialer" that calls a bunch of numbers at once, and if the line picks up, instantly connects it to an operator. In legit call centers, they're tuned so that you rarely get enough people picking up at once that there are no operators available. But scammy telemarketers? They don't care, they want 100% of the scammers working 100% of the time, and if that means you get woken up 3 times to a dead line, so be it.
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What's the overall progress on cancer treatment in the past 10 and 20 years?
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[Here you go](_URL_0_csr/1975_2008/results_merged/topic_survival_by_year_dx.pdf) That's not specific to under 50, but it contains a tremendous amount of information, and is broken down by diagnosis. You could correlate it to [this one](_URL_0_csr/1975_2003/results_single/sect_01_table.11_2pgs.pdf), which tells you the mean age of diagnosis for different cancers. [_URL_2_](_URL_0_) contains hundreds of pages of statistics, keep scouring there and you might find more interesting stuff!
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So, let's start with what cancer is: uncontrolled cell growth. Uncontrolled is bad, because it keeps growing and growing when it isn't needed, which cuts off other organs and such from resources they need. To fight cancer, doctors try to kill those cells that are expanding. They do with with medicines, radiation, etc. Remission just means that the tumor is shrinking, not growing. Whatever the doctors were doing was working, and the cancer cells are dying faster than reproducing. But chemo is not a "cure" like an antibiotic is; it will only be effective for a while until the cancer adapts to it. When it does that, the cancer grows faster than the chemo can keep killing it. So doctors have to change the type of chemo that they're giving the patient, but not all types are effective.
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So what was B:\ drive? Why isn't A:\ drive the primary and how did C:\ become king?
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A:\ = first floppy disk drive B:\ = second floppy disk drive C:\ = first primary partition of the first physical hard disk Long time ago in ancient history computers could have both 3.5" and 5.25" floppy disk drives before the latter one died out, leaving B:\ obsolete and now the A:\ drive is also obsolete when people moved on to CDs.
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To put it very simply, a King like Charles I believed absolutely that he was born to be king. Being king "by accident of birth" meant, to him, that he had been chosen by god. Afterall, by the accident of birth anybody could be king. That he ***was*** king meant that he had been chosen to be king, therefore by divine right. This also meant that, as he was god's chosen, he wasn't answerable to any person, as he was only subject to god. Barry Coward's "The Stuart Age" is a good introduction to this.
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Do electrons actually rotate, or does "spin up" and "spin down" just refer to the direction it moves around a nucleus?
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Spin is intrinsic to the particle, it's totally independent of the "motion" of the electron around the nucleus. The electron still has its spin even if **there is no** nucleus around. But no, it's not really "spinning" in a classical sense. As far as we know, electrons are truly point particles, and a single point can't meaningfully spin. Spin is just an intrinsic angular momentum which is *always* carried by the particle. "Up" and "down" refer to the projections of the spin of a spin-1/2 particle along some arbitrary axis (usually called z by convention).
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Electrons, and other fundamental particles, are not actually "spinning". What "spin" is is the quantity of intrinsic angular momentum associated to the particle. Electrons have other intrinsic quantities, like intrinsic electric charge and intrinsic mass. These are just the values of electric charge and mass that every electron just has. Spin is just the amount of angular momentum that every electron just has. It's not coming from any spinning or anything, it's just there.
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What do destination resorts in places like Mexico and Jamaica, do in the summer time? Are they still busy even when the temp is hotter than winter months?
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Even "low season" vacation destinations often have plenty of tourists, often times many people like low season to beat the massive crowds, and just have smaller crowds. Sometimes resorts change up their thing, for example a Ski resort in Colorado will do skiiing in the winter, but hiking, biking, and rafting in the summer. For places like Mexico, the Caribbean, or Thailand, where the weather is often hot or warm year round, the crowds will ebb down, but there's always plenty of people on vacation there doing the normal stuff. But yes, in some cases resorts or other tourist stuff will fully close during their off season though, but thats less than optimal for most places.
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During the local summer, whatever hemisphere you're in is tilted toward the sun, so the sun is in the sky longer, and the sun's light strikes the Earth at closer to a perpendicular angle. So the land and air around you get hotter than they do in the local winter.
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Why do Americans mostly refer to medicines by their brand name?
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Because branding is huge here. So much so that where I live people say Kleenex rather than tissue, Coke rather than pop, or soda, Skil saw rather than circular saw. Many people dont even understand that you can get a giant bottle of Ibuprofen for a lower price than small bottle of Advil. In the US most people buy what the world sells them.
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Trade names like Pristiq and Vioxx (they love x) are the products of marketing departments. Generic names sometimes have a much more systematic naming approach. For example: * ACE inhibitors end in -pril like lisinopril * Beta-blockers end in -lol like metoprolol * Statins end in -statin like atrovastatin * Phosphodiesterase V inhibitors (erection drugs) end in -afil like sildenafil (Viagra) * Anti-virals often end in -vir like oseltamivir (Tamiflu) * Monoclonal antibodies end in -mab with additional modifiers to say where they came from such as xi for chimeric like Rituximab * NSAIDs based on propanoic acid have -pro- like Ibuprofen * Angiotensin receptor blockers end in -artan like losartan * Penicillin derivatives tend to end in -cillin like amoxacillin (antibiotics in general are very systematically named) I could go on. These naming conventions are a god send.
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Is there a ratio between the weight of a submersible vehicle and the amount air needed inside to keep it afloat at different depths? Could I theoretically make a sub as large as I want as long as it could hold air?
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To stay at a certain depth below the water you need your weight to equal the weight of water you displace due to your volume. Subs do this by filling ballast tanks with water to go down and eject the water with air to go up. So yes, at long as you can displace as much water as you weight you can make a sub as big as you want, assuming we're ignoring the structural challenges.
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The air pressure would be significant, but that wouldn't be the problem, it'd be the *water* pressure from the outside. Seafloor pressures are very difficult even for submersibles that only have to hold back a small area.
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What does the helium in a balloon do when we inhale it that causes the change in our voice?
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Helium is less dense than air. This means the speed of sound is helium is faster than air. Your vocal chords produce a sound wave rich in harmonics, which are then filtered by the resonances of the vocal tract. With the higher wave speed in helium all these resonances have a higher frequency, thus changing the tone of the voice.
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Your lungs fill with helium, and when you speak, the sound waves your vocal cords produce travel through the helium. Since helium is less dense than regular air, your voice travels through the helium faster than it would in regular air, so it raises the pitch of the sound, aka your voice.
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Does ocean water get more dense the deeper you go? And could an item that sinks at sea-level be buoyant at more extreme depths, causing that item to hover somewhere in the middle?
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Well, water is mostly regarded as incompressible, which means density doesn't change. Water is a little compressible in reality. Pressure does increase the deeper you go, but the water down there should have more or less the same density. EDIT: Source: I'm a master's student in engineering specializing in fluid mechanics
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Density rules. The heaviest, or most dense, water will always be on the bottom. Pure water is densest at 4 C . To make it heavier, it has to get saltier. As the surface of the Arctic ocean freezes, the left-behind part is very salty water at 3 to 4 C. This North Atlantic Deep Water sinks to the bottom and flows worldwide. Warmer less salty water sits on top of it. In the Antarctic, there is no warmer fresher water to sit on top of it, so NADW is exposed at the surface. When fresh water freezes out at the surface, this already salty and cold water gets even saltier and can cool to about -0.8C before sinking. This is Antarctic Bottom Water - the deepest, coldest water layer in the world. An interesting point is that the Marianas Trench, the deepest spot in the oceans, is only at about plus 2 C. This is because it is completely surrounded by water shallow enough (at only a mile or so deep) that AABW would have to flow uphill to get to it.
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What's the difference between the different tiers of gasoline and is it really worth the extra money for premium gas?
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Higher grades of gasoline are refined more carefully to give them a higher octane rating, which means they burn more consistently and are less likely to "knock" (ignite prematurely) under the higher compression in high-performance engines. Unless your car's owner's manual specifically says you need to fill the tank with a higher grade of gasoline, it's a waste of money. Check the owner's manual.
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Since no one else here explained it, the benefits of an engine that requires premium gasoline is improved performance. Gasoline (or any fuel) will explode if put under enough pressure. In gasoline engines, this is a bad thing because if it explodes from pressure, it always means it is too early in the cycle. Regular gasoline explodes at lower pressures than premium. That means if you use premium, you can run your engine at a higher pressure than you can with regular. When you do finally ignite your fuel, the higher pressure gives you a bigger explosion, which gives you more power. Although diesels work very differently, high pressure ratios is the reason diesel engines are so powerful. They use much, much higher pressures than gasoline engines, which allow them to extract more energy for the same volume of fuel.
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Why do people scream when afraid?
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Social animals (like humans) are adapted to group defense, so we may give signals of alarm that can bring aid or at least warn and protect others. But that's only under some circumstances, such as if you're wide open and have nowhere to hide. Staying silent is another instinctive response to fear, usually if you have a chance of staying hidden.
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Humans get pretty loud. Try it out. Take a deep breath then let out the loudest full blast scream you can. We just don't use it.
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How does an employer know how much to pay their employee?
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The labour market functions based on the rules of supply and demand: the suppliers has to offer something that the consumers are willing to buy, and the consumers have to offer a rice the supplier finds acceptable. On the labour market, the supplier is the household, and the consumer is the employer. An employer knows they are offering too little when no-one shows up to claim the job, and current employees keep quitting. They know they are paying too much... never. Hence they always keep wondering on how to pay less without creating the appearance of a pay cut.
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To make sure they get paid. If they did not require that employers withhold a percentage of paychecks (roughly calculated based on a combination of the projected total annual income and the number of dependents that the wage earner is supporting) from millions of workers, a significant number of them would have spent all of their earnings by the end of the year and not have any left over to pay taxes with.
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What's actually happening to your body when you "get the wind knocked out of you?" What causes it and why does the body respond this way?
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Getting the wind knocked out of you is a commonly used idiom that refers to a kind of diaphragm spasm that occurs when sudden force is applied to the abdomen which puts pressure on the solar plexus. This often happens in contact sports, a forceful blow to the abdomen, or by falling on the back. It results in a temporary paralysis of the diaphragm that makes it difficult to breathe.[1] This can lead to anxiety and there may be residual pain from the original blow, but the condition should clear spontaneously in a minute or two. This can lead to continued difficulty breathing, standing, or sitting.
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It's actually not your lungs. It's generally when someone punches your Diaphragm causing a spasm. The Diaphragm helps draw in more breath by expanding and contracting. So it contracts suddenly and without cause, causing you to feel like you got the wind knocked out of you.
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How did punctuation marks begin, and where did they come from?
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, punctuation helps with speaking the text out loud. That is probably the reason for why much of punctuation developed - ancient Greek plays used punctuation to assist actors in saying the text, and subsequently Latin translations of the Bible employed punctuation because, again, the Bible was supposed to be read out loud. The oldest known example of punctuation, though, is from the [Moabite stone](_URL_0_), a 9th-century BCE text important to Middle Eastern history and written in the fairly obscure Moabite language.
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For what it's worth, overlapping letters, creating ligatures, and inserting dashes into/over letters is quite common as a feature of shorthand for many commonly used words or letter clusters in pre-print writing systems. In the Latin-based system, for example, common words might be shortened to just the beginning and ending letters with a line over them; the word "and" (Latin *et*) was shortened into the ampersand, which doesn't necessitate starting a new letter; and common grammatical endings are often contracted with a dash or other mark to save the scribe some work. With typesetting, this style remains both because it is familiar but also because commonly used symbols can get a symbol (or key on the modern keyboard) which again saves a bit of time for the typesetter or typist. The overlapping of letters or using dashes or other marks was a familiar technique, rather than one invented for the purpose of designating currencies.
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Why, even though I used to be tiny and have a fast metabolism, did quitting Prozac (antidepressants) cause me to gain nearly 50 pounds in two months?
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It most likely affected your appetite causing you to eat more than you used to. Have you had any changes in how active you are?
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Please do not go off meds without help from your doctor. Antidepressants can create severe withdraval effects like diarrhea and panic attacks.
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The school voucher system in America that the GOP is pushing for
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Parents of school-age children would have a choice between sending their kids to public school, or getting a "voucher" that they could use towards the tuition of a private school or religious school. It's controversial for a few reasons: -Many people worry that a voucher system would lead the better public school students to go to private schools, leaving public schools with the kids the private schools don't want - poor kids, kids with discipline problems, non-English speakers, learning disabled kids, and special needs kids. -Many people object to the fact that a voucher system would result in large-scale taxpayer funding of religious schools, and would give the Catholic church and other religious groups control over the education of millions of children.
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Vouchers is a form of subsidy. The "difference" is that typically subsidies are given directly to the schools to do as they see fit. Vouchers are given to individuals so they can pay tuition at a school of their choosing.
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Why is rolling our eyes a natural response to something we perceive at dumb or annoying?
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It’s a cultural, learned behavior., not a natural response to something dumb or annoying. This is backed up by literature and media from Shakespeare all the way up to the early 80’s where eye rolling was actually still seen/used as an expression of lust/attraction. The use of eye rolling to express annoyance is a very recent development. Studies have also shown that women use this far more than men and in some cultures only women do it.
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It isn't a universal expression of annoyance, though. In fact only since the 1930s or 40s did it start to have that connotation in the U.S. Watch old movies, and you'll see it was an expression of wry amusement. (Look at even older movies and it was a "come hither" gesture!) It evolved from amusement to the dismissive "oh, brother" or "oh, please" around WWII. From dismissive to contemptuous was a short step. The meaning of the gesture is purely cultural. There aren't many studies specifically on it, but eye-rolling is not an automatic gesture. It's consciously done. Many cultures do use looking-away gestures to indicate dismissiveness or rejection. But not all involve the eye roll. The homogenizing influence of mass media is starting to spread this one, though.
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Einstein states that mass and energy are correlated. So something with more energy will have more mass. Why does a photon have no mass if it goes at the speed of light?
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You're probably thinking of the famous equation, E=mc^(2), but that's only the energy-mass relationship for a particle at rest. The full equation is E^(2)=m^(2)c^(4)+p^(2)c^(2). For a massless particle, like a photon, this simplifies to E^(2)=p^(2)c^(2), or, equivalently, p=E/c. A photon's energy is E=hf, where h is Planck's constant and f is the photon's frequency, and its momentum is p=h/l, where l is the photon's wavelength. Since c=fl, these agree with the relativistic equation.
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The other posts have answered most of your question, but they're confusing about why it's the speed of light. To clarify, start with the equation E=mc^2 and ignore what c represents. In this case it's just a constant that scales mass in order to make it equivalent to the energy. Now, I can't figure out a way to explain this with any rigor that doesn't assume an understanding of special relativity, but what is actually happening is that the constant in that equation is what determines the speed that a particle that has zero mass will move in free space. Meaning that the speed of light is determined by the equation E=mc^2, not the other way around. Edit: For everybody wondering 'if m=0, does E=0?' (or anything related), scroll down. E=mc^(2) is not the general formula and that is explained a few ways below.
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Why doesn’t water have any distinct flavor? What makes it taste so neutral?
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Not being a smart ass but water does have a distinct flavor. If you were blindfolded and asked to drink something I'm sure water would be the most distinct. Maybe that's not what you are getting at but we never ever drink pure water (as in only H2O and nothing else. It's actually very dangerous to the body). Water from different sources will have different flavor due to the mineral makeup. The water from my tap is town water and is very "hard" whereas my mate who collects his rainwater in a tank has a very different flavor to his water which is instantly recognizable to me as tank water.
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Taste is a chemical-based scent. Your taste buds are designed to produce a response when they come into contact with certain chemicals, like sugars, salts, and oils. PURE water produces no response to your taste buds because there are no taste buds designed to respond to contact with PURE water (H2O). Water can have chemicals in it though, from soil and stone and other places. When you can taste water, that comes from chemicals in the water. If water is filtered enough, you can't taste it. Edit: Forgot about chemicals in water
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What is the difference between the term 'Sun' and 'Sol'?
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Well I'd say technically speaking the star any planet revolves around would be its sun. So locals would probanly refer to it as their sun and pilots/visitors would refer to it by its 'name'.
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[This color](_URL_0_). Above the atmosphere, the sun is white with a blue-green tint as a result of its peak wavelengths. Through our atmosphere, the sun's peak wavelengths are greener. However, the sun is still considered white in both cases because its emission strikes every single visible wavelength fairly evenly. If you want to assign a color to the sun, though, then you'd say it's green, based on peak wavelengths. The reason we usually consider the sun yellow is because it's always referenced to a blue sky, and so appears yellower in contrast. [This](_URL_1_:) this is a great visualization of the solar spectrum, both in space and through out atmosphere.
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why does bank transfers take so long?
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In addition to the reasons below - there's likely a commercial interest at play too - if bank A sends money to bank B immediately, while bank B is checking it is legit, it can earn interest on that money in the hours or days before they release the funds. And that's a lot of money.
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Debits are not instantaneous. A hold for that money is put on your account immediately, but the vendor doesn't see that money for a day or two. Similarly, it takes a day or two for them to send it back to you.
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Why does stropping a blade with leather make it sharper?
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Basically, when you use a blade, the edge gets tiny imperfections which bring the edge out of alignment. Stropping realigns the edge of the blade without removing any material like a stone would. [This](_URL_0_) website is great for visualising what is actually happening, as it has pictures of blade edges using a scanning electron microscope so you can really see what is going on at each stage of sharpening.
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> How can this possibly sharpen a metal blade? It doesn't sharpen it, it hones the blade. When you sharpen a blade the edge is made very thin. It is so thin that it is flexible, and can easily be curled over by use or even accidentally while sharpening. This makes what would otherwise be a sharp blade a bit blunt. By running the blade backwards against the leather strap the curled edge can be straightened back out, returning the blade to peak sharpness.
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How did the modern guitar come to be? Why aren't there any guitars with strings designated for each note?
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There are guitar like instruments with strings designated for each note. For example the harp. There have been guitar like instruments for as long as there are written history. They have varied in size and number of strings but they are largely the same. A lot of these variations have survived to this day. The modern guitar form were developed in the middle ages when music theory and professional musicians and composers became popular. As musicians and instrument makers could do this full time they had a lot of time to experiment with different forms and features. So they discovered the form that would make the best sound and the number of strings that a musician could use. Earlier guitar like instruments often had a simpler resonance box and fewer strings. For example the lute.
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Hi, not discouraging further contributions here, but do check out these earlier answers * /u/hillsonghoods on the hugely entertaining [AskHistorians Podcast 067 - 20th Century Popular Music and the Rise of Guitar Groups](_URL_1_); as well as in [How did the default set of instruments for modern bands come to be 2 guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, and vocals? Why is it so rare to hear instruments other than these in popular music since the 1950s?](_URL_2_) and [When did the modern concept of the 'band' begin? I.e. The four piece guitar, bass, drums, singer set up. Was it popularized by a single group?](_URL_0_) * /u/Kai_Daigoji in [Why is the guitar the standard instrument for modern music?](_URL_3_)
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Could a currency have a negative value?
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Your credit card is a currency with negative value. You accept some debt and goods together, then later have to exchange that currency for USD, because you're earning way too much compound interest on your anticurrency.
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A negative interest rate is used to prod people into investing their money in the markets, as a way to stimulate the economy. Economies in that environment really need the incentive.
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Dear Physicists; where on a snakes body, and what type of wings would it have/need to be able to fly?
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Snakes don't have the skeletal or muscle structure to support wings so it would be much like asking what kind of legs a rock would need to walk to the store. On the other hand, the Chrysopelea is a [genus of snake](_URL_0_) that has a very unique method of gliding for distances as long as 100m.
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It's not really flying. It's gliding. You remember from Toy Story, "that wasn't flying; it was falling with style"? It's the same thing here. Flying assumes that it can create sustained flight in the air, including ascending. This snake slows its descent so that it doesn't drop like a rock, but it's only gliding. It has the ability to suck in its abdomen and flare out its ribs to make itself more wing-like, so that it more slowly drifts to the ground. Combining that with the undulating, serpentine movement you see in the .gif, and it can stabilize its descent.
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Why did the iPhone not sport a 64-bit architecture until its seventh model in 2013, whereas the Nintendo 64 was 64-bit and was released in 1996?
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Software developer here, The size of the data path is largely irrelevant. The N64 wasn't the first or even the biggest data path of the CPU architectures out there in its era. Even the 1970s Cray-1 supercomputer was 64-bit. Even 32-bit Pentium processors had 64-bit data paths. And almost all N64 games were actually 32-bit because it took too long to execute the larger 64-bit instructions and it was largely unnecessary back then. The reason 64-bit processors are more popular these days is either for large memory address spaces (larger than 4GiB) or for processing certain kinds of big data sets, like video encoding/decoding. The N64 didn't have to and couldn't have done that back then.
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I would have to say no. The 64-bit means that the processor uses 64 bit words in its instruction set. To make it simple, it basically allows there to be more addressable memory. The more addressable memory you have the more programs you can have running simultaneously. A 32-bit system can store up to 4GB of addressable memory (RAM) because 32 bits can store -2147483648 through 2147483647. I say it's not necessary because the programs run on a phone come no where close to maxing out the RAM. It just makes it future-proof. Maybe a couple years down the line we will see more advanced OSes and programs. Only then will 64-bit become necessary.
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Why do so many cities and towns end with "ville"?
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It's a French word for city or town (etymologically related to "village"). It was fashionable in the post-Revolution United States to name new cities that way, especially in the south.
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For a very good answer, I recommend you read /u/acidnisibannac's response to a similar question [here](_URL_0_). I'll TLDR it in case cannot be bothered to read it. TLDR; A bunch of historical context goes into the names, plus cities/towns will use whatever name they think sounds nice.
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What were Julius Caesar's last words?
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[I think this old thread](_URL_0_) should just about answer your question. Probably, though, Suetonius' version (καὶ σὺ τέκνον), which he only reports as something that other people say, were not Caesar's last words. Despite the hearsay that Suetonius reports both he and Plutarch state as fact that Caesar did not speak after the first blow was struck. More likely his last words were his response to Casca's initial attack, which Suetonius reports were "ista quidem vis est" ("Truly this is violence!") but which Plutarch says were (if you'll excuse my rather loose translation) "μιαρώτατε Κάσκα, τί ποιεῖς;": "Casca you bastard, what are you doing?!" Plutarch says that Caesar said this in Latin...but he doesn't actually report the Latin, he gives the Greek. After that first outburst, though, both Suetonius and Plutarch are in agreement that Caesar said nothing.
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Julius Caesar was actually the first person to put some sort of word separators in his writing. When he wrote his letters to the Senate about his progress in Gaul, he would put a dot above the first letter in every word, to make it easier to read.
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Why do priests need offices? What kind of clerical or desk job type activities require them to make use of a desk, drawers, etc.
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Gotta write your sermon somewhere. The priest is also sometimes the one who looks after the financial health of the parish as well as handling the maintenance of the building and the grounds
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One part of the answer may be that Orthodox bishops are required to be celibate (unmarried) priests, and unmarried priests are usually hieromonks ... parish priests are almost always married, in Orthodoxy. Therefore the Orthodox church hierarchy consists of former monks, which leads to a stronger emphasis on monasticism. In the West, especially after the Gregorian reform (1100s-1200s), priests were not married, and therefore you have a much wider variety of hierarchs (i.e. not just monks). Just to give a recent real-world example, you can see this in the Orthodox churches within America; in the Antiochian archdiocese, there's a unique case of the majority of bishops having been celibate parish priests, which is a rarity, and this at least partially explains why there's virtually zero emphasis on monasticism among Antiochians in America (two monasteries in the entire country), versus the Greeks (19 monasteries).
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I said "the more you drive, the more likely you are to eventually be involved in an accident" I was told my statement was not logically sound. I am open to the idea that I was wrong... can someone please break it down for me?
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Let's say you're rolling a six-sided die. Your chance of rolling a 1 on that die is 1/6. No matter how many times you roll that die, your chance will still be 1/6. So even if you are driving more, your actual chance of experiencing an accident doesn't change. You are just giving yourself more opportunities to have that experience.
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New drivers are statistically far more likely to be in an accident than more experienced drivers. Insurance is completely a statistics game.
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How did carrier pigeons know where people wanted them to go?
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They didn't. Every carrier pigeon has one place that is their "home". They can always find their way home, no matter where they are released. But that's all they can do, so they're only able to deliver messages one-way, to one place.
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Up until recently, we didn't really know. Turns out, they combine a natural compass with the ability to recognize landmarks. They know what direction they are supposed to go (generally). To find their home, they literally use buildings, rivers, and roads that they recognize to hone in on their exact destination. A recent GPS tracking study showed that the pigeons actually followed roads and rivers to their destinations, even if they weren't the most efficient path.
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What happens to trash I throw out?
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It typically goes to a landfill near you. In general, it's crushed first by the garbage truck so it takes less room. It's then sent to a sorting facility and dumped. It may be burned in certain non-toxic cases. Sometimes they even harvest the emitted "natural gases" from the landfill and burn them off to power the city grid. I don't know too many specifics, but maybe someone else can say something detailed.
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Well if your garbage gets transferred via barge then it’s highly likely it could float down river to a delta and out to the ocean. If your garbage goes directly to the landfill then it’s story pretty much ends there. It’s possible for them to get into the ocean especially when some people actually just toss their trash into the ocean. Thinking your specific plastic rings will make it to the ocean is highly unlikely. Right now there is so much garbage and micro plastics in the ocean that it’s becoming a real environmental threat to ocean life.
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Why didn't composers attempt to put lyrics in their classical pieces?
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> I was listening to classical music today and started to wonder why--outside of opera--no one ever put words to it. Sorry, this is just wrong. There are millions of pieces that have vocal parts and are not operas. [Here's](_URL_1_) a list of Bach's choral works - including some of the most famous pieces he ever composed. [Here](_URL_0_) is a huge list of lieder (songs) composed by Schubert.
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Classical music isn't just your typical four chord rock song with a basis beat. There are themes in each song and each song used different techniques like counterpoint and countermelodies and polyrhythms and stuff like that where basically different instruments are playing different melodies and rhythms but in the big picture it all comes together to make beautiful sound. Composers of classical music also are geniuses because they have to know how a melody they write on a piano will sound for a cello or a French horn and all these other instruments with different timbers and different keys. They didn't sit around in studios trying ideas out. It was all in.
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Why are Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and ISIS against each other?
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Firstly, religion. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are Sunni Arabs, Hezbollah are Shi'a Arab. Huge ethno-religious conflicts between the two. As for AQ and ISIS, it's a bit more complicated. They're not really enemies, they just disagree with each other. You've probably read in the news that ISIS used to be affiliated with AQ until early this year, when they were kicked out for being "too extreme", which is partly true. The short version is that ISIS see themselves as a state, rather than a terrorist group. That's a designation they kind of deserve, to be honest. They run police forces, local governments, schools, and even post offices in the territory they control. Befitting their role as a state, ISIS thought that, instead of swearing loyalty to AQ, AQ (as a non-state group), should swear loyalty to them, much as AQ swore loyalty to the Taliban back when they ran Afghanistan. This caused a big argument (in Islamic culture, a personal oath of loyalty should be to the death), and AQ disaffiliated with ISIS.
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Russia is fighting together with Assad's government army, Iran and Hezbollah against all rebels opposing Assad. This includes ISIS (which US is fighting as well), the Free Syrian Army (which the US is supporting), and the Army of Conquest. The Army of Conquest includes but is not limited to Al-Nusra (basically Al-Qaeda in Syria), which the US is fighting as well, but it also has elements that collaborate with the Free Syrian Army. Russia is only attacking elements in Syria and not in Iraq The US-led coalition is fighting ISIS and Al-Qaeda elements in Syria and Iraq and is supporting the Free Syrian Army (which is fighting Assad) and the Kurd's (mainly the Yazidis, which are mainly fighting ISIS). At the moment both factions are working together in sharing intelligence, and to ensure that the missions won't collide.
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Why do we need sunscreen when our ancestors didn't? Did all our ancestors die of skin cancer?
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Ancestors that lived in Africa had lots of sun, and didn't need sunscreen because of high melanin levels. Ancestors who lived at higher latitudes (we're talking about youall in Sweden) had clothes to protect them from the sun and lighter skin color. Ancestors that die of skin cancer after they've had children don't matter, from an evolution point of view.
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We've been gaining longer and longer lifespans the longer time goes on. We're also diagnosing things a lot more often and efficiently. Back before sunscreen people still would have gotten skin cancer and died from it, but maybe it wasn't reported or they just attributed it as 'death by unknown causes'. In Australia at least we have a MASSIVE hole in our ozone layer. Us white Australians really aren't suited to this sort of environment, we belong where it's cold and there's no sun most of the time. We'd still get sun there, but not so much as to cause sunburn on a regular basis.
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What does not emit electromagnetic radiation?
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Thermodynamics tells us that anything that can absorb EM radiation will also emit EM radiation as a function of temperature. Anything made of atoms can absorb EM radiation, so anything made of atoms will emit EM radiation. This can be a continuous blackbody spectrum, which is a good approximation for most solids, or it can be a series of sharp spectral lines, like those produced by a hot gas. The key is that objects can only emit radiation at the same wavelengths they absorb. So what doesn't emit any EM radiation? Only particles that don't absorb EM radiation, like neutrinos. We don't know what dark matter is made of, but we think that it also doesn't emit of absorb EM radiation.
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Even though microwaves are low energy waves, there's still always a chance of radiation damage from any kind. If enough of the waves hit an electron in your dna then it can ionize. Non ionizing just means that one wave will not cause ionization in your body. It's all chance based, and since there's a ton of waves from any radiation, anything can happen even though the chance is really slim. Did you also know that sunlight is a form of radiation ? Flight attendants and people who fly more often then the general public actually have more exposure than people who work at nuclear facilities. Source: I work at a reactor.
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How can scientists sequence or even code information onto DNA when scientists can barely photograph it? (links to references inside)
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The same way one can do chemistry with molecules we never visualized, either with electron or optical microscopy. For example, to find out what - and how much - of something is in a particular sample, you don't need the ability to photograph it. The first widely used sequencing technique is [Sanger sequencing](_URL_1_). It uses the power of [PCR](_URL_2_) to replicate strands of DNA until they can be visualized macroscopically as a dark band on a gel. In terms of coding information, [solid-phase synthesis](_URL_0_) is used. Once again, chemistry is done without the need to "see" a molecule, in the conventional sense of the word.
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It used to be very experimentally difficult to tell what sequences of DNA are present in an organism. Before the human genome project was underway, we did not have a full, mostly contiguous genome (eg sequences connected together like in the cell). After sequencing most of the entire human genome, we have the code for *all* human genes, even ones we didn't previously know about and still haven't identified. You can now go to sites like _URL_0_ to see what genes we have identified and browse the genome.
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In places where water is scarce, could a dehumidifier collect water from the air that would be potable?
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Yes. It's called an atmospheric water generator. The cost is that it uses a substantial amount of energy.
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We have multiple methods for purifying water (also known as desalination in this case). However, they are moderately expensive to set up, and require a large amount of energy
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Is it possible to increase your attention span?
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Some people would call your lack of concentration Attention Deficit Disorder. There are differences in the brains of people with ADD and without. If you are really stubborn or have a lot of willpower, maybe you can change it when you notice you're getting distracted. However, if you actually have ADD, then the easiest way to change it is by taking adderall. [Check this out, it might help](_URL_0_)
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I don't know the biological side of this, but I can talk a bit about the psychological side. It has a lot to do with attention. If you don't give something attention, like a reflex, it will work on its own quickly and efficiently. If you start paying attention to them, you start to gain more control over them. Just like when you're driving or walking or eating, you don't really always pay attention to what you're doing yet it's still quick and efficient. The moment you start to pay conscious attention, you slow down and you might even do something wrong, but you also have more say in what happens. There's usually a tradeoff between doing something *efficiently* or doing something *consciously*.
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The scientific purpose for crying?
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I think I read once that scientists believe that crying evolved as a signal to communicate pain (maybe from being wounded) without making loud noises. That way our ancient ancestors could look at each other and know something was wrong without loud noises attracting predators. Now it still communicates physical pain, but also emotional pain because of the increases cognitive ability of the brain.
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There is no clear reason why we cry. One proposal is to receive sympathy from your attacker by showing pain and ache. The [first paragraph] (_URL_0_) on wikipedia has some proposals as to why we cry.
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How do sugar substitutes like sucralose affect blood insulin levels?
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I thought this video was interesting, this guy tested and measured his blood sugar levels after trying various sugar substitutes with his coffee. _URL_0_ Test Results from the video notes: Coffee Only: 15 mg/dL increase Coffee + Heavy Cream: 19 mg/dL increase Swerve (erythritol): 16 mg/dL increase Splenda: 11 mg/dL increase Truvia: 8 mg/dL increase NuNaturals Monk Fruit: 24 mg/dL increase Sugar: 41 mg/dL increase Equal: 13 mg/dL increase Sweet' n Low: 10 mg/dL increase Sukrin Fiber Syrup Gold: 89 mg/dL increase EZ-Sweetz Liquid Sucralose: 5 mg/dL increase Sukrin Gold (granulated): 4 mg/dL increase Sweet Leaf Stevia (liquid drops): 5 mg/dL increase It would be nice to see other samples and if the results were similar.
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Most say no or low sugar because they generalize glucose as sugar and other forms not. Also glucose is harder to metabolize than say sucrose, dextrose, fructose, lactose etc. So technically they aren't wrong but also not right. No sugar substitutes tend to use saccharin instead of a "-ose"
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Why does removing batteries, and then reinstalling them make the device work for a small period of time?
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Circuits are designed to shut off with batteries below a certain voltage. When it detects an excessively low battery voltage it turns itself off. That circuit stays in the "off" state until voltage is completely removed from the circuit. That circuit also has a range... Say cut off when voltage is below 3V, but only come back on when above 3.2V so that there's no flip-flopping if the voltage is exactly at the cut-off When batteries are no longer delivering current, they do tend to revive themselves. It's possible, with the example above, it got down to 3.0V, triggering the cut-off, then raised to 3.1V, but not above the cut-on. When you remove them, the cut-off resets, then the 3.1V is enough to power it until it goes down to 3.0V again. Sometimes it's possible to repeat this several times.
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In some devices, the middle terminal is actually used in the circuit, such as a circuit that has ground, +3 V, and −3 V powered by 4 batteries: [Battery split supply schematic](_URL_0_ ) In this circuit, it's very unlikely that both sets of batteries (positive supply and negative supply) will be drained at exactly the same rate. Maybe a power LED is connected between + and ground, for instance, which draws a little more than the ground to − side. By removing the batteries and replacing them in different places, you could be putting the less-depleted batteries in the more-hungry slots, which would squeeze a little more life out of them.
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How do flash-grenades work, how do the get so bright?
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Flash bangs have either magnesium or aluminium in them which when rapidly burned produces a really bright light. (Basically the same as a commercial firework).
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Fragmentation, concussion, smoke, incendiary and flash-bang. Fragmentation grenades are designed to maximize wound potential by incorporating a housing designed to fragment and create shrapnel. Concussion grenades are designed just to create a high-explosive shock without the extraneous shrapnel damage. Smoke grenades are designed to cover movement by obscuring visual lines of sight. Incendiary grenades are designed to both inflict casualties and destroy buildings, vehicles etc. Flash bangs are designed to temporarily disorient in order to increase the effectiveness of another operation (room clearing, capture etc.)
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The vaccination war: Aren't the only people at risk those who don't vaccinate
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No. Vaccines aren't perfect. For example, two of the people who caught measles at Disneyland were vaccinated. They are very, very good, but just getting the vaccine does not completely eliminate risk. Also, there are some people who would otherwise take the vaccine, but can't for legitimate medical reasons. Those people are depending entirely on herd immunity to protect them.
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Vaccinations are normally minor injections that contain tiny amounts of either dead viruses or the shells of viruses. When your body receives them they build up a resistance to it so when the real virus enters your body you can defend against it and (probably) not get sick. Vaccines allowed us to rid the world of smallpox and mostly get rid of polio. Parents won't give them to their children because they don't understand how they work and they were told by people (citing a single discredited research paper) that they could harm their child, possibly giving them autism. There is no evidence they are dangerous and except in rare circumstances (if you have a specific allergy) it's more dangerous to not get a vaccine then to get it.
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What are draconian like laws? Can someone list some fictional and real life examples?
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The Draconian laws refer to the Athenian leader Draco, who instituted a series of written laws enforced by court in Athens; replacing oral laws and blood feuds. They were quite harsh. Debtors of low social status unable to pay were enslaved, stealing a cabbage was punishable by death, as were a multitude of other offenses (when asked about it, he said that he considered the lesser crimes to deserve it, and knew no more severe punishment than death for the others).
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Laws vary hugely by country. What country are you asking about?
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Why do video game controllers use "ABXY" instead of "ABCD" or "ABYZ" etc.
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The Neo Geo and some other systems used ABCD buttons. ABXY is really the convention used by the SNES and XBox. If you want the meaning for choosing something in particular, the Playstation shapes probably has the most intention. O represents yes in Japan while X represents no. The square represents a menu screen(sheet of paper), while the triangle represents the head(point of view). This point actually caused some confusion, since in English speaking markets, the position of accept/reject is swapped from no/yes in Japan to yes/no elsewhere, hence why the O button is used to cancel out of things in western markets instead of X. This is partially because Japanese reads from right to left. The AB XY thing is more arbitrary and doesn't have much meaning.
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Very early consoles usually had a direction pad (D-Pad) or a joystick and two buttons, which they labeled A and B. Later, some added a third button (C). When they wanted to go to four buttons, it would have made sense to use ABCD, but D was already sort of taken (since everyone calls it a D-Pad), so they went to the opposite end of the alphabet. (Where did Z go? Judging from [this Sega controller](_URL_0_), it was there, but they dropped the far outside buttons.)
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Why is it that men get erections from boobs when they are culturally sexualized, but not when they are a regular part of everyday life?
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I don't know about you, but breasts always give me a slight "tingling" Though an erection is not directly related to boobs, but what the boobs represent. They represent sexy time, and when they come out, it's time to go.
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It has mostly to do with behavior - social norms or perceived aspects of manlyness. Therefore, men are more likely to engage in dangerous activities, show off, etc. Also, men (in general and in the manlyness lens) take less care of their health, not going to doctors as regularly as women, disregarding ilness and self medicating more. (I'm excluding casualties due to war - internal or external)
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The difference between mixed and augmented reality
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There's a bit of misinformation in the other replies. The term 'mixed reality' starting coming into general use in the 90's--[this paper from 1994](_URL_0_) defines it as: > (...) merging of real and virtual worlds somewhere along the "virtuality continuum" which connects completely real environments to completely virtual ones. Basically, anything between actual reality and virtual reality can be considered 'mixed reality'. With this definition, *AR is one particular type of mixed reality*. What the other users seem to be describing as 'MR' is more commonly known as 'augmented virtuality', which is another type of mixed reality. (both 'AR' and 'AV' are described in the same paper cited above).
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AR means the holograms were there for the recording, but not live. Basically they were added in video editing. AR means that instead of having a person sit there and track the shot etc, the software automatically placed them correctly. Imagine taking a picture with your phone, and then using the AR emojis to add bunny ears etc to the picture as you're using the camera. That is AR at work. The software automatically detects where to put the graphics, but its not there in real life, its just there "in the video".
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Why do the sounds of Styrofoam or squeaking balloons bother some people, but not others?
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I think this page explains it a little bit. _URL_0_ Summary: The human ear is generally sensitive to sounds in the 2,000 to 4,000 Hz frequencies due to a shaping in our auditory canals (where squeaking balloons, crying babies, and nails on a chalkboard usually lie). There is also a psychological effect involved which this article doesn't touch on very heavily, but I think it goes along the tune of "Why do some people like the taste of XX food and others don't?" I myself have a negative affinity for touching corduroy fabric. It makes me feel so uncomfortable I could cry, but squeaking balloons and Styrofoam and nails on a chalkboard don't bother me in the slightest.
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This is physiology, not physics. Those sounds you mention have a similar spectrum to baby's cries, and our brains and ears have evolved to be tuned to those sounds and to produce a response.
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[Psychology] How much does society contribute to what a person finds attractive? And how much is innate?
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It's almost entirely socially constructed. When food is scarce, fat people are attractive, when food is abundant, thin people are. In the 1920s, flat girls were attractive, in the 1960s, curvier girls were. Attractiveness of facial features is influenced in modern times by what looks best in pictures and on film, which is why modern celebrities look quite different than old-time celebrities. Someone above mentioned that healthier looks better than unhealthier - except when heroin chic was all the rage, and we think tanned looks better than untanned despite the health risks associated with tanning. ETA: And in the past, untanned was more attractive because it signified a person that stayed indoors instead of working outdoors on a farm or the like. So whatever society deems attractive will be the norm.
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This is actually a huge debate in psychology- nature vs. nurture. I would say that it's both though. I'm no scientist, but I think your genes pre-disposition you to be a certain way, and your environment (how you were raised) affects how you use what you're naturally equipped with.
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Do great apes who learn sign language use verb tenses?
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It is doubtful that any of the primates that were allegedly taught sign language were using any kind of language at all. Upon review, the "primate linguists" seem to have been so infatuated with their work that huge confirmation bias obtained: all things that the primates did which could be claimed word-like were recorded, those that were not word-like were not. Do other primates use language or can they be taught? Almost certainly not. Can you have tenses if you don't have language? No, by definition. Can Kaku write a book completely out of his field, physics, for which he has credibility? Well, he can. Should he write a unreviewed monograph on telepathy, telekinesis, consciousness, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and transhumanism? Almost certainly not. Why not? Because it puts his imprimatur from physics onto personal speculation. It sells books, it gives "things I pulled out of my ear" a false credibility.
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There’s actually a part of the brain specifically devoted to language in humans, which other animals don’t have, or at least not nearly to the level we do. At the same time, case studies with feral children have shown that we need to be taught language from a young age, or those centers of the brain don’t get a chance to develop and by adulthood it’s more or less too late. So partly biology, with how our brains evolved, and partly civilization. It’s not just vocal language, but also other forms of language that is unique to humans. Specifically the ability to abstract ideas. We may not be able to communicate by scent or wagging tails or other things that animals do, but animals also can’t convey ideas like “yesterday” or “maybe” or “because”. That’s unique to our brains. Well, arguably. There are some smart animals and gorillas who have been taught sign language and whatnot, but as far as we know we’re the only ones to have developed abstract, high level language on our own.
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If gamma radiation is a high energy photon, and a photon is a mass-less 'particle', how can gamma radiation cause any damage?
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The high energy part is what's important, regardless of whether it acts as a particle or a wave. The process behind the damage is pretty simple; the radiation has lots of energy, electrons in matter absorb that energy and become excited - rising in orbitals getting further away from their nucleus until eventually they just leave and the atom becomes ionised, leaving a highly reactive ion, and a highly reactive (and very energetic) electron. Both of these can then go on to damage other structures (like, say, DNA) as well as disrupting the structure of the matter they came from.
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Alpha radiation is high-energy ionized helium nuclei, two protons and two neutrons sticking together with no electrons around. Very potent, but penetrates matter weakly. A sheet of paper (or your skin) will block them. When alpha-active matter is ingested it will cause major problems. Beta radiation is high-energy electrons. Similarly to Alpha radiation, both are made of particles and penetrate matter weakly. Beta radiation can be blocked by a thin sheet of metal. Gamma radiation is extremely high frequency light, beyond UV and X-rays. It penetrates matter easily and you need excessive lead shielding to filter out a lethal dose.
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Why are we still discovering new elements?
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Protons all have positive charge, and just like magnets similar charges repel each other. There are certain forces that hold the nucleus of an atom together but the larger the atom becomes the less stable it becomes (in general) because there are more protons, all of which are pushing each other away. The elements that are being "discovered" currently only exist for extremely brief amounts of time before radioactively decaying into other elements. These two factors make it very difficult to both synthesize new elements and to measure their properties. We try and find new elements for 2 reasons, bragging rights/it is awesome, and there is a hypothetical "island of stability" where the nucleus will be so big it will be stable again. The issue is finding that is difficult when every very large element currently decays into smaller ones within milliseconds.
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It's more or less true. There are more elements at the high end of the table, but the higher you go the faster they decay, to the point that they don't really count any more... maybe. There are also "elements" you can perhaps make with special particles like that [muonic hydrogen](_URL_0_) that was recently (?) made (hydrogen with a muon instead of an electron), or maybe something that uses a strange quark somewhere instead of a down quark - like hydrogen with a [sigma^+](_URL_1_) instead of a proton. But, in the end those things aren't really elements. Not strictly. So, yeah, we know pretty much all the elements.
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Can every event in the universe, including the Big Bang, be mapped through a light cone?
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I'm not sure exactly what you are asking. Are you asking whether every event is simultaneously in both the past light cone of some event A and the future light cone of some event B (where A and B can be different events)? The answer is then, trivially, "yes". But I suspect you may be asking something different, like whether any two given events are always in the past light cone of some common third event. That is, given two events A and B, is there some (future) event C for which both A and B have a causal influence on C? (The answer to that question is actually "not necessarily, it depends on your spacetime" and definitively "no" if we are talking about the current cosmological model.)
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Yes, and we have. Radio telescopes can see [the radiation from the Big Bang](_URL_1_) in all directions. What they're seeing though is not the moment the universe was created, but [when it became transparent](_URL_0_), which was about 380,000 years later. We cannot see any farther back than that because the Universe was full of an opaque plasma.
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Why were old movies like "Gone With The Wind" and "Wizard Of Oz" in color when movies were still in black in white until the late 50s/early 60s
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Technicolor was cumbersome and required expensive specialty cameras and lighting. It was at first only suitable for big-budget pictures, sort of like 3D today. Also, many directors preferred black and white for stylistic reasons. This is even true today; look at Schindler's List. Edit: Jesus, I get it. Schindler's List is over twenty years old. You're all very clever for pointing that out. My point was that it was made in black and white for stylistic purposes even though color film was cheap and had long become the norm.
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This won't answer your question head-on - so hopefully someone will drop by with more information - but do see this absolutely charming write-up by /u/and_how in * [When 'The Wizard of Oz' was premiered in 1939, was this film most people's first time seeing a film in color, or had most people already had that experience by 1939? Are there any interviews with people after having seen the movie?](_URL_0_)
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How can humans sense when they are being watched?
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We can't. It is confirmation bias in action. Basically, you have been watched countless times. One of those times you got a funny feeling and happened to notice someone watching you. Ever since, whenever you get that feeling, you believe someone is watching you. Edit...wrong phrase.
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There are several things at work in this impression people have that they know when people are watching them. First of all, there’s no extra sensory perception that tells anybody they are being watched. That’s just magical thinking. Sometimes people detect clues to something subconsciously. They may notice people acting differently or even the weird behavior of a pet, who knows. But things like this make people feel like something is amiss, they look around and spot somebody watching, and then conclude that what they felt was “being watched.” Other times, people think something is amiss without evidence. All the time, actually. But they look around and find nothing, so they forget about it. However, after doing this a hundred times and forgetting every time, they may actually discover a person watching them once, and wonder “how did I know they were watching?” But really, they just make note and remember the time they were right while forgetting the multitude of times they were wrong.
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Mushrooms can grow in a variety of different places, but is it possible to grow edible/nutritious mushrooms within yourself that provide adequate sustenance?
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We already have multitudes of gut bacteria that convert food that we can't digest on our own into substances we can metabolize. Assuming it digested food we could not, and assuming we could digest some of it without killing it, then yes it is possible to have a non-parasitic mushroom inside of your body providing you with nutrition. It would end up robbing you of a significant amount of food that you could digest though, and wouldn't help you in any major way.
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Mushrooms are the sexual appendages of a larger fungus, and are literally called "fruiting bodies." They grow up so that when they release spores those spores can be better picked up by moving air currents and spread by the wind. If they only grew close to the ground they wouldn't be able to effectively reproduce in this fashion.
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What is the purpose of tenure? In practice, is it a positive or negative thing, why?
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Its purpose originally was to allow professors and students to explore controversial ideas in an academic environment without fear of being fired for discussing them. As for positive/negative, theres no way to truly answer that as everyone and every study will tell you something different.
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In my hometown every teacher is basically fired every year, and most are rehired in the fall. Seems really easy to fire them. Could you explain what you mean? Are you referring to tenure? Which is normally something that professors are given which is more of a long term contract to keep someone good around
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Why do you have bad breath in the morning if you brush your teeth at night?
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Bacteria and saliva are to blame. Bacteria are the cause of most bad breath, and you have provided them with a paradise for living and breading: the tongue. But why you wake up with worse smelling breath has to do with saliva, or lack of. Saliva production goes way down when we're sleeping, saliva that's typically responsible for taking care of the bacteria (diluting it or carrying down to the gut). Therefore, while you're getting your beauty sleep the bacteria are left to multiply.
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Your mouth is filled with hundreds of millions of bacteria. Generally when you sleep, your mouth is open, which dries it out. Your salivary glands are also much less active when you sleep. This allows those bacteria to hang around and produce nasty-smelling compounds that are not swept away by your saliva and swallowed as they are when you're awake. If you want to reduce the stench of your morning breath, keep a glass of water next to your bed and have a few sips every time you wake up.
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Why do we become addicted to substances that harm and eventually kill our body and/brain?
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Because the same mechanism that gets you addicted to substances is very adaptive. We get addicted to things because they're good at activating the reward centres of our brain (dopamine being the most important part). Reward mechanisms are important because they generally encourage adaptive behaviours (sex, food, exercise, novelty etc.)
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Some have suggested that it causes dopamine responses. Similar brain mechanics to forms of addiction (alcoholism, smoking, drug abuse etc). _URL_0_
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